Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Law with June Brusso from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: I'm going to make sure that every single justice up
Speaker 2: in that court knows we are here, we are watching,
Speaker 2: and we demand that they put our lives over the
Speaker 2: interests of the gun lobby.
Speaker 3: Hundreds of protesters were outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday
Speaker 3: to support the federal ban on domestic abusers having guns,
Speaker 3: and inside, the justices seem to agree, suggesting during oral
Speaker 3: arguments that they'll preserve the ban and it didn't even
Speaker 3: seem like a hard issue. Both liberals and conservatives sounded
Speaker 3: persuaded that the ban is in line with the long
Speaker 3: standing practice of disarming dangerous people, and the defendant undoubtedly
Speaker 3: fit in that category. Here's Chief Justice John Roberts questioning
Speaker 3: his attorney.
Speaker 4: You don't have any doubt that your client's a dangerous person.
Speaker 5: Do you.
Speaker 4: I would want to know what dangerous person means.
Speaker 1: That's not being someone who's shooting at people.
Speaker 4: That's a good start.
Speaker 3: My guest is Second Amendment expert Adam Winkler, a professor
Speaker 3: at UCLA Law School. Let's start with the big question.
Speaker 3: Did it seem like justices across the board were inclined
Speaker 3: to uphold this federal gun ban.
Speaker 4: It did.
Speaker 5: It felt very one sided in the Supreme Court, and
Speaker 5: it felt like almost all the justices, if not all,
Speaker 5: the justices, were inclined to uphold the federal ban in
Speaker 5: this case.
Speaker 3: This is the first test of last year's ruling in
Speaker 3: Brewin that established a constitutional right to carry a handgun
Speaker 3: in public.
Speaker 1: So in order to.
Speaker 3: Understand it, I think we have to take a look
Speaker 3: at the historical analysis test established in Bruin that's caused
Speaker 3: so much confusion in the lower courts and led to
Speaker 3: them striking down gun control laws that have been on
Speaker 3: the books for decades.
Speaker 1: So tell us about that test.
Speaker 5: In the Bruin case, Justice Thomas's majority opinion said that
Speaker 5: for gun laws to be constitutionally permissible today, they must
Speaker 5: have historical analogs in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, when
Speaker 5: the Second Amendment was adopted and the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted,
Speaker 5: incorporating the Second Amendment to apply to the states. As
Speaker 5: a result, courts have really struggled over the last year
Speaker 5: or so trying to find gun laws back in those
Speaker 5: days that are sufficiently analogous to many common sense, mainstream
Speaker 5: gun laws that we have today. Truth be told, many
Speaker 5: of our gun laws are kind of twentieth century inventions.
Speaker 5: Bans on felons possessing firearms, bans on the mentally ill
Speaker 5: possessing firearms, and the issue into this case, ban on
Speaker 5: domestic abusers possessing firearms. These are laws that don't have
Speaker 5: any obvious analog in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, and
Speaker 5: so this law was struck down by the Fifth Circuit,
Speaker 5: just like courts around the country have been striking down
Speaker 5: gun laws for lack of a clear historical precedent.
Speaker 3: So then how did the justices get around that lack
Speaker 3: of a clear historical precedent and all end up seemingly
Speaker 3: in favor of this bank.
Speaker 5: First of all, I think it's important to note what
Speaker 5: Elizabeth Proligar, the Flicitor General, began her oral argument with
Speaker 5: by noting the statistics that show that domestic abusers with
Speaker 5: firearms are an incredibly deadly mix, and that forty eight
Speaker 5: states and the federal government have prohibited domestic abusers from
Speaker 5: possessing firearms, showing that what she intended to do was
Speaker 5: not just rely on the history and tradition, but on
Speaker 5: the common sense idea that some people are too dangerous
Speaker 5: to have firearms. But the court seemed to be inclined
Speaker 5: to do is allow the government to frame their gun
Speaker 5: laws at a higher level of generality. You don't have
Speaker 5: to show that there's a history and tradition of domestic
Speaker 5: abusers being prohibited from possessing firearms, and of course there
Speaker 5: isn't a long history and tradition of that, but maybe
Speaker 5: you could show that there's a history and tradition of
Speaker 5: prohibiting dangerous people from possessing firearms, and domestic abusers are
Speaker 5: just a modern day understanding of people who are just
Speaker 5: too dangerous to.
Speaker 3: Have come Did the liberal justices seem like they wanted
Speaker 3: to use this case to revisit that history based test.
Speaker 3: Here's Justice Katanji Brown Jackson.
Speaker 6: What's the point of going to the founding era? I mean,
Speaker 6: I thought it was doing some work, but if we're
Speaker 6: still applying modern sensibilities, I don't really understand the historical framing.
Speaker 5: That did seem like she was pressing that it's very
Speaker 5: hard to defend this domestic violence abuser ban when people
Speaker 5: are subject to a restraining order in light of the
Speaker 5: history and tradition of which that the Bruin Court offered.
Speaker 5: Although Bruin said that you should look for analogous laws,
Speaker 5: I think that at the end of the day, the
Speaker 5: government is hard pressed to draw a very close analogy. Instead,
Speaker 5: the analogies are very general and didn't exactly apply.
Speaker 3: On point, did a majority of the Conservative justices seem
Speaker 3: to want to limit any decision to the facts here?
Speaker 3: Justice Neil Gorsitch said at one point, do we need
Speaker 3: to get into any of that?
Speaker 5: It did seem like several of the justices, including Justices Gorsch, Thomas,
Speaker 5: and Alito, we're looking for ways to narrow the consequence
Speaker 5: of ruling against Rahemi in this case and in favor
Speaker 5: of upholding the law, talking about whether there might be
Speaker 5: different as applied challenges that someone could bring, or whether
Speaker 5: there might be some common law defenses that one could
Speaker 5: bring to a charge that one was possessing a firearm
Speaker 5: illegally in violation of the domestic violence restraining order, and
Speaker 5: several of the justices leased Justice Alito expressed some discomfort
Speaker 5: with the idea that these domestic violence restraining orders could
Speaker 5: be very long lasting and yet don't have very serious
Speaker 5: procedural requirements that correspond with broad notions of due process.
Speaker 3: Perhaps, the Solicitor General said, the Court use the present
Speaker 3: case to give more guidance to the lower courts and
Speaker 3: to correct lower courts quote profound misreading of the bruined decision.
Speaker 1: Do you think we'll get any major statements out of
Speaker 1: this ruling.
Speaker 5: I think that's going to be one of the big questions.
Speaker 5: Is this a really narrow ruling that just cobbles together
Speaker 5: a majority, or is it an opinion that will provide
Speaker 5: more guidance to the lower courts. Justice Kagan specifically asked
Speaker 5: about that and about the necessity, and the Solicitor General
Speaker 5: had a very clear and precise answer that there were
Speaker 5: three errors being committed by the lower courts. They were
Speaker 5: only looking to regulation and not looking to other historical sources.
Speaker 5: They were looking at regulation, but we're really looking for
Speaker 5: twins rather than for historical analogs. And also that the
Speaker 5: absence of regulation should not always be read against the government,
Speaker 5: especially when a problem like domestic violence was not really
Speaker 5: thought of as a problem back then.
Speaker 3: So I admit that I find this historical analysis test
Speaker 3: with Second Amendment cases just bordering on ridiculous. Were there
Speaker 3: any clues as to whether the Conservatives remained behind the
Speaker 3: historical analysis that Thomas put in place.
Speaker 5: Well, I think that the Solicitor General made a very
Speaker 5: strategic choice not to challenge the history and tradition test
Speaker 5: of Bruin, but instead seek to, if anything, recapture its fluidity,
Speaker 5: its ability to be useful to uphold laws, not just
Speaker 5: to strike down laws. And so she was not asking
Speaker 5: the court to abandon the history and tradition test. Rather,
Speaker 5: she was saying that the lower courts have been misapplying
Speaker 5: that test, and that to capture the true essence of
Speaker 5: that test means that you should approach the issue the
Speaker 5: way she did, at a slightly higher level of generality,
Speaker 5: focusing on dangerousness rather than looking for historical precedence of
Speaker 5: domestic abusers being prohibited access to firearms.
Speaker 3: If you had to guess, would you guess that it's
Speaker 3: going to be a limited opinion or a broader opinion.
Speaker 5: If you were to guess, I would say this is
Speaker 5: likely to be a nine to nothing, maybe eight to
Speaker 5: one or seven to two opinion. And I think because
Speaker 5: of that, the larger the majority, the less likely it
Speaker 5: is to be very far reaching. That it may be
Speaker 5: one of these cases that gets assigned to Justice gorsicch
Speaker 5: to just do as little damage as possible to the
Speaker 5: bruined test. But I do think that it's no matter
Speaker 5: how big the majority is to uphold the federal law here.
Speaker 5: If indeed the court does uphold the federal law here,
Speaker 5: it will be very good news for gun safety reform advocates.
