Barbara Fried's Ex Parte Letter to the Judge

This week Ken and Josh discuss Judge Lewis Kaplan losing some patience with Sam Bankman-Fried, and not just because Bankman-Fried’s mom tried to communicate with him ex parte. SBF has been making purportedly pro se filings, at least one of which appears to have been dictated to and FedExed by his mother, and he simultaneously has an appeal proceeding in the appeals court with real lawyers. Kaplan says he has to choose — are you pro se or not? And he wants to know — have any lawyers besides mom been helping with these filings he’s supposedly personally responsible for?

Meanwhile, the “Department of War” has been having a rough time in court. The Pentagon’s anti-reporting press policy has been thrown out as a First Amendment violation, so now the Pentagon says no reporters at all can work out of the Pentagon press room. Meanwhile, Anthropic won a preliminary injunction blocking the Pentagon’s declaration that the company is a “Supply Chain Risk.” (The Anthropic order came down after we taped — we’ll have a further update on next week’s show.)

That’s for all subscribers. Paying subscribers will also hear our conversations about:

* DOJ’s admission that it had no evidence of a crime related to Jay Powell’s testimony about Federal Reserve headquarters renovation cost overruns (and the surprisingly low bar for issuing a subpoena that the government nevertheless failed to clear).

* A surprisingly practical choice by DOJ in New Jersey.

* Minnesota’s effort to force the federal government to disclose investigative material related to the shooting deaths of Alex Pretti and Renée Good.

* Mike Lindell in contempt of court.

* Mike Flynn getting a settlement from Trump for his alleged persecution by Trump’s own DOJ.

* No protective order for those DOGE henchman depositions.

* And the Oklahoma Supreme Court telling attorneys to go ahead and use AI, if they dare.

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