Steve Palmer [00:00:01]:

Here we are. Lawyer Talk podcast. They don't teach you that in law school. We got Troy, our resident law student. I don't know what we're going to do when you get out of law school. We'll have to figure that out.

Troy Hendrickson [00:00:11]:

We'll just do. I'll just keep failing the bar and I'll just stay.

Steve Palmer [00:00:15]:

No, you'll say I was just in law school last year and they didn't teach me that. I learned that here. So we'll have to come up with another quippy name. I love the quippy names. But so today I want to talk about. We do criminal defense work and we had a case recently that involved grand jury testimony, and we filed a motion to get grand jury testimony and you were asking me some questions about it. So what did they teach you about grand jury testimony in law school?

Troy Hendrickson [00:00:38]:

I feel like the big thing for grand juries was they taught us the saying, you can indict a ham sandwich. And that was out of, I believe, New York. There was a judge there and the burden of proof is lower than actual criminal. That's about it.

Steve Palmer [00:00:52]:

So let's start. And the reason I'm bringing this up because, look, dare I join the drove in the masses who talk about the Epstein debacle, But we're going to talk about Epstein today in the context of. They don't teach you that in law school. But first, let's talk about what a grand jury is. So I've done some of this before. I'll do it again just quickly for context. So I remember thinking when I was before law school or even before I started practicing grand jury seems like the jury that should be in the courtroom listening to the evidence.

Troy Hendrickson [00:01:23]:

It sounds like with the title.

Steve Palmer [00:01:24]:

Right. Because it's very grand. Right. And then they had something else called a petit jury that should be something else. So why not grand jury being the most important jury finding guilt or innocence and the pettit jury being something is petta.

Troy Hendrickson [00:01:39]:

What's actually at the trial? Pettit petit.

Steve Palmer [00:01:41]:

Yeah.

Troy Hendrickson [00:01:42]:

I don't know what that is.

Steve Palmer [00:01:43]:

It's the trial by jury.

Troy Hendrickson [00:01:45]:

Oh.

Steve Palmer [00:01:46]:

So here's how it works. The pettit jury or trial jury, we'll call it, that's the one that we get to see when we try a case. And that's the one that would have return the not guilty verdict on O.J. simpson or the, you know, whatever. Pick your big trial. Grand jury's job is to decide only whether there's sufficient evidence to indict somebody by indict somebody mean charge them with a crime. The standard, as you've already pointed out, is lower than the standard of proof to convict somebody. So here's how it works.

Steve Palmer [00:02:20]:

You have like the lowest standard of proof, for purposes of what we're talking about is something called probable cause. There's something lower than that even called reasonable suspicion, and maybe even lower than that called like scintilla or nothing. But then probable cause. Probable cause means like, all right, we've got just enough evidence in front of us to think, call it like 50.00001 or extrapolate that just a feather beyond 50% would be probable cause. And the prosecutor goes to the grand jury and presents testimony, evidence, et cetera, says, all right, grand jury, let's say you show of hands, how many people vote that this person should be charged with this crime, that there's enough evidence to charge them with crime? We all vote and off we go. All right. Now the standard for to prove that.

Troy Hendrickson [00:03:08]:

Case later is beyond a reasonable doubt.

Steve Palmer [00:03:10]:

Beyond a reasonable doubt. So that's like, call that 99% versus 50.1%. So that's grand jury in a nutshell.

Troy Hendrickson [00:03:18]:

It's a decent jump.

Steve Palmer [00:03:19]:

It's a decent jump. So what about what happens at the grand jury? This is where it gets interesting, particularly in the Epstein case. Prosecutors can call witnesses. And those witnesses, they can be police officers, they could be civilians, meaning victims of crimes or people who just happen to witness something. Sometimes they're just records they call in, or they just give the grand jury a bunch of documents that they got from Google or cell phone dump or something, and it all goes to the grand jury's evidence. Here's the rub as defense on the defense side, one, we don't even have a right to know that there's a grand jury convened, that our client's going to be charged, even if our client. A lot of times clients don't even know they're going to be charged yet sometimes they know they're under investigation. And I'll call the prosecutor and say, hey, Mr.

