Defiant Steve Bannon Promises a Fight

on the offense on this and stand by. Contempt of Congress charges are rare and politically messy, something that Johnson's department hasn't pursued since joining me as former federal prosecutor. Robert Mentz a partner McCarter and English is the do O J on solid footing here with this prosecution. Given Bannon's complete failure to even engage with the committee, he virtually in a did Congress to seek criminal contempt charges against him and really placed the Department of Justice in

a difficult position. If this is a case in which the Department of Justice was not going to act to hold somebody in criminal contempt and to seek an indictment against them. For violating the congressional subpoena, and then it's hard to imagine a case that would justify that action outside the courthouse. He said a few things. One, he said, this is going to be the misdemeanor from hell for Merrick Garland, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden. We're going to

go on the offense. What can he actually do besides file motions. Well, he can file motions, and he can actually make this case a bit more complicated than it may appear on the surface, because ultimately, the test here is not really whether or not Bannon's interpretation of the law is correct, but whether prosecutors can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Bannon did not believe his assertion privilege

to be credible. In other words, did he have a good face basis to assert executive privilege and refuse to cooperate with the committee even if ultimately it turns out that his claim of privilege is overturned by the courts and he would be forced to testify, how can they prove what he believed or didn't believe about the executive privilege claim. Well, in order for him to rely on executive privilege, he would have to assert what's called an

advice of counsel defense. In other words, he would have to argue that he was not testifying based on the advice of his lawyer, who told him that executive privilege applaud and he did not have to appear to testify before the House. In order to do that, he has to waive his attorney client privilege with his lawyer and put his lawyer on the stand to talk about the

advice that his lawyer gave him. That's a bit of a risky proposition because it opens up to prosecutors any conversation that Bandon may have had was his attorney during the scope of the rep presentation. But ultimately prosecutors will have to show that his reliance on executive privilege was not a good faith defense and that he was simply trying to avoid his obligation to testify, rather than relying on his lawyer's advice that he didn't have to testify

based upon executive privilege. I suppose that's what his current lawyer was referring to outside the courthouse when he said Mr Bannon is a lay person when the privilege has been invoked by the purported holder of privilege, he has no choice but to withhold the documents and said that his lawyer told him to do so. Well, that's the only partially true, because executive privilege, while it may be in question in this case, is something that is not

asserted in a blanket fashion. In other words, he should have appeared before the committee, his lawyer should have negotiated with the committee to try to work around his claim of executive privilege. And if he is going to assert executive privilege, or any other privilege for that matter, he has to do it on a question by question basis or a document by document basis. It's not appropriate to assert a privilege simply by failing to appear, or in this case, he didn't even show up when he was

supposed to testify and only later asserted the privilege. And in doing so, you simply cannot say that I'm asserting privilege as to all questions that may be asked when I appear before the committee, because the committee could certainly ask him questions that are not covered by the executive privilege or any other privilege, and he has an obligation to show up and answer those questions. And if he wants to assert privilege. It should be done on a

question by question or document by document basis. There are a couple of things going on. He hasn't worked at the White House for years, and he has refused to answer any questions that the committee wants to ask him. So there are some questions that are going to be outside things he discussed with Donald Trump. Well, that's exactly right, and that's the reason why we have not seen an indictment on contempt of Congress charges in this country since

nine three. It's just not something that happens very often because it's a messy power. It's something that's not used by Congress frequently. Instead, what happens is there's usually a bit of a negotiation. The lawyer for the witness reaches out to the lawyers on the committee and they try to negotiate around these privileged claims. That's something that we've seen the other witnesses who have been subpoena to testify

before the committee try to do. In this case, Bannon, simply stone Wall of the Committee, did not cooperate, did not respond, his lawyer, did not engage, simply try to assert a blanket privileged claim, and flatly refused to cooperate in any manner. He was essentially begging the Committee to make this referral and testing Merrick Garland as to whether or not he would do something that hadn't been done in many, many years, and that is to indicte him

for criminal contempt for failing to appear before Congress. Could this backfire on the committee? Well? Could backfire in the sense that this will be a long drawn out process. This is now a criminal case where motions will be filed and there will be discovery exchanged, and ultimately, if Mr Bannon takes this to the final hour, it will be a trial which may not happen for months or

even over a year. And the problem that the House Committee is facing is that they are under a bit of a timeline here because the mid term elections could ultimately turn the House over from the Democrats to the Republicans, and that would undoubtedly end the life of this committee, and the House could then simply withdraw the subpoena. The unofficial deadline for this is the twenty two mid term elections,

because the Committee will probably be disbanded after that. But that doesn't mean the prosecution against Bannon stops, does it. That's in the hands of the Justice Department. No, that's right. It simply means that it could take a long time before the Banning cases ultimately resolved through the legal system.

The last time we saw someone challenge a congressional subpoena during the Trump administration, former White House Council Donagan was subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee in April of Ultimately, he did not testify for over two years later, so this could be a long drawn out process, and in the end, it's not even clear that they will get Banning to testify because the contempt would simply put him in jail for a minimum of one month and up to a year on each of the two counts, but

it's still does not force him to appear before the committee to testify, and at the midterm elections, should the House turn over to the Republicans, the committee would likely be disbanded and there would be no committee left for

him to be forced to testify in front of. Even the committee members are saying that doing this is sort of a warning to other people who might choose to defy the committee requests for information, and former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows failed to appear for a deposition on Friday, and he said that he's exerted and rightfully so his executive privilege and it's not up to me to wave it. And so it's got me

between a rock and a hard space. Does President Trump have any real hold on him with these claims of executive privilege, Well, the privilege belongs to the executive branch. So the question here is whether it belongs to the current White House. President Biden has waived executive privilege to allow the committee to continue its investigation, or whether or not the former president still has some residual privilege that

he can assert. There actually is some legal president for some limited privilege for a president even after he left office, So that issue will have to ultimately be decided by the courts and in the interim. Mark Meadows, who was President Trump's chief of staff, who was working in the White House on January six, is taking the position that that issue has to be resolved before he can come before Congress and testify. But he has taken a very

different approach than Bannon. He has engaged with the committee, his lawyer has engaged with the committee. They have attempted to work out some areas of inquiry that he could answer, some documents that he could turn over. That is the way these things typically go forward. It's really a situation with Steve Bannon where he is almost begging Congress to hold him in contempt and almost begging the Department of Justice to indict him. So in some ways he got

exactly what he asked for. But in the end, will it force Bannon to testify? Probably not. Bannon is wearing this indictment like a badge of honor. It's something that he not only was inviting but now seems to be reveling in. And ultimately, if he's convicted, he may spend some time in jail, but there's no way to force him to appear before that committee and give testimony. Well, he came to the courthouse with his own camera crew, so he's enjoying this and he's using it to pump

up his podcast. So now Mark Meadows, the committee said in a statement that he failed to show. He's refused to even indicate whether he used a personal cell phone on January six, and how lawmakers might retrieve his text messages. So it doesn't sound like it's much cooperation going on. I know it is, and it's more than Bannon and his lawyer engaged, and but he's still essentially refusing to cooperate.

The problem is that the case against Meadows is not quite as strong as it is against Bannon because Meadows was working in the White House at the time, and much of the questioning to Meadows has to do with advice that he may have given to the President on January six, although it's also clear from the subtina that went to Mark Meadows that the committee is also seeking information not only about the January six insurrection, but also

about events that happened subsequently, which as the President's phone call to the Secretary of Stating Georgia after the election, and some other steps that were taken after the election to try to influence the outcome to try to prevent

