Friday Round Up! 8/18/23

It's the RICO, baby!

I’ve been singing “And the indictments kept rolling in from every side…” to the tune of a song from the musical Evita ever since last Monday. Indeed, it’s getting hard to keep track of them all at this point, so there may be a new diagram forthcoming — stay tuned! Meanwhile, there haven’t been many sexy developments this week, mainly a lot of talk about some defendants’ request for removal of their case from state to federal court. Full disclosure: I took federal jurisdiction in law school, which is already a tricky topic; my professor (who shall remain unnamed) basically gave incomprehensible lectures which involved her drawing lots of buckets on the chalkboard with arrows going in and out of them. So whenever I hear about removal I get PTSD bucket flashbacks and my eyes glaze over and I want to fall asleep. So, perhaps in next week’s episode Renato and I can brush up on the topic (not sure if he had the same professor I did) and give a breakdown of what’s happening and how likely the scenarios are. For this week, though, we took a look at the nuts and bolts of D.A. Fani Willis’ indictment as well as the Special Counsel appointed to investigate Hunter Biden:

NEW: The Freedom Academy Book Club!

I got great feedback from my discussion with Pulitzer-Prize winning author Professor Beverly Gage on her book, G-Men: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of an American Century, and received requests to make this a regular feature. So, I’m starting a Freedom Academy Book Club! I’ll make a selection about once a quarter and we’ll meet the author. So [drumroll]…our next selection will be

Steve Vladeck

‘s The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic. (Not an alarming title or anything.) I’ll host a discussion with Steve, who is also the author of the excellent Substack

One First

, in October. To get an invite to this discussion, as well as our other guest speakers, consider upgrading to a paid subscription!

Articles worth reading:

• This Lawfare piece, which does a deep dive into the hacking of voting machines that forms a part of DA Willis’ indictment

• This post on the

  The Popehat Report
  by RICO expert
  Ken White
  on how to understand the overt acts listed in the Georgia indictment

Upcoming events:

• Wine & Fries Club Happy Hour with Michael Cohen, Sunday, August 27, 8 p.m. EDT. Zoom link will be sent to Founding Members at 5 p.m.

It’s been a great summer but class will be back in session next week! As a reminder, it’s never too late to jump in: Each class is a standalone “lesson” which comes with an audio recording. Plus you will have access to Zoom office hours and guest speakers. Check out the syllabus here, and, you can take a peek at the first few classes without the paywall:

Class 1. Case Study: Operation Infektion

Class 2. What is Propaganda, and What’s the Problem With It?

Class 3. What the U.S. Can (and Can’t) Do to Stop Propaganda

Class 4. Why Can’t the U.S. Get Its Act Together When it Comes to Information Warfare?

Enjoy your last weeks of summer, and look forward to seeing you soon!