Steve Palmer [00:04:10]:

Prosecutor, I represent Joe Blow. I think your agents are targeting him. What can you tell me? Yeah, it's very detailed. Can't tell you anything. Not sure what you're talking. You know, you can get crickets sometimes they'll say, yeah, we're looking at him. We'll let you know. But the point is, we don't have a right to go to the grand jury and offer testimony.

Steve Palmer [00:04:31]:

Sometimes we get invited to go to the grand jury and offer testimony. Sometimes prosecutors in Delaware county, around here, they used to do this routinely. Always give me an invitation to have my client testify in the grand jury. I never did it.

Troy Hendrickson [00:04:43]:

You think that should be common practice?

Steve Palmer [00:04:46]:

I don't think it matters. I don't think it matters.

Troy Hendrickson [00:04:50]:

So why not?

Steve Palmer [00:04:53]:

It should be because I would never or rarely would I have my client actually offer grand jury testimony. I've done it once or twice typically. And the only time I've ever done it is when I have talked to the prosecutor in advance. We believe that we have a very solid self defense argument and the prosecutor is basically telling me, look, you probably got a self defense case here. Why don't you have your client come and talk to the grand jury about why he did what he did? And I think I've only ever done that once. So rarely would I have. And you would ask why? Well, I'm not going to put my client under oath in front of a grand jury giving testimony, but before I even know what the evidence is. That would be.

Steve Palmer [00:05:36]:

Most of the time that's lunacy. That would be lunacy because you're locking yourself in. Your client has that pesky fifth amendment right to remain silent. There's no reason that you need to waive that to go to the grand jury. And as you pointed out so astutely at the beginning of this, they can indict a ham sandwich. Your defendant's probably not going to talk himself off the ledge. He'll probably talk himself deeper into the hole, in fact. So anyway, I feel like also you.

Troy Hendrickson [00:06:01]:

Create that story and then you have to stick to it and you don't know all the facts. Maybe more comes out like, oh shit.

Steve Palmer [00:06:07]:

Well, let me give you, here's a factual scenario. So say you have two adults. We're gonna take so full blown adults, one man, one woman. They go to the local pub and it's Long Island Iced tea night and they both have way too many Long Island Iced Teas and they both get wasted. The girl wakes up the next day and says, I think I had sex last night. I was too drunk to consent. She goes and tells the police and the police go and interview the guy and the guy says, look, I'm not going to make any statements. I'm going to exercise my right to remain silent.

Steve Palmer [00:06:44]:

This has happened. I'm bringing up this scenario because it's happened to me where neither party remembered whether they had sex. Now if the guy says, look, I guess I had sex with her, or maybe I had sex with her, maybe one side doesn't and I'VE had it reversed, too, folks. I've had women charged, too. But say one side remembers, the other doesn't. The side he remembers, if he goes in and says, yeah, we had sex. I thought she knew it was going whatever, he's basically admitting an element of the crime, which is the sexual, and it might be sketchy in his brain or whatever, but he's admitting it. And on the other side, if the girl says, I don't remember, if your guy just remains silent, they can't prove a case.

Troy Hendrickson [00:07:31]:

Like a Rule 29 kind of deal.

Steve Palmer [00:07:33]:

Yeah. It's insufficient evidence to prove the case. So if you send your guy. And my point of bringing this up is, if you go into a grand jury early on and you make admissions like that, you don't know what you. You don't know whether it's important or not. See, we have that right to remain silent in our system. The prosecutor has to prove it. We don't have to give evidence.

Steve Palmer [00:07:52]:

We don't have to tell the government what we did. If you don't like that, take it up with the founding fathers, go read the Constitution, challenge it, change it to whatever. But that's a fact. And you know, these people are saying, well, that's not fair. You should prosecute. Look outside the system, I might agree with you. Inside the system, I can explain to you why it's like that and why it's better. At any rate, so we don't often testify in front of the grand jury because you're making admissions that you don't need to make.

Steve Palmer [00:08:15]:

Fair enough.

Troy Hendrickson [00:08:16]:

Yeah.

Steve Palmer [00:08:16]:

All right, so, Epstein, here's what's going on. Actually, one more. We'll get one more bit of background first. The prosecutor presents their case to the grand jury. They call witnesses, say you're a witness, and they call you to testify. And six weeks, eight weeks, six months down the road, I'm defending the defendant that you've given testimony about. And I look at the judge and say, I want grand jury transcripts. I want to know all the witnesses who testified in front of the grand jury, and I want the transcripts of their testimony.

Steve Palmer [00:08:49]:

And the judge is going to look at me and laugh like, well, you're not allowed to have that. Oh, why not? Well, because the rule says you can't have it unless you show something called particularized need, which is fancy legal talk for a really, really freaking good reason. I almost have to prove in advance that there was some misconduct. I have to prove in advance that there was some reason I should get it. There are Exceptions. If my client did testify, I can get my client's testimony. If there are snitches who got deals, I can usually get that testimony because those are statements of witnesses snitching against me. And they can be exculpatory or helpful to the defense, you know, so there's some.

Steve Palmer [00:09:33]:

There's some of that going on. But if I just want to know what happened at the grand jury, it's a secret. Do they teach you in law school why it's a secret?

Troy Hendrickson [00:09:40]:

I think it's like organized crime, like, worried about the witnesses getting, like, pretty much whacked and all that, going against the mob and all. I think that was, like, the gist of it. Like, they want to protect the witnesses to make sure that they don't get, like, killed before testifying.

Steve Palmer [00:09:55]:

Yeah, for sure. And it's not just the mob. They want to protect the integrity of the investigation. So if you have a situation where the prosecutor's forced to give up what's going on in the grand jury, the targets can go do illegal or maybe even legal things to head off the investigation or derail the investigation. So the idea is to protect the integrity of. Of the witnesses, protect the safety of the witnesses. And for sure, there are historical examples of bad guys killing witnesses who testified against him in the grand jury. And just go watch some movies, you'll see them.

Steve Palmer [00:10:35]:

Not that the movies are all real, but they're premised and true. And I'll tell you something more interesting. For the longest time, and even to this day, we don't get. In federal court, you get very limited discovery on names of witnesses, et cetera. In state court, there's sort of this famous. We now get names and addresses of witnesses in Ohio, and there was this famous story of people on the general assembly floor or people debating this issue, throwing out names of witnesses who had been murdered. So. But no, now we get names and addresses of witnesses.

Steve Palmer [00:11:07]:

But there was a time you didn't even get that.

Troy Hendrickson [00:11:09]:

That's kind of crazy.

Steve Palmer [00:11:10]:

And there was a time that I didn't even get witness statements until after that witness testified.

Troy Hendrickson [00:11:14]:

You were explaining to me that before. I think that's even. That's even crazy.

Steve Palmer [00:11:18]:

You want to hone your trial skills. You listen to a witness and you have no idea who that witness was beforehand. And you didn't know what they were going to say. Like, welcome to the real world, young man. Rock and roll. Get on your big boy pants and go cross examine somebody that way.

Troy Hendrickson [00:11:31]:

Now I have three interviewed body cameras of that person. Beforehand. And now I kind of wish I did was get the written notice of what you said afterwards.

Steve Palmer [00:11:38]:

But anyway, so this is the backdrop for the Epstein situation, because what's happened in Epstein is sort of interesting. You've got the hue and cry, I'll call it. For more information on the mystery Epstein list, what's out there? What's the evidence? Who's named? Is Donald Trump himself even named? Is Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton? Leslie Wexner, for here, right in Ohio, it's like, who's on the mysterious list? And I think the Trump team sort of teased this early on, and Pam Bondi promised him stuff, and it turned out it was a whole lot of nothing burger, and then now they want more.

Troy Hendrickson [00:12:19]:

So it's a great meme right now. The list is just, we know what you're talking about, right?

Steve Palmer [00:12:24]:

List. And then Bongino, who is like beforehand in his podcast saying, of course there's all this stuff going on now. He's got a position of authority. And he's like, nope, I've looked at it. There's nothing. Same with Patel. I mean, it's, look, you know, it's a controversy, so people want to know what happened. So I think maybe I would guess this is calculated.

Steve Palmer [00:12:47]:

The DOJ Department of Justice said, look, we'll just file a motion. And they filed two, one up in New York, one down in Florida, because back in the early 2000s, Epstein was indicted down in Florida. And we're going to just ask the federal district court to release the grand jury transcripts. Now, look, why would we care? Epstein's dead. Release him. Well, the judge, I think yesterday, the day before said, no. There's a federal court judge, I think an Obama appointee for whatever, whether you care or not, said, no, we're not going to release the grand jury transcripts because we looked at the Federal criminal rules, Rule 6, I think, 6E, and, and there's no basis to release the grand jury transcripts. Well, the government says, yeah, we know there's no basis to release the grand jury transcripts.

Steve Palmer [00:13:36]:

But, but there's a, there's a historical and general public interest that, that overrides that. And the judge says, yeah, I hear you, but, no, now here's, here's what's interesting because we do a lot of appellate work we have in federal court, we have circuits, so we have different courts of appeals. The 11th Circuit sits on top of that federal district judge in Florida. And the 11th Circuit has precedent that says we don't release grand jury transcripts for Historical public interest reasons. Two other circuits apparently do. So I think it was like the seventh and maybe the second. I don't remember. But two other circuits do.

Troy Hendrickson [00:14:21]:

So now we have a circuit split.

Steve Palmer [00:14:23]:

Now we have this weird split of authority. So the judge is saying, look, I can't. I'm governed by what this 11th Circuit says. I can't override that. So, you know, good luck. So what's going to happen next?

Troy Hendrickson [00:14:32]:

They're going to appeal. It's the 11th Circuit.

Steve Palmer [00:14:34]:

That's right. The 11th Circuit is going to say, we've already decided this.

Troy Hendrickson [00:14:37]:

Yeah. And we say no. And they're going to. They're smart. They obviously are going to highlight. Well, these other circuits follow this. So now we have a certified conflict between the circuits.

Steve Palmer [00:14:48]:

Yeah, we have a conflict between the circuits. We're gonna give this on a platter to the U.S. supreme Court and let them figure it out whether. Or not. And the Supreme Court's not gonna see. Here's what's interesting. The public is gonna look at this like Supreme Court releases Epstein transcripts. No, but that's not what they're saying.

Steve Palmer [00:15:03]:

The Supreme Court is gonna say there is or is not an exception for public interest and historical public interest. And then you court down there figure that out.

Troy Hendrickson [00:15:13]:

Yeah. So the. The court all the way down in Florida can still say no, there wasn't this historical or whatever. Even though we're allowed to now say yes or no, we still don't believe there is now.

Steve Palmer [00:15:24]:

Yeah, we still don't find it. Right.

Troy Hendrickson [00:15:26]:

I think that was a big thing that I think a lot of people misinterpreted recently on the Birthright citizenship.

Steve Palmer [00:15:33]:

Same kind of thing.

Troy Hendrickson [00:15:33]:

Yeah. They're like, oh, my gosh, like, it's not allowed in me. Like, well, no, no, no. That was just.

Steve Palmer [00:15:38]:

It was just an injunction. Right. That's all they were deciding.

Troy Hendrickson [00:15:41]:

It had actually nothing to do with birthright citizenship.

Steve Palmer [00:15:44]:

That was all about. Another great example because that was all about whether a district judge in some jurisdiction in the country could prevent every other court or the president or anybody from enforcing some rule across the board other than just their own district. So it was like these national injunctions anyway, the same kind of thing. So the. The Supreme Court, when it decides this, it'll say in Ray grand jury transcripts of Epstein or whatever the caption will be. But the court is really going to be saying, look, we either agree with the 11th Circuit that there is no such exception, or we agree with these other two that, yes, courts are permitted to carve out an exception. And they might say they're permitted to carve out such an exception, but don't have to. They could say, we recognize that exception and courts must consider it.

Steve Palmer [00:16:29]:

I got a hunch that they're going to take a hard line approach at this and say there is no such exception. The criminal rules are what they are. And then what's the remedy for that?

Troy Hendrickson [00:16:41]:

I don't know.

Steve Palmer [00:16:42]:

You go back to Congress and say, change the damn rules. Right. So the Congress makes the rules. So Congress promulgated the criminal rules of procedure. If Congress wants to recognize an exception to the grand jury secrecy provisions by creating this historical thing, then they do it.

Troy Hendrickson [00:17:03]:

So who's doing the appeal if Epstein's lawyer's dead? I'm sorry? If Epstein's dead. I think Epstein's lawyer. You were just saying, actually, who does the appeal?

Steve Palmer [00:17:12]:

Well, Dershowitz, he had a couple lawyers. We'll get to that in a second. So the appeal is the government. The DOJ would appeal. So the DOJ filed a motion.

Troy Hendrickson [00:17:19]:

Oh, I didn't know the DOJ was the one that was looking for.

Steve Palmer [00:17:22]:

I thought I was just so, look, I mean, this is actually, I'm not, I don't claim to be politically savvy, but I can understand what the Trump folks are doing. Like Trump's getting heat for this because they're acting like he's covering it up. And I would just point out that this goes back to 2005. So you've had both sides in power since 2005. Anybody could have done this.

Troy Hendrickson [00:17:41]:

Right. It's kind of crazy. It's been going on for 20 years.

Steve Palmer [00:17:43]:

Right. And not to mention the New York case. So the similar motion is still pending in New York. But look, so anybody could have done this. Any president's DOJ could have done this since the case. Now they're going to say, well, look, we couldn't do it until Epstein's dead. But I don't think that's the thing. I mean, really, what I think they're protecting by keeping grand jury proceedings secret, say in Epstein's case would be the identity of these girls who were abused.

Steve Palmer [00:18:08]:

Man, they don't want their names on Front street.

Troy Hendrickson [00:18:10]:

I mean, a lot of them did do like a documentary.

Steve Palmer [00:18:15]:

But that's their choice, not the judge's choice. They have chosen that. But we don't know who else is out there and we don't know what they've suffered. So some of this is to protect the identity and the integrity and the well being of alleged victims. They're not even alleged victims of this horrible predator. Now, the other side is the judge could fashion orders, say, look, I'm going to review the grand jury transcripts, and we're going to excise the names and give you some stuff, but not other stuff.

Troy Hendrickson [00:18:47]:

Just replace them with acronyms. Yeah.

Steve Palmer [00:18:49]:

Or you could. You could make them initials, or you could just black them out altogether. And then, you know, to the. I think what everybody wants to know is, is there, like, who are the famous people that were. That were out carousing with Epstein on Epstein Island? You know, on. What was the island in Pinocchio. The Pinocchio Island.

Troy Hendrickson [00:19:06]:

I don't know. I always see pictures of, like, the little temple deal or whatever, like the blue and white thing or whatever that is.

Steve Palmer [00:19:11]:

You know, it just. It's a horrible case. So I think ultimately, the Supreme Court will say. You heard it here first. The Supreme Court, I think, will say, if Congress wants to recognize an exception for situations where there's public interest and the case is old or all the people are dead or whatever, then Congress has full authority to change the rules and amend them to allow that. But it's an overstep of judicial authority to create that on our own. I think that's how it's going to go. That's how I would decide it, I think.

Steve Palmer [00:19:50]:

And I haven't done the legal research. I know Alan Dershowitz. We'll get to him in a second. But that's.

Troy Hendrickson [00:19:55]:

I think we should really invest in this betting app, because now we can bet on Supreme Court future.

Steve Palmer [00:20:01]:

We should sell, you know, we should sell our tout. We could say, here's how it's going to go. All right, so look, that's part one, part two, Epstein part two. And they don't teach you this in law school, you know, Alan Dershowitz, I.

Troy Hendrickson [00:20:14]:

Think just from what you told me earlier, I think I saw a headline of him that was a bit famous.

Steve Palmer [00:20:17]:

Lawyer been around forever. Harvard law professor, represented all sorts of famous folks, but he's a professor, and he's at one point had represented Epstein. At one point had been accused by one of the Epstein victims of being a perpetrator. And I think Dershowitz sued, vehemently denied it, sued for defamation. I think later the victim withdrew the. Or recanted the accusation. Who knows how that really played out. But Dershowitz has been on TV or, and he's got his own podcast where he's been commenting on this on Epstein.

Steve Palmer [00:20:55]:

Because, look, I mean, the big news a few weeks ago Is there's. We've seen the video, and we don't think Epstein was murdered. It was really a suicide. All right, well, look, there's people that don't believe that. And you know, Dershowitz, he must be able to read my mind, because before I could say it here I was thinking to myself, well, look, if the videos don't show people coming and going, now there is a one minute. There's a one minute discrepancy that apparently exists because there's a glitch in the system. All the videos.

Troy Hendrickson [00:21:30]:

Why would you even post that video with that one minute.

Steve Palmer [00:21:35]:

Just add that little layer of conspiracy theory fodder. It's like, come on. So irrespective of the one minute video, just because the video doesn't show somebody going in and actually killing Epstein doesn't mean that Epstein didn't commit suicide, and doesn't mean that Epstein didn't commit suicide for other reasons. Right? So, you know, you could have people saying, look, you better commit suicide. Or maybe he just felt, I got to commit suicide because this is just too much to handle. I don't want to do it. And I didn't mean other people telling me. But it could also be that there were people in the jail who just sort of looked the other way and didn't care if he committed suicide.

Steve Palmer [00:22:17]:

And you could. Now, you could go down that. You could plumb the depths of that conspiracy, too. You could say, well, they. Epstein was threatened to commit suicide or somebody was going to kill him, so the guards were paid to look the other way while he did it. It could be that they just thought he was a dirty, rotten son of a bitch and he should kill himself anyway. So we don't care that he kills himself. Who knows, Maybe they sneaked in another inmate to kill him.

Steve Palmer [00:22:39]:

You know, who knows? But Dershowitz said what I think is a possible scenario, that the guards just looked the other way. You know, it wasn't a murder, but they certainly didn't stop him from killing himself. And they could have, I also don't think. Which is a different form of murder, I guess.

Troy Hendrickson [00:22:53]:

I don't think they're looking at every single cell all the time either. Also.

Steve Palmer [00:22:57]:

Well, they've got footage. So in theory, they've got this footage, and there's nobody coming and going from his cell at the time that he would have committed suicide. But it doesn't mean that the guards couldn't and shouldn't have been aware of it. And that probably is where the real controversy should be. And I agree with Dershowitz on this. But what's also interesting, and we're going to. This is why this is part two, is Dershowitz made some other comments because he represented Epstein and he said, I can tell you there's no list. So what's your first thought?

Troy Hendrickson [00:23:28]:

So he's saying there's no list and he was the attorney.

Steve Palmer [00:23:30]:

Yeah.

Troy Hendrickson [00:23:33]:

And I'm guessing there's no list. But now if there is, that's a pretty risky statement to make.

Steve Palmer [00:23:39]:

Well, how can he make that statement?

Troy Hendrickson [00:23:42]:

I don't think he can, because he would like to say he knows everything and Epstein's told him everything. But for all he knows, Epstein just.

Steve Palmer [00:23:49]:

All right, so the first question that came to my head is, what's the attorney client privilege, Aaron? What is the confidential. Because, look, we take the attorney client privilege to the grave. Things our clients tell us, whether they're dead or not goes to the grave. I've had this come up. I've actually testified in a murder case where one of my clients was murdered. Courts had to order me to do it. We had to get specific findings by probate courts that I could waive the privilege, whatever. You know, it was dicey, so you can't.

Steve Palmer [00:24:15]:

I'm sure Dershowitz has re reviewed and researched what he's doing here, but he's got limited ability to say anything. But he is saying that there's no list. Whether that's true. And you've brought up another point, like maybe he didn't know about a list. Possible, possible, possible. It was a big case.

Troy Hendrickson [00:24:33]:

You know, there's a ton of discovery, I imagine.

Steve Palmer [00:24:35]:

Yep. So anyway, look, there's lots of interesting. This is what I like to do. This is what they should be doing in law school. You take a case like Epstein that's got all this glamour, and I don't mean that in a razzle dazzle. Yeah, it's got, you know, it's got some media appeal. Everybody's got, like, this immediate interest to it. We did this when I was in Law School.

Steve Palmer [00:24:59]:

O.J. s verdict came out. So a lot of the law school examples were sort of premised around an OJ Scenario. And this is a learning opportunity, really. So in the Epstein case, I like to take cases like this where people are emotionally attached and they think that they want a certain outcome because of the facts of that case. And I think as lawyers, we have to say, well, that might be appealing. No pun intended, that might be appealing. We have to be careful, because if we create, if we change the Rules because of the Epstein case, they are now changed for every other case, which is where we're back to where we started with the Supreme Court saying, should there be an exception and whether it's proper or not, it'll be called the Epstein exception forever.

Steve Palmer [00:25:48]:

And you know, there's some other famous cases like this. If you just go back and research some of the Nixon litigation, the Pentagon Papers and some of that. So, you know, you get these sort of one off type of cases, and maybe the Supreme Court will come up with some sort of one off exceptions, but I don't think so. So I think the legally scholarly, prudent way to look at these things is to analyze what the legal principles are. Are we changing them to get an outcome that we desire in a particular case? And should we do that? And are we going to create a sole exception that's just narrowed to its facts, or are we going to open this up for other similar situations? Because you know what we do as lawyers, we get a little scene like this. I'm driving a damn truck. Look, you release the Epstein transcripts, I want mine. You know that it's dangerous.

Steve Palmer [00:26:40]:

You create precedent. And I think all too often the general public doesn't. I don't mean the general public is not as smart as lawyers. In fact, I think you're smarter than lawyers because we're stuck in this whole rope. But anyway, often the public, the media doesn't understand this. So it's not just about Epstein. This is a bigger problem. You can't just start releasing grand jury transcripts.

Steve Palmer [00:26:59]:

And I get. I ask for them all the time, but I still understand why you can't do that. So anyway, any other questions from the law school gallery?

Troy Hendrickson [00:27:08]:

No, but I do think that law school should focus more on like pop culture cases like this and all that, because it would get. We talked about this beforehand. I think students would get a lot more engaged. You know, they follow more of a case on social media than they will read the cases in the case book.

Steve Palmer [00:27:24]:

Well, and what are you guys talking about in the bar stools?

Troy Hendrickson [00:27:26]:

What do you mean?

Steve Palmer [00:27:27]:

When you're outside law school and you're sitting on a bar stool bs, you're talking about this kind of stuff.

Troy Hendrickson [00:27:32]:

Yes, we're talking about this kind of stuff, but I only have a select few friends that we talk about, like constitutional law and cases and all that. It should be a more common thing that we talk about case law. But a lot of people, they don't want to talk about law outside of law school. And it sucks because if anything, we should focus on the interesting issues when we're at the bar. That's what we should do.

Steve Palmer [00:27:51]:

What happens in law school is this. Your brain slowly awakens to, like, this whole other depth of reality that's going on around you that you've never recognized. So when you read the newspaper. I used to read the newspaper. It was paper. We'd get it. I'd send my dog out to fetch it, and they'd bring it back and I'd read it. Every morning when I read a newspaper, I'm seeing articles.

Steve Palmer [00:28:12]:

I'm not just reading the factual stories. I'm thinking, what's the legal basis behind this? Where can it go? There's an understanding you get. And I think that happens only when you have these kind of discussions. Well, this. I think law school cracks the door, and these kind of things enable you to go into that new realm. So anyway, they don't teach you that in law school. If you've got a topic you want us to cover, Epstein, or otherwise, I promise we don't. I do my best not to take political sides here, so I really don't.

Steve Palmer [00:28:38]:

I've got my own opinions. I'll keep those to myself. But if you got a topic you want us to cover, political or otherwise, we'll do it. Check us out, LawyerTalkPodcast.com, check us out on the socials, leave us a comment, send us a note. Troy and I'll get to it right here where we are. Off the air, on the record, off the. Whatever it is, each and every week, law school style.