President Biden's election from being certified. So it's abroad subtoena, but all in all, it still falls within the question of whether or not the president can assert executive privilege when he's no longer in office, and that's what Mark Meadows is relying on in trying to delay any appearance before this committee. And yet he appeared on TV and what he said to was you and I both know that no one in the West Wing had any knowledge of anything like what happened on January six was going

to happen. I wonder if he's making his case in public to tell the committee I don't know anything. Well. I think he is trying to signal to the committee that there's nothing really there for him to testify about. But again, he has to appear before the Committee and try to assert the claims of executive privilege on a question by question. Bass is something that he has not

yet agreed to do. We'll have to see how that plays out, but ultimately I think the Committee will likely come to some compromise position with Mark Meadows, because they're really not in a position to seek criminal contempt charges against witness after witness after witness. It's something that is done very rarely, and it is really more of a surgical kind of attack on a particular witness who refuses

to cooperate. It's not something that can be done in a wholesale manner against a group of witnesses who are simply refusing to cooperate with the investigation. I know they're working under tight deadlines here, but why so many subpoenas and is that a good strategy. The Committee has argued that subpoenaing thirty five people and interviewing over a hundred fifty people was necessary in order to fully investigate the events of January six on the days leading up to

that insurrection. But it is a bit of a risky strategy by the Committee because in issuing thirty five subpoenas, it's possible that more individuals may simply refuse to cooperate, and the Committee cannot hold them all in criminal contempt and refer all those cases over to the Justice Department and expect Attorney General Merrick Garland to prosecute all of them. So in some ways, it is a bit of a risky strategy by casting such a broad net and by

subpoenaing so many individuals. Will have to see how that ultimately plays out. So far, they have gotten quite a few people to cooperate, and we don't know how many of those thirty five people who received subpoenas have cooperated, But it could backfire on them if a number of individuals simply refused to cooperate. Because it's as a practical matter, it's going to be impossible for the Committee to enforce

every one of those subpoenas. So, Bob, as you said, contempt of Congress charges are rare and politically messy, something the Justice Department hasn't pursued since three Give us a little of the history here. The road that we're seeing Congress go down with regard to Steve Bowden is something that Congress does not take lightly and frankly does not

engage in very often. It happens only and frequently. The last time there was a successful prosecution that goes all the way back to the Watergate era, when g. Gordon Lady and Richard Klindiats were convicted and pleaded guilty for refusing to answer Congressional inquiries. The last indictment we saw in the contempt of Congress case was three decades ago, involving a federal environmental official under President Ronald Reagan who

failed to respond to a House subpoena. The official, Redal Lavelle, who headed the super fun would ultimately go on to be acquitted of the contempt charge, but was later convicted of lying to Congress and sentenced to six months in prison and find ten thousand dollars, But the Justice Department historically has been very wary of prosecuting these cases, particularly in a situation where the witnesses who are being subpoenaed and who are being held in contempt are of the

opposite political party from the House on the Department of Justice that may be considering prosecuting them. And that's because this whole process has a bit of a history of being fraught with political overtones. Congress use contempt citations during the House an American Activities Committee which was formed in nineteen thirty eight to investigate individuals and organization first aversive activities,

particularly those related to the Communist Party. That was a case in which many people in the film industry went to prison rather than testify about their colleagues who may have exhibited support for communist or communist leaning organizations. They were blacklisted for their failure to cooperate and is something that has been a bit of a stain on the House of represented it ever since. So it's something that

has not been used much in recent years. Inspect during the Obama administration, the Department of Justice declined to prosecute an Attorney General Eric Holder and former I R. S official Lewis Larner following contempt referrals from the Republican led House. Similarly, George W. Bush's Justice Department declined to charge Harriet Myers after the former White House Council defied a subpoena in a Democratic investigation into mass firings of United States attorneys.

In all, the House has brought five criminal contempt and three civil contempt actions against Executive Branch officials since two thousand and eight, and in each case the Executive Branch the Department of Justice has refused to pursue those cases criminally. Thanks for being on the Bloomberg Lass Show, Bob That's former federal prosecutor Robert Mints, a partner at McCarter and English. Texas schools can once again set their own mask rules.

After a loss for Governor Greg Abbott in the first federal court ruling over his anti mask crusade, Federal Judge Lee Jaco permanently blocked Abbot's edict banning school mask mandates, ruling it was a violation of disabled students right to equally access educational facilities. Joining me is Tom Melsheimer, a partner at Winston and Strong who represented the students at trial,

tell us. Your main argument to the judge, Well, we represented a group of students with disabilities who were challenging Governor Abbot's executive order banning mask mandates in public schools. And the argument that we made successfully was that the order restricting the use of mass mandates violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and related statutes because it prevented school districts from making reasonable accommodations to assist students with disabilities

get the full benefits of an in person education. So it really starts with the premise that in person education is what every student is entitled to, and that there are strong benefits to in person education that cannot be duplicated virtually or online, and that to say that the disabled students, to extent they had hyped fears or risk of COVID, to say that they could simply stay home and take classes vertually, that's not an answer under the

law and under the Americans with Disabilities Acts. So the whole premise was that kids with disabilities were entitled to at least ask for mask requirements, and school districts were entitled to consider them as a reasonable accommodation, and the governor's order preventing that basically interfered with and violated the civil rights of these of these disabled kids. The governor's ordered.

Was there an order specifically relating to schools. Yes, well, actually the order barred all all kinds of mass mandates and public settings, including school districts, and so we were focused on the application of it in the public schools. What was the argument that the state made. Well, the legal argument they made was interesting, and so let me say what they didn't say. They didn't challenge that masking

was effective at mitigating the risk of COVID. They didn't challenge that the disabled kids were at higher risk of side effects and bad consequences from COVID. They didn't challenge any of that. They basically argued that our clients lacked standing to sue to block enforcement of disorder. And this is where it gets tricky because the state says this order doesn't have an enforcement mechanism. It doesn't delegate enforcement of the order to say, the Attorney General or to

the local district attorney or whatever. It doesn't say anything about who enforces. It just says you can't have mass mandates, and if you have a mass mandate, you're subject to a ten thou a day five, Okay, And they said, well, you can't sue in federal court the Attorney General because he's not specifically authorized to enforce the statute. So you're suing the wrong person essentially. Now our decision was, wait a minute, the Attorney General is out there suing school

districts for violating g. A thirty eight. I mean, he's sending threatening letters to school districts. He's filing lawsuits seeking injunctive relief to prohibit the use of mass mandates. So what is he doing if not enforcing it? This is the you know, it looks like a duck and cracks like a duck and walks like a duck. It's a duck.

But the state took the position that that doesn't matter the fact that the Attorney journal was suing to enforce the anti mass mandate, the fact that he was threatening school districts. If he didn't have the authority in the regulation or order itself, he couldn't be sued. And that was really the gist of their argument. The Department of Justice wigh in. They did. They weighed in on the

issue of violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In the in the use of masking as a reasonable accommodation. I mean, we look, we argued that masking was really no different from ramps. That you imagine you had a state order or regulation or executive order that said school

diserts can't have ramps. Now we would say, we'll wait a minute, shouldn't the school districts have the ability to use ramps if they had students in wheelchairs or students that needed assistance in assessing the school or particular part of the school. And that's really what the Justice Department weighed in on as well. It's just saying, look, this is a reasonable accommodation that the students ought to be entitled to. The other thing that is important that I

don't think everyone fully appreciates. And the state tried to argue that we were making this point when we were not, which is the was not a case where we're arguing that you had to have mass mandates. We were not arguing for universal masking. We were not saying that the only way to mitigate COVID for disabled students is masking. We weren't saying that. We simply were saying that you can't take that out of the arsenal of weapons against COVID.

And if you do that, it's akin to saying it can't have ramps and schools, and it's taking out an accommodation that ought to be available to the schools if they choose to enact it. So tell us about the judges ruling. Well, again, he took note to the fact that the state did not question the risk of COVID in the schools. The state did not question the risk of COVID two children with disabilities, The state did not

challenge your question the efficacy of masking. And given those in effect agreed to or stipulated facts, he concluded that the executive order of Governor Abbott violated American's disability to act because it prevented school districts from offering masking is

an accommodation. So he had joined the enforcement of it by the Attorney General in his injunction prohibits the Attorney General from threatening school districts or from suing school districts to enforce G. Thirty eight, so called any mass mandate. And that's really the seven substance of it. And he was the first federal judge to rule on Abbot's mask then well, so absolutely the first federal judge in Texas to rule on anything with respect to the mass mandate.

But it's even broader than that. There were a number of these challenges brought in federal courts throughout the country, in Iowa, in Tennessee, in Florida. A number of these cases where governors had issued similar orders purporting to ban the use of mass mandates. What was unique about this case is that it was a fy an old trial

on the merits. Those other cases were preliminary matters where a group of disabled students or a disabled students rights group were seeking preliminary relief or expedited or emergency relief. Judge Jakole's ruling in Texas was a full trial on the merits after discovery. So this was a final judgment. This is an a temporary ruling pending a trial. We conducted all the discovery, we did all the briefing on the motion practice, and we had a full trial in October,

which he then ruled on with a complete record. So this means that at this point, school districts in Texas can require masks. They absolutely can require masks. And you know, I want to make this point because a lot of people think it's sort of a binary thing, mass or no mass. But the truth is you can have masking in a classroom, you can have masking requirements in a wing of the school. You can have mask requirements in

a particular school in a broader district. And this injunction that Judge Yakol entered allows school districts across Texas to do whatever they think makes sense. And you may have a small rural district with a handful of students and no students with disabilities. Those school districts may elect to say, you know, we don't need a mass mandate where we are. You've got school districts in in Houston or Dallas or elsewhere that are dealing with large numbers of disabled students

in their school population. They're going to elect potentially to say, yes, we need mass mandates to protect our students. So it's it's it's going to be sort of the freedom of these districts to taylor the appropriate masking requirement to their particular situation. The state is going to appeal. That appeal will be to the Fifth Circuit, which is the most

conservative circuit in the tree. What are your chances on appeal like our chances, in part for the reasons I stated earlier that the state did not challenge really any of our factual assertions about the risk of COVID to disabled students, the efficacy of masking. That's not going to be debated in the appellate court. The only issue that's really going to be before the appellate Court is going to be this issue of standing, and I think we've

got the better of the position on that. You know, this is the same issue in a slightly different circumstances that is before the Supreme Court in Texas Senate Bill eight, the statute which allows private citizens to sue abortion providers or those individuals assisting in an abortion after a certain period of time of the pregnancy. That case involves a private citizens suing in the State of Texas. View in that case is, hey, we're not suing anyone, We're not

prohibiting anyone from doing anything. It's all private citizens. It's a similar issue here that they're arguing. They're saying the

Attorney General is not really enforcing this order. I just think the record that was developed in front of Judge Jacob, the record of numerous lawsuits filed by the Attorney General, the record of letters written threatening school districts, the record of school districts that had mass mandates that then withdrew their mass mandates upon getting a threatening letter or a threatening phone call from the Attorney General's office, or after

they were sued. I think that record is very very strong for finding that in this case, the planists do have standing to bring this kind of challenge. So so you think it will the issue is just going to be what we a procedural issue. It's it's not going to go to the heart of should there be masks or not. I don't think it can go to that because, for whatever reason, the state did not challenge the science.

They didn't have their own experts. They didn't offer, for example, an expert that said that mass or deleterious in somewhere, or they have a harmful impact, or that mass aren't necessary or mass don't work. They didn't challenge that at all. So that's why I mean, of course, you never know what a reviewing court's going to do. There's a lot of unpredictability in this. But this wasn't joined issue on

mask efficacy or the science. If the issue was only joined with respect to these procedural issues, which are important issues. I'm not minimizing them, but the state is not going to be able to go in front of the Fifth Circuit or any higher court and make arguments that they didn't make in front of Judge Jacob about masking or or the efficacy of masking or the need for masking. Do school districts in Texas favor masks? I think it

depends on the school district. I think a lot of urban school districts that have a large populations, very diverse student populations, including significant populations of students with disabilities, they absolutely do favor them. I think school districts that are in rural communities that are smaller than are less diverse, I think they typically don't. But it's not one size fits all. There are some more rural districts that have

been seeking to have mass requirements. There are some larger school districts that have decided they don't need them, and that and that's really of all the things we did in our argument in this case. I think, you know, the the strategic decision that we made early on to frame this as not pro mask any mask but to frame it as giving these districts the ability to put in ramps if they want to, but they don't have to. If they've got kids with peanut allergies, they can decide

we're not going to have peanuts in the cafeteria. Giving them the freedom and flexibility. I think that resonated with the judge, and I think you will resonate more genuinely. Thanks Tom. That's Tom mel Scheimer of Winston and Strown. Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo could be forced to return the more than five million dollars earned from his

pandemic book. The Joint Commission on Public Ethics, New York's ethics watchdog, voted Tuesday to rescind its approval for Cuomo to write American Crisis Leadership Lessons from the COVID nineteen Pandemic in a twelve to one vote. The panel said Cuomo violated the Commission's requirements that he write the book on his own time and also took issue with the book's content. But an attorney for Cuomo said the former

governor is ready to take the matter to court. Joining me is Brad Moss, a partner in Mark Zade Brad tell us why Cuomo needed permission to write the book, so the former governor needed, given his position as public official position at that time as the governor, um acquired him to seek approval to ensure that he wasn't using government resources and government time to write what would be

a private book for obviously private compensation. He secured the approval, but they have rescinded it now based on the conclusion. And some of this came out in the earlier media reporting.

Some of it came out in Leticia James's report into the sexual misconduct allegations that he had sort of pressured various officials to quote unquote volunteer their time and that the premise of the book was not what he had originally explained to the commission it would be, and it raised doubt in the commission whether or not there had been a lack of candor and how he got the original approval, and that's why they took the action they did. What do they want him to do? He's gotten about

three million dollars already. What are they expecting him to do? Be can essentially he can refund the money, or he can try to base the really sue them, claiming that the essence of their conclusion was flawed and was not

sufficiently based on the existing legal factors. And what they're gonna argue and you've seen some of that foreshadowed in the attorney's initial responses is that this comes down to at most of miscommunication, that there was paper work between the supers, between the Commission and Clomo's lawyers, that the understanding of what this would be was laid out there, and if there was a miscommunication, it was on the commission side, not Clomos died, and that in fact, there

was no pressure on people to quote unquote volunteer their time. That's going to be their argument. My assumption, my expectation is that this will be settled, He'll refund some portion of the book advanced and the profit, and then it will continue on. There's not a lot the Commission can do beyond that. There's too much gray area and nuance here for them to really push this too far. My expectations, they just want to get their chunk of flesh, take some money back, and make him refund it and go

on from there. So Cuomo's spokesman released documents outlining the distinction between the use of public resources versus staff volunteering their own time. He said, it's the height of hypocrisy for Hocal, the Governor of New York, and the legislature's appointees to take this position, given that these elected officials routinely use their own staff for political and personal assistance on their own time. Now that is true if they

start look into this. So if it came to court action, these people might come up and say, well, yeah, we volunteered, then I certainly could. And if those individuals want to come forward with scorn testimony, whether in writing or verbal testimony, and state yes, I completely volunteered. I had no way was pressured to do so, this was of my own

free will, that would certainly undermine the commission's argument. There's still be the separate issue of whether or not the premise of the book that came out was consistent with what was originally conveyed. Was the basis for approval. Was supposed to be a follow up to book. It ended up being something different, tied more to the pandemic. It's something where he could have potentially gotten approval even with

