This is Bloomberg Law with June Grossel from Bloomberg Radio.
Former FBI Director James Comy was defiant in the face of a federal indictment on two felony charges of making false statements and obstruction. My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system.
I'm innocent, so let's have a trial.
The unprecedented indictment came just five days after President Donald Trump, in a post on truth Social demanded that Attorney General Pam Bondi bring charges against his perceived enemies, naming Comy, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and California Senator Adam Schiff. The charges center on testimony Comy gave in response to questions from Republican Senator Ted Cruz during a twenty twenty hearing over the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the twenty sixteen election.
What mister McKay is saying and what you testify to this committee cannot both be true.
One or the other is false. Who's telling the truth?
I can only speak to my testimony. I stand by what the testimony you summarized that I gave in May of twenty seventeen.
The indictment follows chaos inside the Justice Department after career prosecutors advised against bringing the charges, and the acting US Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia who resigned was replaced by one of Trump's personal attorneys, an insurance lawyer with no prosecutorial experience. Joining me is former federal prosecutor Robert Mintz, a partner Macarter and English Bob. What is the significance of this indictment, Well.
It's enormously significant in the sense that it's the first time of former FBI director has ever been indicted. And it's also very unusual because the subject of this indictment, James Comey, has been an antagonist to President Trump for so many years now, and there was pressure, frankly by the White House on the Department of Justice to take a look at this case and to bring charges against
the former FBI director. There are long standing, unwritten norms that have separated the Department of Justice from the White House, and all of the presidential predecessors to President Trump have at least to some degree, sought to distance themselves from the Justice Department's prosecutorial decisions. Certainly, at least in public. They have declined to weigh in on pending cases, for example,
especially those types of cases that touched on politics. And they have at least spoken publicly about the deference that the White House gives to the Department of Justice, tradition of independence that allows prosecutors to make decisions about whether or not to bring cases based solely upon the evidence and the law, without any outside influence or even the appearance of any political pressure behind the decision whether to bring a criminal case.
The indictment is less than two pages, so very minimal information. What do we know about the charges?
The indictment stems from James Coomy's sworn appearance during a Judiciary committee hearing on the FBI's handling of investigations into Russian interference in the twenty sixteen election. What prosecutors are alleging in this indictment is that mister Komy knowingly misled senators on two critical points. First, the government claims that Comy falsely denied authorizing anyone at the FBI to act as an anonymous source to the media regarding the investigation.
To the charging documents, he did it willfully and knowingly and made a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement by falsely stating to a United States Senator that he had not authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports regarding an FBI investigation. The second charge allegacy Comy obstructed Congress by making false and misleading statements basically aimed at impeding the committee's inquiry into
the FBI's actions regarding the twenty sixteen election. The third proposed count, which was an obstruction of a congressional proceeding, was rejected, apparently by the Grand Injury. Court. Records show that grandeurors did not find sufficient evidence to support that charge, and that was dropped from the indictment, which was then revised and presented to the judge.
Though false statements may sound like a pretty straightforward charge to prove, actually proving the crime of false statements is anything but easy. Ask Special counsel John Durham. Two people charged by him with making false statements were acquitted at trial. So what does a prosecutor have to prove?
Here?
To prove the case of making false statements, prosecutors will have to convince the jury that James Comy not only made false statements to Congress, but that he did so knowingly, and that any false statements that he made were material to the focus of the Senate proceedings. So essentially, what has to happen in these types of prosecutions and why they are so rare, is that prosecutors have to get inside the head of the person who is making the statement.
They have to get inside the mind.
Of the defendant and prove that what the defendant said was not only false, but it was knowingly false, that they knew at the time they were making it it was an untruth, and then they also have to show that it was a material untruth. That's why we see very few of these types of cases brought, and very few of the cases are successful.
Might be even offer in this case because it's based on Senator Cruz summarizing prior testimony. Add to that, a twenty eighteen Inspector General's report found that Comy's deputy Andy McCabe made multiple false or misleading statements and credited Comy's version of the conversation over McCabe's.
The charges heres focused specifically on questions asked by Senator Ted Cruz about testimony that Comy gave in twenty seventeen asserting that he did not authorize leaking information regarding the FBI's investigations into then President Donald Trump or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Comy testified unequivocally to Senator Cruz. I stand by that testimony. Interestingly, Comy's deputy, Andrew McCabe, has said that Comy authorized him to leak the information
to the press. According to a twenty eighteen Justice Department Inspector General report, Now, when the Inspector General looked into this issue, and he looked at the testimony of James Comy and compared that to Andrew McCabe, they are directly in conflict with one another. And so the Inspector General had to look at the credibility of each of those speakers and look at the rest of the information that was available to make a determination as to who it
believed was telling the truth. In that case, the Inspector General actually found that mister Comy's testimony.
Was more incredible.
They found the Cave's testimony not credible. In fact, it concluded in that report the overwhelming weight of evidence supported Comy's version of the conversation and not McCabe. So at the end of the day, here you've got a he said, he said situation where two people are giving contradictory evidence as to whether or not a conversation took place. And those cases are very difficult to prove, because, again, the standard of proof in any criminal case is beyond a
reasonable doubt. And when you've got two witnesses give testimony that's directly contradictory to one another, it's difficult to prove that one of them is absolutely true and the other is absolutely false. And in this case, it is compounded by the fact that the Inspector General looked at this very same issue and the inspector General's report ultimately concluded that it was Komy who was more credible and the Cabe had not been truthful to the Inspector General during that investigation.
Komy could raise a defense of vindictive or selective prosecution. I know it's a high bar, but here you have the President of the United States in writing demanding that the Attorney General indict Komy, and a few days later, after turmoil in the US Attorney's office, he's indicted, and President Trump again in writing celebrates that it's.
Really difficult to say exactly how much of this collateral evidence will be admitted and considered by the judge, because because none of this has really ever happened before, there was clearly pressure brought to bear on the Attorney General to bring this case. Ultimately, the acting US Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia presented this case to a grand jury, and a majority of the grand jurors voted
in favor of two of the three counts. Probably that will then mean that this case will proceed to trial. Although I think we can expect the defense to raise the fact that there was this outside pressure, and whether or not a judge will consider that, I think we'll have to wait and see. The problem with that defense is that it would essentially turn the US Attorney and others inside the Justice Department into witnesses as to what
actually motivated their desire to present this case. So, while I think the optics of that are favorable to the defense, I'm not sure that a judge will eventually want to go down that road. The judge will more likely focus on the evidence itself and listen to the various defenses that James Comey's lawyers bring at trial.
So you think this will get to trial, it won't be dismissed beforehand.
Well, again, it's hard to say, but I can tell you that it's exceedingly rare for a federal criminal indictment to be dismissed on a motion to dismiss basis. In other words, what a judge has to do is look at the face of the indictment and decides that, based upon the allegations in the indictment and based upon the evidence that the government has.
No reasonable jury could convict.
Now, it's possible in this case that a judge might do that, but again, the facts here are so unusual that I think it's very difficult to predict what a judge is going to do. So the defense actually has multiple opportunities to try to derail this case. They'll certainly move to dismiss the indictment on the basis of some kind of improper pressure or impropriety for the grand jury. They'll try to allege that there's not sufficient evidence to let this case even.
Proceed to trial.
If it gets past that stage, which it likely will, they then have another opportunity to move to dismiss at the close of the government's case, arguing that no reasonable jury could convict based upon the evidence that was presented. And then the defense can argue again at the close of the trial that it should not even go to the jury because no reasonable jury could convict based upon the evidence. And then there's one last opportunity for the defense.
Even after the case goes to the jury. In the event that the jury convicts, they can argue to the judge that, despite the fact that the jury returned to conviction here, that the evidence was legally insufficient, and the judge actually has the opportunity to overturn the jury's decision.
And what about the effect on the Justice Department of bringing a high profile case like this under pressure and despite the reservations of career prosecutors.
Well, I can tell you that political prosecutions and US Attorney's offices around the country are run by separate groups within the office prosecutors who specialize in political corruption, and when those cases are brought against elected officials or former elected officials, they receive the highest degree of scrutiny. In other words, the weight of the evidence and the propriety the charges are reviewed. Not only within the US Attorney's office,
but also by officials in main Justice. It gets a lot of eyes looking at it, a lot of career prosecutors looking at it and weighing in on whether or
not to proceed. And that's done because prosecutors know that these types of cases elected government officials, high level appointed government officials, these are high stakes, high profile cases, and if they're going to be brought, prosecutors want to make sure that they're going to win because every time the case is brought against a high level elected official or former elected official, or former high ranking government official, if the prosecution does not come back with a conviction, it
damages the reputation of the department and can have repercussions about future cases. Because bear in mind that all these decisions, at the end of the day in any criminal case are made by jurors. These are everyday people, and if there is a general perception out there that the Department of Justice is overreaching and bringing cases that it shouldn't be reaching, jurors may become more skeptical of these cases
in the future. Historically, when an assistant US attorney stands before a jury, they bring a certain amount of credibility with them. They bring years and years of a reputation of the Department of Justice of bringing cases that are supported not only by the law but by the facts. And so there is quite frankly, a certain amount of deference that jurors often give to the government and that
judges often give to the government. Will have to see if this type of external pressure begins to erode that trust, because that can have an effect on other cases that are being brought by the Department of Justice in the future.
And this is just the beginning of a long process. Thanks so much, Bob. That's Robert Mince of Macarter and English. I'm June Gross. So when you're listening to Bloomberg. President Donald Trump has long criticized wind power, claiming it's expensive and unreliable, and that massive wind turbans are unsightly, kill birds, cause cancer, and drive whales crazy. Wind is the most expensive form of energy, and it destroys the beauty of your fields and your planes, and your and your waterways.
And Darling, I want to watch Trump and television tonight, but the wind stop blowing and I can't watch.
There's no electricity in the house.
Darling, you want to see a bird cemetery. Go under a windmill sometime you'll see the status.
And since returning to office, Trump has launched an attack on wind power. His administration has stopped construction on major offshore wind farms, revoked wind energy permits, cancel plans to use large areas of federal waters for new offshore wind development, and stop nearly seven hundred million dollars in federal funding
for a dozen offshore wind projects. But on Monday, a major wind for wind energy DC Federal Judge Royce Lamberth rule that work can resume on construction of a nearly completed wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island, and that the Trump administrations stop work order violated federal law because it was arbitrary and capricious following years of planning and coordination with the US government. My guest is environmental law expert Pat Parento, a professor at the Vermont Law
and Graduate School. Pat tell us about this wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island that's eighty percent complete.
Correct, It's a six billion dollar wind farm, would be the largest in the United States. It's funded primarily by a Danish firm or stead, So you know you're talking about six billion dollars of investment in American energy supply, and there was over twelve hundred jobs associated with it, and the stop work order that the Department of Interior issued threw those people out of work immediately. So yeah,
it's eighty percent complete. They need to install twenty turbans to finish it, and they need to do it quickly because the supply chain for getting the turbines here and assembled and installed. You know, they're raising the cal it's a clock for weather, and it's a clock for getting the kind of support you need to get these turbines installed.
Right.
So this project is designed to serve three hundred and fifty thousand home it's huge, it's fourteen hundred megawat and it's also critical to the New England energy supply going forward. So you know this project and Cape Wind is another major offshore wind farm that was on the books but now it's installed by Trump as well. So these two wind projects are critical to supplying electricity in New England.
And of course electricity demands are going up in large part in response to the AI build out and the big, huge data centers that are stucking up so much energy. It's also designed to lower electricity bills because the biggest electricity demand is peak demand in the winter for heating, and right now New England is relying very heavily on gas, and you know, gas prices are incredibly volatile. So the estimate is that this project alone would reduce electricity bills
in New England by five hundred million dollars. So, you know, it's crazy because you've got a project supplying energy that's needed, lowering energy prices, providing stability, and the Trump administration comes along and issues this stopped work order, throws people out of work, and now Judge Lambert has said, no, you can't do that.
In stopping the project, the Trump administration cited national security concerns. What national security concerns?
Yeah, well, you know it was a Secretary Bergham, Interior Secretary, who said it has to do with cybersecurity, and there's a concern about whether there would be undersea drone attacks because of course you have to monitor not only the operation of the turbines, but the fact that you've got to get the electricity on shore. The point is that the Department of Defense has already approved the system that they're going to be using to monitor all this stuff.
So this national security excuse is illegitimate. I mean, if there is really a national security issue, what exactly is it? Why was that evidence not introduced before Judge Lambert? And it wasn't.
The company claimed that the Trump administration violated a constitutional right to do process and that the stop work order was arbitrary and capricious. So tell us what the judge decided.
So Clambert said it was the height of arbitrary and capricious action. In other words, there was no evidence introduced to suggest that there really was a national security problem. There was no evidence introduced that the company is in violation of any environmental or regulatory requirement. This project has been through ten years of analysis. I mean, in other respects, the Trump administration is going crazy over the delays and
energy projects from environmental reviews and regulatory requirements. Well, this project's been through ten years of it. So there's no issue here, no legitimate issue for why this project shouldn't be completed and come online.
The Trump administration usually appeals every federal district court's order that goes against them. Do you think the project can be completed before an appellate court or the Supreme Court intervenes.
I mean, I would have expected to have seen an announcement from the Trump administration that they were going to appeal, but they haven't. So that suggests to me that perhaps they've rethought this, and at least as regards this project, they're willing to back off and let it go forward. I can't be sure of that, obviously, I wouldn't take that to the bank necessarily, but it may be that, at least on this one, they'll let it go.
Recently, the Trump administration has move to invalidate or reconsider permits for other wind projects near Massachusetts that have yet to start construction. Two weeks ago, they asked a court to cancel the approval of a six billion dollar wind project planned off Maryland's coast. I mean, are they targeting all of these wind projects?
Oh?
Yes, they are definitely, not just wind but solar as well. So it's across the board, though, and Bergham and the Department of Energy are under orders executive orders from the
President to oppose renewable energy development. If there truly was an energy emergency, why on earth would you stop projects that are you know, not only in the pipeline, but under construction and for which money is coming in from outside the United States to build them, you know, in electric vehicle plants in Georgia coming from South Korea, et cetera. So this war on renewables makes no sense.
And so in light of all that, how how big a win is Judge Lamberth's decision.
Oh, I think it's a huge win for not only this project, but the other projects you mentioned that are on the books for New England. I don't know whether it will revive all of them or not, but this would be the first order coming from a federal judge saying to the Trump administration, you simply can't do this. It's certainly granting them a stay of execution.
According to Bloomberg analysis, altogether, more than fifteen thousand prospective and current jobs tied to win projects in New England are under threat from the potential shutdowns, and there are all kinds of other effects. For example, you know, Massachusetts has a state organization has spent more than twenty million in total offshore wind job training program. So the ramifications are widespread.
