8-21-25 - 9am - Crime In DC and Trump Fraud Penalty Tossed

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning, Michael and Dragon. This is couber TSM one
two two, five, one nine sixty nine, your second favorite
Jew forever. The same people who are trying to save
us by driving CO two and other carbons to zero
don't seem to realize that that's going to kill us anyway.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
The irony is completely lost on them. Let's let's get
rid of the CO two, okay, Well, the easiest way
to do that is just to kill off human beings.
The chairman of the Metropolitan Police Departments Union the police
department in d C. It's called the Metropolitan Police Department,

(00:48):
the MPD, James Greg Pemberton. He's now out accusing top
officials within the MPD of deliberately manipulating the crime data
coming out of Washington, d C. Now, according to this guy,
officers are actually directed at crime scenes. In other words,

(01:10):
you know, maybe you're the first guy that shows up,
or you're the detective that shows up, and then you know,
eventually a supervisor shows up. They're being directed while at
the crime scene to either understate the severity of the
incident or to not document the incident at all. I
wouldn't it be kind of easy to prove because unless

(01:33):
it just happens to be a crime that you come upon,
you know, you witness a misdemeanor as it's occurring, or
a felony just it doesn't really make any difference. But
you witness a crime occurring. So you know, you you
flip on your lights and siren, and you pull over,
and you get out of your car. You do whatever
you need to do. Well, you as you do that,

(01:56):
you're making a report back to your disc match that
you're responding to code whatever at such and such location,
or if there's a nine to one to one call,
there's a record of that, Hey, I'm calling to report
a burglary, or you know, there was a mugging at
you know, eighth and G Street Northwest. So I don't

(02:16):
have the getting by with this well or why they
think they could get by with it, except I know
why because nobody ever checks. Because do you think that
the Washington Post or the networks that operate on of DC,
or for that matter, the cables, do you think they're
going to go digging? No, Now, some freelancers might, some

(02:38):
independent outlets, might you know, some of the conservative websites,
even some of the liberal websites might go check, but
CN is not going to check, and if they do,
they're not going to report it. So I don't know
other than there's this absolute conspiracy collusion to underreport and

(03:00):
in some cases not even report crimes. I don't know
how they're getting by with it, he says. They respond
to the scenes of these violent crimes, and inevitably you'll
have a captain or a commander show up on the
scene and advise them, meaning the initial investigators, to take
a report for a lesser offense. Sometimes a robbery might

(03:22):
be reported as a theft, burglary reported as unlawful entry.
We're very skeptical that these crime stats are accurate, and
even went so far as to say that in some cases,
the management leadership will direct the responding officers not to
record a crime at all if the victim involved has

(03:45):
been shot or stabbed but is not cooperating and instead
of we file an injured person report. I think they
forget that the US Attorney for the District of Columbia
is Judge Janine Piro, and that the Department of Justice
have initiated an investigation into the falsification of crime data.

(04:10):
There's already one charge been filed against an MPD commander
Michael Pulliam. He's already facing charges. And then at the
federal level, the Attorney General has provided updates on Trump's
federalization of law enforcement in the Capitol and she's reporting
the authorities have made more than five hundred and fifty
arrests so far, and among those taking into custody a

(04:32):
member of an of the MS thirteen game again on
my X timeline. If you're not following me on X,
go follow me on X right now at Michael Brown USA,
Wolf Blitzer CNN apparently was at Union Station. He walks

(04:53):
out of Union Station and there's an APC from the
DC National Guard and there are a couple of guardsmen.
I don't know whether they're male female. I just answered
the photograph. And if you if you're familiar with Union
Station in DC, if you walk out the front door,

(05:15):
there is a round, circular driveway. You know, cabs use it,
people use to drop off people. There is and now
I feel stupid. I don't remember who the statue is,
but there's a really big statue in the middle with
a fountain used you know, not when I was there,
it was always clean, but since then and I think

(05:36):
they've cleaned it up since since this happened, but homeless
people have been bathing it littally stripped down and bathe
in this fountain. Well. Anyway, So the picture is of
the hum V or the APC and a couple of
guardsmen standing, and he's cropped the photo so that you

(05:58):
don't see a lot. But what you do see the
grass is green, it's clean. You don't see trash, you
don't see a homeless person. But he writes on X
as I walked out of the station, this is what
I saw. Now I know what he's implying. He's implying,
Oh my gosh, look, Donald Trump is a dictator, and

(06:21):
Donald Trump has he's got soldiers everywhere, and they've got
although I didn't notice it, they've got automatic weapons and
they're ready to shoot to kill. And we're living in
a police state. And oh my gosh, it's awful. It's awful.
It's awful. I looked at the photograph and I thought about,
damn telling clean the city up. Someone in response to

(06:43):
that photograph said something to the effect, I don't have
it right in front of me right now, but something
to the effect. It was. It was a female. I
use Union Station daily, and when I walked out and
I saw that my hand that was holding my I purse,
my bag instantly relaxed a little. My shoulders dropped just

(07:07):
a little. I took a breath. I felt oh, I
felt the breeze. I smelled the air. I felt like
I was safe and I could have a nice walk
from the subway from the metro to work. That's how

(07:31):
bad the country's gone. The Press Secretary Caroline Levitt what
a spitfire. She confirmed that there have been forty eight
homeless encampments that had dismantled as part of their strategy
to restore public order. I don't know, and I'm never

(07:53):
going to claim that what Trump's doing is solving the
underlying problem. But make this, I make this argument freely.
What he's doing one is absolutely legal, not only legal,
but I think it's moral and the right thing to do.
And in addition to that, you first, just like we

(08:13):
had this, you know, always using the bath water and
the leaking bathtub, the overflowing bathtub, you got to turn
the water off first. That's what he did at the border,
he shut it down. Well, if you're going to clean
up homelessness, and you're going to make the city safer
from crime, then you have to first get rid of

(08:36):
that criminal element, and one way to do that is
with a police presence. The other thing that I watched
on X yesterday was and I don't know. I assume
they were ICE agents, but they may have been a
combination because they are apparently working in teams now and
some are cooperating in others. Other departments are cooperating in

(08:57):
others or not. But anyway, they pull over a car
look to be somewhere on the National Mall. They have
pulled somebody over. He's obviously of Hispanic descent, and he's
being arrested. He tries to bolt, he tries to run,
he gets taken down like immediately. I mean, they just

(09:21):
pop him onto the ground. It's freaking hilarious. But then
a reporter and I sometimes don't think they understand that
they're actually admitting that there's a problem the guy is
in the country illegally, and turns out he was. And
again I apologize because I don't have it in front

(09:42):
of me. He either has been charged with child sexual
molestation or he had already been charged and was wanted
on a warrant of child sexual molestation and this guy's
just driving around DC as somehow we find that acceptable.
I find it completely unaccepted. I find only and completely unacceptable.

(10:06):
Here's the union chief from the Metropolitan Police Department.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
So can you confirm for us that there have been
police officers and detectives and members of law enforcement in
DC who, on the scene of crimes have been told
don't write that one down, or don't add that to
the list, or put that down as a more minor offense.

Speaker 4 (10:31):
Absolutely. That's one of the chief complaints of our members
when we go around and talk to them, is that
they respond to the scenes of these violent crimes and
inevitably you'll have a captain or a commander or sometimes
a lieutenant show up on the scene and advise them
to take a report for a lesser offense. One of
the things that we see them do often is sometimes
they'll be a shooting or a stabbing, and if the

(10:52):
victim is uncooperative with the police, which is not uncommon
in some areas of the city, they'll be directed to
take an injured person to the hospital report which is
not even a crime at all, it's an incident report.
Sometimes you'll have a robbery, it'll be reported as a theft.
Other times you'll have burglaries that are reported as unlawful
entry or thefts. This is something that's been unfortunately part

(11:13):
and parcel of the police department for some time, and
we're very skeptical that these crime stats are accurate.

Speaker 3 (11:20):
That's extraordinary. What is the motivation? Why are these commanders
or higher ups arriving on the scene during apprehensions and
telling police officers to indicate something other than what actually
happened at the scene.

Speaker 4 (11:35):
Well, the only explanation you give me to keep the
crime stats down because politically that's expedient for the police
department and elected officials in the district. I mean, let's
go back to how we got here, which is that
in twenty twenty, the DC City Council passed the Comprehensive
Policing and Justice Reform Act, which was a sweeping piece
of legislation designed to hamstring police officers to reduce the size,
scope and responsibilities of police officers. In addition, it also

(11:59):
prevented from holding criminals accountable even when they're convicted of crimes.
And so now here we are five years later, the
police department with an authorized strength of four thousand sworn members,
we only have three thy one and eighty, leaving us
with over eight hundred vacancies for the position a police officer.
And in order to make up for that gap, the
police department uses two million hours of mandatory overtime to

(12:21):
cover the demand for police officers. And so because of that,
crime has skyrocketed in the district. And one of the
things that we think is going on in the police department,
which who knows how high up that those directors are
coming from, is to make sure that these crime stats
are reported in the most favorable way possible.

Speaker 3 (12:38):
I mean, what you're saying obviously substantiates what we heard
from President Trump. He said they were opening investigation and
that he didn't believe because what happened. I don't have
to tell you I'm speaking to the audience at large.
But when President Trump said he wanted to bring a
national guard, all we heard from many quarters in the
media and in leadership in Washington was this is ridiculous.

(13:00):
Our numbers are lower than they've been in a long
time in Washington, DC. We don't need national guard presence
on our streets. I mean this sounds very, very egregious.
This is lying to the people and the constituents of Washington,
d C. And lying to the federal government about what
your numbers really are.

Speaker 4 (13:18):
Well, you're right, Martha, it is a crime under DC Code.
It would be false swearing and it would be false reporting,
and those are statutes in the DC Code that make
it illegal to do that, to false by police reports
or to change the data. So if the DOJ is
in fact investigating, I hope they do, and if they
find that somebody was intentionally manipulating the data, they should
be held accountable. It's a crime in the District of Columbia,

(13:39):
and frankly, it's a disservice to the police department, it's
a disservice to the city, and most of all, it's
a disservice to the victims whose police reports are not
being properly handled and we're not dedicating the proper resources
to the crimes that they've been victims of. So something
needs to change here, and this is an important issue.

Speaker 3 (13:56):
It's a huge issue.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
During my now granted I before you jump jump me
on this one, in my almost six years in d C.
But let's talk about prior to me being assigned to
security detail. I had no problem walking around d C.

(14:20):
I actually enjoyed it. There were times when I needed
to clear my head, uh maybe just get some exercise.
I would I would take the Metro at night, or
I take a cab and I would go to the
mall and I would you know, maybe walk the Lincoln Memorial,
or walk up and down the mall, or go walk

(14:41):
up the steps of the Capitol and just sit for
a while, you know, clear my head and never and
then from there it just I just now thought about this.
I would walk around to the east side of the
Capitol and I go walk along Pennsylvania Avenue where there
were a couple of you know, there was a couple
of dive bars. There was the tune in an old

(15:01):
Hamburger place that politicians like to gather and go to
as a bar. They'd been there for you know, a
couple of hundred years almost and it was just a
great place to go have a greasy spoon burger. There
were a couple of dive Mexican places. There were a
couple of you know, dive Chinese places. So I would
do that and then I would walk back to my apartment,
and I never felt uncomfortable. Never. Now, obviously, when I

(15:25):
got a detail, who's cars driving behind me and you
know Kenny's walking, you know, side by side with me
or something, obviously I don't feel uncomfortable at all with that.
But even then, it was like, we never had any encounters.
Of course, if you saw if you saw Kenny who
you know, a six four sixty five black man, three

(15:46):
hundred pounds muscle, you're not gonna mess with him anyway,
because you knew he was probably a security guy, you know,
because he's got all the telltale signs. He's got a
jacket on, and it's a hundred degrees outside, and he's
got an earpiece in, so you know you're not you're
gonna leave him alone. But all that, notwithstanding, he and
I never had any encounters. We never had any problem. Oh,

(16:07):
there might be times when he might you know, well, no,
I'm not even sure that he ever said late, let's
go to the OtherSide of the street. But since then,
the times that I've been to d C, it's like
walking into a third world country. Now, let's take what
we hear about d C and let's transfer that to Denver.

(16:29):
Wasn't it just this week that we had the gang members,
including members of Trendo Arragua, once again arrested here in Colorado.

Speaker 5 (16:37):
You hadn't been looking at a text line, have you, Michael?
This makes me wonder if this very thing isn't happening
and going on in Denver.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
Uh, the very same thing I believe is going on
in Denver. No, I've not seen the text yet. Is
that what it said? Yep? I believe the very same
thing is going on in the city in County of Denver.
It may be going on. Don't believe or disbelieve it
going on in other places like say Aurora, Lakewood, Broomfield,

(17:06):
Boulder Highland or Loane Tree Islands Ranch Council. I don't
know about those, but I would I would, I would
bet my kingdom that is going on in Denver. But
here's the other thing that's not going on in Denver.
And there is no no discussion whatsoever about let's do

(17:30):
sweeps and let's clean it up, and let's let's move
the homeless out. And whether that means they go to jail,
or they go to institutions, or they go to shelters,
we got it. We got a nine million dollar hotel
that we bought, that taxpayers bought, and we're now going
to sell to a development what. Oh, I guess that's
because we don't need it anymore. Pretends they're no longer

(17:51):
any homeless people. Yeah for ten bucks? Yeah, for ten bucks?
Was it ten dollars or nine dollars?

Speaker 6 (17:57):
Ten?

Speaker 2 (17:57):
I think it was ten dollars, phil because I offered
twenty five.

Speaker 5 (18:04):
Hey, Mike, I just saw that the New York date
Court of Appeals has reversed and dismissed the nearly five
hundred million dollars civil penalty from Latsia James's baloney fraud
case on Trump. How much longer until the all the
charges are dismissed as well? Have a good day, Mike.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
Well, guess what I've been doing during the break? I
have to do the promo for tomorrow, and I see
the bulletin about that, So I pull up the decision
and skim through the decision as quickly as I can.
Here's what I know based on what I've read so far.

(18:52):
This is the New York Supreme Court, which is not
what we think of as the Supreme Court. They're court,
their final court of jurisdiction is called their appellate court.
This is the Supreme Court, first Appellate Division, so I'm
going to refer to it as the first Department. The

(19:14):
I think it was a five I have to go
back and look now. I forget it was either a
five panel judge judges or ten penny. It was a
huge panet. It may have been five. Ten seems excessive,
but whatever it was, it was more than it was
more than three judges. They unanimously overturned the half billion

(19:40):
dollar penalty. Remember Judge Ingern, that yahoo of a judge
whose daughter worked for the Democrats. He imposed the five
hundred million the half billion dollar fine, and the first
Apartment of the Appellate Division over ruled unanimously that half

(20:02):
billion dollar penalty. They said it was excessive and that
it violated the Constitution's ate the Amendment prohibition of accessing fines.
That there are best I can tell, there are three
separate opinions. The court is highly divided on some of
these issues, and I think I've got some of that.

(20:25):
I think I understand some of that. Let me just
work for it. In so far as the fine is concerned,
the judge the judge that wrote the majority. Two of them,
Judge Renwick and Judge Moulton, said, quote the court's disgorgement order.
A disgorgement order is where the court says you have

(20:46):
to you have to sell off those assets, you have
to get rid of those assets. The court's disgorgement order,
which directs the defendants pay nearly half a billion dollars
to the State of New York, is an excessive fine
that violates the eighth the Men of the United States Constitution. Now,

(21:08):
they also recognize that the lower court's injunctive relief was
well crafted to curb the defendant's business culture. So they
left in place the injunction about how they do In
other words, you're gonna have to start doing business. You know,
you can't do it on quick books anymore. To put

(21:30):
it in really rough terms, you're gonna have to be
a little more sophisticated in how you track your financial records.
They said that it was well crafted to curb the
defendant's business culture, but the penalty for not keeping really,
you know, really sterile books was disproportionate. They put on

(21:52):
hold the ban that was imposed on Trump and his
sons from running the New York corporations, and they halted
the collection of the money, which Trump avoided by posting
the one hundred and seventy five million dollars bond during
the appeals process. Now, best I can tell, the appellate

(22:14):
judges did not overturn the finding of fraud by the
trial court. This is a purely political decision in my opinion.
They left the finding of fraud in place. But so
they're still civilly liable for fraud, but the penalty was vacated.
Now that suggests skepticism the way I read the opinion

(22:39):
that the legal theory that was used to calculate that
penalty raises really serious constitutional problems over the size of
the monetary punishment relative to the alleged harm and obviously
in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Now, they were critical
of the lower court's methodology, indicating that the goal of

(23:01):
deterring future misconduct, that's that's okay, but the amount was
in excess of what anybody would reasonably reasonably believe was needed. Now,
again I point out, this is not a unanimous decision,
so there's a lot of division among the justices on
the aspects of both the merits and the appropriate remedies.

(23:21):
So this kind of I think leaves the door open
for an appeal by the Attorney General to the New
York Court of Appeals, which is the highest court what
we would think of as the Supreme Court. This has
gone on inordinately long for an appellate decision. The Appellate Division,
the Supreme Court division of the New York Courts, usually

(23:47):
has decisions like in cases like this in just a
matter of maybe a couple of months at most. This
has been eleven months, which is an unusually protect protra
amount of time for this division. I don't I think
you'll probably hear commentators say, well, it's because it's such

(24:08):
a complex and high profile case. No. I think it's
because it's a political case. And I think it's because
if you have three separate opinions and the one thing
they're unanimous on is that the penalty was too high,
was unconstitutional. Now you've got to get into all the
other stuff and see what can now be retried or reheard,

(24:35):
or whether or not they've blocked it at all. Now,
Letitia James is already out there saying that the verdict
was evidence of staggering fraud, and of course Trump is
you know, still is politically motivated, so this is a
huge win. This is a huge win for Trump on
a financial basis, So he averts the most severe consequence

(24:57):
the for sale of his real estate holdings. If the
underlying fraud finding not reversed, that will still damage his
business credibility. And if he gets involved in any future
you know, post presidency, you know, litigation or regulatory action
or deal making or other real estate ventures or whatever,
this is going to be a cloud over that. Now

(25:18):
they can still the Attorney General, I think, can still
appeal this onto the Appellate Division, which will drag this
out even further, so the fraud finding stays in place,
the financial penalty gets thrown out as excessive. The leadership ban,

(25:39):
which barred Trump and his sons for a certain number
of years from participating in the business, that has been
suspended and paused during these appeals, so they can go
back and run the business again. The court appointed monitor
has been retained and that will remain in place while
all the appeals are concluded. So that means they still

(26:02):
have to pay, because they have to pay for that monitor.
And I forget how many millions of dollars. I think
it's a couple of million dollars a year or something.
But they still have to pay for that Trump. The
bond remains in place, but they can't collect on the bond.
They can't collect any money from him, they can't collect
any appeals. So that leads in my mind whether the

(26:24):
bond is needed or not. I again, reading it in
a five minute break, I can't tell you whether that's
true or not. But this is obviously going to be
a central topic in all the upcoming legal, the business,
the political debates because it marks a really rare appellate
check on a trial court's attempt to impose an unprecedented

(26:47):
monetary sanction for what can only be classified, even on appeal,
as a civil fraud case. I would quibble with the
civil fraud finding because I don't think they're I mean fraud.
You still need men's reya, you still need some intent,
and I don't think there was any intent here. Was
there some negligence? I'm not even sure I would call

(27:09):
it negligence For me, it appears to be a lot more.
Hey am I vernacular. I can see their financial people saying, well,
you know this is the way Trump likes it done.
We've always done it this way. There's probably a more
sophisticated way to do it, but hey, you know what,
we'll just keep doing it this way. The very idea
that Donald Trump himself still signs checks I find I

(27:32):
just find hilarious. I haven't signed a check, and I
don't know when. I don't know why they're doing that,
and why they're using quick books. They don't have a
more sophisticated financial record and data keeping software program.

Speaker 5 (27:48):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
Curious. You know, the next steps are going to be
kind of curious, because following this, you know, vacating of
the financial penalty, I think Trump will still take the
case to the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court,
for further review. That court would consider both the remaining

(28:15):
fraud finding whether there was actual fraud, legal questions about
the magnitude of the penalty's assess in similar business fraud cases.
Trump's team's already indicating that they will. They do plan
to appeal. Let's see what else I can find in here,
and I'll go to a break. But that's actually that's
pretty much all you need to know. The penalty has

(28:38):
been overturned. The appeals will now go on to the
New York Appellate Court, the equivalent of a Supreme Court.

Speaker 5 (28:45):
Good morning, guys from Kentucky.

Speaker 6 (28:48):
Thank you for reintroducing us to the Traveling Willbury's.

Speaker 3 (28:52):
Thanks Brandy, I'm in town.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
I tell you what, how about after show you and
me go do some superhero stuff fut some crime together. Hey, Dragon,
could you call security and have them put my car
in the garage so I can get out of here
with that?

Speaker 5 (29:10):
Is there any do you really want your car in
the garage here?

Speaker 1 (29:13):
Well?

Speaker 2 (29:13):
No, Could you just have the security guard kind of
escort me out to the car just to be safe?
The city guard, Yeah, he's right here in my backpack.
Corey no longer works here, Corey, poor old Corey.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
I miss Corey.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
I miss Corey too. You know she always smiled when
you've lost. Chris, if you're the Democrat Party, you remember
yesterday I told you about the New York Times story
about the flood of people away from the Democrat Party.
Chris Como, CHRISO has lost or the Democrat Party has LOSTO.

Speaker 7 (29:54):
My brother's a Democrat. I don't know why, but he is.
My father was a Democrat. I know exactly why he was,
but his party doesn't exist anymore. And while I had
disagreements with my father about different issues, I knew what
principles were guiding him.

Speaker 6 (30:09):
Can you unpack something for me that you just said
that I please sound fascinating. You said that my father's
Democrat party and your father ran for president as a Democrat.
This is correct, and he led the state of New
York as governor three terms. He was a you know,
he was mister Democrat, yes, right, And he was a liberal.

Speaker 5 (30:26):
Wied him.

Speaker 6 (30:27):
He was an iconoclass for the Democrat party. You can't
go anywhere in New York without finding Cuomo on the
name of a bridge or a road. And so you
say that his party doesn't exist anymore.

Speaker 7 (30:39):
Unpack that for me.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Oh, we'll let Chris unpack it for you tomorrow, because
it is fascinating.