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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. And now your host, Nia Rogers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, political science professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: Well, I'm delighted. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I am good, and, of course, listeners, one of the reasons why I'm good is that this is the time of year for those of us who are Supreme Court watchers. It's like our Super Bowl, our World Cup, because the Supreme Court is at the end of its term, and it's now beginning to issue all decisions. And this episode is part of our summer of Scots series, which we do typically every mid to late June, early July ish. And the Supreme Court is finally begun to hand down some of the more controversial cases or in some instances, they weren't even controversial, apparently to the Supreme Court because the votes were nine to zero. But nevertheless, yeah, I'm good. This is the time of the year where I get to do a lot of reading of opinions, and then we go and talk about them on the podcast.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, and this is the part of the year where you explain to me the cases. Which I like, because the Internet tends to give me the alarmist view of the cases. And it doesn't matter what the case is, and it doesn't matter whether you're progressive or.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or conservative.
N. Rodgers: Conservative. What matters is that the press tries to make you feel away about things.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because if they can get your eyeballs on your clicks, then they've made money, and that's really what they're after. And so a lot of times I come into these thinking, I have an opinion about this and Vonage goes, here is the soothing, real answer to the question. And I go, oh, I have less of an opinion about this. Because I'm not nearly as fired up after you tell me about it as I am after one of the many media sources that I have the unfortunate addiction to have come across my feed. And by the by, in case anybody is listening, I mean, in case anybody cares about this part. I access multiple kinds of media. Both conservative and progressive because, one, I like to know what the arguments are. And two, I believe that generally speaking, there are two sides to a story or more. And it's good to know what all the sides are, so that you can figure out where you stand as opposed to, I fall in line with these people because that's my tribe, and that's what I'm supposed to do. I like most of GenX, do not have a tribe. And so my tribe is a tribe of one that occasionally gets in line with another tribe of one, that's another GenXer.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I mean, in listeners, Nia just made a couple of relevant points. One, the media frequently will focus on the consequences or the outcome.
N. Rodgers: Whatever is salacious.
J. Aughenbaugh: The justices oftentimes are focusing on the narrow meaning of law.
N. Rodgers: Or the process.
J. Aughenbaugh: We're probably not going to get to this case with this episode. We more than likely will with the next podcast episode. But one example that just comes immediately to my mind of recent vintage is the meaning of the word of the phrase arrives in
N. Rodgers: Which we will get to later, because that's an immigration case.
J. Aughenbaugh: And then we're going to couple a couple of immigration decisions from the Supreme Court in a different podcast episode. Now, the implications are huge, and the media is correct in pointing that out. On the other hand, the debate among the justices, was what does the phrase arrives in mean? Or as we will discuss in this particular podcast episode, because we're going to be looking at the meaning of the Second Amendment and the Sixth Amendment. We're still debating words, phrases, clauses, values from when the Constitution was written, right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay. So yes.
N. Rodgers: Because as I have regularly pointed out, could you vague that up for me, founder? Could you make that harder for me to read. Thanks so much. Appreciate you with your Fs that look like Ss and Ss that look like Fs. Leave me alone.
J. Aughenbaugh: The second point that I think Nia, you made that I think is extremely relevant, and I would encourage our listeners to do this is, is to not read just one media. I encourage and I have for years because I do this in part because of what Nia described, I am Generation X, but also too these cases are dialectical, meaning there are multiple views, at least two views and if you're going to go ahead and be an informed citizen, you should probably go ahead and see how Supreme Court decisions are being reported and discussed from multiple views because the cases are. So for instance, the first case we're going to be looking at is a case that arose from Hawaii. Wolford v. Lopez. Now, the question in and of itself seems to be pretty straightforward. Does a state law requiring gun owners to get advanced permission to carry weapons on private property that is generally open to the public violate the Second Amendment?
