Author: Opening Arguments Media LLC

OA1222 - Actual sane coverage of Trump's kidnapping of a foreign leader PART 1

OA NYC correspondent Liz Skeen joins Thomas and Matt for this emergency episode recorded the day after the US bombed Caracas in a truly unprecedented military operation to kidnap Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife and transport them to Brooklyn to stand trial on federal narco-terrorism charges. We field dozens of patron questions as we try to understand how any of this could possibly be legal. How does this situation compare to the charges against former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, and how is Trump’s record on narcotrafficking these days anyway? What is in this indictment, and what kinds of defenses might Maduro have? Is the federal government going to let this defendant pay his lawyer? Should a federal court be able to consider that this defendant was illegally abducted from his country by the US military while acting as the head of state of a sovereign nation?  What kinds of consequences could there be for Venezuelans in the U.S.?  And what can we--and the world--do to stop Trump from doing anything like this again? 

1. 2020 SDNY indictment of Nicolas Maduro et al

2. 2026 superseding indictment 

3. United States v. Alvarez-Machain, 504 U.S. 655 (1992)

4. “Authority of the Federal Bureau of Investigation To Override International Law In Extraterritorial Law Enforcement Activities,” Assistant Attorney General William P. Barr, Office of Legal Counsel (June 21, 1989)

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Since it's been a while since we last did a GG crossover, I wanted to share the new trial we are doing over there!

It's a new Gavel Gavel trial! We are excited to announce that we will be producing a totally new full trial re-enactment working from our EXCLUSIVE access to the transcript of the federal prosecution of Sean Dunn, better known to the world as the “Sandwich Guy” after being federally charged for assaulting a CBP officer with a fully-loaded 12-inch Subway sandwich on the streets of DC. But before we get to the meat of 2025’s Trial of the Century, legal sandwich artist Matt Cameron is here to slice up everything you need to know. From Dunn’s notably underreported motive to the significance of the date and location of the alleged assault to a shot-by-shot analysis of the only known video of the incident, we’ve got this one wrapped.

1. U.S. v. Dunn docket

2. Sean Dunn’s GoFundMe

3. Video of Sean Dunn throwing a Subway sandwich at a uniformed CBP agent near 14th and U in Washington DC on August 10, 2025

4. U.S. v. Dunn complaint (filed 8/13/25)

5. Sensationalized video of Dunn’s arrest in his house by a swarm of federal agents posted on the official White House X account (8/14/25)

Here's a preview of Law'd Awful Movies!!! If you'd like the full thing, become a $2+ patron at patreon.com/law!

LAM 1010 - After taking a break with a couple of things we actually enjoyed (Juror #2 and My Cousin Vinny), Law’d Awful Movies returns to form with the first two episodes of USA’s uniquely terrible adaptation of John Grisham’s classic 1995 legal thriller The Rainmaker. Thomas, Lydia, and Matt review the show’s bizarre and often cowardly divergences from the source material, its AI-level of understanding of how humans operate in the world and talk to one another--and, of course, the many ways that The Rainmaker gets the most basic elements of law (and lawyering) wrong. 

OA1220 - What’s an FBI agent to do when a notorious low life reports a local cop is asking for a bribe? Turn him into a confidential information of course, and see how far you can get that dirty cop to go. A tale of two assholes, steadily making each others’ lives worse and worse, while one is wearing a wire.

Now, why does the Supreme Court care about any of this? Half the conviction hinges on whether this cop “exceeded authorized access” under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), and no one can agree what that means… including your cohosts. Hear Thomas try to figure out why Amy Coney Barrett is so obsessed with the definition of the word “so”, and Jenessa… defend Clarence Thomas?! This case is a hot mess, but the good news is everyone sucks here and no one wins.

The relevant language: “The Act subjects to criminal liability anyone who “intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access,” and thereby obtains computer information. 18 U. S. C. §1030(a)(2). It defines the term “exceeds authorized access” to mean “to access a computer with authorization and to use such access to obtain or alter information in the computer that the accesser is not entitled so to obtain or alter.” §1030(e)(6).”

Barrett’s ruling: “In sum, an individual “exceeds authorized access” when he accesses a computer with authorization but then obtains information located in particular areas of the computer—such as files, folders, or databases—that are off limits to him.”

• Van Buren v. United States, 593 U.S. 374 (2021)

• United States v. Van Buren, 940 F.3d 1192 (11th Cir. 2019)

• Full text of the CFAA: 18 U.S.C. § 1030

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OA1219 - This year we are celebrating Boxing Day by not doing whatever people are supposed to do on Boxing Day and talking about weed instead. Did Donald Trump really just finish out 2025 by doing something good for US drug policy? We hotbox some Time Machine to revisit Matt’s analysis from last May of Joe “Grandaddy Purple” Biden’s announcement that he was initiating the long process to have the federal government to reclassify OG Kush from its current legal status as Green Crack down to the same category as metabolic steroids. We then return to the present to check in on the weirdly unreported story on how Biden’s efforts went from Blue Dream to Trainwreck in the year after his big announcement before evaluating Trump’s chances of turning cannabis policy Panama Red. 

Finally, in a seasonal footnote Matt shares the story of how the city of Boston fired the first shots on the War on Christmas… in 1659.

1. Biden DOJ's analysis of legal questions around plans to redesignate cannabis to Schedule III

2. “Increasing Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research,” The White House (12/18/25)

3. “The Penalty For Keeping Christmas,” Archive.org (Boston, 1659)

E18 - Congress required the Department of Justice to release (nearly) everything it had from the investigations into Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell by December 19th, so of course they pretended to do that on time on Friday afternoon and then waited until everyone was just about to start heading home for the holidays before actually dumping 30,000 pages of anything resembling actual substance into the record on Tuesday morning. We review and discuss new revelations on how much more time Trump spent on Epstein’s plane than we ever knew, the 30-year-old FBI report that could have changed everything, the astonishing correspondence between the prosecution and the Epstein defense team throughout his 2008 plea negotiations, and so much more.

You can also watch this episode on YouTube!

1. The Epstein Files Transparency Act 

2. Epstein Files database (Camaron Stephenson)

3. DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility report on Epstein plea negotiations (NOV. 2020)

4. Maria Farmer's 1996 report to the FBI

5. Opinion and Order from Judge Kenneth Marra in Jane Doe cases summarizing DOJ’s failure to advise Epstein survivors of the 2008 Non-Prosecution Agreement and plea

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OA1218 - What happens to your first amendment rights when you work for the government? Do you give it all up when you walk in the door? How do we balance the individual right of the worker to speak, against the government’s need to have a functioning work place? Pickering v Board of Education (1968) sets us up to understand how this all works… and why a teacher criticizing Charlie Kirk on their personal Facebook page probably isn’t a fireable offense.

Patrons got exclusive content at the end of this one, only available at patreon.com/law! Can you apply these principles to eight cases that followed Pickering? Quiz yourself alongside Thomas!

• Pickering v Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563 (1968)

• A summary of the history of criminal defamation law, Robinson, E.P. (2024, July 5). Criminal libel. Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University.

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OA1217 - Well, we recorded a bit late to make sure we caught Trump's "announcement" thingy and it was... nothing. But that's good!

Matt also takes us through more travel bans that are going into effect and have been way underreported on. But The Federalist has a piece saying not only is this all great, but Trump should proudly adopt 1920s immigration policy. There is no quiet part anymore.

But fortunately, Matt has a fun footnote for us to bring us back up!

We begin with a delightful amuse douche from the lawyer of Colorado election tamperer Tina Peters unconditionally demanding her release from state prison because Donald Trump said so before a deep dive into our main story: an absurdly bad take from the New York Times--in both a lengthy print story and an episode of The Daily podcast--on how Joe Biden’s unwillingness to be a border fascist got a border fascist elected. Matt breaks down the real causes of the uptick in asylum seekers to the U.S. during Biden’s term in office (and its many unreported benefits to the economy and the nation) and provides the full context for the domestic and international law which the Times is openly arguing that Biden should have broken. 

You can also catch this episode on YouTube!

1. “How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith on Immigration,” The New York Times, Christopher Flavelle (12/7/2025)

2. “Biden Didn’t Cause the Border Crisis” (Part 1 of 4), David Bier, Cato Institute (1/16/2025)

3. “Effects of the Immigration Surge on the Federal Budget and the Economy,” Congressional Budget Office (July 2024)

4. “Job Openings: Total Nonfarm,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Oct. 2025)

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OA1216 - We welcome incarcerated journalist and advocate Christopher Blackwell, calling from his home at the Washington Corrections Center. Chris is the co-founder and Executive Director of Look2Justice, a non-profit which empowers and advocates currently and formerly incarcerated people through an “inside-out” organizing model. He is also a writer whose work has appeared in (among other places) The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and The Nation, and is a co-author of the new book Ending Isolation: The Case Against Solitary Confinement. Chris joins to share his story and his own deeply personal perspective on the inhumanity of solitary confinement.

1. Look2Justice’s website

2. Ending Isolation: The Case Against Solitary Confinement, Christopher William Blackwell (Author), Deborah Zalesne (Author), Kwaneta Harris (Contributor), Terry Kupers (Contributor) (September 2025)

3. Christopher Blackwell’s published work in the New York Times

Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do!