Support the Washington Coalition for Open Government or the National Freedom of Information Coalition to make sure that your pet issues stay public too!

Also, check out the New Civil Liberties Alliance or Pacific Legal Foundation if parts of this episode spoke to you.

For today's story.

I talked to two people that work at two organizations dedicated

to fighting government overreach.

I talked to Oliver Dunford, a Pacific legal foundation.

And Peggy little at the new civil liberties Alliance.

Both of them have encountered problems with the same organization, the

securities and exchange commission.

Uh, keeping secrets and trying to prevent the public from knowing how

it's using the power we have given it.

So that it could protect us from market manipulation by market players

Who wield a lot of influence in their specific areas.

We're going to focus on two main issues.

One with each speaker.

For all over.

One of the problems that he finds most concerning is the fact that

the sec can require you to disclose information that would normally take

a warrant without a judge's signature.

Which means that you don't get your fourth amendment protections.

This concern led Oliver to submit several public records, requests, or

foil requests at the federal level.

For records of the investigations that they were conducting and how

those investigations were handled to see if the people who were

being accused were getting the constitutional protection they deserved

some, , accommodation has been maybe made ] between the

government's right to, , prohibit fraudulent behavior, the private

parties, uh, right to protect itself and the public's right to know all of this.

And then with Peggy, we're going to talk about after investigation.

What happens when you're actually accused of violating

a specific law.

And what the sec can require of you in exchange for not

trying to send you to jail.

And so we have this terrible situation, whether win or lose

the sec can never get a gag, but if you settle, it extracts something from you

that was never at stake in the litigate.

Both of them come at this from angles that aren't exactly public records focused.

But both of them also rely on these kinds of disclosures to

try to bring about just outcomes

In editing this episode, I realized.

That it needs a lot of background on how administrative law works.

So here's the Hannah Marcley quick and dirty version of

administrative power overview.

First Congress passes a law.

This is going to be the empowering statute that creates the agency

that you're talking about.

And administrative agency can come from any number of bills.

For example, the sec comes from the securities and exchange act.

And also enforces the Sarbanes-Oxley act and many other pieces of legislation.

So Congress passes a law, creates an agency to administer that law and

then kind of has a hands-off approach.

The agency is empowered to do two things.

It's empowered to interpret a law and it's empowered to enforce a law.

But in doing both of those things, it has to engage in its

own kind of law making process.

It can go through what's called notice and comment rulemaking, which you

may have heard of where it publishes its proposed rule to the public.

And the public is allowed to comment on it.

And then it must evaluate those comments before enacting the rule.

Or if a rule isn't particularly impactful or is a very obvious

housekeeping measure, it can be done without notice and comment and simply

published in the federal register.

These rules are the subject of a lot of debate in certain circles, because

there's a question about whether the agency is making new law or interpreting

the law that Congress gave it.

Because one of those interpreting the law is legal, but making new law is not.

In deciding how to apply the law agencies have a lot of leeway

and therefore they get a lot of flack for being free of oversight.

If you find this kind of debate.

Interesting.

You should check out the west virginia versus epa case that came out of the

supreme court last week it really gets into the details of this issue

Furthermore many agencies, including the sec.

Use quasi courts or administrative law courts.

In enforcing their rules.

These courts are not under the judicial structure of a traditional court.

And they don't have the same kind of appeal process or the same kind

of judicial appointment process that's designed to ensure that those

making decisions are free from bias

making sure that government sticks to this kind of power structure is

kind of the goal for people like Oliver Dunford at the Pacific legal

foundation separation of powers group.

Uh, practice in the separation powers

group where we're trying to.

Limit the government's ability to, um, do things unilaterally

through the executive branch.

We think that all three ranches should be involved in, uh,

depriving people's rights.

Congress writes the law executive enforces it, and the judiciary

decides disputes that arise

So that's the context we're in.

When we look at the sec actions that we're going to talk about today,

First, we're going to talk about the refusal to disclose records for how

they conduct their civil investigation.

When Oliver asked.

And then we're going to talk about their rule, that in order

to settle an accusation against you, you have to promise never

to talk about your accusation.

These two things create black boxes around the SCCs enforcement and

create a environment where government power is used without oversight

Sure the sec, um, like many agencies, brings a number of, , cases

in court, but they also bring a number of cases , in before it's in-house

administrative law judges and Congress did give them the authority to do that.

And for criminal, of course they, the DOJ takes it.

And that is in court.

] . They at least bring criminal case in court, but civil actions can be.

Enormously consequential businesses and individuals are subject to massive

fines, millions of mines dollars fines.

this can be done again before an administrative law judge who is

employed by the sec and the sec, like other agencies has a, an

official separation of function.

And so the ALJs, and the staff that worked for the ALJs, , supposedly were separated

from the enforcement division of the SEC.

but there have been stories and studies showing that the ALJs are

under pressure, uh, implicit, if not explicit to rule in favor.

The agency and they also have, of course, they want to keep their jobs.

And now, again, officially the jobs are they're hired.

Uh, they are, uh, uh, applicants are reviewed by a separate agency, uh,

but they are employed by the sec.

And so there is an inherent conflict of interest there.

Uh, incentives do matter.

And, um, and so our interest in the sec is, is mainly, uh,

on the administrative side.

Um, we, we certainly don't want the SVC to abuse its power when it goes to court,

but at least when it goes to court, there's a, there's a separate branch.

There's an independent judge that oversees the case.

Uh, what, what it's in-house though the sec, uh, again, it's

both the prosecutor and the judge.

the discovery and procedural rules are stricter than they

would be in federal court.

And the ALJ gets to make all those decisions.

One of those pre enforcement pre ruling decisions that the ALJs or someone

else in the agency gets to make.

Is issuing civil investigative demands

One other thing that agencies often do is they send out what

are called civil investigative demands.

CID is, which is essentially a subpoena issued by an administrative agency.

Uh, and they do not require a sign-off by a judge.

Subpoenas our legal tools use to get information or testimony

in court or in criminal trials.

You might've seen it to see a witness subpoena, to come testify

in a case, those sorts of things.

But when they're required to produce information, typically it requires a judge

to order you to disclose information.

This gets back to your fourth amendment rights, your right to be

free from unreasonable searches.

And being forced by an agency without the third-party oversight

of a judge to disclose information.

Does seem to infringe on some of your privacy that should be

protected by the fourth amendment

It's a subpoena issued to a small business or big

businesses we have tried, PLF has tried to get copies of those CIDP.

Uh, the subpoenas and we have been denied on the ground that they would disclose

the SCCs investigations and that they weren't, uh, inhibit the investigations.

what Oliver is saying is that they made foyer requests for the copies of

issued civil investigative demands.

And we're told that those records, those public records were exempt from

disclosure because they would have shown how the agency does its enforcement.

This is one of the exceptions to FOYA, but it is used when something

being disclosed might prevent the investigation from finding real facts.

In this case, the civil investigative demands have already been issued

to the party that was accused.

So the people that could change things or hide things based on those demands.

Already have the documents in hand.

Which makes it seem like a silly way to reject a foyer request

Some of this is understandable.

The companies who are under investigation don't necessarily

want this information public.

some accommodation is appropriate.

problem though, is that the sec has so much power.

Not only will a courts generally enforced the subpoenas, uh, but the sec

can hang threats over the recipient's heads and say, well, if you don't, if

you don't comply, we'll have no choice, but to bring an action against you.

And again, the sec can bring the action either in court court, uh, in house.

Uh, and if they take it in house, they went almost all time.

And so there is a great disparity in power.

And if you don't do the STCs bidding, then they can bring an action against you.

And what you're doing in many cases is you are turning over information to the sec

that they can later use to bolster their.

actions or, , as you see, may find something, in which they can, uh,

with which they can use , to bring them additional claims against you.

After looking through the enforcement guide and the policies that are

published online on the STCs website and doing a lot of digging.

Oliver and PLF still couldn't figure out how the sec decided.

Who to prosecute.

As we'll hear later from Peggy, it's not always clear when the

sec makes those kinds of decisions and what motivates them to select

prosecuting party a instead of party B.

And this is important when you're talking about oversight to know

that they're making these decisions based on the law and the facts not

based on for example party prejudice

We were hoping that we would find, uh, kind of what the sec.

Uh, thinks how it goes about deciding when to send out an administrative subpoena.

What, what the basis is, is it simply a hunch?

Uh, is that a one, one call came in and there was a complaint about a company.

Do they have to meet any kind of, probable cause standard in order to send these out?

We're just trying to see what the practice is and to see if the practice,

the actual practice deviated from what the manual said or what the law says.

And just to see if, again, if we could keep the sec honest and,

and make them stick to what, what they're supposed to be doing with.

As part of PLF mission to hold government accountable and particularly

enforcement branches accountable.

They've sent out these kind of foyer requests pretty often

We've sent it to a few agencies in addition to the

sec, in all cases, um, we've got the same answer, which is somewhat.

Comforting as the right word, but, but at least the agencies are acting consistently

in that respect, that they're, um, that they're investigating a company that,

that remains at least for now, uh, closed.

Um, so we have not been in the, in as a general matter.

We're not going to find out when an administrative subpoena is issued and

unless a company challenges it in court.

, but outside of actions being filed or a company just saying

out loud, here's, what's going on.

Generally those subpoenas will be kept from the public,

I'm not saying that the government should have to open its, um, dispose

everything it's doing all the time.

Uh, but more transparency is better than not.

When Oliver's getting at here is that there's more than just the

agency's actions at stake here.

These investigative demands effect companies and private parties who might

not want that information disclosed.

Furthermore, they're kind of related to the attorney client issues.

The agency, the sec in this case is talking to its attorneys about

how to pursue an investigation.

And those kinds of conversations are often private.

But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be able to get information

that's already been disclosed to the party who's being accused

There are ways that the agency could try to mitigate the risk to its

investigation or to the agency's privacy.

But still disclose the important oversight documents that oliver is looking for

I think that they could have redacted some names redacted, some

of the information that they were seeking, which would dispose who the recipient is.

], also more of the underlying, um, basis of why they're sending

out these subpoenas again.

Is there any kind of.

probable cause standard.

Did the sec, think that there was some fraudulent or criminal behavior going on?

Was it just a hunch?

Those are the kinds of things that, uh, that, that kind of information

outside of publicly available manuals and things like that.

We did not get.

And so the goal here is to make sure that the sec, which does have

a role to play in ensuring that.

Regular parties don't break the law.

Uh, but the agencies themselves can't break the law while they're doing it.

Uh, and if they're everyone should be subject to the same rules.

But when it's just a, uh, when the governments engage in a fishing

expedition, and they're asking me to turn over all kinds of information, which

can later be used to incriminate you.

Yeah, there's a, there's a problem in there.

, and some, , accommodation has been maybe made ] between the government's right to,

, prohibit fraudulent behavior, the private parties, uh, right to protect itself and

the public's right to know all of this.

So the STC wouldn't let Oliver figure out how they decide,

who was worth investigating.

Who's stuffed to Snoop through and.

That's just the beginning.

Of the problems at the sec.

When we come back, we'll hear from Peggy little.

Little about what happens after someone gets charged

Peggy little and the other attorneys at the new civil liberties Alliance have

done a lot of work on the other issue.

I mentioned the gag rule that the sec uses to keep people who have been

accused of violating securities laws.

From discussing the accusation

they represent a man named Barry Romeril who has been unable to

talk about the prosecution against him from the early two thousands

Barry was formerly the chief financial officer of the

Xerox corporation and he had held other very high, , positions , in

international companies as well.

, the sec charged Xerox and S I think it was five of its, , high executives

with accounting manipulator.

And to be honest with you, I'm not a CPA.

And at one point I probably could have described exactly what was at

stake, but essentially the smoothing out your, profitability data.

So it, there's not a lot of jumps to it.

This is something that was done a lot in the, in that time period, Jack

Welch's, at GE was famous for doing it.

Uh, and GE never got charged.

Um, this was something, uh, KPMG, which was Xerox's accounting

firm was also charged in this.

If you read the literature that was coming out around this time,

it was described as a sea change.

In sec enforcement.

So what it meant was the, uh, sec was reaching into new areas under new

theories, um, of financial misconduct that certainly had not been seen as

something that regulator would punish or even regard as a securities law violation.

This is an example of an administrative agency trying to interpret its

empowering statute here, the securities and exchange act.

And coming up with.

Changing ideas of what the law means over time.

This is something that can create a lot of upheaval in the regulator community

and also can catch people off guard

and they filed the complaint against, Barry Romeril, , Paul Alayer and

the various other executive officers in the Southern district of New York in 2003.

And about eight days later, the settlement and paperwork was filed.

So this was not a case that was litigated.

It was, investigated.

There was, obviously some negotiation about what the nature of the charges

would be and Xerox as too many companies do, in my opinion, agreed to

pay multimillion dollars, um, to get the sec off its back and to move on.

None of the companies like to be under an sec investigation.

So the sec created this new category of misconduct without

giving any warning to the regulated community like Xerox or other large

corporations, that it was something that could get them into trouble.

And right off the bat they went after mr Rommel and the other

leadership people at xerox

There was this, sea change in 2003.

when Mary Jo white became head of, sec, she talked about having a regime of,

um, really aggressive on enforcement and you see that, um, certainly post 2008,

there was a lot of that going on as well.

Uh, it does make a difference.

Um, What a sec chairman or commissioners are in charge at the time.

And they disagree amongst themselves as to what constitutes

a securities law violation as well.

This gets back to Oliver's concern about making sure that the government

is following its own rules to produce consistent rather than arbitrary outcomes.

The one, one concern about government is one.

It doesn't follow the rules when it follows the whim, um, particular

individuals who are running things.

Justice Scalia mentioned this in his famous Morrison versus Olson dissent,

quoting from the Massachusetts constitution that we want to be

a nation of laws and not of men.

Uh, and if we're not a nation of laws than we are subject to whim to arbitrary rule.

So if there is disagreement on whether or not an action is a violation

and it hasn't been proven to be a violation in any court, but maybe

is the whim of a new sec director.

What would make a company decide to take a settlement instead of to fight it

Well, certainly being under investigation by the sec, uh, involves of

bad publicity, it affects the stock price.

it distracts the executives from their other, duties and

the exposure is very high.

It's very easy to, um, bring a case and convince the jury that, you know, these

large corporations are up to no good.

And the cost of defense.

Are enormous in some of our briefing in Mr.

case.

In other cases, we have shown that in there a 2015 study, the average costs

of defending an sec enforcement action runs into the millions of dollars.

And that does not even count the, um, pre the investigative

phase, the reinforcement phase.

So it's a very, uh, heavy burden.

Most companies prefer to XSEDE and pay the fine and move on as I spent the first

20 or so years of my career representing amongst other

things, uh, fortune 50 companies.

And I can tell you that the rush of the settlement is very much

built into the corporate culture.

Another factor that often pushes parties to settle when they're

accused by an agency like this.

Is the fact that the agency often controls the court that you're heard in.

You remember how Oliver mentioned earlier that sometimes the

prosecuting agency can choose to go through an administrative court?

What that really means is that the judge in the case, Is

also employed by the agency.

Which means that.

It's hard to imagine there isn't at least some bias in the court

We think that that process itself is problematic when

you have a an agency acting as both the prosecutor and the judge.

Uh, and then when you get to the appeal, when you find me in a law to appeal

an adverse decision by an agency to a court, the court has to defer to both

the law as found by the agency and, uh, the facts, uh, as found by the agency.

And so, um, in all of these cases, we think that the government should

certainly has a role to play in prosecuting fraudulent behavior, but

they have to do it through the proper.

channels

So there's pressure to settle both from the corporate culture and from

the fear related to actually litigating the case and how bad that could be.

Plus there's the publicity issue.

That's where the second limit on transparency comes in the gag rule

that Peggy and NCLA are fighting.

the gag rule is, a rule that says you consent.

And the consent is a huge issue here that the,, you will never question any

allegation that the sec brought against you, or even create the impression

that you were less than guilty of everything they said you were guilty of.

And you can't even, , allow someone else to say that on your

behalf, but it, it essentially.

Silences the public discourse on your prosecution.

That's unconstitutional

aside from the unconstitutionality.

What are the policy implications of keeping defendants from discussing the

truthfulness of allegations against them?

Well, they're quite enormous.

Um, I guess one starting point would be two commissioners, one a

democratic appointee, Roberta Carmel and another Republican Hester purse

who is still an sec commissioner.

Both of them have published, comments that are very concerned

about regulation through settlement.

That what the sec does when it, when they take these steps to expand.

The theory and nature of their jurisdiction over regulated parties,

that when they silence the person, very important information is, is

taken out of the public discourse.

And both of those commissioners said they were very concerned about the sec,

uh, essentially making up the law that it uses to enforce, against regulated

parties and further that then they use the prior settlement as a precedent and

said, well, you know, Xerox was charged with this and therefore you have the

same exposure and they paid, you know, multimillion dollars in, in fines.

Testing out novel theories is something that public interest law

firms like PLF, and NCLA do a lot.

But it's not something you think of the government doing.

Figuring out new ways to charge people with crimes or civil violations.

they do, prosecute and regulate, rich people, but, but that's

not all, uh, anyone who's engaged in interstate trading in securities

is, or who works in that industry.

So accounting firms and things like that.

can be subject to the sec jurisdiction.

And, and the government, likes test cases like public interest firms.

We, we look for, sympathetic clients and we look for test

cases to, try out theories.

And so does the government and the government may want to test

a new case or a new theory.

against, uh, some low hanging fruit, against a party that doesn't have

the resources necessarily to fight.

So for some reason, Peggy's client Barry Rommel became a test case for this new

interpretation of account manipulation.

And he really wants to know why

So much so that when he found out that NCLA was speaking out against

the gag rule, he sought them out.

that's it, this is a fun story.

NCLA is dedicated to opposing abuses of administrative power.

And, um, we learned of the gag rule.

And so for the first thing we did was we filed a petition to amend with

the sec itself in which we briefed why it's a prior restraint, a content

and a viewpoint based discrimination.

It violates your rights of petition.

Uh, just basically a horn book of first amendment law.

And we brief that to the sec in October of 2018, it was one of the first

things I did after coming to work here.

And as part of that mission of getting

These abuses of administrative power out to the public and understand.

I wrote an op-ed for the wall street journal, which

they published to my delight.

I've been trying to get one of those published for quite some time.

And they took this one and, uh, the day it came out, Barry Rumrill called me

up and said, I want you to represent me

So what exactly was Barry asking in NCLA to do here?

He had already agreed technically to the settlement.

But what exactly is a settlement and what kind of ongoing power does it have

Well, the settlement is courses civil,

the interesting thing is us attorneys do not in, and they don't even

try to get gags as part of a plea bargain in a criminal context.

And we cite cases in our papers about this, any kind of first amendment

violation, that requires someone in a plea bargain to surrender a constitutional

right is very heavily disfavored, and usually held unconstitutional.

So the, the, what I'd like to call a real prosecutor, which would be

a us attorney, they don't even ask.

I'm told anecdotally, they think it's kind of hilarious that the sec thinks

that could be, can get something that an actual prosecutor can't get.

So when you said that you first filed a petition to get rid

of the gag rule, independent of Mr.

Ramero is the gag rule ensconced, somewhere aside from the

actual settlement agreements.

Another great story.

Uh, the gag rule is, uh, called a rule, but it's not.

And the reason it is not is they, the SCCs just published it in the federal record.

Saying it was effective immediately.

And because it was a mere housekeeping rule, it, they did not need to

publish it for notice and comment.

This goes back to what I was talking about at the beginning of the episode,

about how some rules that are not very important, don't have to go through

notice and comment rulemaking, but rules that actually affect regulated parties

are supposed to go through a process where the public has a right to engage.

So 1972, when they slipped this thing into the

federal register, there was never any notice and comment on it.

I have brought this up in every pleading and in also the petition to

amend with the FCC, because this is no different from say, Congress passing

a bill and failing to pass it through.

Both houses are presented to the president for signature.

Oliver says that he sees this pretty commonly in many agencies.

The agencies are either overstepping their statutory

mandate going beyond what, the kind of congressional authorization law.

Uh, or they're issuing rules through a shortened process that doesn't give

the public sufficient opportunities to comment on or object to a proposed rule.

So this quasi rule about the gag orders and settlements has affected Mr.

Ramero.

And he's trying to figure out what he can do about it.

But i wanted to know what he wanted to do or say that the gag

rule was preventing him from doing

So you met Mr.

Romeril after the wall street journal article, and he

asked you to represent him.

what was he wanting to do that he wasn't allowed to do?

Well, I can't really say exactly what he

would say because of the gag.

And we've been very careful about that, , there's a highly regarded professor.

At Columbia named John John coffee, I think they call him Jack and he's,

written about the gag and why it, uh, and I think his line is, you know,

sunshine is the best disinfectant.

So the gag is also under academic criticism.

Did you make any public foyer requests to the sec about how they

handled, investigations or pre enforcement action related to either

the, the underlying issue of the account manipulation or the gag rule use?

Mo more of the former, we made Request just for Mr.

Rahm records still not answered.

Um, and they of course claimed that they were archived because it was

the 2003, which was a long time ago.

And then during COVID they said that nobody could go over to the archives.

Um, and we're still at a stalemate on that.

It's not critical to our issues because they're not really very fact-based.

Um, but Barry would like to know what was, behind his a prosecution.

And we made those requests in 2019 and they are still not answered

This is really par for the course.

For the sec, they have a D minus.

For their foyer responses with the government efficacy project

and are generally regarded as one of the worst responders

when it comes to foyer requests.

in a criminal proceeding, you can write a book

thereafter and say, the government's case against me, didn't hold water.

And I can, I can prove this by talking about, uh, say mark Cuban or Nelson

obis, um, who have been two of our supporters in the gang tissues.

They both were wealthy people who could afford to fight the

sec through trial and win.

so anybody who wins against the sec can speak here's, what's crazy.

If you lose and you go to prison, you can also write a book and I,

uh, commend to your listeners.

two recent books, one by Raja Gupta.

And the other by Raj Rajah Nazrim who were both, associated with Goldman Sachs,

there was an insider trading allegation.

Both of them were convicted by juries and in time in prison,

they have both published books.

They are being interviewed by Andrew Ross Sorkin on squawk box CNBC.

And they're saying that the SCCs case didn't hold water, they're

denying the allegations, which they are free to do under a case called

Simon and Schuster versus the New York state crime victims board.

And that case, which is as a us Supreme court case says just because

you've been convicted of a crime does not mean you can't speak about it.

And so we have this terrible situation, whether win or lose the sec can

never get a gag, but if you settle, it extracts something from you that

was never at stake in the litigate.

And that's the core misunderstanding that the sec has about its powers.

Peggy feels very strongly about the procedural issues that happen

when you settle out of your case, instead of fighting it.

There's a lot of constitutional law about the rights you have.

If a cop pulls you over and charges you with a crime or any number of

other things that you've seen on TV about going to court, your right to.

Call witnesses.

But you lose all that in a settlement

You wave a right to a hearing.

You waive your right to appear before a judge on the settlement, you waive your

first amendment constitutional rights, and you also make all these, statements

in your quote unquote consent that says ad I have not been threatened or in, in

any way, forced to sign this consent.

And, I wasn't threatened with criminal proce that is routinely untrue.

Uh, in fact, uh, people, Mr.

Ramero situation are threatened with criminal prosecution all the time.

And you just because they signed a consent form, which is drafted by

the sec, that says they weren't, it doesn't mean that they were not.

So NCLA and Mr.

Or arguing that the consent to the settlement agreement

wasn't really consent.

And that it wasn't really legal for the sec to demand this prior

restraint on his speech on Mr.

Sales speech.

And so the NCLA attorneys challenged the gag order portion

of the settlement agreement.

In court and the southern district of new york

The judge who initiated the course seemed, um, offended.

I would say it just in the, in the nature of the opinion, I was very

dismissive that he agreed to it.

the court opinion went on and on about how Xerox was, you know, this, important case,

the largest civil settlement of its time.

And the judge seemed to think that this was very impressive and

it's not something that you should be disturbing 16 years later.

And one of the grounds for her opinion was 16 years is just too long.

And we wanted to say, well, what would be the right time?

Is it 30 days after it's entered 60 days, six years, 16 years.

So what did you do when you got that bad decision?

Well, we appealed to the second circuit where I hoped,

uh, we would get a good reception because of the Crosby case.

The Crosby holding is very powerful.

It says, , no court may enter a re prior restraint even upon consent.

But remember this, the courts of appeals are filled with former

prosecutors and also filled with people who has district judges probably

entered such orders to themselves.

So I think the traditional discomfort bled through in the second circuit opinion,

what rationale did they give for why, they think that

this is a legitimate practice,

uh, one, they, uh, say, well, he agreed to it.

He had noticed in an opportunity to be heard, which is not true.

The consent itself says you don't get that.

, and to that, you know, he's bound by his own agreement.

. So what you have is just, what's called an interest circuit conflict.

Um, that's been pointed out to the Supreme court.

We also feel that the, um, decision in Romeril is also in conflict with the law,

several circuits, um, including the 11th, the sixth, the fourth and the ninth.

So we have a lot of circuit conflict, which is the sort of thing that

does get you certain certiorari at the United States Supreme court.

So you asked the Supreme court to hear the case

we did.

We are, um, cautiously hopeful.

Who else, might be interested in the outcome of this case?

What kind of practical impact would it have?

It has enormous practical impact.

I think the thing most visible right now is Ilan Musk, who, , was fighting that,

in the Southern district of New York, what he, he did when the sec told him

he was violating the gag, uh, provision that he had agreed to a few years

earlier, he just moved in the, Southern district of New York before judge Nathan

to say, I want my settlement set aside.

And, uh, he, and he also cited at the Crosby case.

The earlier case is still good law in his reply proceedings.

And he has appeared as an Amicus and supportive of us as has mark Cuban, Phil

Phillip Holstein, and, um, Nelson Elvis.

These are all people who fought the sec and won.

Had Barry Romeril, been convicted of the most heinous crime, say

treason or assassination of, of the highest public official.

He could still talk.

And I mentioned, uh, the two, uh, gentlemen who had been convicted

by the sec and by juries, Mr.

Gupta and Mr.

Rajan entre, and one of the most poignant moments in Mr.

Raja, not from his appearance on CNBC squawk box is right at the end.

He says, but I am still so proud and grateful to be a

first-generation American.

Uh, he said I did some gree with the jury's verdict, but I respect it.

And the reason I am so proud and happy to be an American is that I

can freely speak and state my case.

So there you have it on this 4th of July.

Being able to talk openly about what the government does.

Right.

And what it does wrong is what makes being an American so special to some people.

People.

And that's what I hope we can accomplish together.

So keep listening to revealed, and I look forward to telling you more stories.

You found out the hard way.