Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Law with June Brusso from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Is it on or is it off? That's the question
Speaker 1: that's been asked about Elon musk deal to buy Twitter
Speaker 1: for the last six months. Now, Musk says it's on
Speaker 1: in a letter on Monday. The world's richest man made
Speaker 1: the proposal to go ahead with the forty four billion
Speaker 1: dollar deal to buy the social media network on the
Speaker 1: original terms. But Twitter has not dropped its lawsuit to
Speaker 1: force Musk to go through with the deal, and the
Speaker 1: trial date is still set for October. So what's going
Speaker 1: on here? To tell us is Eric Talley, a professor
Speaker 1: at Columbia Law School, why do you think Musk came
Speaker 1: in at the original offer price instead of trying a
Speaker 1: lower price. Well, look like any situation in which you
Speaker 1: know the parties are a party is reaching or trying
Speaker 1: to find resulution. There could be a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: different reasons. One of them, boast practically probably is the
Speaker 1: fact that everything is lined up to close the deal
Speaker 1: at twenty cents. The shareholders have voted, proxies have been
Speaker 1: sent out, the lenders have signed up to a deal
Speaker 1: that's going to go off with that price. So if
Speaker 1: you're going to change the price from that, like if
Speaker 1: if we're going to go for a settlement at fifty
Speaker 1: three twenty or something like that, pretty much all those
Speaker 1: things have to be put back in place again, and
Speaker 1: that can take some time. And you know, in the
Speaker 1: current market conditions, no one really is the biggest friend
Speaker 1: of trying to stall so long as you're trying to
Speaker 1: get this deal done. So that may be one of
Speaker 1: the main reasons why there's some attraction to getting exactly
Speaker 1: the same financial terms as we're with the initial deal.
Speaker 1: And what drove Musk to make this all for now.
Speaker 1: A couple of other things almost certainly drove him to
Speaker 1: do this now as opposed to two weeks ago. The
Speaker 1: first is just, you know, over the last couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: it has become clear that several of the defenses that
Speaker 1: Mr Musk was trying to put forward and those windows
Speaker 1: were starting to close a little bit. You know, his
Speaker 1: bought hunt that he was engaged in didn't seem like
Speaker 1: it was yielding the types of gross disparities between Twitter's
Speaker 1: disclosures and what the data scientists were finding. That he
Speaker 1: could walk away because that was a material adverse effect
Speaker 1: that probably was also going to imperil some of the
Speaker 1: situations related to fraud. A lot of the earlier discovery
Speaker 1: motions dealt with communications back and forth, and seems pretty
Speaker 1: clear that Mr Musk was well aware of bought issues.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's why he was going to go into
Speaker 1: this deal, and he was telling everyone about it. So
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the off ramps that he
Speaker 1: had kind of hoped he'd be able to get those
Speaker 1: windows started to narrow considerably, and it made it look
Speaker 1: more and more like, well, this may be a company
Speaker 1: that I end up owning. When you combine that with
Speaker 1: the fact that a He's about to go into a deposition,
Speaker 1: that deposition was probably going to be excruciating long and
Speaker 1: possibly a little bit embarrassing, because there are a lot
Speaker 1: of claims that he or his lawyers had made that
Speaker 1: had been almost fully rebutted by other witnesses, and it's
Speaker 1: clear that he was going to be called and and
Speaker 1: may still be called on a lot of those inconsistencies,
Speaker 1: and you know that would be videoed and shown in court.
Speaker 1: So I think that that going into that deposition there
Speaker 1: never fun, but this one was going to be a
Speaker 1: particularly unpleasant one, and then you finally combine it with
Speaker 1: the fact that if things are starting to shape up
Speaker 1: to look as though Mr Musk is now overwhelmingly likely
Speaker 1: that be owning Twitter. However, this thing settles how much
Speaker 1: more does he want to try to ncap this company?
Speaker 1: Because most of his defenses you pretty much boiled down
Speaker 1: to saying Twitter is a terrible company. Who would want
Speaker 1: to buy it, who would want to own it, who
Speaker 1: would want to work for it, who would want to
Speaker 1: be a customer of it? And if that's going to
Speaker 1: be his booby prize at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: maybe he sort of thought it's best I stopped being
Speaker 1: sort of the saboteur and start being the booster of
Speaker 1: this company. And so it's not terribly surprising that at
Speaker 1: some point, well, once he real is that he's going
Speaker 1: to be trying to recruit people to stay, the employees
Speaker 1: to stay, another investors to come in. That involves telling
Speaker 1: a positive story, not a negative story, and and the
Speaker 1: earlier he can pivot to doing that, perhaps the better.
Speaker 1: His offer was made with a proviso that the Delaware
Speaker 1: Chancery Court enter an immediate stay of Twitter's fight and
Speaker 1: adjourn the trial. His offer came with the proviso that
Speaker 1: there be an immediate stay of Twitter's legal fight and
Speaker 1: an a german of the trial. Twitter has not done that.
Speaker 1: Is this a case of fool me once, Shame on you,
Speaker 1: fool me twice, shame on me, fool me three, four
Speaker 1: or five times, shame on Twitter. Well that was a
Speaker 1: nice try by Mr Boss, but quite frankly, you know,
Speaker 1: the imagery of Lucy holding the football and Charlie Brown
Speaker 1: running up to kick the football again I think is
Speaker 1: definitely in play here, right. The fact of the matter
Speaker 1: is that letter sort of says I am gonna undertake
Speaker 1: to agree to do what I've already agreed to do
Speaker 1: in was trying to back out on. And so when
Speaker 1: you really read that letter closely, yes, it signals that
Speaker 1: he's had a change of heart, that he's willing to
Speaker 1: try to close this deal on its original terms. That's
Speaker 1: great news for Twitter, but it doesn't really put his
Speaker 1: money where his mouth is. It's conditioned on an immediate
Speaker 1: stay of all proceedings and on the debt commitments closing. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, the fact of the matter is that doesn't
Speaker 1: really change any of the positions that he was in
Speaker 1: All it does is it signals that he's now more
Speaker 1: open to closing on these particular terms. So Twitter would
Speaker 1: be foolish if they said, Okay, now that you've signaled
Speaker 1: this relatively limp willingness to go forward, we should just
Speaker 1: put everything on hold, even though we're careening towards this
Speaker 1: October seventeenth day. You know, if part of what was
Speaker 1: motivating him to issue this letter was sort of a
Speaker 1: fear of walking into that deposition room, well, if that's
Speaker 1: you know, has come to Jesus moment and deciding he's
Speaker 1: going to soften up on the steal, why would Twitter
Speaker 1: ever want to put on the brakes on their lawsuits.
Speaker 1: So if I'm Twitter's attorneys and it seems like this
Speaker 1: is what they've been doing, you know, you're telling your associates, no,
Speaker 1: you don't plan a trip to the Bahamas that week.
Speaker 1: We're planning to go to trial and until and in
Speaker 1: less the ink is dry on a deal that's much
Speaker 1: more credible than the first one. We're not gonna let
Speaker 1: this slow down, you know, any or at least not
Speaker 1: very many parts of the schedule that we put in
Speaker 1: place to get us ready for trial. What happens next.
Speaker 1: Is the deposition going to go forward? Well, the deposition
Speaker 1: is scheduled to be on October six and seven, I think,
Speaker 1: and that is absolutely still in the books. Now, they
Speaker 1: might push the deposition by a couple of days. It's
Speaker 1: conceivable they would, particularly if it's the queasy feeling about
Speaker 1: that deposition that is in fact um inducing a little
Speaker 1: bit of softening up with Mr Musk. That is probably
Speaker 1: gonna mean that other things get accelerated into its place,
Speaker 1: and that would give them maybe, you know, forty eight
Speaker 1: hours to try to work out whether they can get
Speaker 1: all of their box in a row to close the deal.
Speaker 1: But you know, if they are negotiating in the background
Speaker 1: what this closed deal is going to look like, I
Speaker 1: would expect that Twitter is trying to make sure that
Speaker 1: there are concessions there that are a little bit more
Speaker 1: concrete than merely a repetition of the promise that he
Speaker 1: made back in April to close the deal. So, for example,
Speaker 1: they might have him stipulate the various legal outcomes and
Speaker 1: essentially say I'm going to agree that the specific performance
Speaker 1: is in fact the right order here and concede my
Speaker 1: liability on the issue, or alternatively, they might say, Okay,
Speaker 1: if you want to go through this deal, it's going
Speaker 1: to take a few more days or weeks to get
Speaker 1: things lined up. We would like you to immediately put
Speaker 1: enough cash and stock in other companies like Tesla and
Speaker 1: SpaceX into an escrow account so that if you try
Speaker 1: to back out on it, we don't have to try
Speaker 1: to haul you into court for a specific performance degree.
Speaker 1: We'll just have a judge attached that account and have
Speaker 1: it empty out to us and have that will kind
Speaker 1: of put your money where your mouth is. So there
Speaker 1: are ways that they can try to put a few
Speaker 1: more teeth into this undertaking to close this deal at
Speaker 1: fifty cents, But I can't imagine that they would simply
Speaker 1: be happy to both delay and just reaffirm the the
Speaker 1: you know, all of the provisions as they are now.
Speaker 1: They can't do too much to the deal to change
Speaker 1: it around, or else they're gonna have to go back
Speaker 1: and you know, issue new proxies to shareholders, get another
Speaker 1: shareholder vote, and you know, go back to the to
Speaker 1: the debt commitment letter and and and hope to get
Speaker 1: a new one of those as well. So these will
Speaker 1: be mainly sort of um, you know, additions or writers
Speaker 1: to ensure prompt payment by Mr Musk uh and and
Speaker 1: adding on something like an escrow account or um an
Speaker 1: admission to liability wouldn't necessarily require changing the other terms
Speaker 1: of the agreement. What might the judge do to make
Speaker 1: sure that this deal happens before she decides to you know,
Speaker 1: before she said, decides to cancel the trial. Well, typically,
Speaker 1: you know, when parties go into deep negotiations about a
Speaker 1: potential settlement, the judgment will give them a little bit
Speaker 1: of room to do it, but not infinite room to
Speaker 1: do it, because you know, chance McCormick is pretty savvy
Speaker 1: to this as well, that one of the part Mr
Speaker 1: Musk has been alleged to already have been engaged in
Speaker 1: you know, stalling tactic in this litigation. So I think
Speaker 1: there's a sense in which the courts and Twitter would
Speaker 1: sort of say, okay, look, we'll give you enough room
Speaker 1: to see if we can negotiate a settlement of this deal,
Speaker 1: but not if all it really is is a pretext
Speaker 1: to put everything on hold. So I suspect that Chancellor
Speaker 1: McCormick will give them a little bit of leeway, particularly
Speaker 1: if they both show up saying we really think we're
Speaker 1: close to a deal, your honor, she might bump a
Speaker 1: couple of the depositions. I doubt she's going to bump
Speaker 1: the trial date, quite frankly, because you know that's been
Speaker 1: set for months now, and you know, Chance McCormick is
Speaker 1: not the only case that she's hearing. She's scheduling all
Speaker 1: these other cases around it as well. So that week
Speaker 1: has been reserved and dedicated to this case, and I
Speaker 1: anticipate that it's going to be the matter that goes
Speaker 1: forward at time. You know that there are still pieces
Speaker 1: to put together. One of the big wild cards in
Speaker 1: this case is whether suddenly the lenders in the deal,
Speaker 1: we're going to get cold feet and show up and
Speaker 1: say we're not willing to go forward, which then could
Speaker 1: throw things into even more chaos. So my guess is
Speaker 1: that these discussions aren't just between Twitter and Musk, but
Speaker 1: the lenders are in the room as well, just trying
Speaker 1: to make sure that every you know, all the remaining
Speaker 1: pieces that have to be put in place can be
Speaker 1: put in place. Enough assurances can be given to Twitter
Speaker 1: that the deal will close and they can execute any
Speaker 1: additional paperwork that they need to make that happen. What
Speaker 1: else could happen to trip up the deal? Well, there
Speaker 1: still is this wild card about the lenders. Now, the
Speaker 1: lenders don't have a lot of outsum in this deal,
Speaker 1: but there is a set of dominoes that could fall
Speaker 1: over if the lenders somehow legitimately back out. The most
Speaker 1: critical one is that if the lenders back out, while
Speaker 1: it doesn't forgive Musk entirely of his obligations, it would
Speaker 1: at least per the terms of the contract limit his
Speaker 1: liability to money damages, which is probably going to be
Speaker 1: the termination fee of a billion dollars. So the lenders
Speaker 1: backing out for independent reasons, not goaded on or coached
Speaker 1: by Mr Musk, has always been kind of an interesting
Speaker 1: wild card in this situation, and there aren't too many
Speaker 1: outs that the lenders have, But it could well be
Speaker 1: that one of the things that is going to be
Speaker 1: you know, really critical for the lenders, and he is
Speaker 1: actually part of the deal itself, is that there has
Speaker 1: to be a solvency certificate that is issued for for Twitter,
Speaker 1: that it's got to be assured that it's going to
Speaker 1: be solvent upon the closing of the deal, that it
Speaker 1: won't have liabilities and excessive assets or won't have cash
Speaker 1: flows that are incapable of meeting its debts. Someone's got
Speaker 1: to sign onto that, and weirdly enough, the entity that
Speaker 1: has to sign onto that solvency certificate is Elon Musk himself.
Speaker 1: So there could be some kind of odd fun and
Speaker 1: games that take place in which Musque says, I don't
Speaker 1: think I can sign on to a solvency certificate, and
Speaker 1: therefore the banks are going to pull their lending, and
Speaker 1: therefore he doesn't have to close under the contract. I
Speaker 1: do think that there is a danger that if that happens, though,
Speaker 1: it's going to be perceived by Twitter and probably the
Speaker 1: judge is being a little bit too cute, see, So
Speaker 1: I have some reservations about whether they're even going to
Speaker 1: try to go down that road. It is a theoretical possibility,
Speaker 1: so that might be something to keep our eyes out on.
Speaker 1: And the letter that Mr Musk sent about his offer
Speaker 1: to you know, come back to the table also says well,
Speaker 1: provided that the debt gets funded as well, So he
Speaker 1: has kind of worked in some wiggle rooms some margin
Speaker 1: of error on that front as well. And it's something
Speaker 1: that you know, you kind of look at, you say, okay,
Speaker 1: this is a letter that has some concessions in it,
Speaker 1: but it is not yet the paragon of predictability that
Speaker 1: I think Twitter would want or the Judge Eric. Is
Speaker 1: it just coincidence that Musk was getting blowback for his
Speaker 1: peace plan proposal on Ukraine and then news breaks the
Speaker 1: next day that he's going forward with the Twitter deal.
Speaker 1: I do think that there there, you know, have been,
Speaker 1: you know, in addition to a bunch of the other distractions,
Speaker 1: right um, Mr Musk's decision that he's going to engage
Speaker 1: in foreign policy initiatives for Ukraine being only one of them,
Speaker 1: but you know, some bad news for Tesla in terms
Speaker 1: of their production numbers and so forth. I do think
Speaker 1: there's a sense that the number of other distractions have
Speaker 1: grown sufficiently large that maybe Mr Musk sort of thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: this was fun for a while, this was entertaining for
Speaker 1: a few months, but now I got other things on
Speaker 1: my plate, and you know what, I kind of see
Speaker 1: where this is going anyway, so I might as well
Speaker 1: close this deal. I think you combine that with the
Speaker 1: fact that you know this was not destined to be
Speaker 1: a walk in the park, this deposition, I think there
Speaker 1: would be a lot of cringe worthy moments for Team
Speaker 1: Musk during this deposition of staments that are just outright
Speaker 1: inconsistent and by Twitter's account, just lies about what Mr
Speaker 1: Musk did and didn't do in his communications back in April.
Speaker 1: That no one really wants to have to sit through
Speaker 1: that squirm fest of a deposition, And thanks so much. Eric.
Speaker 1: That's Eric Tally, a professor at Columbia Law School. Tom Barrick,
Speaker 1: the founder of Colony Capital and a close ally of
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, is on trial in Brooklyn for using his
Speaker 1: access to the former president to secretly help the United
Speaker 1: Arab Emirates to try to gain influence over American foreign policy.
Speaker 1: Prosecutors say that Barrick and his former assistant Matthew Grimes
Speaker 1: were the eyes and ears and voices of the u
Speaker 1: a E, providing the country with sensitive information and access
Speaker 1: to the highest levels of US government. But the defense
Speaker 1: says Barrick was a globe trotting businessman who ran a
Speaker 1: forty billion dollar investment fund and called the prosecutions allegations
Speaker 1: that he was an illegal foreign agent nonsense. Joining me
Speaker 1: as Bloomberg Legal reporter Patricia Hurtado, who's covering the trial
Speaker 1: tell us what prosecutors are accusing Barrack of well. Tom
Speaker 1: Barrick is a longtime friend of Donald Trump's who acted
Speaker 1: as one of his campaign finance guys in sixteen. The
Speaker 1: government alleges that during the run up to the election,
Speaker 1: as well as Trump's election as president, he and his
Speaker 1: former assistant gentleman named Matthew Grimes basically conspired to act
Speaker 1: as unregistered foreign agents for the government of the United
Speaker 1: Arab Emirates, and the allegations are that he agreed to
Speaker 1: do the U a e. S bidding to help influence
Speaker 1: the new presidency and the new the new administration, arranging
Speaker 1: for meetings talking points. He denies it all. He said
Speaker 1: he was just a business fan doing his business. The
Speaker 1: government alleges he made money. According to the government, the
Speaker 1: Emirati Sovereign Wealth Funds later invested about three seventy four
Speaker 1: million into a fund and real estate projects he backed.
Speaker 1: So was there any formal agreement or anything that the
Speaker 1: government can point to to specifically show the agreement. No,
Speaker 1: which you have to do. And so if you are
Speaker 1: acting as a foreign agent, it's a violation section. And
Speaker 1: according to this you're supposed to tell the US government
Speaker 1: that you're doing lobbying for the foreign country. The US
Speaker 1: says he failed to tell them that he never registered.
Speaker 1: Neither did Grimes. Meanwhile, they charged an Emirati who is
Speaker 1: now a fugitive, of acting as the point man basically
Speaker 1: for the United Arab Emirates in the US with Barrick
Speaker 1: and Grimes. And then the minute he understood that the
Speaker 1: US was investigating, that he left the country. And what
Speaker 1: about barracks associate that's on trial. Yeah, he's his young assistant.
Speaker 1: He was twenty two when he started working for Barrick
Speaker 1: right out of Wharton, and he's accused of helping arranged
Speaker 1: these meetings and helping arrange these communicates. But his lawyer,
Speaker 1: Abby Lowell, has said he was just a gopher for Barrick,
Speaker 1: arranging for making sure he had his bosses smoothie every
Speaker 1: morning and the coffee was hot, and that the Colony
Speaker 1: Capital private jet had the right food in it. So
Speaker 1: he was basically his assistant. Nothing more. So is the
Speaker 1: defense he didn't do it or he didn't get money
Speaker 1: for it, or what. It's both that he didn't do it,
Speaker 1: and if he got money, it was because of investments
Speaker 1: that were just separate and apart from any kind of activity.
Speaker 1: Basically that he denies any wrongdoing. He denies being an
Speaker 1: unregistered foreign agent, he denies acting and lobbying on behalf
Speaker 1: of the United Arab Emirates, And in fact, he's argued
Speaker 1: that there were actually points where he was advocating for Cutter.
Speaker 1: There was a blockade to ends Cutter, and he was
Speaker 1: advocating for Cutter, which is another Gulf country which was
Speaker 1: violently opposed by the UAE and they were basically sworn enemies.
Speaker 1: So why would you support one country and then support
Speaker 1: another country when their enemies? What would you say from
Speaker 1: the opening statements is the best piece of evidence the
Speaker 1: prosecution has. Well, I mean, the other thing that he's
Speaker 1: charged with is lying to the FBI about this investigation
Speaker 1: when they question him point blank. Now, a lot of
Speaker 1: the evidence has been alluded to, but it's under steal
Speaker 1: because it's classified. So there's apparently information there that has
Speaker 1: been redacted half of the documents that get filed or
Speaker 1: blacked out, according to the defense, but they expect to
Speaker 1: call people in the former Trump administration to discuss that
Speaker 1: Trump and high ranking officials and the Trump administration were
Speaker 1: away error that Barrick was talking to the Emiratis and
Speaker 1: this was just the way they did business, and they
Speaker 1: were using Barrack because he was well known to them.
Speaker 1: Because one of the arguments is that Trump gets elected
Speaker 1: as a businessman and a former reality TV sheet show host, right,
Speaker 1: so he doesn't have the traditional avenues of knowing who's
Speaker 1: going to be a former foreign policy advisor. You know,
Speaker 1: that can be a conduit to reaching the newly elected president.
Speaker 1: So he would still have to register as a foreign agent, though,
Speaker 1: wouldn't he? Yeah, he would, And but I think the
Speaker 1: argument is if Trump maybe knew, and maybe high ranking
Speaker 1: members of the administration knew that this was being done,
Speaker 1: I guess there is an argument of plausible deniability as
Speaker 1: far as the defense is concerned, right, because if they knew,
Speaker 1: what's the problem here, and that perhaps another administration is
Speaker 1: seeing different because Trump is no longer in office. It
Speaker 1: seems like lying to the FBI is one of the
Speaker 1: prosecution sort of fallbacks in these cases. And that's an
Speaker 1: easy case for the prosecution to make because the FBI
Speaker 1: usually has the answer is before they asked the questions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's interesting because they're arguing the same defense Martha
Speaker 1: Stewart made, which is you guys didn't take notes. I
Speaker 1: mean you took notes by hand, but you didn't record it.
Speaker 1: How do you know you didn't write the questions down?
Speaker 1: How do we know that the answer was wrong when
Speaker 1: you don't have the question? He answered, you know you
Speaker 1: have an answer, but you don't know what the question was.
Speaker 1: And so how's the jury supposed to infer the worst
Speaker 1: possible interpretation and take the worst inference? Well, we know
Speaker 1: that defense did not work for Martha Stewart. How is
Speaker 1: jury selection? One of the interesting things that happened during
Speaker 1: jury selection is jurors were questioned closely about their feelings
Speaker 1: about Donald Trump himself and how closely they followed the
Speaker 1: sixteen campaign, and um, the judge actually asked prospective jurors
Speaker 1: how did they feel about Trump? Donald Trump himself and
Speaker 1: what would they think if he came in to testify
Speaker 1: as a witness in this case. So that was extraordinarily
Speaker 1: unusual to hear that, especially at a time when we're
Speaker 1: having the Moral Lago investigation and whether or not, you know,
Speaker 1: the January six hearings are going on and what transpired there.
Speaker 1: So it's it's quite interesting that there's some possibility that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump or high ranking members of his administration could
Speaker 1: be called in to testify, including Jared Kushner and possibly
Speaker 1: a former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and um former
Speaker 1: Treasury Secretary Steve the Nuchin about what did Barracks say
Speaker 1: and what did you know about it? Did the judge
Speaker 1: let jurison who had any negative thoughts about Trump negative
Speaker 1: feelings about Trump? For the most part, it was almost
Speaker 1: like if they were very discreet, they did not get
Speaker 1: kicked off the jury for cause. You know, there's peremptory
Speaker 1: challenges where both sides get to object to a certain
Speaker 1: juror for whatever reason. They don't have to cause. But
Speaker 1: there are times when the judge could struke someone for
Speaker 1: prospective juror for cause if they seem to be they
Speaker 1: don't speak English, well, they're hard of hearing, they have
Speaker 1: a hardship for childcare, for example, or a job hardship, right,
Speaker 1: so they can't sit on a five week trial without
Speaker 1: losing income, which would be devastating to their household or
Speaker 1: something like that. So there were people that were very
Speaker 1: articulate critics of President Trump, including prospective jurors that had
Speaker 1: said he was a crook. Now, those people got struck
Speaker 1: for cause immediately, or people who are very loquacious and
Speaker 1: talked at length about how closely they followed the election
Speaker 1: and that they wanted Hillary Clinton to win. They were
Speaker 1: obviously candid, and they got struck for cause. But there
Speaker 1: were other people that said, oh, yeah, I closely follow
Speaker 1: of the election, but I didn't care about the outcome,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a head scratcher. Was like, are
Speaker 1: they not being forthcoming to tell you the truth about
Speaker 1: what they who they wanted to win. So sometimes those
Speaker 1: people were struck. There was one woman who said she
Speaker 1: was upset about the outcome of with Michigan Governor Gretchen
Speaker 1: Whitmer's case. So immediately the government is raising a red flag, going, uh,
Speaker 1: this is a person who might believe in conspiracies and
Speaker 1: Q and on or whatever. So um, finally I think
Speaker 1: the government struck her. But so that's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing where the judge made the prosecutors sometimes use their
Speaker 1: peremptory challenges to people who might be stealth Republicans. So um,
Speaker 1: these are the same charges that former National Security Advisor
Speaker 1: Michael Flynn faced. This case was actually started out of
Speaker 1: Mueller's investigation. It started there and then it ended up
Speaker 1: in main Justice, So started with a special prosecutor and
Speaker 1: then it went to main Justice and eventual late now
Speaker 1: it's in the Eastern District of New York with a
Speaker 1: Department of Justice component too, out of prosecutors. So how
Speaker 1: many witnesses so far? Any interesting witnesses so far? There's
Speaker 1: been at this testimony from an expert and he's a
Speaker 1: professor of um Middle East studies basically, and he's talking
Speaker 1: about the history of all these countries and sovereign wealth funds,
Speaker 1: which to me was fascinating because he's talking about these
Speaker 1: Gulf states who have principalities. They're run by sheikhs or
Speaker 1: princes or kingdoms, and they are oil rich and some
Speaker 1: of them, like the UAE United Arab Emirates, was interested
Speaker 1: in using soft power and they use their sovereign wealth funds,
Speaker 1: some of them with you know, unbelievable amounts of cash
Speaker 1: behind them. One of the sovereign wealth funds has something
Speaker 1: like eight hundred billion dollars in assets, and they they
Speaker 1: do things like to win soft power and win good
Speaker 1: ill around the world, investing in things like sports teams
Speaker 1: like Arsenal or Manchester United UM. They built the United
Speaker 1: Arab Emirates built a stadium in downtown London based with
Speaker 1: you know, for goodwill UM. You can also see the
Speaker 1: Saudias doing this with Live Golf, which has decided to
Speaker 1: invest and have UM golf tournaments, to the criticism of
Speaker 1: some people. So it was fascinating to me to hear this,
Speaker 1: you know, soft power influence and what they're trying to
Speaker 1: do UM to buy goodwill including also back in doubt
Speaker 1: chairs at universities for academic and research as well as
Speaker 1: a think tanks. So fascinating to listen to. So this
Speaker 1: next week I think we're supposed to listen to more
Speaker 1: experts to set the ex stage of what was at stake,
Speaker 1: why would have done this and why the government thinks
Speaker 1: Barrick did this. You have the two defendants, they both
Speaker 1: have their own attorneys. Does their defense contradict each other
Speaker 1: in anyways? No, essentially a joint defense. And you know
Speaker 1: Grimes's defense lawyer showed jurors pictures of his client. He
Speaker 1: apparently met Tom Barrick as a sixteen year old. He
Speaker 1: started a DJ business in Santa Barbara when he was
Speaker 1: fourteen and when he was sixteen, he got hired by
Speaker 1: Barrack's wife to be the DJ at Barrack's sons graduation
Speaker 1: party from eighth grade. So they have a picture from
Speaker 1: Grimes at that young tender age of sixteen. He's all
Speaker 1: of twenty nine now and he looks very young. So,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, they seem to have a joint defense. That
Speaker 1: seems to be, you know, working hand in glove together.
Speaker 1: Thanks Patty. That's Patricia Hurtano, Bloomberg Legal Reporter, and that's
Speaker 1: it for this edition of The Bloomberg Law Show. Remember
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