“LAWYER UP” | In the Litter Box w/ Jewels & Catturd – Ep. 1130 – 11/5/2026

YouTube player

IN THE LITTER BOX W/ JEWELS AND CATTURD
M-F at 3:00PM ET | Visit: https://inthelitterbox.com
Hosts: Jewels Jones & Catturd

They spent the whole campaign not telling you what they would do with the gavel. They won, and the first thing out of their mouths was a threat. I am live at 3 PM ET on who said it, what they can actually do come January, and who really has the exposure here.

Paid promotions:

Visit: Spike Detox your body! Click http://www.twc.health/catturd and use code CATTURD for 10% Off + Free Shipping for USA residents 🇺🇸

Visit: https://app.polymarket.us/S8ac/LITTERBOX – CODE: LITTERBOX for Polymarket US app download it today, sign up with code LITTERBOX, deposit $10, and Polymarket will give you an extra $20 to get started – Where The World Bets On What Happens Next!

Visit: https://Inthelitterbox.com YOUR AD HERE! The only litter box anybody has ever wanted to be in. We read our sponsors out loud, weekdays at 3PM ET with Jewels and Catturd. Visit https://Inthelitterbox.com for show information and advertising.

JEWELS JONES LIVE | A POLITICAL RENDEZVOUS
Tea Spilling Saturdays Live @ 3PM EST | Visit: https://JewelsJonesLive.com
Hosted by: Jewels Jones

–DISCLAIMER– This show is opinion of the host and is meant for entertainment purposes only. Viewer discretion is advised.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full Episode Transcript

Hello there litter mates! How are you today? Are you better today? are you revved up and ready to go? Ready to roar? Well, today is Thursday, November 5th, 2026. This is episode number 1130. My goodness, time is flying. I want to see how you’re doing though. I’ve been thinking about you. It’s been such a crazy ride. It’s Thursday, two days out. Who’ve we got in here? Let’s see. Faith, I’m going to try to get some people that I haven’t Hi to before faith be underscore 9042. How are you working man underscore? J. Good to see you Maris Renee hello there DZ damn. Hey, how are you? Let’s see Karen Stell. Hi I see you my goodness. There’s one of my gems.

Good to see you lavender wisp How you doing coconut milk one two three a lot of new names here A lot of new names and I know it’s because we’re all going through the exact same thing where you’ve come to the right place because I want to start today with the thing that I’ve been hearing from you since Tuesday night because I would rather say it out loud once than pretend I can’t hear it. A lot of you, and rightfully so, you are not sad anymore. You are done. There is a difference and I know the difference. Sad is when you lose something. Done is when you’ve had it. So here is what I did with my morning instead of feeling that. I went and read what the losers filed.

Because something funny happened in the 48 hours after those polls closed. Almost nobody with a grievance went back to the voters. Not one of them said, All right, you beat me. I will make my case again next time. No, it was nothing nothing at all like that They went and got a lawyer Imagine that Imagine the surprise so let’s start up at the top here because I have got a state party chair Who called Tuesday night?

One of the best nights of her entire life and who is now headed to a judge to undo part of that same night I have got a federal judge who told the justice department out loud from the bench go out and indict And a week later a grand jury handed up 10 names I’ve got one of the biggest Muslim advocacy groups in this country taping a neon orange sign to its own office window in Florida yesterday afternoon. And I’ve got a congressman whose own voters fired him in May handing the Secretary of War a resignation ultimatum. And I’ve got a settlement with a smiley face in it in a document page 4.

that’s the hour and I’m not going to open with a silver lining today nope I am going to close with one it is real it happened to this week and it has a degree number on it has a decree so you understand what’s actually going on here what I actually have instead is better and it is the thing that nobody gave you on Tuesday night I can tell you exactly how each one of these things actually works what a judge can do and what a judge cannot touch what a statute does that a signature never could what a government a governor can actually kill on her own and what she needs two chambers for dates effective dates, roll calls, the paper.

And then at the end of this hour, I’m going to tell you about a man who counted 1711 days and about the one person in this entire story who fixed something without filing a single piece of paper to do it. Stay with me. This is going to be quite a show. I can assure you of that. lots of information, lots of things that are going on. So I want to start in Olympia, Washington with a woman named Shasti Conrad. Okay. She chairs the Washington state Democrat party and on Tuesday night, she had in her own words, one of the best election nights of her lifetime. This is what she said. She was not exaggerating.

I mean her side held every single congressional seat and it was defending in that entire state. It grew its majorities in the state legislature, not for the first time, for the sixth cycle in a row. Sixth, in a row. So picture her Tuesday night, picture the room, that is a woman who got everything she asked for. And on the same ballot, in the same booths, by the same hands, on the same day, the workers of Washington state passed an initiative, 638. 1 ,252 ,867. 963 people voted yes. 961 ,810 voted no.

Now, I’m going to read you what that initiative actually does from the initiative, not from anybody’s description of it, because this is one of those subjects where everybody wants to tell you what the words mean instead of telling you what the words are. It requires a school district policy, quote, prohibit biologically male students from competing with and against female students, end quote, in K -12 athletic activities intended for female students only. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Girls sports are for girls. 56 .6 percent.

And here’s the second number and the second number is the one that tells you this was not some conservative wave washing through Washington State because there was no conservative wave in Washington State on Tuesday. But on that same ballot there There was a measure to repeal the state’s millionaires tax, 9 .9 percent on income over a million dollars. Repeal it. Those same voters said no. They kept the tax, 58 percent to 42. So the people of Washington State on one ballot, on one day, said two things at the same time. Keep taxing the rich, and girls’ sports are for girls. And I have to tell you, that is one of the most coherent things I have seen in an electorate do in years.

There is nothing confused about it. That is a state saying, we are not conservatives, and we are not insane either. So what did the chair of the party say about her night? Well, about the tax repeal failing, she said, and I’m quoting her, so we’re thrilled. This is what she said. She says, that exact word, thrilled. We’re thrilled. 58 % thrilled. And about the other one, the 56 .6, the 1 ,252 ,000 people, she said she’s going to fight it in court. same ballot, same voters, same hands, same night. Thrilled with the 58. Going to a judge about the 56.

Now I could spend the next 10 minutes on how that feels and I’m not going to because you already know how it feels and because what it feels like is not useful to you. What is useful to you is how. And I went and I got the how this morning, because the part of the story that nobody is going to tell you is the part where this was already stopped once and the people who could have stopped it decided not to. So follow the calendar with me because it matters. This did not start as a ballot measure. In Washington State there is a thing called an initiative to the legislature, and it works exactly like it sounds.

You gather the signatures and instead of going straight to the voters, it goes to the legislature first. The lawmakers get the first crack at it. In early January, the people pushing this turned in about 445 ,000 signatures. On January 22nd, the Secretary of State, Steve Hobbs, formally notified the legislature that the signatures had been verified and certified. That is the letter. It has a date on it. The legislator was told in writing in January. And the rule is this. If the legislator does nothing by the end of its session, the measure legislature goes on the next general election ballot automatically. The end of that session was March 12th.

So here is where I need you to be very clear eyed because this is the whole thing. That legislator is controlled by her party comfortably for years, including the two for the sixth cycle in a row. They had the paper in January, they had until March 12th, they could not have amended it, I mean they could have if they wanted to they could have amended it. They could have passed a competing version, they could have written their own policy and put it in statute which was the you thing that actually would have settled it. They did nothing. And when you do nothing with an initiative to the legislator, you’re not blocking it, you’re mailing it. Straight to the voters.

That is what the statute does on its own, while everybody is at recess. So the sequence is not complicated, and I want it in order out loud once. January, The legislature is told in writing that this is coming March the legislature’s session ends with the bill untouched which sends it to the ballot November 3rd 1 ,252 ,000 people vote for it November 3rd later that same evening the chair of the party that controls that legislature Calls it one of the best nights of her life November 4th, she announces she is taking the result to a judge. And I want to be fair to her about one thing because being fair is how you stay credible and I intend to stay credible. She is allowed to do that.

Going to court over a ballot measure is legal. It’s normal. It happens in this country constantly in both directions and some of those cases are righteous. is. That is not what is bothering me. What is bothering me is which number she is arguing with. Because she is not arguing with the count. Nobody in Washington State is claiming a miscount. The returns are the returns and her own side had a terrific night in them. She is arguing with the answer and that is the thing that I want you to carry for the next 15 minutes because you are going to watch it happen 4 more times in this hour in 4 more places by 4 more people who have absolutely nothing else in common. Tuesday the voters answered.

Wednesday everybody who did not like the answer went and got a lawyer. And the very next one on my list is the strangest one because this time the lawyer did not come from the side that lost. This time, the judge is the one who went looking for it. Now let’s head on over to California. And to a federal judge named David Carter. And I want to tell you upfront, because it matters to how you hear the rest of it, that this story starts with the government losing. Back in October 15th, this just happened. Justice Department, they sued the state of California and Los Angeles County and the thing it asked for was big.

It had a list, 20 ,000 names in its own filing, page two, paragraph four, the government says it believes those are likely non -citizens who were sent a vote by mail ballot. That’s what they have here. And what it wanted the court to do was order California to set those ballots aside. Now stay with me because this is the part where I have to be honest with you even though it is not the fun answer. On Monday Judge Carter said no. He turned the Justice Department down. He would not order the state to pull ballots out of a stack on the strength of a list. And you know what? I understand I do. I do not love it, but I understand it.

Because a court ordering a state to quarantine 20 ,000 ballots eight days before an election is a sledgehammer and a sledgehammer in that direction today is a sledgehammer in the other direction in four years. I get it. But he did not stop at no. And And this is the part that made me sit up because I have never in my life heard a judge do it this plainly. He turned to the prosecutors in his courtroom and he told them what he thought the real remedy was. He said, an indictment is the traditional one. And he said, and quote, an absolute chilling effect.

he said that he said that it has an absolute chilling effect and then he said go out and indict go out and indict a sitting federal judge from the bench to the Justice Department, not a hint, not a footnote, in an order that 11 people read out loud in a room with a transcript in it. That was Monday. Wednesday, the day after the election, a federal grand jury sitting in Santa Ana handed up an indictment. Ten people. Los Angeles and Orange counties. Ten were charged. And before I go one syllable further, here is the thing that I am going to say once and mean. Those are charges. Ten people have been accused. Not one of them has been convicted of anything. thing and in this country.

You are not guilty because a grand jury said the word. That is not me being soft at all. That is me refusing to do the thing that I have spent four years watching other people do on our side. I’m not doing it. All right. So here’s now the details of the whole thing. All 10 of those people are lawful permanent residents. Green card holders, every one of them. These are not people who came across a river last spring. These are people who are here, legally, with documents in the system, in line. And here’s the number that I did not expect. And it’s the reason this story is not what you think it is. Nine of the ten are not charged over a ballot at all.

9 of the 10 are charged with lying on a naturalization application, with filling out the form to become an American citizen and on a form denying that they had ever registered to vote or ever claimed to be a citizen. 1 of the 10 is accused of voting 4 times, 2020, twice in 2022, and 2024. So sit with the shape of what is actually being alleged there. It is not mainly a vote fraud case, it is a case about the application. It is about the last question on the paperwork before you get to raise your right hand. And the first assistant United States attorney out there, a man by the name of Bill Assaly, said the quiet part out loud. He described these defendants as legal immigrants.

He said they are people who are voluntarily going through the immigration process. that’s who they are. He said, quote, they’re trying to become a citizen. That is a prosecutor telling you his own defendants are not villains out of a movie. They are people who want in. And I will tell you what I think about that since you’re here and I am the one with the mic. I think it is worse. Not for them. For us. Because the whole transaction of becoming an American is one promise on one piece of paper. It is not a fee. It is not a wait. It is a promise. You tell the truth about who you have been and in exchange this country hands you the single most valuable citizenship on the face of the earth.

And the people in that courtroom are accused of getting the order wrong. Of taking the vote first and asking for the country second. You do not get to vote your way into a country you are still asking to join. So count the two cases together because the pair is the point. In Washington State, somebody lost a question she did not like and went looking for a judge. In California, a judge refused to give the government the big win it asked for and then told it where the law actually lets it go. Both of those are courtrooms. Both of those happened inside the same 48 hours. One of them is a party chair trying to get a judge to overrule 1 ,252 ,000 people.

The other one is a judge telling the government, no you cannot have 20 ,000 ballots but if you’ve got individuals who broke the law then name them, charge them and prove it in front of a Everybody else I know which one of those I think is the system working Now hold that thought because I have got four more pieces of paper to put in front of you and one of them has a smiley Face on it and I actually had to write smiley face instead of give you an emoji because it wouldn’t work for some reason It just froze at the very end when I was preparing for this and it wouldn’t give me a smiley face So, it says, smiley face here. Back into the dark ages. Alright, so, four pieces of paper.

Fast, because all four of these landed in the same two days, and all four of them are the same move wearing a different hat. Number one, Florida. Yesterday afternoon, the Council on American Islamic Relations shut down every operation it has in the state of Florida. And it announced it by taping a neon orange sign to its own office window outside Tampa. Sure did. Its website now tells people who live in Florida not to join its mailing list, not to quote otherwise engage with Care or Care Florida at this time. Nobody rated them. Nobody has been charged with anything. I want that on the record. Today is why.

Florida’s designation of that organization as a domestic terrorist organization takes effect this morning. And under the law the governor signed in April, knowingly giving material support to a designated group, is a crime. That reaches the people who writes the check. That is what emptied that office. And here’s the mechanism, because they have beaten Florida on a terrorism label before and they won. I went back and I read the March order. A federal judge blocked the governor’s executive order on the First Amendment grounds. The court’s own words. This court finds he cannot. So what is different this time? Well, the order stopped a pin. This one is a statute.

So an executive order is one man’s signature. A law is the whole state’s. Number two, North Carolina. Democrats won that Senate seat Tuesday by almost 20 points, 58 .7. The same voters wrote photo ID into the state constitution by almost 20 points the other way. 59 .6. One ballot, one day, the same hands marking both. And mail ballots are covered now too. So now you can look at the mechanism because it is the second time in one hour that the mechanism is the whole story here. Democrats took the state house that same night, first time since 2010, and the statute dies with a new majority. One vote in, one chamber, and it is gone. A line in the Constitution does not.

Changing that takes another statewide vote of the whole state. The amendments a con job on the people of North Carolina. His explanation was that voters did not have enough information. They had the ballot in their hands, they read it fine. Number three, and this is the one with the smiley face, on Tuesday the Justice Department settled with Lockheed Martin for about twenty nine and a half million dollars. 22 million of that goes to the United States because Lockheed is a federal contractor and it’s certified in those contracts that it was obeying civil rights law.

More than a thousand employees split the other seven and a half and the EEOC says that that is the largest class of workers ever to publicly recover under one of its settlements over one of these programs. And this is page four of the signed agreement, a director of global diversity and inclusion in writing to human resources. This is what they said, quote, we will identify at least 11 additional POC ads from further functions and the level 2 race flag will clear. POC is people of color. A flag is what their software put on a list when it did not like the race of the names on it. and then she signed off. Let’s go with a smiley face. The smiley face is in the federal document.

I am not describing a mood. I am reading a character. And here’s the arithmetic from another one of those same emails also in the settlement. Increasing POC for the bonus list will result in removing equal count of non -minority. One name on, one name off in writing. The man who filed that case is Tim Buhr. He was a Vice President there and he put his own name on it. Now, that is not a bias somebody who had to go hunting for, right? I mean, that is a decision somebody was proud of. Number four is Texas, and this one is just the table, fewer than 30. That is how many Texas kids in the top income tier of the school choice program got one of the state’s 116 ,574 accounts.

The state’s own report has two rows for families way up at the top of the income scale. Both rows read less than 30. The incoming governor called that program a voucher scam in her victory speech. her case is that public money is going to privileged families. So here is the Comptroller’s Own Table, published October 1st. Over 18 % of the children in it have a qualifying disability. 62 % live in a household under twice the poverty line. And another 95 ,000 kids are still on the waiting list, which that report calls the in the country. You do not get a waiting list like that selling something too privileged.

Four pieces of paper, a sign on a window, a ballot that went two ways by 20 points, a settlement with an emoji in it, a table with two rows that say less than 30. And in every single one of them turns on the same question, which is the question I actually want to spend time on because nobody explained it to you on Tuesday night, and it is the only one that is going to matter between now and January. What can each one of these people actually do? So here is the thing I actually came here to give you today, and it is not a feeling. Everybody you, you know, that you were going to hear from this week is going to tell you how Tuesday felt. I cannot use that and neither can you.

What you can use is a ladder because every single one of the people in this hour reached for a tool. And those tools are not equal. They are not even close to equal and almost nobody ever tells you the order which is exactly why it’s so easy to sell You a headline about something that cannot actually happen So let me give you the order the weakest to strongest and there is only one test How hard is it to undo Bottom rung a state Just a statement. A press conference, a post, a sign taped to a window, an announcement that somebody intends to sue, cost to undo. Nothing. You undo a statement by making a different statement on Thursday. And I want you to notice something about this hour.

A whole lot of what got reported to you as an action in the last two days lives on this rung. Somebody saying that they are going to court is not somebody being in court. Second rung, a signature, one person’s pen, an executive order, a designation, a directive, fast, dramatic, and it is one of the ones that makes the news costs to undo. One judge, one successor with a pin of his own. That is the whole reason I keep pulling the statute out and showing it to you. Not because statutes are exciting. They are the most boring thing in an American government. But because the boring one… is the one that is still there in the morning.

Third rung, a statute, a law, two chambers and a signature, slow, ugly, full of people you cannot stand, cause to undo it. Two chambers and a signature all over again. And that is the rung where the Texas story actually sits. So let me use it because this is the single most practical thing that I’m going to say today. The incoming governor of Texas called that program a voucher scam. Okay fine. She won. She’s entitled to hate it. She cannot repeal it. Not because somebody is blocking her. Because of where it is. It is in state law. Repealing a state law takes both chambers of that legislature and that legislature only meets in regular session in odd numbered years.

The next one is in January which is also when she takes office. So what can a governor do by herself? Well, she can go after the money A Texas governor can line item veto appropriation. That is a real power, and it is hers alone, and nobody can stop her from using it. And here is the part that you will not hear anywhere else. A veto reaches the next budget that the legislature sends her, not money that is already appropriated, already out the door. Which means the fight over those 116 ,000 accounts is not a fight about speech. It is a fight about one line in a budget bill, in a session, in a building, in front of two chambers. And that is not a prediction. I don’t do predictions.

That is just where the lever is. Top rung. The Constitution of the state. Cost to undo it? Everybody. The whole state, again at a general election. That is the rung North Carolina’s voters used on Tuesday, and that is why the ballot matters more than the Senate seat on the same ballot, no matter which way you voted on either one. Now, the clocks, three of them, and they are all running right now. Clock one, the court calendar, and I have to be honest with you about this one because honesty is the only thing I have got that other guys do not have because sometimes it hurts to even say it. The court calendar is slow. Announcing a lawsuit takes an afternoon.

Getting a ruling that actually changes something takes months, and then the other side appeals, and that takes longer. Anybody who tells you a filing this week settles something this month is selling. Clock 2 The Sessions Calendar Legislatures come back in January, Texas included. Between now and then, almost nothing can be repealed by anybody, anywhere, no matter how loudly Tuesday is being re -legitated on television. Then you have clock three. There it is. And that is January 3rd. That is the date the new Congress is sworn in. That is the one, not an estimate, and that is non -negotiable.

It is in the Constitution, which means everything happening in Washington between today and January 3rd is happening in a building full of people who already know their replacement’s name. So when somebody puts a headline in front of you in the right, like in the next eight weeks, you now have two questions and they take about four seconds. One, which rung is this on? Is it a statement, a signature, a statute or a constitution? 2. Which clock is it on? Is this a thing that happens before January? Or is it a thing somebody is going to be allowed to talk about until January? That is it. That is the whole trick. And once you’ve got that, it cannot be sold as procedural headlines ever again.

And you You will know more about how this actually works than the person reading it to you. And I’m telling you all of this now on purpose because in about 10 minutes I’m going to put a man in front of you who is standing on the bottom rung of that ladder on the wrong side of all three of those clocks holding a piece of paper and making a demand. and the national press is going to spend the next week telling you it is an earthquake. It is not and I can prove it with a roll call from March. Hold that ladder in your head for 60 seconds because this is the thing that pays for this hour and then I’m going to hand you the roll call. I know we got a we got a in a quick little second.

get into this so big time that I’m like, wait a minute, I got to do something else. I’ve got something else I have to do over here. So here we are. Let me get this on up so you can see what I’m talking about here. I know the last person, I figured I would go ahead and use it. Kevin New scum was up in here on polymarket .com. He just, it’s just awful. But again, the good news is this creep is going to be gone. new scum, grew scum is gone very, very soon.

But anyway, if you want to know what’s really going to happen in politics, sports, the economy, wherever, Polymarket’s the place where people are putting real money behind their predictions instead of just yelling about it on TV or social media. And now there’s a dedicated app for US users. You can download it today. Sign up with the code Litterbox, L -I -T -T -E -R, B -O -X. You can deposit $10 and Polymarket will give you an extra $20 to get started. That’s the code. Litterbox. The link is in the description box below and you can go and see what the market really thinks. So Buttigieg, fight as well.

Okay, I was looking for Newscom, but it looks like there’s so many different things that they’re putting out there. I saw him earlier and that was plenty, by the way. So we’ll start with Pete Buttigieg favored to be the first Democrat to announce the 2028 presidential run following the midterm elections. Got a 24 % chance happening right there right now. And so you can look at all of the odds, the full list of potential candidates. You can go and check them out. You just click on here. But remember if you use the code litter box if you put in 10 Polymarket will give you an extra 20 to get started. So that’s the code litter box.

Definitely check that out litter box We need to have some fun around here. Do we not? crazy crazy week so Here is the rope roll call But first I have to actually introduce you to this man because it’s important that you know exactly who we are talking about here. I’m going to introduce you to the man holding the paper. Wednesday night, Thomas Massey posted a condition. And I’m going to read it to you exactly as he wrote it because the grammar of it is the whole story. Quote, There is one contingency in which I won’t re -introduce the Articles of Impeachment. Hegzith resigns. That is the ultimatum delivered to the Secretary of War of the United States. Eight Articles of Impeachment.

His filing. Article 1, right at the top of the page in capital letters, is waging war and contravention of the War Powers Resolution of 1973. And he told a national network that he is going to force the House to vote on it as soon as Congress comes back, which is next week. Now, the national press is going to spend the next seven days telling you that this is the Republican party turning on Pete Hegseth. So let me hand you the three facts that nobody is going to put in the same paragraph. Fact 1. In May, the Republican voters of Kentucky’s 4th district fired him. 54 to 46. He lost to a former Navy SEAL the President has endorsed and his name is Ed Galrein.

His own primary, his own party, his own district. Not even close. His term ends in January. Fact two, and this is the roll call I promised you. This is not the first time the House has looked at the underlying question. On March 5th of this year, the House voted on whether to pull American forces out of the fighting with Iran. It failed. 212 to 219 and of the 219 on the other side of that here is the part that matters. Two Republicans voted yes and he was one of the two. So when somebody tells you next week that Republicans are turning on the Secretary of War I want you to hear what that sentence actually contains. It contains two people. In March, it contained two people.

One of them is leaving in January because his own voters sent him home. That is not a party turning. That is a man with a deadline. Fact three. The president answered this on Wednesday, the same day, and he did not hedge and he did not leave it to a spokesman. He said Hegseth is doing a very good job and he waved off the stories about replacing him. Same day, on the record in his own voice. And now watch what happens to that ultimatum when you put it next to the thing I gave you 15 minutes ago. He is not holding a statute. He is not holding a court order. He is not holding a cont institutional amendment. He is holding a post and a resolution he has to give notice of.

And the mechanism he is using, which is the real one, I will give him that, is a question of the privileges of the House. That is a procedural key. It lets one member force the to schedule a vote. It is the one tool a member with no committee, no majority, and no leadership has left. But forcing a vote is not a winning a vote. And the ordinary disposition of a privileged resolution nobody wants to touch is a motion to table it, which is in itself a vote and which takes about 11 minutes. And then it’s over. So count the clocks on him. I am not going to tell you what happens because I do not know that. I’m going to tell you what he is standing on. Congress comes back next week.

His term ends January. The new Congress is sworn in on January 3rd and on that date he is a private citizen in Kentucky. He is on the weakest rung there is, on the wrong side of every clock in the building, and he is making a demand of a sitting cabinet secretary whose boss publicly backed him 24 hours ago. And this is the thing, and this is what I have been building towards all hour. So here it is. Once and then I’m done with it. Every single person in this hour reached for the same thing. The party chair in Washington State who had the best night of her life and who woke up and went looking for a judge.

The Justice Department out in California which asked for a court for 20 ,000 ballots and got told to go indict somebody instead. The advocacy group in Florida that taped a sign to its own window because a statute was about to reach the people who write its checks. The company that got a bill for $29 .5 million because somebody put a quota in an email. And now, a congressman with 60 days left on his badge, filing articles of impeachment against a cabinet secretary and telling him he can make it go away by quitting. Nobody in that list is going back to the voters. Every one of them is going to a lawyer, a judge, a fighter.

or a procedural key and I want to be careful here because that is not automatically a scandal. Some of those moves are the system working exactly the way it’s supposed to work and the grand jury in Santa Ana is the system working. The statute in Florida is the system working. A company paying for what it put in writing is the system working. The difference is not the lawyer. The difference is what they are arguing with. Some of these people are arguing with a law, and some of them are arguing with an answer that 1 ,252 ,000 people already gave. So, watch the roll call, not the noise, and a man who cannot hold his own seat does not get to hand out resignation letters.

One more story, and this one has no lawyer in it anywhere, I’m sure you’re thrilled over that one and I have been saving it all hour because it is the one thing I read this morning that did not need a filing or a designation or a settlement or a procedural key to get done. Okay, it needed somebody to ask. James Comey hired five lawyers in three weeks. Not one, five. They filed their appearances one after another through the back half of October and two on the names on that paper are names you hire when you are not planning to lose. Patrick Fitzgerald, who ran the Scooter Libby prosecution, Michael Drieben, who argued cases for the in front of the Supreme Court for 20 years.

Those are the two big ones. That is what the title of this hour looks like when a man can afford it. So here is where that case actually sits because it is not where most people think it is. The paper is in federal is in the federal court in Washington. United And it states versus Comey, it’s case number 126, criminal 229, and Judge Trevor McFadden is the presiding judge, and the charging document was filed on October 5th under seal two counts. Now listen to what kind of document it is, because this is the whole thing right here. It is not an indictment. It is an information. An indictment is what you get when a grand jury agrees with a prosecutor, ordinary people in a room who have to vote.

An information is the prosecutor’s own charging paper. He signs it himself. There’s no grand jury in the room at all. Both are legal. They are not the same instrument at all. And the first thing those five lawyers did was file a motion to dismiss it. So here’s the calendar, and the calendar is the news. October 5th, the information is filed under seal. October 9th, the defense asked the judge to throw it out and ask for an emergency hearing. October 6th, they filed the real motion to dismiss. October 23rd, the government answers it. October 27th, the defense replies. October 30th, the last thing anybody put on that docket. And then nothing. It is fully briefed.

Both sides have said everything they are going to say. There There is no hearing date on a public docket at all. It is sitting on one judge’s desk in Washington and it has been sitting there for a week. That is what pending means. It does not mean somebody is about to be dragged out of a building. It means a man is paying five lawyers by the hour to wait. and that is the only that is only the Washington case just so you know that’s just that one there is a second one Eastern District of North Carolina it was filed back in April a different judge Louise Flanagan same defendant same man October 9th his lawyer files a motion in that case and he asked the to seal it. October 13th, she seals it.

So I cannot tell you what it says and neither can anybody else. But here’s the part that is public. October 16th, the government went to that judge and asked for more time to answer it. And the new deadline they asked for is today. Today, November 5th, while we are sitting here our chairs. When the judge sealed that request too and then signed another order the same afternoon so whether she gave them the extra time it’s not public either. So we’ve got this whole thing sealed off. The paper is sealed but the deadline is not. That is the only date on anybody’s calendar in this whole block. it is this one.

So now Ilhan Omar, because she is the one everybody asked me about this morning, we were watching all the celebrations, everybody’s going, what is going on? Are you kidding me right now? Ilhan Omar has not been charged with anything and I want to say that plainly and I want to say the other half just as plainly. There is a federal paper with her name on it and it is public, but it is not a case against her. I mean, if you go look at what is actually on the docket, you can see it. There is a sealed search warrant matter filed in federal court in Washington about the search of her residence.

And there is a separate application from the New York Times asking a judge to unseal the material in the investigation. Read that again. The newspaper is in court. She is not. And on Tuesday, she was reelected with 76 .5 % of the vote. So the honest answer to what happens to that one now is, nothing has happened to it yet and the only thing moving is a fight over whether the rest of us get to see the paperwork. One rule for this whole block and it applies to every name in it. Again, this is what I need to make clear to everybody because I would be doing you a huge disservice if I did not. Charged is not convicted. Investigated is not charged.

I am not going to tell you a man is going to Because I would like him to be and I’m not going to tell you he is walking because his lawyer is good I am going to tell you what is on the docket and the docket is the thin right now on purpose Because that is what October looked like Which brings me to the name I have been careful with all week on purpose Federal agents went into Ilhan Omar’s home. They took her phone. The Justice Department actually confirmed that there is a warrant and that the warrant is sealed, which means you do not get to read it. I do not get to read it and neither does she. So here’s the part that you need to hold on to.

She has not been charged with anything, not a count, not an information, not an indictment, nothing. I mean, I could sit here, I could build you a whole case out of a sealed envelope. Half of the shows in this country are going to do exactly that today. I’m not going to do it. And the reason is the rule that I gave you 30 seconds ago. a rule that only… Only keep, you only keep when it’s convenient is not a rule, it’s a moot. Searched is not charged. The day that there is a charge, I will read you the count number off the docket myself with a big fat smile on my face.

And there is one case in this particular pile that is not waiting on anybody because it is in a courtroom while I’m talking to you. Thirty -four felony convictions get 30 minutes today. Fifteen aside, five judges, the appellate division, first department, in Manhattan. One court above the judge who ran the trial. On one side, the president’s lawyers. on the other side the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and each one of them gets a quarter of an hour to answer questions. The appeal runs on three arguments and they have been the same three arguments since 2024. That a payment like this one belongs under federal election law and a state prosecutor never had the case.

That presidential immunity was violated by what the jury was allowed to hear and that the prosecution never showed an intent to defraud. His lawyer’s brief opens on the line he has said himself a hundred times. It should never have been brought. Both sides have already said out loud that today is not the end of it. This one is going up to New York’s High Court and after that, possibly the Supreme Court of the United States. 30 minutes today. Years after that. And then there is the one that is finished. A brand convicted. One count of rape, three counts of sexual assault, four women.

Four women you will never see and never hear because the law over there gives them anonymity for the rest of their lives. They walked into that building anyway. They told twelve strangers what happened to them and twelve strangers believed them. He had everything. The accent, the stadiums, the millions of followers, the whole second act where he reinvented himself and lectured the rest of us about who was corrupt. The crown prosecutor said it today and These are his words, and not, they’re not mine. Predatory used his celebrity status to commit sexual crimes. A manipulator, he said, with an insatiable desire to get what he wanted, whether consent was given or not. He is sentenced Monday.

Every other name in this block is waiting on a hearing date. He got his. So what do you actually watch? Not a headline, a hearing date. The day a judge puts one of these on a calendar is the day something is about to happen and that day will show up on the docket before it shows up anywhere else. Everybody on that list lawyered up. Not one of them is finished. They are waiting the same way we are, and the difference is they are paying for it. I want to end with a number, and it is not a vote total. 1 ,711. Days. That is how long a man named Demetro went without seeing his wife.

And here’s the detail that got me because it’s really the reason why I’m ending the show with this instead of with the filing. He knew the number. He had been counting every day for four and a half years, one at a time he kept the count. He is a Ukrainian soldier and that is the thing that put her in danger because when Russia took their hometown, being married to a man in that uniform made her a target. Her name is Larissa. She spent those years inside of Olshiki. It is a city. It’s right on the front line it has been occupied this whole time and before the war 24 ,000 people lived there.

By this autumn there were about 1 ,700 left in it, mostly elderly, people who could not get out or who would not leave. On Saturday he got her back, the two of them standing there wrapped in Ukrainian flags. Now, the reason the shooting stopped long enough for that to happen is Melania Trump. Not a summit, not a framework, not a track, not a working group with a name and a logo. The first lady opened her eyes. Her own channel to Moscow and to Kiev, and both of those governments agreed to hold fire in and around that one city from October 27th to November 1st. Five days, one city. And in those five days, she says nearly 800 people walked out.

On Monday, the President of Ukraine signed a decree awarding her the Order of Princess Olah, first class. That is the highest honor that country gives a woman. It has a number on it, and it has a date on it. Decree 1079. And at 11 o ‘clock this morning, while most of the country was still arguing about Tuesday, She sat Russian representatives and Ukrainian representatives down in the same room at the White House. And I want to be careful about how I say the next part because I’m not going to oversell this and I’m not going to promise you anything. You’ve had enough of that this week from people who are not me. That is not peace. I mean, nobody said it was peace.

But it is 1 ,700 people who had a quiet week. It is nearly 800 of them who got out. It is 34 children who have been handed back to their since last October. And none of it came off of a negotiating track. There was no treaty. There was no leverage. There was no lawyer. It started with a letter she wrote to Vladimir Putin.

Everybody with a title has spent four years explaining to us why a pause like that is impossible she asked anyway so listen if you are sitting there today and you are sick about Tuesday and I’m not going to talk you out of it I do not think that that is my job and I do not think you would let me do it anyway but I have spent this whole hour showing you grown adults with every instrument in the country available to them. Judges, grand juries, statutes, settlements, procedural keys, eight articles of impeachment, $29 .5 million. And the single largest thing that anybody actually accomplished in the last week got done by a woman who sat down and wrote a letter and asked. 1711 days.

He was counting. Somebody finally gave him a reason to stop. So that’s the show. I’m so glad you were all here to spend it with me. I know it’s been a rough couple of days. It has been for everybody. You are not alone, but just know that everybody is feeling the same way as you are. You’ve got people that love you, myself included. You all are wonderful. You are doing a great job. Don’t let any of this tear you apart ever. there’s always good in the world and you make it that way. So you all be safe, be kind to one another, and we will see you tomorrow at 3 o ‘clock p .m. Eastern time. Bye. Thank you. Okay, we’ll talk. Litigated. Litigated. Can’t talk. Gotta hear it. Who TA’d it?

I can’t talk. No. Mm -hmm. I can’t talk today yet. Let’s get it. Let’s get it. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

You have successfully subscribed to the newsletter

There was an error while trying to send your request. Please try again.

In The Litter Box will use the information you provide on this form to be in touch with you and to provide updates and marketing.