N. Rodgers: Like a golf course?
J. Aughenbaugh: Or a retail store, a bar.
N. Rodgers: Oh. Okay. Owned by an individual, but generally the public. I got you.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, because these are businesses that need customers to come in and buy their goods, their services. You mentioned a golf course, you want people to come and play rounds of golf, right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Hawaii passed a law after the Supreme Court's decision in 2022 in the Bruen case. That went ahead and said that unless a business explicitly says that you as an individual can frequent their private property possessing a gun, you are prohibited from doing so.
N. Rodgers: Oh, so they have to make you opt in, as opposed to opting out. Like when you see signs on doors that say no guns on the premises or no guns allowed, so what they're saying is they have to put up a sign on the door that says, bring your gun and hang out and have a good time. Otherwise, you're not allowed to.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or guns are allowed, right?
N. Rodgers: Okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, what you have here is in many ways, and I did not see this in pretty much any media write up. What you have here is the classic constitutional law conflict where one civil liberty, private property runs in conflict with another civil liberty, the right to possess a firearm. Now, let's be very clear. Hawaii, California, New Jersey, Maryland, New York, I believe, they all passed these laws to restrict people who possess guns from being able to have them on their person as they would go about their day. Now, the response of the individuals is, hey, wait a minute here. There's no such law that says, my right to free speech is either allowed or not when I go onto somebody else's private property, or my right to free exercise of religion. I mean, think about it, the last time I went to a bar there wasn't any signage that said, well, if you are Christian we're not going to serve. Or you're not allowed. Or if you're a big mouth who likes to talk politics, don't come into Walmart. This is the classic tension. And the Supreme Court ruled against the state of Hawaii. The vote was six to three and it was aligned on the conservative liberal ideological, if you will, split. The majority opinion was written by Justice Alito, and he basically went ahead and said, the Hawaii law was an attempt to circumvent the court's ruling in the Bruen case from 2022, and the man quote, if you will, "This regime hobbles what the Second Amendment protects, the right of Americans to carry arms for self defense as they go about their daily lives." Now, those in the dissent, were Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, and Kagan. I think Kagan had the better of the two dissents, Kagan said, "If we follow what Bruen says we have to do in looking at laws that regulate guns, there were plenty of laws at the time the Second Amendment was written, that dictated where you could have firearms, including allowing property owners to decide whether or not people could bring guns onto their private property. Now, the Hawaii law that was passed, and again, you could describe this as the media frequently does as liberal or progressive states being upset with the Supreme Court's Bruen decision. Because the Hawaii law had other features that were not challenged in this particular case, including listing 15 sensitive areas where you cannot have a firearm, including bars, parks, restaurants, youth centers. But those weren't at issue in this case.
N. Rodgers: Restaurants that serve alcohol.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Not Taco Bell. You could carry a gun into a Taco Bell. But when alcohol is involved they didn't want people to be armed, which I'm not entirely certain I disagree with. Thank you very much.
J. Aughenbaugh: So in many ways, this is the classic tension. I got to admit Nia I am amused that progressive states, which typically are not all that aggressive in protecting the rights of private property owners, all of a sudden wanted to go ahead and protect them. I thought that that was pretextual. Or for those of you who would like the everyday common language, it was a bullshit reason, but nevertheless. I find it interesting that gun owners, many of whom are conservatives. And historically in the United States, conservatives are the biggest advocates of the rights of private property owners. All of a sudden we're like, what the hell with the rights of private property owners. Constitutional law in politics sometimes leads to interesting arguments from the parties in a case.
N. Rodgers: I understand what Hawaii is trying to do. Hawaii is trying to say Bruen went too far.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure, yeah.
N. Rodgers: And we're trying to use our public health and safety.
J. Aughenbaugh: Authority.
N. Rodgers: Rules.
J. Aughenbaugh: For the death of authority.
N. Rodgers: Thank you. To try to rein in what the Supreme Court has cut loose.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: What I think is interesting is, if you own a bar that serves alcohol, you are free to put up a sign in your window that says, no guns allowed. And it does the same thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Hawaii laws default was unless a private property owner said that guns were allowed, the assumption is you couldn't bring a gun into these locations. And again, the analogy in listeners, if you want to go to law school, you better get comfortable with analogies. Because that's the stock and trade of lawyers. They make comparisons, they make analogies. And during oral arguments, the attorney for those who were challenging the Hawaii law, went ahead and said to the justices during oral arguments. Can you name any other civil liberty where you have to get special permission from private property owners to continue to possess that civil liberty. So again, think about the fact that if you walk into a youth center, you don't give up your First Amendment freedom of speech rights. They go whizzing.
N. Rodgers: Because if you've ever heard the smack that is talked at a recreation center during a basketball game, you would think, oh okay, maybe some people's First Amendment rights should be limited.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, I got to admit. And, of course, those who are critical of that position point out that there's a big difference between somebody's religious beliefs or political speech is different than somebody who's carrying a gun.
N. Rodgers: Well, the intention here is if I want to be in a gun free environment, because I am fearful of whatever. I'm fearful of the gun. I'm fearful of the person. I'm fearful of the person with the gun, whatever, whatever, whatever. I would like to think that I could go to a park and not have to worry about that. I could go to a youth center and not have to worry about that. That law would discourage people who would casually break that law. Now, it's not going to discourage people who were going to break that law anyway.
N. Rodgers: Because if somebody's intentionally going to carry a gun to a place where they're not supposed to, they're going to do it no matter what, or at least they're going to try. TSA takes how many guns out of people's luggage and they're like, I forgot I was carrying my shotgun or whatever. You're like, Really? You forgot that you were carrying your shotgun? Whatever.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, the Hawaii law, like these other laws Nia, all arose after the Bruen decision. Because before Bruen, most of the federal courts in the United States focused on a outcome analysis. Ends means testing. If a government jurisdiction could plausibly argue that the reason why they had a gun control law was to prevent gun violence. Many federal courts in the United States were like, Well, then that law is constitutional. Bruen flips that around. Bruen says, the assumption is, your Second Amendment right is as important as any other civil liberty found in the US Constitution. Unless the government can go ahead and show that they have a really good reason, the assumption is the government can't abridge your Second Amendment. The Supreme Court's basically challenging the public, that if you don't like that interpretation of the Second Amendment, you have to do what?
N. Rodgers: Elect people to Congress who will change.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Federal laws. Or amend the constitution.
J. Aughenbaugh: Amended the Second Amendment.
N. Rodgers: Or at least clarify what the Second Amendment was likely to have meant since I'm not entirely certain that the founders could see machine guns that far ahead or other weapons of what we think of as mass.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's problematic because in the Bruen decision written by Justice Thomas, he's got a phrase that says gun laws that target guns that are commonly held, violate the Second Amendment. So listeners as we are recording this.
N. Rodgers: That is the fundamental argument, I think that gun rights activists have versus gun control activists have is what did the founders mean when they said you could own a gun? What did they mean when they said you had the right to bear arms? Do you have the right to take it into church? Do you have the right to take it into wherever? Do you have the right to have a bazooka? By Justice Thomas' commentary, if everybody buys a bazooka, then it's okay for everybody to own a bazooka because now they're in common use.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well and Nia, as we are recording this episode, the state that we live in has just passed, a gun law that targets a very popular weapon, AR 15. That law has already been challenged.
N. Rodgers: I'm sure that somebody was waiting with a challenge as soon as Abigail Spanberger signed it, because that's how these things work.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's one gun case. Now, we have a second gun case that was decided the previous week US v. Hemani?
N. Rodgers: In a 9-0. This thing where people say, The court is so divided. The court never agrees on anything. There's always the liberals and the conservatives, and then the three that you can pick off maybe that are one or the other. No This was a 9-0 Boop.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. What was at issue in the Hemani case was a federal law that allows the government to deny your right to purchase a firearm if you are a habitual drug user. The Supreme Court held that this federal law did violate the Second Amendment, as Nia pointed out, the vote on the Supreme Court was 9-0. The majority opinion was written by Justice Gorsuch. What was also odd about this case, and we will get to this in just a moment is Elena Kagan joined a concurring opinion written by Justice Alito. Which by the way, folks, hardly ever happens.
N. Rodgers: If you felt an earthquake in Venezuela that may have been why.
J. Aughenbaugh: The aftershock.
N. Rodgers: Actually, our hearts go out to everybody in Venezuela because wow.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Two earthquakes of that magnitude in such a short period of time?
N. Rodgers: It's going to be a long going tragedy.
J. Aughenbaugh: In a country whose economy was already devastated for years. But back to the Hemani case, the Supreme Court went ahead and used a doctrine that Nia, you and I previously discussed in a podcast episode, and this is known as overbroad or the overbreadth doctrine. This doctrine basically says that a law is unconstitutional when it makes criminal behavior that is not illegal, it sweeps in both criminal acts and illegal acts. Specifically, in this case, basically the law would not allow.
N. Rodgers: It's legal to own a gun. It is not legal to sell fentanyl.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or specifically in the case of Hemani. They showed up at his house. Because they had a warrant predicated on the fact that they thought he was a terrorist. They get to his house and they don't find any evidence to suggest he was a terrorist, but they did find a handgun. During the search, Hemani goes ahead and again, listeners, remember what Nia and I have told you, when interacting with law enforcement, shut up because he went ahead and disclosed.
N. Rodgers: Don't say anything. Just give him your name and then say, I would like to speak to a lawyer. Like, don't. Oh my goodness.
J. Aughenbaugh: He went ahead and disclosed, unprompted by law enforcement, that he was a frequent recreational user of marijuana. Now, at that point, the government was like, Hey, wait a minute here. We have a federal law that prohibits you from owning a gun if you are an habitual drug user. The main argument made by the federal government at oral arguments and in their written briefs is per Bruen, you got to go back to what was acceptable or not acceptable at the time the Second Amendment was written. The federal government said, most states prohibit individuals from owning guns if they were considered habitual drunkards. This goes back to your point before Nia when we discussed the.
N. Rodgers: You really want a guy who's spending all his time in the tavern.
J. Aughenbaugh: Owning a gun.
N. Rodgers: Also carrying around a rifle. Probably not. If you think back in the day.
J. Aughenbaugh: Gorsuch said the problem with that analogy is that habitual drug users today would not only sweep up those who are addicted to drugs, which again, we might want the government to be able to go ahead and keep firearms out of their hands. But with recreational drug users, he gave some examples in his majority opinion that I loved. He went ahead.
N. Rodgers: Mr. Hemani said, I use weed about every other day.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: He points to 60 grams of weed.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: In his house. My dude is not a small weed user. My dude really is a heavy duty weed user.
J. Aughenbaugh: But Gorsuch, in his majority opinion said, the reason why the government's application of this law was overbroad, is that it would sweep up recreational drug users like Hemani. But he goes also spouses who occasionally use each other's sleeping pills, college kids bumming Adderall off of their classmates, none of which is criminal drug use or necessarily problematic with the ownership of a gun.
N. Rodgers: Like if I occasionally snag a Xanax from you because I get nervous skating on a plane.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That should not mean that I can't purchase a gun or own a gun. It would be better if I did not use the gun while I was also using the Xanax.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's a separate issue.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, in part, the reason why this case drew so much interest, even though the vote was nine to zero, was this is the law. That was used to convict former President Biden's son Hunter in 2024. Because in addition to being found guilty of tax fraud, he was also found guilty lying on his application to purchase a firearm. Because one of the questions was, are you an habitual drug user? At the time when he was trying to purchase the firearm, he had a severe cocaine addiction. By the way, for those of you who are wondering, this is a law, the Gun Control Act of 1968, that was passed in response to the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior, It had a provision which was updated in 1980s that ban gun possession by anyone who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance. Now, again the government really struggled to go ahead and point out how somebody using weed, particularly when, as Alito pointed out in his concurrence, a majority of the states have now legalized the recreational use of marijuana.
N. Rodgers: Not Texas.
J. Aughenbaugh: But not Texas. That's right.
N. Rodgers: Which is where this happened. That's why Texas thought they could bring this charge because in Texas, there is no recreational marijuana. There is only medical marijuana.
J. Aughenbaugh: But interestingly enough.
N. Rodgers: What I thought was interesting was he said to the agents, It's locked up in a safe. I'm not sitting around with an unlocked up gun. Smoke this much weed. I got it locked up.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm not cleaning my handgun while I smoke a couple blunts. Now, as I mentioned in the previous case, how these cases will sometimes lead to some strange, shall we say, political arguments. This case really scrambled, if you will, your usual, if you will, positions taken by interest groups and politicians. For instance, the Trump administration defended the federal law, which was backed by former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, every town for gun safety, interest group which is.
N. Rodgers: Bloomberg is a Democrat.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Every town for gun safety is strongly in favor of gun regulations. That was odd. On the other side. Think about this. Supporting Mr. Hemani were the National Rifle Association, the American Civil Liberties Union.
N. Rodgers: It's weirdly those two together.
J. Aughenbaugh: A law school clinic that specializes in helping Muslims affected by counterterrorism policies and the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports decriminalizing drug possession.
N. Rodgers: I think Hemani could also make the argument that once they couldn't prove the initial reason that they got the search warrant, which was that they thought he was engaged in terrorist activities, that everything else falls away from that. Because and I'm sure that was one of the underlying arguments, how are you going forward with this when you couldn't when the reason that you got the warrant turns out to be false?
J. Aughenbaugh: But again, the problem is the warrant is the legal justification to get into his house. If he had kept his mouth shut, he would have no idea that Hemani he had a gun, but two.
N. Rodgers: He had that much weed.
J. Aughenbaugh: That he was smoking weed on the regular.
N. Rodgers: Which again, as Aughie mentioned earlier, comes back to our rule in every instance that you deal with the police, which is to say nothing. Say nothing. Except that you would like to speak with an attorney.
J. Aughenbaugh: For those of you who would like to be entertained by oral arguments, and it's not very often that I get to go ahead and say, you should read the transcripts of oral arguments. You should read the transcripts of this particular case because one, it was extremely lively and entertaining, as the justices posed a number of very colorful hypotheticals. Because they were trying to figure out where to draw the line between drug use, and then drug use with a firearm being dangerous.
N. Rodgers: Well, and also impairment without addiction. They had a whole discussion about drugs that can impair you but aren't ad for instance, not to overshare here, but I recently took a friend for a medical procedure. I would argue that right afterwards, they were slightly impaired because they had had anesthesia. They weren't allowed to drive. That's the reason I took the friend so I could drive them home. They weren't supposed to drive for 24 hours. If that wasn't some sort of mild impairment of your judgment, then you would be able to drive. That's why my friend that's why I took my friend and because he's my friend, and I like him. But one could argue he probably shouldn't have been in possession of a gun during that period, as well. If he's not allowed to drive a car, he probably shouldn't be allowed to go for target practice.
N. Rodgers: Because my friend is a reasonable adult, he did not go for target practice. It was not an issue. But that is an interesting question.
J. Aughenbaugh: Think about if your friend had said to you after the procedure, in response to hey, I think about going out duck hunting this afternoon. Really?
N. Rodgers: Exactly. It turns out I'm not going to let you do that.
J. Aughenbaugh: You're not allowed to drive a car or operate any heavy machinery, but you think it's completely appropriate to go ahead and take your shotgun out, and attempt to go ahead and bag a couple duck for dinner. Really?
N. Rodgers: By the way, that oral argument was in March, if you're looking for it. You can find it on their website. You can also find it on C-SPAN sometimes. There will be oral arguments on C-SPAN, but they don't have cameras, so it's always the transcripts.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now the last case we're going to cover this podcast episode, and it got very little press attention. But Nia and I were fascinated by this because we think that one of the values of Supreme Court cases is to remind us as Americans why we have certain provisions in the US Constitution and how they reflected the experience of the colonists. The case is the Abouammo versus United States case concerning the federal government's attempt to get an obstruction conviction in one venue, in one jurisdiction. When the obstruction actually occurred in a different jurisdiction. Let's go to the case facts, Abouammo worked for Google, right?
N. Rodgers: I think so.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. He worked for Google. He shared the details of Google users.
N. Rodgers: Twitter. He worked for Twitter.
J. Aughenbaugh: Twitter. He worked for Twitter. He shared the details, the information of Twitter users to the Saudi Arabia government. Okay?
N. Rodgers: Right. These were dissidents.
J. Aughenbaugh: Dissidents. Yes.
N. Rodgers: Not to put too fine a point on it, Prince Bonesaw does not care for dissidents. Yes. Sorry, bin Salman the current guy in charge of the government.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I shouldn't call him Prince Bonesaw, but that's what he's called in many of the media on the left and the right. He doesn't have a huge number of fans, but anyway, his view of dissidents is, it's really okay to kill them. This is a dangerous thing to hand over this information.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, he did this while he was employer of Twitter. But then he moves to Seattle, Washington. Then the federal government was investigating. Now, when he worked at Twitter, it was in the San Francisco area. He leaves Twitter, goes to Seattle and when he's at Seattle, he has an interview with federal law enforcement and he lies. What the feds did was they impaneled a grand jury in San Francisco and indicted him in San Francisco. He says, "My indictment and conviction for obstructing justice when I lied, I was incorrectly charged because I got charged for obstruction of justice. The obstruction of justice occurred when I was living in Seattle, not when I was in San Francisco working for Twitter." He says, "My indictment, arrest, conviction should be all overturned, because I was charged in the wrong venue." What many Americans don't understand is there are two provisions in the US Constitution that explicitly forbid this. One is actually in the original Constitution. The second was the Sixth Amendment which says, Your trial can only occur in the same district in which you committed the crime. What this prohibits Nia is what lawyers refer to as venue shopping. To give you an example. For those of you who don't live in Virginia, if you're going to commit capital murder in Virginia, you're going to want to go ahead and do it in Northern Virginia. Why? Because Northern Virginia juries are less likely to go ahead and find you one guilty. But two, when Virginia still had the death penalty, they were least likely to give you the death penalty as your sentence. Now, if you're a prosecutor, where you would really like to be able to charge everybody in Virginia for capital murder is either Southwest or Southside Virginia. But the Sixth Amendment prohibits the government from charging you and having a trial in any district other than which you committed the crime.
N. Rodgers: Article 3 Section 2 says it has to be within the state. Then they further amended that it need to be in the district not just the state. They were tightening that range down, not making it bigger.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Now, the one time when that is not true, and listeners will have heard this on plenty of television shows that they watch over the years, is sometimes you have to ask for a change of venue because the city in which it has happened is too poisoned to have a fair trial. That's you asking and the judge hearing both sides and saying, "Okay, that's fair. There's been too much coverage here. You need to move it to someplace." But even so they are not going to move it out of state. The danger in that is that the judge gets to choose where they move it to. You want to be careful about that because you could end up in a worse position than you are currently.
J. Aughenbaugh: The vote in this case, by the way, was nine to zero. The majority opinion was written by Kagan and for my money on the current Supreme Court, probably the two best writers, are John Roberts and Elena Kagan. Kagan does a masterful job in a very succinct manner in describing why this prohibition on venue shopping was important to the founders. Because as she pointed out, it was common practice for the British crown. Where the Parliament enacted laws that allowed the colonists to be tried for treason. But you would not be tried for treason in the colony here in the United States instead you were shipped back to Great Britain where you would be tried in a court with judges that perhaps were, shall we say, more pro crown, than they were interested in giving you a fair trial.
N. Rodgers: Because you getting off over there hurts them. The Crown's going to say, "You're not loyal. You didn't find this guy guilty etc. By the way, it would have always been almost always a guy. But I like the phrase that she says, "The legislation was so roundly despised as to make it into the Declaration of Independence." Which it is.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: By the way, quit dragging us off to England to try to try us is one of the things listed in the enumerated this is why we're leaving. But I also think that Kagan did a very smart thing by reaching in and touching things that Thomas and Alito and Gorsuch really care about, that through line between the founders and the Constitution to law, and the precedent that they always talk about because she's like, Oh no. There's a whole war fought over this mess. You can't just be really charging people wherever you feel like it.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is one of the reasons why we wanted to leave the British crown. I think it was really smart for the Supreme Court to issue this decision and issue it in a nine to zero vote because as many legal commentators have remarked, and there's a body of criminal justice literature about this Nia. As the country has become larger and we have nationwide transportation and communication systems, the courts have relaxed this insistence on you being charged in the district and state in which you committed the crime. But that gives prosecutors a lot of leeway to pick what would be the best venue to get a conviction. I can understand what the federal government's logic was. Their legal argument was the start of the crime began in San Francisco when Abouammo worked for Twitter. But the dislike for technology in San Francisco, would also more than likely lead to a conviction, whereas if you're charging him for obstruction of justice, he didn't really obstruct justice until he did what? Lied to the investigators when he was living in Seattle. The crime was actually committed in Seattle. Now, if you want to go ahead and charge him for aiding and abetting terrorism.
N. Rodgers: Because he took money. He took money from Saudi Arabia to give that information. When he was living in San Francisco, he changed the dates of when he said he got the money and said, "Oh, no it's part of my consulting firm." That lie, that falsification of documents. Happened in Seattle. If you want to charge what happened in San Francisco, it has to be aiding and abetting terrorism, or whatever, taking money from a foreign for private information. I don't know what you would charge it for. But what they got mad at was that he lied to them in Seattle. They got mad about that. That's what they decided to and you're like, really? You got to charge him with the right thing in the right place.
J. Aughenbaugh: The difficulty for the government, because I read a series of articles about this in the San Francisco Chronicle, was that the feds didn't think they could make the case for aiding and abetting terrorism because the money that he received from the Saudis looked legitimate for consulting? How do you go ahead and prove that the money was for.
N. Rodgers: What the intent for the money is right?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. But what they could easily get him on was lying. But again, sometimes, and my former mentor, John Rohr, he always made this point, if you really want to understand the values of a nation, read the decisions of their highest court. The majority opinion in this case reminds us very well. Again, you should read Kagan's majority opinion. How important, the prohibition on venue shopping as a limitation on the government, and why that prohibition is found in two different parts of the US Constitution. But anyways.
N. Rodgers: Also two wildly different districts, the Western District of Washington versus the Northern District of California California. They're going to get a conviction in California. They just are. But are they as likely to get a conviction in the Western District of Washington?
J. Aughenbaugh: Maybe not.
N. Rodgers: They were trying to pick a good spot. By the way, it's Mohammed bin Salman. It's not Prince Bonesaw, it's not technically his name.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, and we apologize if we offended anybody.
N. Rodgers: It's just a common nomenclature that is used. It is Mohammed bin Salman.
J. Aughenbaugh: I've actually read his nickname in a number of mainstream media here in the United States. Those are the three cases we wanted to cover with this particular podcast episode. In our next podcast episode, we're going to be looking at some immigration cases and maybe a couple other ones as we begin to work our way through the Supreme Court's decisions handed down here in the month of June 2026. Thank you, Nia.
N. Rodgers: Thank you, Aughie. I'd like to thank the listeners for their patience. I know that here recently, you've gotten a couple of what I think of as filler episodes, episodes where we were waiting for the Justices to release things. We talked about the Streisand effect, and we talked about attacking SCOTUS because we think those things are important. But I have to admit that now I'm excited to get to the meat of the summer, and the things that are going to be coming out from now on, will the big cases. I'm really interested in birthright citizenship. I know there's a couple of cases you're really interested in seeing how the justices go and how they go from where we predicted they would go. Looking forward to that. Thank you so much, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thank you, Nia.
J. Aughenbaugh: You've been listening to civil discourse brought to you by VCU Libraries. Opinions expressed are solely the speaker's own and do not reflect the views or opinions of VCU or VCU Libraries. Special thanks to the workshop for technical assistance. Music by Isaac Hobson. Find more information at guides.library.vcu.edu/discourse. As always, no documents were harmed to the making of this podcast.