Speaker 5: They've been struggling to defend gun laws in courts, bands
Speaker 5: on guns without serial numbers, bands on assault weapons. Even
Speaker 5: last week a court struck down the restriction on felons
Speaker 5: possessing firearms. So if the court does move to this
Speaker 5: higher level of generality it says that government can prohibit
Speaker 5: people who are dangerous from having firearms, it would provide
Speaker 5: a basis for defending a lot of core gun laws
Speaker 5: that we really rely on in modern twenty first century.
Speaker 7: America and adam.
Speaker 3: Last week, so Supreme Court agreed to decide the fate
Speaker 3: of the federal criminal ban on bump stocks, the attachments
Speaker 3: that let a semi automatic rifle fire much like a
Speaker 3: machine gun.
Speaker 1: What do you make of that? Do you make anything
Speaker 1: of it?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 5: I don't make much of it. I think that is
Speaker 5: really an administrative law case. And it's about whether the
Speaker 5: administrative agency went too far in interpreting its powers under
Speaker 5: the Gun Control Act and other federal statutes that regulate firearms.
Speaker 5: And so I think that although they both deal with
Speaker 5: firearms regulation, both these cases, they're very different ones. A
Speaker 5: Second Amendment case that's going to be decided on Second
Speaker 5: Amendment grounds and how huge impact on how other Second
Speaker 5: Amendment cases are handled. Whatever the court does on the
Speaker 5: bump stocks will be much more important for administrative law
Speaker 5: and the scope of administrative agency authority under the Constitution.
Speaker 3: A lot of administrative law cases this term. Thanks so much,
Speaker 3: Adam Best, Professor Adam Winkler of UCLI Law School.
Speaker 1: A note.
Speaker 3: Michael Bloomberg, the founder majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the
Speaker 3: parent of Bloomberg Radio, is a donor to groups that
Speaker 3: support gun control, including Every Town for Gun Safety. Coming
Speaker 3: up next, the battle over abortion rights. This is Bloomberg Ohio.
Speaker 7: We did it.
Speaker 6: We did it.
Speaker 3: It was a huge win for abortion rights in Ohio,
Speaker 3: a Republican state where voters approved a ballot measure to
Speaker 3: enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution
Speaker 3: that gives abortion rights a seven out of seven winning
Speaker 3: streak in state ballot initiative fights since the Supreme Court
Speaker 3: overturned Roe v. Wade last year, and while abortion rights
Speaker 3: may not have been on the ballot in other states,
Speaker 3: it was the driving issue in races in Kentucky and Virginia,
Speaker 3: where it trounced the opposition, beating back an attempt to
Speaker 3: reframe the issue by Republicans. Thank you. Kentucky Democratic Governor
Speaker 3: Andy Basher resoundingly won reelection in the red state of
Speaker 3: Kentucky by putting abortion rights front and center in his
Speaker 3: campaign against the Trump backed Republican Attorney general who supported
Speaker 3: the states near total ban on abortion. Joining me is
Speaker 3: an expert in reproductive rights, Mary Ziegler, a professor at
Speaker 3: UC Davis Law School. Mary in Ohio, fifty six percent
Speaker 3: voted for the constitutional right to abortion, despite a host
Speaker 3: of obstacles put in the way by Republicans, including purging
Speaker 3: the voter rolls and changing language in the ballot measure
Speaker 3: to call a fetus and unborn child.
Speaker 9: There have been a lot of obstacles. Republicans began by
Speaker 9: trying to lift the threshold for passage of a ballot initiative,
Speaker 9: and that proposal was defeated by Ohio voters in August.
Speaker 9: There's been information published on official government websites in Ohio
Speaker 9: giving a misleading account of what issue on the ballot
Speaker 9: initiative would have meant. There's been the language anti worshion
Speaker 9: language used to describe what voters were choosing. And yet,
Speaker 9: you know, despite all of that, pulling on the valid
Speaker 9: initiative actually been pretty remarkably consistent for some time now,
Speaker 9: So voters had made up their minds and all of
Speaker 9: these various strategies by Republicans didn't work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and also making it a no vote in August
Speaker 3: but a yes vote in November. It seems like the
Speaker 3: Republicans were just trying to sow confusion rather than waning
Speaker 3: on the issue.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the things
Speaker 9: that's striking. There hasn't really been an effort in Ohio
Speaker 9: to convince voters that abortion rights were a bad idea
Speaker 9: on the merits. Instead, there have been efforts to stop
Speaker 9: voters either from understanding the issue or deciding it. And
Speaker 9: that obviously tells you Ohio Republicans were in trouble. Right,
Speaker 9: If you yourself conceived that your position is that unpopular,
Speaker 9: you're not starting from a position of strength. I think,
Speaker 9: by the same token, if you've lost seven of seven
Speaker 9: valid initiative races in the space of a year, the
Speaker 9: problem is not you know, just packaging or funding that
Speaker 9: the problem is substance, and I think that's becoming increasingly clear.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the seven to zero winning street.
Speaker 3: What have the abortion rights advocates been doing to be
Speaker 3: so effective?
Speaker 9: I mean, I think, first of all, they have the
Speaker 9: advantage of what Republicans are doing in a lot of states.
Speaker 9: Right So Republicans in Virginia, for example, tried to say, oh, hey,
Speaker 9: you know, the Democrats are extreme because they don't want
Speaker 9: there to be any restrictions on abortion. And it's been
Speaker 9: easy for Democrats to carry that attack by pointing to
Speaker 9: the bands that are actually on the books and large
Speaker 9: spots of the country that are not, you know, moderate
Speaker 9: compromises at all. I think the other thing that abortion
Speaker 9: rights supporters have done relatively well is to realize that
Speaker 9: ballot initiatives are very much the politics of the local.
Speaker 9: So a message that will work in Ohio will not
Speaker 9: necessarily work in California or Kansas. That you have to
Speaker 9: tailor what you're saying how you write your valid initiative,
Speaker 9: what arguments you make for it to the audience in
Speaker 9: that state. And I think that's been pretty successfully done
Speaker 9: too so far.
Speaker 3: So in Virginia, along with the fear mongering, it seemed
Speaker 3: like abortion opponents were trying out some new tactics, sort
Speaker 3: of rebranding. Republicans, like the Governor Glenn Youngkin didn't talk
Speaker 3: about abortion bans, but rather limits on abortion.
Speaker 4: I really feel that this is a moment for us
Speaker 4: to come together around reasonable limits.
Speaker 3: Actually it seemed to backfire. Republicans lost control of both
Speaker 3: chambers of the state legislature.
Speaker 9: Governor Youngkin was on the record as saying that he
Speaker 9: was piloting what he saw as a potential way forward
Speaker 9: for Republicans on abortion in every state, and that was
Speaker 9: to go on the offense and essentially accuse Democrats of
Speaker 9: being the real extremists on abortion and using, like you said,
Speaker 9: a limit, as Youngkin would have framed it, to rally
Speaker 9: Republicans around. And that obviously didn't work, And if anything,
Speaker 9: it seemed that the abortion issue helped Democrats, I think,
Speaker 9: achieve a surprisingly good result in Virginia and taking control
Speaker 9: of both houses of the Virginia legislature. And I think,
Speaker 9: you know, the reason it didn't work is because Youngin
Speaker 9: was using an old playbook before Roe was gone. Republicans
Speaker 9: would hold up, you know, regulations that were popular in isolation,
Speaker 9: like a fifteen week ban or a ban on so
Speaker 9: called partial birth abortion, and say, you know, aren't you
Speaker 9: for this voters and a lot of voters would say, sure,
Speaker 9: you know, that sounds reasonable. But now when Democrats say
Speaker 9: that isn't really where Glenn Youngkin wants to stop. That's
Speaker 9: as much as he thinks he can get today. But
Speaker 9: tomorrow he's going to come back and ask for a
Speaker 9: six week ban or a ban at fertilization. That argument
Speaker 9: has a lot more credibility with voters because, of course,
Speaker 9: you know, anti abortion activists are admitting as much, anti
Speaker 9: abortion politicians are admitting as much. There's many state bans
Speaker 9: that already go that far. So when young Kin claims
Speaker 9: to be the voice of moderation and reason, it doesn't
Speaker 9: have the same force it would have before Dobbs. So
Speaker 9: I think that's one of the reasons that strategy didn't
Speaker 9: actually play out as Youngkin had planned.
Speaker 3: Kentucky Governor Andy Basheer seemed to pull out all the
Speaker 3: stops against his Republican opponent, Daniel Cameron. For example, he
Speaker 3: ran a very stark attack ad that featured a young
Speaker 3: woman who'd been raped by her stepfather when she was twelve.
Speaker 1: Here's part of that ad.
Speaker 8: This is to you, Daniel Cameron, to tell a twelve
Speaker 8: year old girl she must have the baby of her
Speaker 8: stepfather who raped her is unthinkable. I'm speaking out because
Speaker 8: women and girls need to have options. Daniel Cameron would
Speaker 8: give us none.
Speaker 3: Mary, what's your take on Basher's campaign.
Speaker 9: Well, I think what you're seeing in the fight between
Speaker 9: Cameron and Bashir is sort of the mirror image of
Speaker 9: what happens when you try to do the opposite of
Speaker 9: what Glenn Youngkin did. So, at least at the beginning
Speaker 9: of his campaign, Daniel Cameron said, I'm not going to
Speaker 9: run away from my position on abortion. I'm going to
Speaker 9: make it part of my campaign. I'm going to emphasize
Speaker 9: that I've been in court, I've been the one fighting
Speaker 9: for Kentucky's abortion band like I'm mister anti abortion right.
Speaker 9: And I was happy to have him do that because
Speaker 9: then Basher could say, you know, I am the voice
Speaker 9: of reason right and not even really have to get
Speaker 9: into questions about abortion that would be tricky in Kentucky.
Speaker 9: He could focus on things like victims of sexual assault
Speaker 9: and accuse Cameron of being heartless toward those patients and
Speaker 9: leave any of the trickier questions in a red state
Speaker 9: like Kentucky off the table. So I think the lesson
Speaker 9: is that whether you're trying to strike a kind of
Speaker 9: faux moderate tone like Youngkin, or you're trying to, you know,
Speaker 9: run to energize the base, which I think is what
Speaker 9: Cameron was doing, that there are perils either way.
Speaker 3: Constitutional amendments to protect abortion access are already on the
Speaker 3: ballot in twenty twenty four in Maryland and New York.
Speaker 3: In what other states do you see momentum to put
Speaker 3: abortion rights on the ballot in twenty twenty four?
Speaker 9: Probably the most consequential is Florida. New York, and Maryland
Speaker 9: are not in any real jeopardy of changing their abortion
Speaker 9: policy significantly absent the constitutional amendment. Florida has a very
Speaker 9: conservative state Supreme Court that is likely to overturn a
Speaker 9: nineteen eighty nine precedent recognizing state of wors rights, So
Speaker 9: absent intervention by voters, you're likely to see Florida's six
Speaker 9: weekman go into effect in the not too distant future.
Speaker 9: Florida is more complicated. Florida has a sixty percent threshold
Speaker 9: for passing ballid initiatives. And second, there's already a challenge
Speaker 9: before the Florida Supreme Court, which as I mentioned, is
Speaker 9: very conservative, by the Attorney General, Ashley Moody that's attempting
Speaker 9: to get that issue off the ballot by essentially arguing
Speaker 9: it's confusing to voters. So this is another kind of
Speaker 9: parallel to what we saw in Ohio, where Republicans are
Speaker 9: trying to keep voters from weighing in, but this time
Speaker 9: they're relying on a very conservative state Supreme Court, which
Speaker 9: may be a more successful strategy.
Speaker 3: Well, the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision left us with this
Speaker 3: state by state fight over abortion rights. Thanks so much,
Speaker 3: Mary Best, Professor Mary Ziegler of u C. Davis Law
Speaker 3: School coming up next. Donald Trump shouts at the judge
Speaker 3: in a wild day on the witness stand. I'm June
Speaker 3: Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg.
Speaker 8: It's a case that be dismissed. Immediately the fraud was
Speaker 8: on the air from the court the court.
Speaker 3: Was the fraud sturing this case.
Speaker 10: They made references to assets that were very valued well,
Speaker 10: and they.
Speaker 5: Said they had no idea, they had no idea what
Speaker 5: the numbers were.
Speaker 3: Yes, you heard that correctly. Donald Trump said it was
Speaker 3: the judge who committed fraud. It was a wild day
Speaker 3: in the courtroom as the former president took the witness
Speaker 3: stand on Monday in the New York Attorney General's two
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty million dollars civil fraud trial over asset
Speaker 3: valuations at the Trump organization. Less than an hour into
Speaker 3: Trump's testimony, Judge Arthur and Goren, who will decide the case,
Speaker 3: threaten to remove him from the stand for giving law
Speaker 3: rambling answers to yes or no questions. New York agey
Speaker 3: Letitia James said she wasn't surprised.
Speaker 10: He rambled, he hurled insults, but we expected that. At
Speaker 10: the end of the day, the documentary evidence demonstrated that,
Speaker 10: in fact, he falsely inflated his assets to basically enrich
Speaker 10: himself and his family. He continued to persistently engage in fraud.
Speaker 1: The numbers don't lie.
Speaker 3: Joining me is Bloomberg Legal reporter Patricia Hurtado, who was
Speaker 3: in the courtroom. So, pat what was it like in
Speaker 3: the courtroom, because reading about the testimony, it seemed so
Speaker 3: contentious and just off the rails at some point.
Speaker 7: Basically, you know, those of us who are trial reporters
Speaker 7: are used to the controlled environment where the lawyer asked
Speaker 7: questions and the witnesses under oath and they're supposed to
Speaker 7: answer truthfully to the best of their ability. Trump used
Speaker 7: it as an opportunity, as a soapbox, to take the
Speaker 7: stand and give the answer and make the statement and
Speaker 7: give the spin that he wanted to give and how
Speaker 7: he felt about this lawsuit. So he called it a
Speaker 7: which hunt. He would give ad hoc answers that were
Speaker 7: not to the exact question. He would just go off
Speaker 7: on a diatribe or a long long comment that the
Speaker 7: judge said, are we having to listen to an essay?
Speaker 7: You know? I mean, at some point the judge was
Speaker 7: trying to rein him in because the trial was veering
Speaker 7: off the rails. He was talking about, you know, motives
Speaker 7: and applying all kinds of nefarious machinations behind the seat
Speaker 7: for wives. The lawsuit got brought, he called it fraud.
Speaker 7: He said, the judge sitting right next to him was
Speaker 7: biased and said the case was crazy. And then the
Speaker 7: attorney for the state said done, and then Trump said done.
Speaker 7: But then he continued on and used every other question
Speaker 7: as you know, a forum to air his grievances about
Speaker 7: the feelings about the lawsuit, how great his company was,
Speaker 7: how he has a beautiful company with beautiful numbers and
Speaker 7: these are amazing, and he's so wealthy he could do
Speaker 7: whatever he wanted.
Speaker 3: Well, the judge at one point said, you can attack me,
Speaker 3: but just answer the question. Did he lose his temper?
Speaker 7: Well, the judge several times stopped and said, can you
Speaker 7: please control your client? And he turned to Kaist Christopher Kais,
Speaker 7: who is a lawyer for Trump, and he asked him,
Speaker 7: could you please control your client. And he was basically
Speaker 7: suggesting that he would dismiss Trump from the witness stand
Speaker 7: and he is allowed in the civil lawsuit to draw.
Speaker 7: It was called an adverse inference. You know, basically, all
Speaker 7: bets are off, and I'm going to vote against mister
Speaker 7: Trump because he didn't think he was being honest.
Speaker 3: So did Kays at one point argue that Trump had
Speaker 3: a right to speak as a presidential candidate on the
Speaker 3: witness stand yes.
Speaker 7: He called him the former and soon to be chief
Speaker 7: executive of the United States who understands the rules, and
Speaker 7: the judge says, but he doesn't abide by them. And
Speaker 7: Kys was basically arguing he has a right to do
Speaker 7: whatever he wants because he's running for president and his
Speaker 7: pre speech rights as a presidential candidate were being impaired.
Speaker 3: So what did he say about the financial statements? Did
Speaker 3: he make any admissions?
Speaker 7: He did acknowledge that he had signed. There were many
Speaker 7: times where they showed him guarantees they gave banks like
Speaker 7: Deutsche Bank for loans or loan guarantees for the Durrell
Speaker 7: Golf Club in Florida as well as for Trump Tower
Speaker 7: in Chicago, that he would guarantee that he had a
Speaker 7: certain amount of net worth. So basically he guaranteed it.
Speaker 7: So he was having to admit on the stand that
Speaker 7: he had indeed signed and endorsed and affirmed the accuracy
Speaker 7: of the financial documents. They're called statements of financial conditions
Speaker 7: that Trump org had submitted attesting to the value of
Speaker 7: their properties and how much money they had on hand.
Speaker 7: For example, attesting that he had twenty billion dollars in
Speaker 7: net worth in the end, he could not distance himself
Speaker 7: from something that he had affirmed and signed and sworn
Speaker 7: was accurate. He attested that Joetscha Bank, for example, he said,
Speaker 7: was not defraudst They got great loans and there were
Speaker 7: worth a lot of money, and the bank was not
Speaker 7: a victim. And so for the lawsuit that the attorney
Speaker 7: generalist brought was basically nonsense and quote unquote crazy. But
Speaker 7: you know, Deutsche Bank has said have they known the
Speaker 7: true value, They may have not agreed to certain terms
Speaker 7: that they let Trump have. So this is now going
Speaker 7: to be up to the judge. And at one point
Speaker 7: the judge interrupted Trump and asked the state lawyer, are
Speaker 7: you okay with this because it seems like he's going
Speaker 7: off again, And the state lawyer, Kevin Wallace, said, he
Speaker 7: thinks it's great. It sounds like what the state is
Speaker 7: happy about is. Trump did not distance himself. He acknowledged
Speaker 7: those were his signatures. He acknowledged he did sign those
Speaker 7: documents which eventually did go to the banks. He said
Speaker 7: it was up to the banks to do their own
Speaker 7: due diligence, and that there's this clause at the very
Speaker 7: bottom that basically plausible deniability. You know, it's like an
Speaker 7: escape clause that Trump claimed the onus was on the
Speaker 7: bank to do their own due diligence and not rely
Speaker 7: on the accuracy of the numbers the Trump board gave them.
Speaker 7: So you know, he's saying it's the fall to the
Speaker 7: banks and the insurers for not doing better due diligence.
Speaker 7: But the documents are what they say, so I can
Speaker 7: see why the Attorney General may feel that they've actually
Speaker 7: gotten a lot out of Trumps, just what they needed.
Speaker 3: And also, is he claiming that Mara a Lago is
Speaker 3: worth like a billion dollars?
Speaker 7: Yes, he said it was worth a billion. And this
Speaker 7: is a strange answer that's been given by the Trump sons,
Speaker 7: Don Junior as well as Eric, that mar A Lago
Speaker 7: supposedly had a National Register of Historic Places preventing it
Speaker 7: from being developed as anything but this historic property it's
Speaker 7: when it was built by Merriweather Posts. You know, it's
Speaker 7: this beautiful nineteen twenty mansion and it's on the water,
Speaker 7: and Trump bought it and then claims that he could
Speaker 7: develop it. And he did this also for a Scottish
Speaker 7: golf club that he wanted to develop. So he claims
Speaker 7: these properties he could do whatever he wanted, so if
Speaker 7: it was okay for them to overvalue properties like Mara
Speaker 7: a Lago. It's a club, but it could also be
Speaker 7: a residence, but it cannot be both. But Trump and
Speaker 7: his sons have said it's a club and a home,
Speaker 7: so he can do whatever he wants, and sometime later
Speaker 7: it could be changed, totally ignoring the fact that the
Speaker 7: National Register of much of our places says you can't
Speaker 7: change the construction of the building.
Speaker 3: Far, far, far more restrained was the testimony of Ivanka
Speaker 3: Trump on Wednesday. She'd been an executive vice president at
Speaker 3: the Trump Organization. My main question is did Ivanka throw
Speaker 3: her father under the bus in any way?
Speaker 7: Now, she was a very measured witness. She did not
Speaker 7: throw her father under the bus, even in the tiniest way.
Speaker 7: She was a very measured, controlled witness who did not
Speaker 7: have a very strong memory. And her tact to me
Speaker 7: seemed to be that she would answer questions posed to
Speaker 7: her by the New York Attorney General saying, do you
Speaker 7: remember that you find this document or do you remember
Speaker 7: that you were involved in this transaction? And her answer
Speaker 7: was a repetitive I don't remember it happened, but I
Speaker 7: remember you showed it to me last year when you
Speaker 7: interviewed me. So the totality of her memory was limited
Speaker 7: to I only saw this once before when you showed
Speaker 7: it to me, but I have absolutely no memory of
Speaker 7: the actual transaction.
Speaker 3: She was a point person in establishing a lending relationship
Speaker 3: with Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management arm.
Speaker 7: She was testifying about how did it come about this
Speaker 7: relationship with Deutsche Bank, and she testifies that her husband,
Speaker 7: her father, and the Trump Org had a prior relationship
Speaker 7: with Deutsche Bank in the real estate section, but her husband,
Speaker 7: Jared Kushner, introduced her to the private wealth management group
Speaker 7: in Deutsche Bank, which gave her what the Attorney general
Speaker 7: claims are more favorable terms based on financial documents and
Speaker 7: statements of financial condition that were submitted that were fraudulent.
Speaker 7: So the New York Attorney General alleges that with the
Speaker 7: Trump Or gave Deutsche Bank to get these more favorable
Speaker 7: terms were fraudulent because they were inflated values and inflated statements.
Speaker 3: So she was the point person they renegotiated. But yet
Speaker 3: she said she wasn't involved and had no knowledge of
Speaker 3: his personal financial statements.
Speaker 7: It was more like she said she was not involved.
Speaker 7: She never saw them, per say. She assumed they were accurate,
Speaker 7: but she distanced herself from the whole scenario.
Speaker 5: How did these.
Speaker 7: Documents get created? It was not up to her with
Speaker 7: her father's business, with his people.
Speaker 3: So the defense case starts on Monday with more test
Speaker 3: stimony from Donald Trump Junior. Thanks Pat, that's Bloomberg legal
Speaker 3: reporter Patricia Hurtado coming up. A celebrity choreographer wins against Fortnite.
Speaker 3: I'm Jim Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg. Kyle Hanagami's
Speaker 3: choreography has been used by celebrities like Justin Bieber, Britney Spears,
Speaker 3: and BTS. He says it's also been used by Fortnite,
Speaker 3: but without his permission. Hanagami has a federal copyright registration
Speaker 3: covering a full five minute dance routine from his video
Speaker 3: to Charlie Booth's song how Long, and he's claiming that
Speaker 3: Epic Games Fortnite infringed on that copyright by using his
Speaker 3: choreography as an emote in the video game that's a
Speaker 3: viable dance for a player's avatar. Other choreographers have not
Speaker 3: fared well with suits against Fortnite, But the Ninth Circuit
Speaker 3: Court of Appeals has put a new spin on the moves.
Speaker 3: Joining me is intellectual property attorney Ryan Meyer of Dorsey
Speaker 3: and Whitney. So Ryan, As the Ninth Circuit said, copyright
Speaker 3: protections for choreography remain a largely undefined area of law.
Speaker 3: But can you describe what might make a dance copyrightable?
Speaker 4: There aren't any bright line rules. There's a series of
Speaker 4: non determinative elements. Whether there is rhythmic movement in a
Speaker 4: defined space, the compositional arrangement, musical architectual accompaniment, dramatic content,
Speaker 4: presentation before an audience, and execution by skilled performers. The
Speaker 4: length doesn't necessarily matter, although the longer and more complex,
Speaker 4: the more likely it is to be protectable.
Speaker 3: So Hanagami was able to get a copyright for his choreography.
Speaker 3: Here tell us about the dance itself.
Speaker 4: The dance contains about four hundred and eighty counts of chography,
Speaker 4: with ninety six repeated counts, But what was actually allegedly
Speaker 4: misappropriated are just four counts of the choreographer's work, which
Speaker 4: the District Court described as a two second combination of
Speaker 4: eight bodily movements set to four beats of music. Now Fortnite.
Speaker 4: In that game, you have an avatar, and one of
Speaker 4: the ways that they make money is in a marketplace
Speaker 4: they sell what are called emotes, which are dance movements
Speaker 4: or other kinds of movements that you can buy and
Speaker 4: have your avatar perform them. And so here the emote
Speaker 4: is called it's complicated, and it's this small portion of
Speaker 4: Kyle Hanagami's copyrighted five minute work.
Speaker 3: He sued and tell us what happened at the district
Speaker 3: court level.
Speaker 4: Well, the district court level, he didn't make it very far.
Speaker 4: He filed his complaint and in response, Epic Games filed
Speaker 4: what is called a motion to dismissed, claiming that the
Speaker 4: choreographer had not sufficiently alleged that there was substantial similarity
Speaker 4: between what was copied, and the district court agreed and
Speaker 4: found that when the dance that was copied is divided
Speaker 4: up into a series of poses, those poses are not
Speaker 4: copyright protectable. Moreover, the part that was actually copied, it
Speaker 4: was just a short, relatively simple part of the overall work,
Speaker 4: which is not protectable by copyright.
Speaker 3: So the district court judge dismissed Hanagami's complaint, and he
Speaker 3: appealed to the Ninth Circuit. How did the Ninth Circuit rule?
Speaker 4: So, the Ninth Circuit decided that the District court judge
Speaker 4: had essentially applied the long standard for determining substantial similarity
Speaker 4: a copyrighted work like choreography, when parsed into individual movements,
Speaker 4: each individual movement might not be protectable, which is essentially
Speaker 4: what the District Cork judge found and stopped there. But
Speaker 4: the combination of them, the selection and the arrangement to
Speaker 4: other elements, the pathways between each movement. When all that
Speaker 4: is combined, the Ninth Circuit found that it could be
Speaker 4: a copyrightable work. And the Ninth Circuit also said it
Speaker 4: was an air for the court to find that this
Speaker 4: particular sequence was too simple and short to be copyright protectable, because,
Speaker 4: as the court pointed out, even a very short sequence
Speaker 4: can still be relatively complex. The court actually compared it
Speaker 4: to dividing a choreographic work into just its individual poses
Speaker 4: would be like dividing a musical work just into its
Speaker 4: individual notes.
Speaker 3: And so the case will now go back to the
Speaker 3: District Court for further proceedings. As they say, Thanks Ryan
Speaker 3: that's Ryan Meyer of Dorsey and Whitney. This is Bloomberg
Speaker 3: Law on Bloomberg Radio. I'm June Grosso.
Speaker 1: Stay with us.
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