that premise. But the Commission's argument is, you didn't tell us, that's how it was going to be you mislead us, and that was your misleading premise was what got you approval in the first place. So there's a lot to still be worked out here. I almost certainly expect that will be a lawsuit that was this will be challenged in court. There will be lots of depositions and documentation collected, and this is why I expect it will settle at

some point for some amount of money. That will be a confidential stone to say that the book was different from what they thought it would be. I mean, they would have given him permission to write another book. It just seems as if they're grasping at straws there. You know, he could say the book evolved as I was writing it. Yeah, And it's you know, if if nothing else, this is you know, sort of the commission doing what it wants

to hear because it can. He's obviously politically weakened. There's a question about, you know, improper abuse of authority that's already existing. They see an opportunity to kind of strike

while the iron is hot. It doesn't mean that their conclusions are inappropriate or not based in good faith upon the fact, but of course it does raise a concern about whether or not this is their own abuse of discretion, which I'm sure will be part of whatever the litigation is that the former governor's lawyers will almost certainly bring, as they'll try to point to essentially a politicization of the process. They'll try to claim this is overreaching, an

abuse of the discretion of the Commission. Whether or not that argument will go anywhere remains to be seen. I don't expect it will, but it will play into sort of the all encompassing political aspect of this when former Governor Cuomo almost certainly tries to make a comeback. So let me ask you this bread would the Commission bring

the lawsuit or would Cuomo bring the law suit? Because the Commission doesn't have any power to do anything, do they, So Governor Culomo would bring the lawsuit because if he takes no action right now in light of this vote, the Commission can move and I'm not sure if the specific mechanism, whether they have referred to another entity, or if they have the power themselves to implement it, but they can move to basically impose like the equivalent of

a lead or monetary sanction against him personally for the money he was able to collect based off this. Now we're sending approval, so he will I think if it is the equivalence of the government has gotten the imposed it got getting ready to impose a lean on your house, and you sue to challenge the authority of them to do so or the basis for them doing so. That's basically the context of which he'll will bring almost certainly

this lawsuit. And where would the money go? He does, he return the money to the publishers, so they have the unintended benefit. It would likely get donated, whether to a charitable organization or quite possibly to some type of fund that would go to the government. My assumptions that can't go to New York State government in any form, but it can almost certainly get refunded to a charitable organization of some sort, which is probably what will happen anyway.

But none of this is written down. This is like the first time this has happened. I can't say it's the first time ever. A lot of this isn't always public um. I'll say that it's not often that you would see this, especially for someone of such prominence and

seniority as the governor of the State of New York. UM. This speaks very much to the current time frame we're in in terms of the willingness of these institutions to buck the political um authorities, but also the very weakend position that former Governor Cuomo is in given everything that's going on in the last few months. Let's say there is a lawsuit he doesn't given there's no settlement, who has the better argument in the lawsuit. I think in the end the Commission could win out if they take

it all the way. My assumptions expectations I've been saying is I think they will ultimately settle it for some you know, confidential amount and make him donate it to charity and leave it at that, and allow the public optics of it to be there and to have set sort of the standard. Investigations into this book are still going on by the State Assembly, the State Attorney General's office, and the Brooklyn U. S Attorney's Office, so we could

hear more about this in the future. You absolutely could, um whether from a civil context or from a criminal one, depending on the full range of actions he took. And I would certainly say the jury is still out in terms of how much trouble Andrew Cuomo got himself into. I don't anticipate much more going on beyond what's already occurred, and it sounds like the criminal allegations that have been made might not survive legal scrutiny, not a state batchel

scrutiny would. I have to wait and see how that plays out. I'm sure Cuomo could write a book now and get a lot more money than that, and he almost certainly will, and it will be a sort of a tour or two of redemption, trying to, you know, make up for his sins and explain how he's understood where he went wrong, which is a very standard move for a politician to make, and there's no one better at it than Andrew Cuomo. Thanks so much for being

on the show. Brad, that's Brad Moss, a partner, Mark said, and that's it for this edition of The Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you can always get the latest legal news, honor Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at www dot Bloomberg dot com, slash podcast Slash Law. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg