This is Bloomberg Law with June Grossel from Bloomberg Radio.
We as a Republican party are going to do everything possible that we get rid of mail invalots. We're going to start with an executive order that's being written right now by the best lawyers of the country to end mail in ballots because they're corrupt. And do you know that we're the only country in the world. I believe I may be wrong, but just about the only country in the world that uses it.
Actually, more than thirty countries have mail in voting, including the UK, Canada, and Australia, and voter fraud is extremely rare, although President Trump has complained about it for years and of course fought losing legal battles over allegations of fraud in the twenty twenty election. Still, on Monday, Trump said he'll sign an executive order to end mail in voting and voting machines, which he claims are all also highly
inaccurate for validation. He pointed to comments by Russia's authoritarian leader Vladimir Putin in an interview on Fox You Know.
Vladimir Putin said something. One of the most interesting things. He said, your election was rigged because you have mail in voting. He said, mail in voting every election. He said, no country has mail in voting. It's impossible to have mail in voting and have honest elections.
By midweek, the White House seemed to have shifted course, with a top aid saying the administration would pursue legislation to attain Trump's goals. My guest is constitutional law professor Rick Pildis of NYU Law School. Rick, under the Constitution, what roles do the president, Congress, and the states play in elections?
So let's start with the president. So the president has no power constitutionally to dictate to the states how they conduct national liefections. The Constitution gives states the power to regulate the way in which our national elections are held, and the constitution also gives Congress the power to decide to sort of supplant the states in that role. But the president has no power constitutionally to dictate how states conduct elections.
Let's say Congress agrees with President Trump, what could Congress do to change the way elections are held?
I think that begins to get us into the more significant questions. In a sense, So even if the president doesn't have the power to do this. Once he puts the marker out there on this by issuing the executive order, then the question becomes, you know what's going to happen in the States, and what's going to happen in Congress. Congress, in theory, does have the power to determine issues like
the appropriate use of absentee ballots in national elections. Congress could require absentee ballots to be provided, It could determine the conditions under which they can be used, and I think in theory it probably could ban their use. There might be some constitutional challenges individual voters would bring, but fundamentally, the Supreme Court has recognized extremely broad power in Congress
to regulate national elections under the Election's clause. Now you know whether Congress would actually do this, I'd say fairly skeptical about because number one, of course, as long as we have the filibuster, the Democrats are going to oppose this and it won't get through the Senate. But number two, the Republicans have for a very long time been very
much against nationalizing the election process. There will certainly be some Republicans I would imagine who would go along with the President but I think there might well be pushed back from within the Republican Party on going down this route. At the national level, election administrators, including in red states, are not going to be happy about a change like this because it means the election process will be more complicated for them to run because increase the number of
people who would turn to in person voting. So, in theory, Congress could regulate in this area, but I don't know what the politics will be about that. I think then the question is what will happen in red states, you know that are run by legislators and governors who are sympathetic to the president's agenda, And will we see significant changes going on in red states about the use of absentee ballots?
And let's say Congress does pass a law like that, what would a challenge look like?
So if Congress were to ban absentee ballots altogether, I can imagine individual voters who cannot be in the jurisdiction on election day or during the early voting process if the state has early voting, who say I just can't exercise my right to vote at all, in effect, because I just for whatever reason, cannot be in the jurisdiction during those days. I could imagine they might bring a challenge under the federal Constitution and sort of right to
vote constitutional doctrine. They would argue that this ban would impose a severe burden on their voting rights. So I suspect that would be the form the challenge would take, And I think the voters who would have the strongest case would be the voters in that category I just described, people who just physically can't be in the jurisdiction during any of the days on which voting takes place. I don't know whether they would win that constitutional challenge, but that's what I would envision.
Yeah, I mean the military votes by mail for that reason. Also, Republicans poured tens of millions of dollars last year into convincing their voters that ballots by mail are safe, and Trump himself has voted by mail. Now, what about voting machines. Trump wants to go from voting machines to paper ballots with watermarks.
Well, I don't understand exactly what he has in mind yet about that. So we do overwhelmingly vote on paper ballots already. The question then, is how those bad ballots are counted, And typically you know, that's where machines come into the picture. So if you vote on you know, what's called an optical scan machine, you fill in the bubbles on your ballot. You then enter the ballot into the machine that tabulates the vote. So if he means that voting should be done on a paper ballot, most
of our voting already takes place that way. If he means that the vote should be somehow counted by hand rather than counted by a machine whose accuracy has been you know, validated, and by the way, we also do audits after the tabulation to make sure the machines are
accurately counting the ballots. If he means to get rid of machines for counting the ballots, it's very hard to conceive of what that would mean and how that could possibly be done, because it would mean, you know, hand counting millions of ballots, which would introduce huge delays in the counting process. And we know counting by hand is actually much less accurate than using the machines to count the ballots. So it's really unclear to me what he
even has in mind about voting machines. I guess we need to see what the order actually ends up saying what's.
Really going on here? Is it an attempt to give the Republicans an advantage in the midterms because Democrats supposedly do better with mail in voting than Republicans. Or is it a power grab or something else.
It's a little hard for me to speculate about, you know, what exactly is going on. He's obviously had an issue about mail in ballots for quite a while. He made a big issue of this in the run up to the twenty twenty election. I think the view is that that ended up hurting him in the election because many Republicans then decided not to vote by absentee ballot, and whether those people voted in other ways or not, you know,
we don't know for sure. I'm sure that this statement by him is causing consternation among other elected Republican officials who probably think it's not in their interest to abandon absentee voting. But you know, for whatever reason, he has a being his bondt about this issue, and he lacks the power to do anything directly about it. But we'll see if Congress ends of doing anything.
Trump did issue an executive order in March that, among other things, would require proof of US citizenship in order to vote. A couple of federal judges block that order. Does that indicate how other challenges might fare well.
I think there's little doubt that an executive order that purported to tell the states that they could not use absentee ballots would be blocked by the federal courts. Again, I'm a little hesitant to speculate, you know, too much until we see the actual order and how it's designed and what powers it asserts. But he doesn't have the power to dictate the states that they cannot use absentee
ballots or can only use them under certain conditions. So I don't have much doubt that in order that did that would be struck down put on hold by the court.
Trump is also using his influence to try to win the mid terms by getting Texas to change its maps to give Republicans five more seats, and California is doing retaliatory redistricting to get five more Democratic seats there. On Thursday, Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation for a special election in November to approve a redrawn congressional map in that state.
This was not a press commence. We intended to have. This is not an action the legislature intended to advance. This is not an election we expected to be holding on November fourth, But they shot the first bullet.
I take it that, though it's very unusual, there's no legal impediment to mid decade redistricting.
We've had very little mid decade redistrict in American history, is certainly in modern American history. The last time this happened in a way that went to the Supreme Court actually was also from Texas in the early two thousands. I actually filed an amicust brief in that case urging the court to hold the federal Constitution precluded mid decade redistricting.
The Supreme Court didn't agree with that position. But we're in a world in which control of the House rests on such a fine margin kind of election after election, which is a very important part to understand as a backdrop to all of this, And so it leads the political parties to fight over every single inch of terrain, and so various kinds of you know, norms that have been around for a while, you know, are breaking under that pressure, which is what's happening with the constraints against
mid decade redistricting, and the Pandora's box that opens up is, you know, if state can do it once, they could just adjust their districts every couple of years to try to maximize part of advantage throughout the decade, and of course it's going to trigger you know, retaliator mid decade redistricting. And it's another example of the kind of tactics that at the end of the day, really undermined public confidence
in the legitimacy of the process. Jerrymandering is bad enough when it happens once a decade, but if we move down a path towards sort of perpetual redistricting for partisan advantage seeking, it's all the worse. So none of these things really promote the integrity of the process from the perspective of voters.
Perpetual redistricting, that's a scary thought. Thanks so much, Rick. That's Professor Rick Pildus of NYU Law School, coming up next on The Bloomberg Law Show. There's been a significant drop in union elections as the unions play a weight and see game warry of organizing and taking risks during the Trump administration. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg. President Trump made his position on unions pretty clear in a conversation with Elon Musk about a year ago.
I mean, I look at what you do.
You walk, you want to quit, they go a strike.
I won't mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and use it.
That's okay.
You're all gone. You're all gone. So every one of you is gone, and you are the greatest.
Trump was no friend to unions in his first administration, and in the past six months he's ended collective bargaining for two thirds of federal workers, effectively paralyzed the federal agency that decides unfair labor practices and disputes over union elections, and rescinded the minimum wage that federal contractors have to pay workers, just to name a few anti union actions.
So then it may not be so surprising that there's been a significant drop in union elections and petitions to the National Labor Relations Board in the last six months. That stands in contrast to the previous three years, where there were historic numbers of union elections, representation petitions, and unfair labor practice charge just filed each year. My guest is labor law expert and Lafasso, a professor at the
University of Cincinnati Law School. And the average number of newly certified unions per month dropped twenty two point three percent between January and July of this year, and there's been a fifteen point eight percent drop in the number of representation petitions filed in that time period. How do you count for this significant drop?
I think you have to look at both sides of the equation. First, you had historic increase under Biden, and under bait progressive general counsel. The board was relatively progressive, but not quite as progressive as General Counsel Jennifer Brusso was. So Brusso was aggressively progressive. She looked at the law and she interpreted the law in a way that, in
my view at least was reasonable. But on the progressive side, the law can always be interpreted more progressively or more conscis servatively more pro union or more pro business, and it's not like the law has a single meaning. And she was on the very progressive side, and that emboldened and encouraged unions to file election petitions and also defile unfair labored practice charges even where it might have been a more iffy theory of why they were being unfairly treated.
Iffy because in the past they may not have gotten that theory validated for the board. So that's going to increase the numbers. Then when Trump came in, they're remembering the first Trump board, and the first Trump board as progressive as Jennifer Brusso was, it was reactionary. It was extremely to the right, much more pro business and even in some instances I would say not just pro business but anti union more so than any other board ever
in the history of the National Labor Relations Board. And they're remembering this and it was very painful for them. So they're in this sort of wait and see pattern, anticipating the worst. So I'm at a conference right now and I'm listening to people and they don't want to file petitions right now because they are really afraid.
Do you think the new board is going to be as conservative as the board in the first Trump administration.
Yeah, the board doesn't have a quorum. I personally don't think that the Trump two board will be as reactionary as the Trump one board. I could be wrong. The reason I'm saying this, though, is because the general counsel Callan, who is a conservative man, so he's going to interpret the law in a more conservative fashion, is going to
be more pro business fashion. However, he's an institutionalist. He's been the regional director for one of the regions out in the West, I think in California for a long time he was a board member. He's loved by everyone. He was at the board when I was there, everyone loved him. He was just kind, he was easy to work with. He doesn't want to destroy the agency. Also, people Trump put forward for the board also institutionalists. He could have picked people that had union busting careers and
he doesn't seem to be doing that. So it's possible that the fear that's going on is an overreaction. But I think at least they're waiting and seeing what this board will do. So when you put those two things together, though, the sort of record highs and then the remembering of what the Trump board did in his first administration, you get this huge swing. I don't know if it's going
to last. It's going to be very interesting to see, and I think it's going to depend on what this board starts doing and whether it was willing to dismantle precedents.
Is this reluctance coming from the union leaders or the workers who might fear the political climate, especially in light of the economy and the labor market. I mean, where's it coming from?
Oh? Both, definitely. So from the worker's point of view, they're scared. There are people that are afraid to even speak out against the president of retaliation because we saw that the president decided to fire a large percentage of the federal workforce, which he has direct control over. So people are afraid to speak out. Now, whether that's justified or not, the historians will tell us that, but people certainly are afraid, and so they don't want to stick
their necks out right now. But union leaders, who are thinking about these things and hearing from their constituents are also concerned, and they're more in the wait and see pattern, like, well, let's see what's going on. But the workers themselves, I think, are afraid. And they're also afraid because the economy isn't
as good. So when you had a much better economy, which despite what everyone was saying, we had a pretty good economy under Biden, but the economy has been going down and down, and the labor market is much tougher. Right now, there's no slacks in the labor market. So it's hard. If you get fired from a job right now, let's say you're unjustly fired because you're a union activist, you may not get another job. It's very tough. So
this makes people afraid to organize. It makes the labor organizer's job and the labor union leader's job that much more difficult.
You say, wait and see, but don't the unions already know where Trump stands, especially with the executive order that he issued ending collective bargaining for two thirds of the federal workforce. Even before Trump took office, student athletes dropped organizing efforts at Dartmouth College and the University of Southern California.
Well that was smart of them, because the General Council has withdrawn a Brusso's memo, her General Council Memo stating that student athletes are actually employees and should have the protections of the board. So we do know almost certainly what this board would do with that. So on that issue, it's pretty clear. But there is sometimes some very easy issues. For example, remember the early two thousand when Bush was the President Chamber and Wilma Leebman, two people that couldn't
be further apart. A progressive Leaveman and a conservative chamber and very conservative chamber. They've agreed on six hundred cases together. Now they were all found voids by the Supreme Court because there was only two and they weren't a quorum, but not because of what they decided. Those were all easy cases. There's plenty of easy cases to go forward. What they're waiting and seeing on and I think what they are not going to do is we're not going
to see them pushing the envelope. But I would be surprised if Ingian say, Okay, we're going to ask for expanded remenedies right now. I wouldn't ask for them because I wouldn't want that precedent to go before a court. First of all, I wouldn't want to go before the board, and then I wouldn't want to go before the court. So they're not going to push the student athlete issue
right now. So if I were student athletes right now, I might go for a voluntary recognition, but I wouldn't go for anything else.
And isn't the president in a legal battle to exert more control roll over independent agencies like the NLRB.
The president is trying to control the administrative agencies a lot more. And the president who's taking the position that he can fire board members and only this pre court can tell us if that's true. My guess is, even though right now the precedent at the Supreme Court is that he can't fire commissioners or board members, that they are likely to reverse that obvious divided vote. And I'm
talking about Humphrey's executor. So if he can fire anyone at will, if he doesn't like a decision that comes out of the board, then he'll just fire the person. So I'm sure that these board members are going to be somewhat more beholden to the president than they normally were in an independent agency where they really were independent
of the president. I think that will happen. And let's face it, he already fired member Willcox, and I do want to remind the audience that she was the first black female board member, and so the look is very, very bad that he decides to fire the first black board member but not the democrat white And again that could be a coincidence, I don't know, but it is a very bad look and so it does send the message definitely, But the president is not going to fire
a board member because of an obvious, simple case of enforcing the law. I think what he would do is if it's something that gets the chamber upset, that gets Starbucks or Amazon upset, and that doesn't mean Starbucks losing a case or an election. I mean, where Starbucks this is ridiculous because these are expanded remedies or something like that. So yes, I think it's just more nuanced, and I at least am taking also a wait and see, and I'm optimistic it will not be as bad for unions
as it was other than trump one administration. Let me put this way, I wouldn't bet on what I'm saying. I just think it's more likely than not, like forty nine to fifty one percent. That's where I'm at.
Would you say that labor unions are already playing defense. They're sort of on the front lines of some of the legal fights against Trump's reduction enforced plans and moves to exclude two thirds of the workforce from collective bargaining rights, and initiatives that shutter agencies and affect universities.
Absolutely, unions are definitely on the defensive, and they're concerned. There's a lot of things means can do, but remember, whatever they do for their members, they also can't live without members. They need fees because organizing takes money and getting benefits for their members takes money. So they are on the defensive and they want to survive. And I can't get into the mind of every union, but I wouldn't be surprised if for them this is an existential threat.
That's how higher education feels right now. I mean, I'm a member of a union at my university, and we certainly feel that this is an existential threat. People are palpably afraid. And by the way, we're a public institution, so what's going on in public institutions is more at this date level. But it's the same kind of thing that's going on at least in the Red States that are part of this idea that unions are not good for the economy and that higher education is left wing propaganda.
And I think a lot of us are afraid to speak out. What are we going to do? We want to keep our jobs even ten years on the line. So it's going on all over the country.
By laying back now is there a risk to the momentum that the unions seem to have picked up in the last few years.
So the concern is, Okay, if we stop organizing, we lose our momentum, but if we organize, we might get bad results. This is why you're in this paralysis, this wait and see, because there's one push to kind of keep the momentum up. People want unions more than ever in like at least the last seventy five years, So they're more popular today than they've been certainly in my lifetime. But at the same time, you have an administration that's more hostile to unions definitely before FDR. So there is
a paralysis right now. And you know which way do we go? Now? Do you go in this relatively aggressive way and continue the momenta or do you stop? Or do you do something less aggressive but you can keep up the momentum. What is the right choice? And I think people don't know what the right choice is right now, and that's the problem.
Thanks so much, Ann. That's Professor An Lafosso of the University of Cincinnati Law School coming up next. A thirty million dollars pardon scheme fails and how the so called Sandwich Guy, became a resistance icon in DC. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg. You may have seen the viral video of a DC resident throwing his subway sandwich at an ice officer after cursing about the federal
takeover of the nation's capital. DCUs attorney Janine Piro put out her own video bragging about charging Sean Charles Dunn, a decorated Air Force veteran, with felony assault, for tossing the salami sandwich.
And then he took a subway sandwich about this big and took it and threw it at the officer.
He thought it was funny.
Well, he doesn't think it's funny today, because we charge it with a felony assault on a police officer, and we're going to back the police to the hilt. So there, stick your subway sandwich somewhere else.
Well done. Now known as sandwich Guy, has become a symbol of the resistance to the heightened presence of federal agents and troops in DC. You can see Banksy's style posters of him tossing the sub and all kinds of free DC sandwich themed flags posters tote bags and T shirts.
You can also see the video of Dun's rearrest in a swat style raid as more than a dozen federal agents converged on his apartment building, filed into a narrow corridor, dressed in full tactical gear with guns drawn and carrying bulletproof shields until Dunn opens the door to his apartment and surrenders peacefully. The reason you can see a professionally edited multi camera video of his arrest is because the White House sent a social media team to record it
and then posted it online. Joining me is national security expert Bradley Moss, a partner Mark Zaid. Brad does this videotaping and posting of an arrest violate the suspect's constitutional rights?
Does this? The Supreme Court about twenty something years ago, had addressed the idea of embedding media with law enforcement in the context of doing work, and Supreme Court had basically overturned the policy, saying it was violative of people's First Amendment, Fifth Amendment, and Fourth Amendment protections. After all, you are presumed innocit until proven guilty. I mean, there was no legitimate basis to have news media embedded with
law enforcement for that purpose. What we're seeing here with these social media influencers embedded with the FBI or whichever federal law enforcement agency is conducting these particular raids is even greater abuse of the process in the sense that it's not even pretending to be about news gathering or objective journalism. This is straight up political hackery. These are
social media influencers. These are media players with a very explicit partisan agenda, designed not to gather facts, but to push the White House's specific narrative about what is transpiring. This entire process, as far as I'm concerned, is at least unethical, if not likely also illegal.
What would be some of the possible legal challenges.
So you're almost certainly going to see at some point various pre trial motions for you know, pretro publicity issues tied to the inclusion of these social media influencers being embedded and publicizing this. There's going to be various actions taken by defense attorneys claiming their clients privacy rights and constitutional rights were violated by use of these embedded individuals.
How that will play out remains to be seen. I don't think the cases necessarily are thrown out simply based off that, but it is entirely possible it will cause some problems with prosecution of these cases. And if that does start occurring, if the courts start pushing back by way of these pre trial rulings, I think you'll see a shift in the policy from most of the agencies
and from the White House. If for no other reason, then it'd be undercutting their ability to do what they say they're trying to do, which is to identify arrest and convict criminals.
Could it also become part of the evidence of the defense at trial, perhaps demonstrating you know, bad conduct by the arresting officers, or that the defendant was being targeted in some way.
Yes, all of it would be discoverable. All of it would be potentially exculpatory information that would have to be turned over to the criminal defendants and their council. All that could be brought up not only from a factual standpoint, depending on what the you know, various footage shows, but also simply if there's a you know, political or vindictive
prosecution pre trial motion brought. This would all be information that these defendants would be entitled to obtain and to use in their own defense, which is why normally we don't do this, you know, you especially don't do it with these types of individuals following along in the cars, because it opposes so many problems for the ultimate actual prosecution of the crimes.
The FBI has allowed the media to do these sort of ride alongs. I mean, when I was in local news, I did ride alongs with police, but this was a multi camera shoot and the editing and the dramatic music make it seem more like a movie trailer.
And there have been TV shows, you know, you think of the infamous show Cops that's been around forever. Those shows did have some kind of media embedded within it, but there were very strict protocols and procedures. There were waivers that had to be signed by anybody whose identity was shown, anybody whose information was made public, and of course that footage always then had to be made available
to those defendants when they went to trial. And so this is why there were always those limitations foot of place, because while it makes for great TV, while it looked cool on social media with the hype music and the you know, the raw rag machismo that the White House is doing, that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be
helpful when it comes to actual trial. And that's what we're waiting to see is does this backfire from a legal standpoint by undercutting law enforcement's ability to actually prosecute successfully these criminals.
And talk about overcharging. He's being charged with a felony of forcibly assaulting, resisting, or impeding a federal officer. A judge released him on his own recognisance, considering the felony charge excessive, and what DC jury would convict him of that.
It'll be interesting to see one if that stuff gets reduced in pre trial motions, but two, even if somehow even one aspect of this does get to a jury, whether or not they can find a jury that would convict this guy based off that kind of evidence. It's laughable right now to assume that would happen, but it's entirely plausible. It's entirely possible that people would simply look at it from a strictly legal standpoint and saying, do I think this is a ridiculous case?
Yes?
Did his conduct meet the scope of the statutory provision?
Yes?
Okay, guilty. I don't foresee that whole case going through the end with the original charges. This is all a media spectacle right now. We're seeing the US attorney Piro having problem getting invitements from grand jury. I fully expect this to be just another case of that.
His next court appearance is in September, so we'll see what happens. Thanks so much, Brad. That's Brad Moss of Mark Zaid. Let's turn now to a multimillion dollar pardon scheme that failed. The audacious plan crystallized over a lobster dinner in Puerto Rico, where a self styled MAGA connector says he and a child actor turned crypto enthusiast hatched an idea to secure a presidential pardon for bitcoin booster Roger Ver, also known as Bitcoin Jesus, and in the
process make millions for themselves, specifically thirty million. Joining me is Bloomberg Legal reporter Ava Benny Morrison Ava. They only had tenuous ties to Ver, why did they decide to try to get him a pardon.
There's been a lot of enthusiasm around the clemency process since President Trump took office in January. He has certainly approached his clemency powers with more vigor than some of his predecessors, and that's instilled a lot of hope in people who want to try and get their case in
front of the White House for relief. So in this situation, Roger Ver, who is an early investor in bitcoin and he is currently under indictment for tax evation in California, he was very vocal about wanting a pardon, and he had been on social media and sitting down for interviews with conservative commentators talking about his battle with US authorities and making a direct appeal in some situations to Trump
to give him a pardon. Matt Argyll, a businessman from Florida, and Brock Pierce, who is also a pretty well known figure in the cryptosphere, knew about this and approached him and offered to lobby for his cause. So Matt Argall in particular was pretty key in a number of these conversations that took place earlier this year and offered to assemble a group of Washington insiders who could Take's best case to the White House and try and get.
Him a pardon.
A thirty million dollar fee seems a bit high.
While a number of these pardon plans have been popping up over the past few months, this one stuck out because of the fee that was attached to it. The conversations were about Roger handing over thirty million dollars to these people to try and get him a pardon, which is astronomical. You know, I've reported on a number of these different proposals and fees flying around to lawyers and consultants and lobbyists, but thirty million dollars is certainly the highest amount i'd heard.
What kind of fees do you normally hear about.
It differs across the board. I have heard that some lawyers have been quoting a million dollars as a base level to prepare an application and to speak to the right people in Washington to try and get their client case heard. But then someone suggested there was a finders fee, so quoting five thousand dollars to put someone in touch with someone else. For other people, lawyers have quoted tens of thousands of dollars to put the paperwork together. So
it really varies. But this is a real evolution of this clemency space. I think the clemency space historically has largely been populated by pro bono advocates, so lawyers and academics offering to lobby for people who have been in prison for a very long time or particularly harsh sentences, maybe during the cocaine epidemic, but only now we're really starting to see these massive fees attached to this kind of work.
So what happened after you got their pitch? So what happened after Verra got their pitch?
So there were a number of conversations held earlier this year between Roger Vert and Matt Argyll, Rock Pierce and some other characters who are quite well known in conservatives and have very good track records at helping people get clemency. So those conversations went into what a path to a White House pardon might look like, and also reiterated this thirty million dollar fee structure again and again. But those
conversations seem to have fizzled out. In March, I got my hands on an email that showed that the had just stopped replying to text messages and calls and voice notes from some of the people that were involved in these pardon conversations.
And no money actually changed hands. Now you spoke with Oragle, what was his explanation for this scheme?
I found him to be quite upfront and forthcoming about his role in these conversations and how it all came together. He told me that he had traveled to Washington on a number of occasions to kind of lay the groundwork, and you know, he introduced a well known Washington lawyer to Roger Vert to discuss a potential pardon plan. And I asked him about the thirty million dollar fee. The way that he and Brock had come up with that fee was they estimated Roger Ver was worth ten to
twenty billion. That's not an amount that we've been able to confirm, but in Matt's justification, twenty million dollars seemed like a drop in the ocean for someone like that, especially when your freedom's on the line.
Really fascinating story. Eva, thanks so much. That's Bloomberg Legal Reporter Eva Benni Morrison, 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 Julie Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg