PODCAST

Serious Trouble

Josh Barro and Ken White

An irreverent podcast about the law from Josh Barro and Ken White. www.serioustrouble.show

news news commentary

All Episodes

39:43

I Am Not In Serious Trouble

Serious Trouble ·

2025/01/10

It’s already a busy 2025 for some of our favorite characters. On this episode: Rudy Giuliani has been held in contempt in proceedings in Judge Lewis Liman’s courtroom, where he has stalled the liquidation of his assets for the benefit of two women he defamed. Donald Trump gets an "unconditional discharge" penalty from Judge Juan Merchan and is trying to stop the release of Jack Smith's report. George Santos asks a judge to delay his sentencing so he can develop and monetize his podcast (!), Eric

27:45

Petite Policy

Serious Trouble ·

2025/01/03

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showWelcome to the first Serious Trouble episode of 2025! For all subscribers this week, Ken and Josh discuss Luigi Mangione’s indictments in both Pennsylvania and New York, and he’s also the subject of a federal criminal complaint. Both New York and the Feds look eager to prosecute him, and there’s going to be wrangling over who gets to go first, with an important difference in the stakes — he’s facing a capital

48:35

An Expensive Settlement

Serious Trouble ·

2024/12/18

This is our last episode of 2024! We'll be back right after the new year to discuss new messes. Today, we look at the substantial settlement that Disney-owned ABC has agreed to pay over George Stephanopoulos’s repeated assertions that Donald Trump had been found “liable for rape” by a jury or juries. And Trump sues CBS, Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register. Plus: Judge Juan Merchan has ruled that the Supreme Court decision establishing a sphere of presidential immunity does not compromise the

41:17

Six-Pack Abs Can't Save You Now, Luigi

Serious Trouble ·

2024/12/13

People get really weird when a murder suspect is hot, huh? Luigi Mangione needs to be extradited to New York, and he’s resisting that — we discuss why it can make sense for a defendant to delay the inevitable. Also in New York, Daniel Penny has been acquitted of criminally negligent homicide in the killing of Jordan Neely. Juries can get weird. Plus: InfoWars may not be sold to The Onion after all, an expert witness in AI used AI to write his testimony and it hallucinated some fake cases (oops!), we

24:04

Pardon Me For All That I Have Done

Serious Trouble ·

2024/12/06

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showJoe Biden has committed the ultimate act of snowplow parenting: a presidential pardon for his son, and not just for the specific acts he faced charges over, but for anything he did between 2014 and five days ago. This week, Ken and I discuss exactly how unusual this pardon was and exactly what kinds of norms about pardons even remain to enforce, and rumors that Biden might hand out a lot more preemptive pardons for

45:56

Diss Isn't RICO

Serious Trouble ·

2024/11/27

Did you know Ken is a huge Kendrick Lamar fan? Well, not really. But he is psyched that Lamar and Drake have produced some truly hilarious litigation to discuss. Their beef goes back years, and they have traded diss tracks — in Kendrick's latest, he calls Drake a “certified pedophile” who’s “tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A Minor.” Is that defamation? If you’re a regular listener to this show, you know it very likely isn’t — and even Drake isn’t quite ready to sue for defamation. But he has

16:42

Matt Gaetz Pulls Out

Serious Trouble ·

2024/11/22

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showWouldn’t you know we recorded this show Thursday at 11am Eastern, just in time for Matt Gaetz to withdraw his candidacy for Attorney General a bit after noon? Don’t worry — we went back and recorded a new beginning of the episode, tossing out the now moot (probably?) conversation we had about the ethics report everyone in Washington wants to see. Ken and I still took the opportunity to talk about how a DOJ under

28:46

The Aftermath

Serious Trouble ·

2024/11/13

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showLast week’s presidential election, which has made Donald Trump once again the president-elect, will obviously have profound effects on the various criminal cases against him. On this show, we cover the Department of Justice winding down the two federal prosecutions and why they're doing it now, and the prospects for the prosecutions in Georgia and New York.For paying subscribers: a deeper conversation on what should

40:39

Young Thug Pleads Out

Serious Trouble ·

2024/11/05

For your Election Day listening pleasure, we have an episode for you covering the news that has arisen in the lead-up to the election:* Updates on Eric Adams, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes says her office is looking into whether Donald Trump illegally threatened Liz Cheney at a rally in Arizona.* Young Thug, the Atlanta rapper who has stood accused of running a street gang, pleaded guilty in the long-running, very messy RICO case where he has stood trial alongside several of his associates

23:37

Michael Avenatti Is Still a Bad Lawyer

Serious Trouble ·

2024/10/24

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showFor all listeners, we have updates this week on Michael Avenatti, Aileen Cannon, Laura Loomer and Bill Maher. Our valued paying subscribers (thank you for your support!) will also hear about: the Central Park Five lawsuit against Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani being ordered to hand over assets to the election workers he defamed, FTX defendant Ryan Salame, who alleges (dubiously) that federal prosecutors double-crossed

42:20

Twelve Busybody Idiots

Serious Trouble ·

2024/10/18

SpaceX is suing the California Coastal Commission for objecting to a plan to increase the frequency of SpaceX launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base. The commissioners did raise some concerns that actually relate to the Pacific coastline, but they also mouthed off about how they dislike SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s general political activities. And Judge Tanya Chutkan considers how the Supreme Court decision in Fischer affects the criminal charge against Donald Trump for obstructing an official

19:14

XL Brief

Serious Trouble ·

2024/10/10

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showThe long memo Jack Smith promised is here: a 185-page document laying out evidence he’d like to present in his January 6-related case against Donald Trump. The memo has to be so long because the Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity was so complex and vague: Smith must show, act by act, that he’s offering evidence either of Trump’s unofficial actions, or of official acts where he can overcome the

38:20

To Be On Safe Side, Please Delete All Messages You...

Serious Trouble ·

2024/09/30

Federal prosecutors allege that New York mayor Eric Adams accepted tens of thousands of dollars of free business-class upgrade on Turkish Airlines as part of a broader scheme to receive illegal support from foreign nationals (including concealed political donations from Turks) in exchange for official favors, including from the Fire Department of New York. This is a long, fun “speaking indictment” with juicy details.Plus, there’s other news: Three Iranian hackers indicted for the breach of Trump

23:40

Superseding Indictment

Serious Trouble ·

2024/09/26

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showRyan Wesley Routh has been charged with attempting to assassinate a major presidential candidate. Ken and Josh discuss how proving Routh’s intent to kill the former president might be challenging (had he not left a note expressing his intent), and we talk about what “attempt” is — Routh never pulled the trigger, but there are a number of “substantial steps” he took toward killing Trump that should still make this

33:41

RICO Freak-Off (feat. Sean 'Puffy' Combs)

Serious Trouble ·

2024/09/20

We were kind of expecting Sean Combs to get indicted sooner or later, but we weren’t expecting the indictment to be for RICO. Federal prosecutors allege that Combs, as the leader of the “Combs Enterprise,” led a criminal organization for purposes including coercing female victims to have sex with male prostitutes at drug-fueled orgies known as “freak-offs.” Is that really RICO?Plus: just gun charges (for now) for the man caught laying in wait for Donald Trump at his Florida golf course with a rifle,

23:49

Reversible Error

Serious Trouble ·

2024/09/13

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showJosh and Ken discuss developments in the Data Colada-Francesca Gino-Harvard case, Sarah Palin's defamation case against the New York Times (for free subscribers), and (for paying subscribers) the different philosophies the judges have about how the presidential election should affect the scheduling of the Trump criminal cases they preside over.Plus: Hunter Biden's Alford plea, the Tenet Media FARA case and whether

41:34

One Weird Trick

Serious Trouble ·

2024/09/06

You probably saw the moronic TikTok trend in which check fraud became trendy and was rebranded as a “glitch” that allowed you to get large amounts of money out of any Chase ATM, even if you had little cash in your account. It’s federally illegal, it’s illegal in every state, and “I saw it on TikTok” isn’t a defense. Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean every one of these cases will be interesting to prosecutors.Speaking of stupid criminals: Jacob Wohl and his sidekick Jack Burkman are back in the

25:20

Take Two

Serious Trouble ·

2024/08/30

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.showJack Smith is attempting to salvage his two federal prosecutions of Donald Trump with a superseding indictment that removes evidence about Trump’s presidential acts from the document backing his charges over Trump’s effort to steal the 2020 election. The new indictment removes the allegations that are closest to the core of presidential powers — for example, Trump’s efforts to get the Department of Justice to open a

41:06

Oh, You!

Serious Trouble ·

2024/08/22

George Santos has pleaded guilty and will likely be sentenced next February to several years in federal prison. Santos also lost his copyright claim against Disney over his Cameo videos that were broadcast on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Disney had less luck trying to argue that a customer whose wife died of an allergic reaction would have to arbitrate any wrongful death claim because of an obscure clause in the service contract for Disney+. Several associates of Matthew Perry were indicted for their roles in

47:12

Hacks

Serious Trouble ·

2024/08/15

Elon Musk has produced some new legal issues for us this week. He has sued a coalition of advertisers for colluding to boycott the Twitter platform, saying this is an antitrust violation, and Musk is also the subject, along with Donald Trump, of a labor law complaint before the National Labor Relations Board, filed by the United Auto Workers.Plus: Trump may sue the federal government over the Mar-a-Lago raid, Missouri will not get the Supreme Court to consider whether its voters were harmed by the

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