Yes, they are for jobs, for investment, for lowering electricity bills, for making energy more affordable for American consumers right down the line. Never mind climate, never mind you know, environmental impacts of energy development. If you think about gas, right, where does the gas come from? Well, some of it comes from the Marcella's shale in Pennsylvania, in Maryland, but a lot of it comes from Ohio and further west,
and that's got to get there by pipeline. So you've got to build all of this infrastructure, which is very expensive, and then you've got to hope that gas prices remain stable, which they don't. They're incredibly volatile because we're exporting a lot of the gas. That's another priority of the administration. They don't want to just produce the gas for a US consumption, They want to produce it to send it overseas. So all of these factors really support the idea if
you want to have a mixed energy portfolio. You know a lot of us are concerned about over reliance on gas and certainly coal and oil. But the point is you can have all of those different in green to a sensible energy policy. But that's not what we have. We have a single minded determination to build as much gas and revive the coal industry. That's going to drive up consumer prices. Never mind the environmental impacts.
Ken what the Trump administration is doing here with wind and solar power be unwound if the next administration supports renewable energy.
You know, one of the biggest problems is if you discourage this investment, you discourage the banks in the United States and elsewhere around the world. Some of the other banks around the world have even more money to invest. You know, if you're a discouraging investment in energy supply, that is going to have long term impacts for sure. Whether or not that can be turned around is an
open question. But right now the evidence is that we're not only not building systems that we need, but we're discouraging people from investing in those and.
Pat what's the landscape for future legal actions as far as wind farms are concerned.
The Trump administration is reviewing permit plans for other wind farms, and so the first step is going to be what's the result of that review. Are they going to pull back and cancel leases, Are they going to cancel permits? Are they going to try to stop these projects through that mechanism?
Right?
And then of course people will sue, and if those kinds of cases get to court, depending on what the administration has actually ruled or said about them, then you're going to get into questions about can you really stop these projects? Can you really cancel these leases or permits? You know, those are all questions in the future, and until we see exactly what Trump's going to do case by case, project by project, we won't be able to say.
And with all the litigation that's probably ahead, does the Justice Department still have experienced environmental litigators in place? I know there's been a lot of shuffling and moving lawyers to areas that they're not familiar with, like immigration, and because of that, a lot of lawyers have also left.
They have fired or reassigned some of the senior lawyers in the Department of Justice in the Environmental Division. If they're bringing people in to the Department of Justice that don't have deep experience in these very complicated environmental laws. If you think about the Outer Continental Shelf, you know, there's a long history of incredibly dense law that governs
what happens on the outer Continental shelf. And then you layer on all the other laws, the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act and this Magdison Stevens Sustainable Fisheries Act. So you're talking about an incredible complex of federal law that has a very long history back to there in some cases beyond the seventies when we saw
all the environmental legislation being passed it by Congress. So you know, you just can't drop lawyers into the middle of something like that and expect them to really know their way around these blogs.
It's not an easy area of the law to litigate. Thanks so much, Pat. That's Professor Pat Parento of the Vermont Law and Graduate School. US Attorney General Pam Bondi threatened to go after hate speech on a podcast last week.
We will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.
Bondy was wrong. Hate speech is not a crime. In fact, hate speech is free speech protected by the First Amendment. Just ask the Supreme Court. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote in twenty seventeen, quote, the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express
the thought that we hate. Bondi's remarks to criticism from across the political spectrum and she tried to walk them back with some confusing posts on X joining me is First Amendment expert Timothy Zick, a professor at William and Mary Law School, Tim can you define hate speech for US?
Well, it doesn't have a definition in US law or First Amendment or prudence. There's no category of hate speech that is unprotected under the First Amendment. That's in contrast to European countries and other countries that do have the statutory prescriptions on speech that derrigates or criticizes people based on gender or race or some other protected characteristic. But if the Attorney General should know, in the United States in general, hate speech is not criminally prescribable.
The Supreme Court has protected hate speech in more than one case. The one that stands out in my mind is Brandenburg versus Ohio, the case involving the Nazi Party marching in Skokie, Illinois, in nineteen seventy seven.
Well, the Supreme Court and others has come down on the side of freedom of expression right in the sense that the government cannot criminalize or otherwise punish the expression of viewpoints, even if those viewpoints are offensive or vile or derogatory. Right so even speach in supportive Nazism, this is a general matter protected speech. Speech that offends people based on race, or gender or sexual orientation, that's also
protected speech. And the Supreme Court has been consistent in drawing that line where it has in the sense that you know, whether it's Nazis marching in Skoki, that case reached, the Supreme Court is that decided. Look, the town of Skokey cannot enact all these ordinances to try and prevent Nazis from marching or displaying Nazi regalia. The Supreme Court
protects viewpoints even if they're vile. There are some narrow exceptions, right, If you threaten another person to fothering injoy your death, if you incite other people to auge and imminent unlawful activity that's likely to occur, those sorts of things are not protected. The government cannot have the power to tell an audience in the United States what speech is appropriate or too offensive to be heard.
But the Court has recognized an exception to the First Amendment for threats of violence. How are they defined?
That's a narrow exception to First Amendment protection. Right, So if you communicate what the Court is defined as a serious expression of an intent to inflict bodily harm or death on the person. Then you can be punished for that kind of speech. But the narrowness here is, you know, it has to be a serious expression. It can't be something said in jets. It can't be hyperbolic language where you say, well this person should be hung for their crimes,
that sort of thing. It has to be more directed, more specific, And as the Supreme Court has recently said, uttered recklessly that you know, there's a risk when you say the word that a person will perceive what you're saying is threatening. But you say it anyway. So it's not just threatening language. That's not unprotected speech. It's something
far more specific than that. And when the Attorney General said, well, what I meant to say it wasn't hate speech, really, it was threat Well, none of the speech that we've been talking about since Charlie Kirk's assassination, you know, constitutes threats. Right when you praise or celebrate someone's death, that's not a threat. So you know, she got it wrong twice. Essentially.
She also said in her explanation, you can't call for someone's murder. You cannot swat a member of Congress. You cannot dos a conservative family and think it will be brushed off as free speech. These acts are punishable crimes, and every single threat will be met with the full force of the law. Are all the things she mentioned punishable.
Well, some of them are protected, right. It depends on the sort of statute that you're looking at, you know, how narrowly it's defining harassment. For example, sample or threat. Calling for the murder of someone is not incitement. It is not a threat.
Right.
I wish you know so and so would die. Is a terrible thing to think and a terrible thing to say, but it's not unprotected expression under our First Amendment doctrines and jurisprudence. Yes, there's conduct that you can go after. If I repeatedly harass someone, whether it's online or offline, then that can rise to the level of harassment. But there I'm not being punished for my expression. I'm being
punished for the act of repetitious harassment of another. And docting is difficult, right, because just publishing information about, say, where someone lives, is not necessarily unprotected speech.
Right.
A lot depends on the contact. And again they said it's statute under which you're reviewing it.
And wasn't there a Supreme Court case a few years ago involving threats on the internet.
Counterman versus Colorado. Yeah, that was this very recent threats case the Supreme Court handed down. There was a singer who had some uninvited online messages. Tried to block the person from contacting her. He just opened new accounts and kept contacting her, And eventually this person was prosecuted for
form of harassments. But the court below and then the Supreme Court treated it as raising the question of whether this person had communicated what it called true threats as I described earlier, serious expressions of an intent to cause bodily injury or death to another. And what the court was wrestling with in that piece was a mental state required for the speaker, and a number of courts before
that had sort of adopted this subjective test. Well, if I'm the audience for that speech and I perceived it subjectively as threatening, that should be enough. And the court was worried, well, that's not speech protective enough. That's going to cause misunderstandings to be translated into criminalized threat. We don't want that, But we also don't want a sort of lower standard. So let's find something in the middle
for a goldilock standard, and they settle on recklessness. If the person knows of a substantial risk that the person he is communicating with is when it perceives the speech is threatening, then that's the kind of recklessness that the First Amendment requires before you label something a true threat.
So you have the Attorney General's remarks, you have Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General, saying that people protesting at a restaurant while Trump was having dinner might have committed a crime. And you have President Trump's statements, including saying to an ABC reporter, will probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly. It's hate. Why is there this fundamental misunderstanding of hate speech.
Well, I don't know if it's a misunderstanding. I mean, it's just been sort of President Trump's a longstanding position, right, He either doesn't understand or doesn't appreciate freedom of expression. So his view is that negative press isn't protected. You can pull the broadcast license of a broadcaster that publishes critical coverage of him. It's consistently negative right. That, of course,
is contrary to the First Amendment. Going after your political enemies for things that they say is part of the sort of Trump mantra, but it is unconstitutional. And you know, what's interesting to me is recently people have said, oh, we've crossed some line here where the president is threatening retribution into this political enemy. We are nine months into a retribution campaign. It's gotten louder, but it's been there
the whole time. I mean, they've gone after law firms, international students, the American Bar Association, and plenty of others up to this point. What's different is it's more explicit, I suppose one could say, and the drumbeat is getting louder. We're going to go after particularly so called left leaning speakers or organizations who say things that we don't like, and the First Amendment stands in complete opposition to that position.
So what's changed. I mean, the Kirk assassination horrific event, bound to create, you know, sort of churn and backlash, but the administration's answer to that has been again, we're going to go after the left so called and we're going to punish speakers who say nasty things about Charlie Kirk or you know, about President Trump and the First Amendment just simply doesn't allow them to do that.
Across the country, people from teachers to airline pilots to healthcare workers have been fired, suspended, or disciplined over remarks, particularly social media posts about Charlie Kirk and Vice President J. D. Vance encouraged reporting these remarks to people's employers.
So when you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out in hell, call their employer.
We don't believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.
Explain why the First Amendment doesn't protect private employees.
The rules are different for private and government speakers. Right, So if you're talking about a private employee and at will employee who can be dismissed for any reason, at all or no reason, then they can be dismissed or speech that they publish or communicate. There are only a few states where you get some statutory protection for political speech, but in general, you speak at your peril. With respect
to private employment, public employment is very different. Public employees retain some First Amendment right as citizens to speak on newsworthy matters, which certainly covers the speech that has been sort of debated post to Charlie Kirks murder, and it's complicated. So if you're a public employee and you say something offensive, Let's say you praise Charlie Kirks murder and you're university professor,
and your employer says, well, I'm going to terminate your employment. Well, putting aside the ten year and academic freedom problems there, as a public employee, you have a First Amendment right to communicate that, but the Supreme Court has said what you get as a public employee if you speak on matters of public concerns, is a balance. We're going to balance your right to speak against the employer's interest in
efficient operations. So across a range of public employment, what you might find in some cases is that courts will side with the employer. What you said was so offensive it created disruption in the workplace, and we're not required to tolerate that. So it can be complicated to respect the public employment, but it's much simpler with regard to private.
Do you think a hate speech case will reach the Supreme Court?
It's not clear yet what the administration intends to do with respect to so called hate speech investigations or prosecutions. Mostly what they're doing is threatening to investigate people for core political speech. So we wouldn't even be taught talking about hate speech. It would be more you know, I'm going to go after George Sorows organization because it supports left wing positions or its funds left wing political activist
and what's clearly unconstitutional. I don't even know if the Supreme Court would be interested in a case like that. I'm assuming a lower court would say that's unconstitutional. But there are cases in the First Amendment realm that may make it to the Court, some of them involving maybe the rights of non citizens under the First Amendment, which the Court has been unclear about. I may want to
clarify that. Some of the university cases, the Harvard case, for example, where the administration is terminating funds the university says based on their speech, maybe there'll be a press case involving a broadcast license or something like that. I can imagine the Court being interested in those cases.
Thanks so much, Tim. That's Professor Timothy Zick of William and Mary Law School. And that's it for this edition of The Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you can always get the latest legal news on our Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at www dot bloomberg dot com slash podcast, slash Law, and remember to tune into The Bloomberg Law Show every weeknight at ten pm Wall Street Time. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg