35 Burst results for "One Witness"
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from CARPE CONSENSUS: Moving on From Sam Bankman-Fried
"This is Carpe Consensus. Join hosts Ben Shiller and Danny Nelson as they seize the world of crypto. Hello and welcome to Carpe Consensus. This is a podcast from the CoinDesk Podcast Network. I am Benjamin Shiller, Features Editor here at CoinDesk. And joining me today is Danny Nelson. He is the co -host. And also Helene Braun. She is a reporter here at CoinDesk. And we're going to be talking about the SBF trial, which just wrapped up last week with the former founder of FTX being found guilty on seven counts of federal fraud and related charges. And that was a pretty big deal for the crypto industry and certainly here for CoinDesk as we broke the story originally. So Danny, what was it like to be there at the end of the trial there with the verdict? Yeah, I got to say it was unexpectedly emotional, right? So for five weeks, we heard all these co -conspirators, these insiders who pled guilty to various crimes, testifying against Sam saying he made me do this, he told me to do that. Caroline, Nishad and Gary all coming with their very powerful stories. And then at the end, Sam testified and then he was bad for him. I know, weird thing to say. I don't feel like he is innocent or I don't think he's not guilty rather. He's definitely guilty. He's guilty as hell. But watching him in the courtroom, watching his parents there, I just felt like this sense of, wow, I felt the gravity of the moment. And I don't know, we should lock him up, but we shouldn't give him 115 years. This is a hot take, I know. Maybe we can get into the rights and wrongs of how long he's going to get. Helene, what about you? How did you feel when you saw the verdict being read out? Yeah, I did not feel bad for him at all, especially after we heard all the closing statements. We heard two different closing statements from Assistant US Attorney, Danielle Cezune, and they were very compelling and very convincing. And I felt like there was this moment in her closing argument where I looked at Sam and it just felt like he finally realized that this was it for him. There was no going back. His defense was just not good enough. And I think the jurors knew too. And at that point I was just like, I hope he gets 150 years or 200 years. I don't feel bad for this guy. All the evidence that we've heard was just crazy to me. So no, I totally disagree with Danny. I think he deserves to be in prison for the entirety of his life. Right. So you mentioned the defense there. I mean, there seemed to be a consensus amongst lawyers that we spoke to about the trial and the defense that he didn't get a very good service on that score. I mean, how much of a difference do you think that actually made? I mean, it seems like a structural set of circumstances where he would get a guilty verdict anyway, and most people expected him to go to jail. But do you think if he had a better defense, he could have gotten a better sentence or a better verdict? Yeah, I think it's interesting because in the beginning of the trial, it sort of felt like the defense wasn't trying very hard. And I think it must be so funny if you're Mark Cohen, the defense attorney that Sam was represented by, to read all these articles about you and bad of a lawyer you are and how bad of the defense strategy you have from all these, you know, journalists that have nothing to do with the law and are attorneys themselves, and they're just judging your work, basically. But I think in his closing statements, I could see that he was trying really hard and that I think he was he had hope for his defense. I don't know. He's supposed to be good. I don't know. I was wondering that, too, if is he supposed to be a really good lawyer or is he just the guy that all the bad guys go to? He's the only one who is willing to defend them. From what I've heard, I think Mark Cohen is a fine lawyer, but that's the name of the game when you're a defense attorney. Your clients, especially the more outspoken ones like Sam Pink and Fried, you're not going to win all your cases. And if you have a really bad deck, well, that's the deck you have to play with. And he went to trial with this guy who had so much evidence against him. I think it was very insurmountable. So, sure, maybe he wasn't as quick on his feet with some of the strategic and tactical things in the courtroom, like objections and phrasing of questions and things like that. But if you have all these people testifying against your client, and then when your client takes a stand, you can't get him to sound the way that an innocent person would sound. And also, you have to remember, before the trial even began, the trial would go. The judge wouldn't allow the defense to bring in all of Sam's philosophical arguments. They wouldn't allow him to bring defensive counsel arguments. He went to trial with a losing hand, and it's not completely his fault that the trial ended up going against his client. Right. I mean, I have to say I agree with you, Danny, about feeling a little bit sorry for SBF. I mean, both things can be true. On the one hand, you can say this guy was a fraud, he was a criminal, he took a lot of people's money, and he spent it lavishly and irresponsibly. On the other hand, he is a human being. To get this huge sentence, he could go away for 115 years at maximum, seems like a rather excessive amount of time. And there is an argument out there that he is very much the fall guy for the industry, and the guy who's kind of taking the rap for a lot of cultural problems in the industry and a kind of lax, general corporate governance culture out there. I mean, there were VC funds that put millions of dollars, billions of dollars into FTX without doing any due diligence. And that's not a criminal act, but it was an act of cultural indifference or negligence that you could say contributed to this enormous folly. So, you know, I think there's a reasonable argument to say that he is taking the rap for the entire industry when maybe he doesn't quite deserve that kind of level of status here. What do you think about that, Danny? I don't know. I think it's a special kind of stupid to set up a company in the way he did. And sure, there's a lot of follies that crypto in general has committed, but just the arrangement between Alameda and FTX, and that's this whole case, right? That Alameda spent all this money from XTS customers. That is so unique, right? That doesn't even have to do with crypto. The way that this fraud was committed was mostly because people were wiring their money into Alameda Research to get it into FTX. So there was also the allow negative code and the let's borrow $65 billion code that was more crypto native, but I don't know. And, you know, look at me, I'm contradicting myself again, right? Because earlier in the episode, I'm saying, well, I feel bad for Sam and here I'm saying, well, he's guilty as hell. I don't know. I think there's room for both statements because it's very hard to watch someone's parents in the room when a guilty verdict is handed out. Like they're older, right? He's going to be locked up probably for the rest of their lives. I don't know. I just, I can't get over that scene in the courtroom. I did feel guilty. I'm sorry. I did feel bad for him. Did you steal the money? I did feel bad for him up until his testimony, because up until that point, all these people that he used to be friends with that were all part of the scheme to like, he wasn't just the only one that committed this fraud. All these other people, Caroline, Nashad, Gary, they're all part of this. And they all were put up on the sand as the good guys, so to say, just because they cooperated with the government and they told their side of the story. But his then testimony just showed that he is not remorseful at all. He still is trying to lie to people. He's still trying to talk himself out of this. And at that point, I was just like, it's too late for this. You're already in this trial. You're on the stand. It's time to look back and be a little bit remorseful and stop thinking that you're smarter than everybody else. I mean, do you think it would have made a difference if he was remorseful? Well, if he was remorseful, he wouldn't be convicted even faster. Yeah, except because he can't really be remorseful because in his opinion, he's not guilty. Right? So what's he going to say to the jury? He could say something like, I'm sorry, the people got hurt and I made mistakes and something like that. Well, he did say that. That was the very first thing he said, basically. And then after that, everything was basically, I don't remember. He decided to say it because he had to. Helene, among the witnesses that flipped on Sam, who's the biggest villain? Like you sat through that whole thing too. Who do you walk away feeling the least bad for and who do you feel the most bad for? I feel like there are easy answers here. I feel the least bad for Caroline just because literally just because of that tape that we heard from that meeting in November where she told her employees that it was kind of fun to, you know, steal money. She obviously didn't explicitly say it like that, but she said it was fun. She sounded a little crazy in that recording. So after her testimony, after hearing that recording, I thought, wow, she's definitely not the innocent little girl that everybody says she is. She certainly knew what she was doing. And she certainly, you know, she's certainly guilty as well. So I feel the least bad for her. The person that I felt really, really bad for wasn't a shot. Okay. But I also don't know if that's just because he's very soft spoken. He has a very low voice. He seems like a very sweet guy. So it could just be a front that he put on for his testimony. I have the opposite answers, actually, like a complete opposite. I feel like Caroline from reading the Michael Lewis book, which is sympathetic to Sam, but also some of the things that were said about Caroline were repeated by the government in their narrative. Caroline just comes off to me as someone who was completely, I guess the word I would use is submissive in every aspect of this business and personal relationship. And I don't feel bad for her at all, but I feel the least bad for her, even though she did big fraud. I think that Nishad, though, is next level evil. He presents himself, like you say, as this guy who is soft spoken. Oh, by the way, after he learned that the companies were stealing money from customers, he took out $3 million to personally buy a house. This wasn't like in furtherance of the scheme to keep it all afloat. This was so he could have a house, like personal enrichment. So I think it's all just a front. And Gary, I don't know how to read him. I think he just doesn't talk much. And he took the deal as soon as his lawyer said, we should make moves here. Do we know what the deals are with those collaborators who turned on SPF? I mean, will they be getting any jail time? We don't know that aspect of it. I would imagine that Gary will get the best deal because he offered himself up to the government before the government was even investigating. Caroline, she didn't speak until they raided her house. So you get negative points for that. And I don't know about Nishad, but I would expect Gary to get the best deal. Gary said he hopes that he doesn't get any jail time, though. And I think that could actually be the case, because we see in a lot of these white cases that those people or the witnesses that cooperate with the government actually get zero jail time. So I think that's a possibility, which would be crazy to me. Yeah, we'll probably get years of probation. So if they would violate the deal, then they would go right to jail. But I think Caroline might get some time. I don't know about Nishad, and I would expect Gary to get no jail time. Could we even see them back in the crypto industry? I highly doubt that that seems exceptionally unlikely. I think they want nothing to do with this. In fact, in other cases, the government, like for securities fraud, so some of them have some of them pled guilty to securities fraud. When you plead guilty to securities fraud, the government often makes you say, I will never work in the securities industry again. That probably means they shouldn't work in any of crypto, because most cryptos are securities. Bitcoin's not a security. Well, Bitcoin's not a security, too, and neither is Ether. But a lot of the other ones probably are. So if I were them, I would steer clear. I don't know. I think they've had their fair share of the crypto industry, and I don't think anybody needs to see them back in the industry. I think Adam Yedidia, who was one of the first witnesses, who was a senior software engineer at FTX, I think, or Alameda, he is a high school teacher now. Yeah, he's a math teacher. He seemed a little traumatized by this whole experience. Well, maybe in a few years' time, we can do a sort of where are they now article.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from UNCHAINED: SBFs Lawyers Could Be Annoying the Judge | How Might That Impact the Trial?
"Hi, Welcome to Unchained, your no -hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto eight years ago. And as a senior editor at Forbes, was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full -time. This is the October 9th, 2023 episode of Unchained. DeFi just got way easier with Vaultcraft, popcorn's no -code DeFi toolkit for building, deploying and monetizing automated yield strategies. From institutional service providers to DeFi degens, anyone can use Vaultcraft to supercharge their crypto with custom cross -chain yield strategies. Learn more on vaultcraft .io. The game has changed. The Google Cloud Oracle, built for Layer Zero, is now securing every Layer Zero message by default. Their custom end -to -end solution sets itself up to bring its world -class security to Web3 and establish itself as the HTTPS within Layer Zero messaging. Visit layerzero .network to learn more. Buy, trade and spend crypto on the Crypto .com app. New users can enjoy zero credit card fees on crypto purchases in the first seven days. Download the Crypto .com app and get $25 with the code LAURA. Link in the description. Today's topic is the ongoing criminal trial of Sam Bankman -Fried. Here to discuss are Sam Ensor, partner at Cahill Gordon and Rindell, and Brian Klein, partner at Waymaker. Welcome, Sam and Brian. Thanks for having us on, Laura. Thank you, Laura, for inviting us on. So you were both recent guests, so I'm not going to go into your backgrounds first. But to help people differentiate your voices, Sam, why don't you start by telling us what your top takeaway is so far from the trial? I think the top takeaway is you see the government honing in on their theory. A big part of their theory of the alleged fraud is this notion that FTX told customers, hey, deposit your money, it's safe, without disclosing that they were going to let an affiliate Alameda Research use the funds to trade and have special privileges that other customers of FTX did not have. That, I think, is one interesting thing. And then we've seen from the defense side, some of their defense themes come out, like that Sam Bankman -Fried thought it was legitimate for Alameda to have these privileges, that he didn't think there was anything wrong with that because there was enough collateral for the money Alameda was borrowing, and some of the defense themes in terms of normalizing the conduct. So things like they were building the plane while they were flying it to help the jury sort of understand that things were chaotic, and they shouldn't necessarily infer criminal intent from things that may have just been sloppy, negligent, overlooked. And Brian, what would you say your top takeaway is so far? I think the government's diving into this case and going to the deep end very quickly. I mean, they're calling key witnesses right off the bat. Gary Wang's up now, and then they're going to call Carolyn Ellison. These are the people everyone's been waiting to hear from, and they're coming up right away. And so one of my questions is, how is this case going to go five to six weeks? I don't know what's going to have it take that long if they're going through key witnesses off the bat. Now, we can all anticipate other types of witnesses they'll call, things they'll do, but they're really going right at it right away. All right. So let's dive in with the very beginning of the trial, which was this new term I learned at some point in the last couple of weeks, voir dire. Did I say that right? Correct. Sam, I love this term. I've always said this multiple times. It's jury D selection. And what we ended up with is a jury that consisted of people with these professional backgrounds. There was a physician's assistant, a social worker, a Metro -North trained conductor, a librarian, a United States Postal Service vehicle maintenance worker, a special ed teacher, a nurse, a Ukrainian advertising person. And then there was a retired I banker. And yeah, it was about three quarters women and I think a fourth men. And so I wondered how you thought these people, you know, the fact that, for instance, nearly none of them have financial backgrounds would affect how the trial unfolds. I think what's interesting about jury selection, it's not surprising there's a postal worker there because almost every case I had, there was a postal worker. So a lot of government employees get called all the time. They get full pay weather and jury duty. So it's easier for them to serve, which is quite an interesting thing. That sounds like a Manhattan jury to me. I mean, you've got a lot of well -educated people. You've got people from professional backgrounds, some of them. And you've got a pretty diverse array of people who would live in the Southern District of New York, which stretches from, you know, Staten Island, Manhattan, the Bronx and up. And so I think this jury, you know, reflects a cross section of that district. You know, you can read into, well, you got three quarters women, one quarter men, and there's only one or two hard finance people there. I don't think that really matters here. I think that the prosecutor are putting their theory forward in something that lay people can understand. And they need to do that anyways, because you're always speaking to the juror or the jurors who aren't the highest educated people or aren't the most professionals who don't have the special maybe skill set that's relevant for your trial. Because you've got to, if you're a prosecutor, you've got to get 12 people to agree unanimously on something. So you can't be talking above the head of anybody. And I think that's going to be a real focus of the prosecutors here is making this a simple, understandable case. And, you know, often the defense tries to make things seem more complex than they are, or it may be complex and just blame the complexities. I agree with all of that. And I'll just say, I think that makeup of the jury, I think would be, it doesn't favor one side or the other from what's described. But I think one thing to remember is the jurors can talk to each other, right? So if you have one or two that you educate and they get a point, they can educate the rest of the jury. And so I think the way both sides look at it is they think about who do I need to arm with the points who can then advocate in the jury room when it comes to deliberation. So maybe they're not all finance people, but if one finance person gets it and they can explain it to the others, that makes sense. And then there may be something that, that is, you know, more understandable for the postal worker that is, that they can relate to more, that they may make more sense. And, you know, another important thing is regardless of finance, a big part of the jury's job is to evaluate witness credibility. And that's something everybody is equipped to do. Indeed, the folks who may not be in front of a computer all day, but rather are delivering the mail to lots of people, talking to lots of people, may have a pretty good sense of what to look at when they're evaluating demeanor to determine whether somebody's lying or not. And they have value to add in that room. I just add one point that the jurors can't talk now about the case. And I think Sam's saying at the end, when they're set up to deliver it, they can talk among themselves. I think that is an important point. I suspect every time I've done a trial, you pretty quickly try to figure out who the foreperson is going to be. And usually you're right. You know, and so oftentimes to Sam's point, you are trying to get one or two people to be advocates for you, but you really need everybody to kind of understand what's happening. Otherwise you're going to have a problem, particularly if you're across. Wait, and I'm sorry, who the foreperson is going to be? What does that mean? So the jurors at the end, when they go back, they'll select somebody who's the foreperson. That's the lead juror who will communicate the notes usually and communicate the final verdict when they come back. They're kind of the head juror. They got their votes the same as every other jurors. It's not different, but they're sort of the nominal head juror. But oftentimes it's a person who may be in the finance case, the person with the finance background, because the other jurors will look to that person and say, hey, why don't you help us lead us through this? Because to Sam's point, you can explain this to us also. Yeah. The person who was the retired investment banker also had a Stanford MBA. But I think what - also I should say their spouse also was retired and had worked at Berkshire Hathaway. But anyway, this is the reason, and maybe I should have said this in the phrasing of my question, but the other reason I had wondered about the professional backgrounds of these people is that when you were actually in the room and you were listening to all the prospective jurors, a very large proportion of them actually worked in finance, probably because it is lower Manhattan. So just to see that it all got whittled down to only one, I was like, oh, okay. Cause it just felt like, you know, there was like a FINRA person and they were like RIAs and like accounting people. They were just like a lot. So anyway, we don't need to belabor this point, but it was just something - One thing I think would be interesting, I'd love to hear Brian's take on this. If you were defending Sam Backman -Fried, would you want a finance person or would you want to exclude them? Because I think, you know, on the one hand, they're going to get a lot of the concepts, which is relevant to some of the defenses, but on the other hand, if they were in a traditional financial background, they may be accustomed to more controls than were in place here and may find some of this stuff to be fugazi. What do you think? I don't think if I were, you know, representing Sam Backman -Fried, I would want an accountant, a traditional finance person. I would want someone out of the mainstream. I'd want younger people in general. There's certain, you know, you do trade in stereotypes when you're selecting a jury because you have to, because it's a very quick process in the sense that you're trying to like figure out what a person might believe. And you're also doing, just to go into a little bit of the dive here, sometimes if you have a robust defense team, you're looking up their, you know, social media posts. You're trying to, you're quickly Googling their names. You're trying to figure out about them to learn about their views. And they're generally like pro -government or there's someone who is, you know, had views that are skeptical of government. And if you're the defense, of course you're looking for people who are skeptical. And one last question I wanted to ask about this was one of the questions that the prospective jurors had to face was whether or not they had served on a jury before. And if so, whether or not they'd reached a verdict, but the judge did not want to know what the verdict was. I wondered what was the purpose of that question. And I wondered like, you know, would the prosecution be more motivated to pick people who had reached a verdict and then the defense wouldn't want to pick those people. I was like trying to figure that out. That the questions asked for every juror and every type of case, even civil cases, it's a standard question. And I think the goal is if you're a lawyer, you know, trying to pick a good juror, you want to know if they've been able to reach a verdict. If you're a prosecutor, since 95 percent of people who go to trial in criminal cases are convicted, it's probably safe to assume that they voted to convict. But if they didn't reach a verdict and you're the defense lawyer, you know that there was a hung juror and that there was some element of whether that juror or others who weren't able to reach a conclusion and that you would look potentially favorably on depending on how the juror described it. So that is an important question if you're a prosecutor or defense lawyer. And for the judge, the judge doesn't want people who are disruptive on the jury. He wants this case to go through and he wants the jury to deliberate and reach a verdict. This judge isn't supposed to have a thought about, you know, whether conviction or acquittal, but this judge Kaplan wants an orderly process and that's what he's looking for. Okay. Yeah. By the way, if I remember correctly, I should have checked through my notes, but I'm pretty sure everybody who said that they had served on a jury said that they had reached a verdict. I don't think there was anybody who said they didn't. So that's kind of interesting. All right. So let's move to opening statements. What did you each think of the opening from the prosecution? So I thought it was a textbook government SDNY opening in terms of the style well done in terms of being accessible to the jury, simplifying the issues, executed well, as I can tell from the transcript. And I think the general theme was, you know, to explain at a very simple level how a fraud was committed by Sam Bankman freed and the essence of the, of the, the fraud, what was it that made this fraudulent telling customers that their money would be safe, repeating that to Congress, saying it in tweets, when in fact the money could be given out the back door to Alameda, the controls weren't disclosed, Alameda, the funds were going to Alameda to literally to an Alameda bank account when customers thought they were depositing at FTX. And according to the government, Bankman freed is taking the money and using it for his own purposes, as he wasn't authorized to do. They also gave, I thought a pretty good roadmap of, you know, here's how we're going to prove the case. We've got documents, we've got cooperating witnesses and they previewed. These are folks who committed crimes. They've admitted the crimes, scrutinize their testimony, but look for corroborating evidence. What I thought that they did not, you know, I thought they elided over some complicated issues in ways that the defense could exploit things that are more complicated than they seem and were not necessarily nefarious, but the government is trying to paint them as nefarious by just sort of glossing over the details. One thing I didn't see when I was last on, I said the STNY prosecutors love to say at the end, there are three things. We ask you to do three things, pay close attention to the evidence, follow Judge Kaplan's instructions on the law, use your common sense. They did not do that here. That was a departure. I'm going to have to talk to Damian Williams, the US attorney, about why they chose not to do that after this. I thought it was a standard, you know, opening statement by prosecutors. One thing I didn't, couldn't tell, it didn't seem like there were visuals tied to it or if there were, they weren't really discussing them. And a lot of times - There were some, I think, but I wasn't in the courtroom, so I didn't see them, but there were a few, there were presentations for both. Yeah, the defense definitely was clear from the transcript they were using them because you could, the lawyer was having somebody like put it out, right? And so usually you want a simple story with some visuals and, you know, the prosecutors, everything comes down to the close really. I mean, you want the jury to understand what you're trying to do. You want them to know what to pay attention to, but you're not expecting them to make up their mind and they're not supposed to, the opening statement. So you're really trying to give them a roadmap of how to understand the trial, both sides are, and how to look at it. And I think, you know, the defense made that a little clearer in how they were presenting it. The lawyer made it very clear like, hey, this is how I want you to try to look at things. This is the prism I want you to see things. But I thought both were pretty standard and nothing really strayed from what was expected in either one. Interesting. I have to say, like my experience in the courtroom was like the prosecution was very easy because they use simple words like lie, stole, things like that. But parts of the defense, they used terms that were technical, like security, collateral, margin. And so even though I know this in and out, like I was also like having a slightly hard time to follow. There was a point where they moved away from that. But I remember thinking, how is that going over with this particular jury? Because I was like a little lost also, because he was also speaking, I felt like a little bit more quickly than the prosecution. I personally thought that if I was comparing the two, I thought the defense opening was better and typical not of what you would see in most trials because they really engaged with the substance of the case. However, I do agree that there were times where Mr. Cohen was sort of not explaining the background, you know, like just jumping in with stuff that the jury had not been given any context for. And I think Brian can tell you, like on the defense side, why does that happen? The defense is much more reactive. So the government gets to plan their opening. They can execute it as they plan it. They can practice it a thousand times. The defense lawyer is hearing the government opening for the first time, has to react to it and may have a lot of things going on in terms of the prep. And so, you know, you could sort of see in that defense opening, oh, you got the wrong slide up. Oh, could you go back to that to that other slide? You know, they're, they're much more like, they have to deal much more in the moment of what's happening, but I still fought on the substance that the defense opening was strong. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Maybe what I also picked up was it definitely felt like the prosecution delivery was like, like I said, it was just, it felt like it was delivered a bit more slowly. And anyway, for whatever reason, I felt like in the courtroom, I had a easier time following it. You need to talk slower than you think, actually. It's one of the hard things about, you know, presenting to a jury is it's not meant to be rapid fire conversation usually. I mean, you need to be yourself, of course, you can't, shouldn't change your personality, but oftentimes myself, you know, there's a lot of adrenaline. You need to like take a beat, take a breath and remember to just go slower because again, you've been living and breathing this case, both sides for over a year now, whatever, almost a year now and everything you understand, and you've got to remember these, you know, people, the 12 plus the alternates. Yeah, I'm sure they've heard about it, but they don't, you're now throwing them in the deep end of the pool with you. And so, I mean, your point is in the student one, Laura, because if you're knowledgeable and you're wondering about some of these terms, you can imagine what some of the jurors are thinking. What, what the heck's a margin? Like where, what does that even? And so I think that could be a danger for them, but I do think that the defense did use this analogy or metaphor, whatever it is about building a plane while it's flying, which is somewhat common defense theme for financial cases. And I thought that I'm sure we're going to hear that again, but I would tell you what, right now the prosecutors love when defense lawyers use those metaphors because they will slam them, in my opinion, in the close with that. They'll talk about the plane and how, I mean, they, they love that. That's always a danger. I don't like using analogies or metaphors and things like that in the opening of the fence work that I always worry that it will get turned on me because I've seen it and I've done it when I was a prosecutor and I've seen what happened on both sides. So you've got to be very careful in your opening because you will comment on someone's opening at the close. You will say, remember when they told you this, this, and this, and I'm going to tell you right now, those three things didn't happen, or you heard this and it's different. The government will do the same. Remember when that defense lawyer got up and told you this, and we talked about that plane? Well, guess what? I'm going to talk to you about a plane right now. So let's talk about the government's first witness who was a trader on, or I should say customer on FTX, Marc Antoine Julliard.
Crypto Critics' Corner
A highlight from Did Sam Bankman-Fried's Defense Blow It?
"Welcome back, everyone. I am Cass Piancie. I'm joined as usual by my partner in crime, Mr. Bennett Tomlin. How are you today? I'm doing well. How are you, Cass? Good. It's been an exciting week. We are joined by a very special guest, actually fourth time appearing on the show in some way, shape, or form. If you count the panel. If you count the panel, which you were a part of, David Z. Morris, welcome back to Crypto Critics Corner. Thank you. And welcome. He has, he's been writing for Protos and kind of covering the SPF trial for Protos. So it's been wonderful having you on the Protos team, David, but actually maybe we should start off there. How did you wind up writing for Protos? What's going on over at Coindesk? Let's talk about it. Yeah, I think some people will know and some people will not. There was a big round of layoffs from Coindesk about six weeks ago now, seven weeks ago. And unfortunately, I was impacted. There's a whole behind the scenes story that I can't go into too much. But as people know, Coindesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which was pretty significantly impacted by a lot of crypto crashes that we caused, question mark. And so I've been talking to some of my colleagues and saying that there needs to be some sort of to equivalent like the Silver Star or the Purple Heart for journalists who lose their jobs because they destroyed the organization that they were working for. Well, and I've also been excited just to add, before you get any further, to have, for you to have had more time to contribute to your personal newsletter, Flesh Markets, where you get to cover some of the more esoteric but interesting stuff that just can't get editorial approval at other outlets. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. And I guess right up front, I can say, it would be really awesome to have more people sign up. It's just davidzmorris .substack .com. And you get a biweekly subscriber only crypto news roundup, although right now it is mostly SPF trial. Lots of lots of good stuff there. It's been really exciting to see it grow. And I have gotten a lot of a lot of great feedback. So it's nice. And we're going to link to that sub stack in the show notes. And if you're listening to this on a podcasting platform, I will be linking to it there as well. So it'll be easy enough to find David's sub stack and also his coverage of the trial so far for Protos. So we'll be linking to all of that good stuff. But now let's get to the main course of our discussion, which is the trial and how hectic and wild this has been. Why don't you start us off, David? You've been there firsthand, wherever you want to start. Why don't you just go for it? So we just finished the first week. There was no trial on Monday, but Tuesday started with jury selection, which was interesting. But also I got a lot of reading done, which I think is actually going to be a theme for a good bit of the trial. And then we really went off to the races. The first witness was Adam Yedidia, who was one of the developers of fairly high ranking. He lived in the Bahamas penthouse with Sam Bankman -Fried and was a longtime friend. He crucially, well, we'll go into more depth, but he's a little bit different from some of the other witnesses because he's not testifying under a plea deal. He hasn't pled guilty to any crimes. So the prosecution started off with a witness who's not implicated in anything that's going on particularly. They did actually start off with a cocoa commodities trader, if I recall, right? Like everyone seems to have just skirted over that. It's okay, I actually saw a bunch of videos say the same exact thing, but I know he wasn't a very impactful witness. He basically was just saying that he, as a professional commodities trader, cocoa trader, had fallen for the hype of what SPF had put out there and FTX. He watched the Super Bowl ads and put his money on there. But yes. And that was actually kind of significant just as a thing for the prosecution to establish, which is this was a customer, somebody who had used FTX, talked about the marketing, talked about why he, a professional, trusted the platform. And that sort of establishes the grounds for a lot of the fraud charges. So yeah, that was the first. Adam, you did the second. Third witness was a guy, Matt Wong of Paradigm, which is a crypto venture fund, took the stand to talk about how they got robbed. And then yes, we wrapped up the week with Gary Wong, the co -founder of FTX and Alameda Research and Gary's testimony was definitely the bombshell of the week. And we'll get into it, but I think the totality of the situation is that things are going very badly for Sam. And there was even some drama in the courtroom that seemed to reflect that people understood that, which I think we will also get to. Yeah, so jumping back to that, I haven't been in the courtroom like you have, but I've been reviewing the coverage and the transcripts and some of that. And the opening statement for Sam Bankman -Fried's lawyers struck me when they were going over it because it made a variety of incredibly strange arguments. At least to me as a lay person, none of us on this call are a lawyer, just to be clear for anyone listening, but argued in the opening statement that Alameda Research had billions in profits, said Alameda Research was a totally legitimate payment agent for FTX that everyone was fully aware of, and then even tried to make the excuse that FTX was a bank and that a bank run is what occurred, which is surprising to me because I missed them getting that charter, but apparently their lawyer found it. Do you have any thoughts on kind of that opening? Well one notable thing about kind of being in the courtroom is that at this point, I'm not really yet looking back at anything. So I was there for the statements and I found the defense statement quite weak. The bank run thing definitely jumped out at me. And of course, that is the side of the debate that Michael Lewis is on, which maybe we can talk a tiny bit about either here or elsewhere. And also just more generally, I think that the way to think about those arguments is not so much that they're actual arguments that the defense is going to be able to make over the course of the trial for reasons that I'll get into, but they are means of sowing doubt. The defense's only real tactic so far has been to, and this is legitimate, right? In a criminal case, the standard is you have to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that somebody is guilty. And so the defense is focused on creating that reasonable doubt. It's pretty much failing to do so, so far. And I think the opening statement kind of previewed that they are kind of grasping at straws. For those who don't know, the defense witnesses were all denied. Basically, they submitted a list of witnesses that was almost exclusively, as far as I could tell, subject matter experts, finance professors, and other people who had no real specific knowledge of what was going on. And the judgment in that case was that these witnesses are only going to confuse the issue because they're going to be talking in theoretical terms rather than speaking to any substance. And so that means the defense doesn't actually have any witnesses to call. There might be some opportunities for them to go back to that initial witness list and get some people in. But I think at most there were two names that they were given the option to recall as responses to government witnesses. So they're really relying on their cross -examination to, again, almost exclusively to sow doubt about the witnesses. And that has included both with Adam Yedidia and Gary Wong talking about the deals under which they are testifying. And in Adam Yedidia's case, the first major witness, I would say, I think that fell really flat in a way that might wind up harming the entire defense. Because as I said, Yedidia did not plead guilty to anything, but he was testifying under an immunity agreement. That is, anything he said could not be used to charge him with a crime. He has not been charged with a crime, but the agreement just prevents him from being charged based on his testimony. However, and the prosecution has done this very effectively, both with Yedidia and with Gary Wong, they are actually bringing up these agreements first and emphasizing the fact that what nullifies the agreements is if the witnesses are found to have lied. So somebody like Adam Yedidia is now completely not charged with any crime. Anything he says cannot be used to charge him with a crime on the stand. But if he lies, that agreement is nullified. And the same goes for Gary Wong, who actually faces decades in prison for the stuff that he's charged with. So if you give the jury the benefit of the doubt that they're at least slightly thinking these things through, it really undermines the fundamental argument of the defense that is trying to imply basically that these people are just saying what the government wants them to say because they were offered a deal. And that's really one of, frankly, only two lagged defenses standing on right now. So that's a really compelling point that you're making and piggybacking off of that in a sense here. I think some of the more dramatic flubs that have been pointed to publicly, the one that I remember distinctly, and I don't know if this played out similarly in the courtroom, but the one I remember distinctly is he didn't buy a yacht, did he? Which was what the defense team essentially said to, I don't know if it was Yididia, I think it was Yididia where they were saying he owns a Toyota Corolla. Obviously he's not taking in all this wealth just to buy fancy crap for himself. He didn't buy a yacht, did he? And I think the other flub that everyone's been noticing or that has been sticking out for everybody is that the judge is basically not having any of this, that there's been a lot of repetition, that there's been some borderline hearsay attempts for witnesses and other stuff, and that the judge is saying, you guys better fucking cut this out right now. But yeah, can you talk about those moments? So there's actually three things because I want to talk about the hearsay thing and see if I can pull out the details because that was a pretty nuanced one. Yeah, but the questioning of Yididia about Sam's spending was honestly hilarious and really made the defense seem, I think I just have to say, not that competent. And it's surprising because this is the firm of Mark Cohen and a guy named Christian Everdell. And Everdell is handling most of the cross -examination so far, and it was Everdell who pursued this line of questioning with Yididia and was asking, yes, did he buy nice clothes? Did he buy a nice car? Did he buy a yacht? And of course, Yididia was saying, not that often. I think also during this question, Yididia was saying like, no, he just dressed in cargo shorts and a t -shirt. And I think the really incredible part that seems to show some real lack of comprehension by the defense is that the defense then pulled up a piece of evidence that was the infamous photo of Sam Bankman -Fried on stage with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair at Crypto Bahamas last year. Now, they pulled up this photo because Sam Bankman -Fried in that photo is sitting next to Bill Clinton in cargo shorts and a t -shirt. So the defense is doing this to try and show he's just a regular guy. He's not embezzling money. Look at him. But he's next to Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, guys. How do you think he got on that stage in a t -shirt and cargo shorts? Do you think the jury is morons? They know influence peddling when they see it. Do you not? And the other point at which this is a complete disaster is that there's what's known as redirect. So cross -examination is after the prosecution has asked questions, because these are all prosecution witnesses. So the prosecution goes first, asks questions, defense gets to cross -examine. And then the prosecution gets to come back for what's called redirect, which is they have to address issues that the defense raised in their cross -examination, and they can essentially rebut. Now, the rebuttal for this line of questioning that the prosecution came back with immediately was to ask you, Didier, have you heard of FTX Arena? And at this point, I was in the actual courtroom. Sometimes I'm in the overflow, but I was in the actual courtroom, and the actual courtroom burst out all of it. I could not control myself. I laughed. Everybody laughed, because we all knew where this was going, which is that Didier said, yes, I've heard of it. We paid $100 million for the naming rights for the former Miami Heat Arena. And again, it seems like the defense's tactics are built on the assumption that the jury is stupid, which is to say that they think that this guy's personal spending is the full sum of what he did with $8 billion. And so that was pretty bad. The hearsay issue was interesting, and I'm not going to be able to pull the details back up from memory. But effectively, I think this was with, maybe we shouldn't go too deep into this, because I'm not even remembering whether it was Didier or Wong. But essentially, the defense was looking at the transcript of testimony that one of the witnesses gave to, I believe, the FBI immediately after the shutdown in December, was asking them what they had said at the time. And then when they did not produce the response that the defense was hoping for, the defense began reading their past statements to them from the transcript and asking them, did you say this? And that is essentially putting words in the witness's mouth. The judge immediately cut this off very sternly. And it was part of a much larger pattern where the defense was getting constantly shut down on its lines of questioning as whether they were leading the witnesses. And of course, Cass, as you point out, the big one was repetition. And it really feels like the defense is just killing time, because a substantial portion of the cross -examination with the major witnesses so far has just been the defense re -asking the same questions as the prosecution with no apparent purpose at all, as far as I could tell.
Unchained
A highlight from SBFs Lawyers Could Be Annoying the Judge. How Might That Impact the Trial? - Ep. 554
"I think that, you know, you're getting right into the peeking behind the curtain, seeing what's happened there. They're telling you what they say and what they saw and what they did. And they're just going to be a number of them in a row. So they started with a smaller one. I think to build to the credibility of each one as they go along, right. They do Yudidia first, then they do Wang and now they're going to Ellison. So I think that's intentional. It's like putting these stepping or these stones in place to build it up with foundation and so I think it's a good, that's a smart strategy on the government's part. Valtcraft performs no -code DeFi toolkit for building, deploying, and monetizing automated yield strategies. From institutional service providers to DeFi degens, anyone can use Valtcraft to supercharge their crypto with custom cross -chain yield strategies. Learn more on vaultcraft .io. The game has changed. The Google Cloud Oracle, built for layer zero, is now securing every layer zero message by default. Their custom end -to -end solution sets itself up to bring its world -class security to Web3 and establish itself as the HTTPS within layer zero messaging. Visit layerzero .network to learn more. Buy, trade, and spend crypto on the crypto .com app. New users can enjoy zero credit card fees on crypto purchases in the first seven days. Download the crypto .com app and get $25 with the code Laura. Link in the description. Unchained has expanded beyond podcasts. We now offer crypto news, tutorials on everything you need to know about Web3, and videos to help deepen your crypto knowledge. Visit unchainedcrypto .com today. Today's topic is the ongoing criminal trial of Sam Bankman -Fried, here to discuss our Sam Ensor, partner at Cahill Gordon and Rindell, and Brian Klein, partner at Waymaker. Welcome, Sam and Brian. Thanks for having us on, Laura. Thank you, Laura, for inviting us on. So you were both recent guests, so I'm not going to go into your backgrounds first, but to help people differentiate your voices, Sam, why don't you start by telling us what your top takeaway is so far from the trial? I think the top takeaway is you see the government honing in on their theory. A big part of their theory of the alleged fraud is this notion that FTX told customers, hey, deposit your money, it's safe, without disclosing that they were going to let an affiliate, Alameda Research, use the funds to trade and have special privileges that other customers of FTX did not have. That, I think, is one interesting thing. And then we've seen from the defense side, some of their defense themes come out, like that Sam Bankman -Fried thought it was legitimate for Alameda to have these privileges, that he didn't think there was anything wrong with that because there was enough collateral for the money Alameda was borrowing and some of the defense themes in terms of normalizing the conduct. So things like they were building the plane while they were flying it to help the jury sort of understand that things were chaotic and they shouldn't necessarily infer criminal intent from things that may have just been sloppy, negligent, overlooked. And Brian, what would you say your top takeaway is so far? I think the government's diving into this case and going to the deep end very quickly. I mean, they're calling key witnesses right off the bat. Gary Wang's up now, and then they're going to call Carolyn Ellison. These are the people everyone's been waiting to hear for them and they're coming up right away. And so one of my questions is how is this case going to go five to six weeks? I don't know what's going to have it take that long if they're going through key witnesses off the bat. Now we can all anticipate other types of witnesses they'll call, things they'll do, but I mean, they're really going right at it right away. All right, so let's dive in with the very beginning of the trial, which was this new term I learned at some point in the last couple of weeks, voir dire, did I say that right? Which, Sam, I love this term. I know I said this multiple times. It's jury D selection. And what we ended up with is a jury that consisted of people with these professional backgrounds. There was a physician's assistant, a social worker, a Metro North train conductor, a librarian, a United States Postal Service vehicle maintenance worker, special ed teacher, a nurse, a Ukrainian advertising person. And then there was a retired I banker. And yeah, it was about three quarters women and I think a fourth men. And so I wondered how you thought these people, you know, the fact that, for instance, nearly none of them have financial backgrounds would affect how the trial unfolds. I think what's interesting about jury selection, it's not surprising there's a postal worker there because almost every case I had, there was a postal worker. So a lot of government employees get called all the time. They get full pay while they're in jury duty. So it's easier for them to serve, which is a part of an interesting thing. That sounds like a Manhattan jury to me. I mean, you've got a lot of well -educated people. You've got people from professional backgrounds, some of them, and you've got a pretty diverse array of people who would live in the Southern District of New York, which stretches from, you know, Staten Island, Manhattan, the Bronx and up. And so I think this jury, you know, reflects a cross section of that district. You know, you can read into, well, you got three quarters women, one quarter of men, and there's only one or two hard finance people there. I don't think that really matters here. I think that the prosecutor are putting their theory forward in something that lay people can understand. And they need to do that anyways, because you're always speaking to the juror or the jurors who aren't the highest educated people or aren't the most professionals who don't have the special maybe skill set that's relevant for your trial. Because you've got to, if you're a prosecutor, you've got to get 12 people to agree unanimously on something. So you can't be talking above the head of anybody. And I think that's going to be a real focus of the prosecutors here is making this a simple, understandable case. And, you know, often the defense tries to make things seem more complex than they are, or it may be complex and just blame the complexities. I agree with all of that. And I'll just say, I think the makeup of the jury, I think would be, it doesn't favor one side or the other from what's described. But I think one thing to remember is the jurors can talk to each other. Right. So if you have one or two that you educate and they get a point, they can educate the rest of the jury. And so I think the way both sides look at it is they think about who do I need to arm with the points who can then advocate in the jury room when it comes to deliberation. So maybe they're not all finance people, but if one finance person gets it and they can explain it to the others, that makes sense. And then there may be something that that is, you know, more understandable for the postal worker that is that they can relate to more that they make make more sense. And, you know, another important thing is, regardless of finance, a big part of the jury's job is to evaluate witness credibility. And that's something everybody is equipped to do. Indeed, the folks who may not be in front of a computer all day, but rather are delivering the mail to lots of people, talking to lots of people may have a pretty good sense of what to look at when they're evaluating demeanor to determine whether somebody's lying or not. And they have value to add in that room. I just add one point that the jurors can't talk now about the case. And I think Sam's saying at the end, when they're set off to deliver, they can talk among themselves. I think that is an important point. I suspect every time I've done a trial, you pretty quickly try to figure out who the foreperson is going to be. And usually you're right. You know, and so oftentimes, to Sam's point, you are trying to get one or two people to be advocates for you, but you really need everybody to kind of understand what's happening. Otherwise, you're going to have a problem, particularly if you're across. Wait, and I'm sorry, who the foreperson is going to be. What does that mean? So the jurors at the end, when they go back, they'll select somebody who's the foreperson. That's the lead juror who will communicate the notes usually and communicate the final verdict when they come back. They're kind of the head juror. They got their votes the same as every other jurors. It's not different, but they're sort of the nominal head juror. But oftentimes it's a person who may be in the finance case, the person with the finance background, because the other jurors will look to that person and say, hey, why don't you help us lead us through this, because to Sam's point, you can explain this to us also. Yeah, the person who was the retired investment banker also had a Stanford MBA. But I think what - I put my money on that person being the foreperson, but I was a betting man, right? Yeah, I should also say their spouse also was retired and had worked at Berkshire Hathaway. But anyway, oh, this is the reason, and maybe I should have said this in the phrasing of my question. But the other reason I had wondered about the professional backgrounds of these people is that when you were actually in the room and you were listening to all the prospective jurors, a very large proportion of them actually worked in finance, probably because it is Lower Manhattan. So just to see that it all got whittled down to only one, I was like, oh, OK. Because it just felt like, you know, there was like a FINRA person and there were like RIAs and like accounting people. They were just like a lot. So anyway, we don't need to belabor at this point, but it was just something - One thing I think would be interesting, I'd love to hear Brian's take on this. If you were defending Sam Beckman Fried, would you want a finance person or would you want to exclude them? Because I think, you know, on the one hand, they're going to get a lot of the concepts, which is relevant to some of the defenses. But on the other hand, if they were in a traditional financial background, they may be accustomed to more controls than were in place here and may find some of this stuff to be fugazi. What do you think? I don't think if I were, you know, representing Sam Beckman Fried, I would want an accountant, a traditional finance person. I would want someone out of the mainstream. I'd want younger people in general. There's certain, you know, you do trade in stereotypes when you're selecting a jury, because you have to, because it's a very quick process. And the sense that you're trying to like figure out what a person might believe. And you're also doing, just to go into a little bit of deep dive here. Sometimes if you have a robust defense team, you're looking up their, you know, social media posts. You're trying to, you're quickly Googling their names. You're trying to figure out about them to learn about their views. And they're generally like pro -government or there's someone who is, you know, had views that are skeptical of government. And if you're the defense, you're, of course, you're looking for people who are skeptical. And one last question I wanted to ask about this was, one of the questions that the prospective jurors had to face was whether or not they had served on a jury before. And if so, whether or not they'd reached a verdict, but the judge did not want to know what the verdict was. I wondered what was the purpose of that question? And I wondered, like, you know, would the prosecution be more motivated to pick people who had reached a verdict and then the defense wouldn't want to pick those people? I was like trying to figure that out. That the questions asked for every juror and every type of case, even civil cases, it's a standard question. And I think the goal is if you're a lawyer, you know, trying to pick a good juror. You want to know if they've been able to reach a verdict, if you're a prosecutor, since 95 percent of people who go to trial in criminal cases are convicted. It's probably safe to assume that they voted to convict. But if they didn't reach a verdict and you're the defense lawyer, you know that there was a hung juror and that there was some element of whether that juror or others who weren't able to reach a conclusion. And that you would look potentially favorably on depending on how the juror described it. So that is an important question. If you're a prosecutor or defense lawyer and for the judge, the judge doesn't want people who are disruptive on the jury. He wants this case to go through and he wants the juror to deliberate and reach a verdict. This judge isn't supposed to have a thought about, you know, whether a conviction or acquittal, but this Judge Kaplan wants an orderly process. And that's what he's looking for. OK, yeah, by the way, if I remember correctly, I should have checked through my notes, but I'm pretty sure everybody who said that they had served on a jury said that they had reached a verdict. I don't think there was anybody who said they didn't. So that's kind of interesting. All right. So let's move to opening statements. What did you each think of the opening from the prosecution? So I thought it was a textbook government SDNY opening in terms of the style well done, in terms of being accessible to the jury, simplifying the issues executed well, as I can tell from the from the transcript. And I think the general theme was, you know, to explain at a very simple level how a fraud was committed by Sam Bankman -Fried and the essence of the of the fraud. What was it that made this fraudulent telling customers that their money would be safe, repeating that to Congress, saying it in tweets, when in fact the money could be given out the back door to Alameda. The weren't controls disclosed. Alameda, the funds were going to Alameda to literally to an Alameda bank account when customers thought they were depositing at FTX. And according to the government, Bankman -Fried is taking the money and using it for his own purposes, as he was authorized to do. They also gave, I thought, a pretty good roadmap of, you know, here's how we're going to prove the case. We've got documents, we've got cooperating witnesses and they previewed. These are folks who committed crimes. They've admitted the crimes, scrutinized their testimony, but look for corroborating evidence. What I thought that they did not, you know, I thought they elided over some complicated issues in ways that the defense could exploit things that are more complicated than they seem and were not necessarily nefarious. But the government is trying to paint them as nefarious by just sort of glossing over the details. One thing I didn't see when I was last on, I said the STNY prosecutors love to say at the end, there are three things. We ask you to do three things. Pay close attention to the evidence. Follow Judge Kaplan's instructions on the law. Use your common sense. They did not do that here. That was a departure. I'm going to have to talk to Damian Williams, the U .S. attorney, about why they chose not to do that after this. I thought it was a standard, you know, opening statement by prosecutors. One thing I didn't couldn't tell, it didn't seem like there were visuals tied to it or if there were, they weren't really discussing them. And a lot of times there were some, I think, but I wasn't in the courtroom, so I didn't see them, but there were a few. There were presentations for both. Yeah, the defense definitely was clear from the transcript. They were using them because you could, the lawyer was having somebody like put it out. Right. And so usually you want a simple story with some visuals. And, you know, prosecutors, everything comes down to the close, really. I mean, you want the jury to understand what you're trying to do. You want them to know what to pay attention to, but you're not expecting them to make up their mind. They're not supposed to, the opening statement. So you're really trying to give them a roadmap of how to understand the trial, both sides are, and how to look at it. I think, you know, the defense made that a little clearer in how they were presenting it. The lawyer made it very clear, like, Hey, this is how I want you to try to look at things. This is the prism I want you to see things, but I thought both were pretty standard and nothing really strayed from what was expected and either one. Interesting. I have to say, like my experience in the courtroom was like, the prosecution was very easy because they use simple words like lie, stole, things like that. But parts of the defense, they used terms that were technical, like security, collateral, margin. And so even though I know this in and out, like I was also like having a slightly hard time to follow. There was a point where they moved away from that, but I remember thinking, how is that going over with this particular jury? Because I was like a little lost also because he was also speaking, I felt like a little bit more quickly than the prosecution. I personally thought that if I was comparing the two, I thought the defense opening was better and not typical of what you would see in most trials because they really engaged with the substance of the case. However, I do agree that there were times where Mr. Cohen was sort of not explaining the background, you know, like just jumping in with stuff that the jury had not been given any context for. And I think Brian can tell you, like on the defense side, why does that happen? The defense is much more reactive. So the government gets to plan their opening. They can execute it as they plan it. They can practice it a thousand times. The defense lawyer is hearing the government opening for the first time, has to react to it and may have a lot of things going on in terms of the prep. And so, you know, you could sort of see in that defense opening, oh, you got the wrong slide up. Could you go back to that to that other slide? You know, they're much more like they have to deal much more in the moment of what's happening. But I still fought on the substance that the defense opening was strong. Oh, interesting. Yeah, maybe what I also picked up was it definitely felt like the prosecution delivery was like, like I said, it was just it felt like it was delivered a bit more slowly. And anyway, for whatever reason, I felt like in the courtroom, I had an easier time following it. You need to talk slower than you think, actually. It's one of the hard things about presenting to a jury is it's not meant to be rapid fire conversation usually. I mean, you need to be yourself, of course, you can't, shouldn't change your personality, but oftentimes myself, you know, there's a lot of adrenaline. You need to like take a beat, take a breath and remember to just go slower. Because again, you've been living and breathing this case, both sides for over a year now, whatever, almost a year now and everything you understand. And you've got to remember these, you know, people, the 12 plus the alternates. Yeah, I'm sure they've heard about it, but they don't, you're now throwing them in the deep end of the pool with you. And so, I mean, your point is in the student one, Laura, because if you're knowledgeable and you're wondering about some of these terms, you can imagine what some of the jurors are thinking. What the heck's a margin, like where was that even? And so I think that could be a danger for them, but I do think that the defense did use this analogy or metaphor, whatever it is about building a plane while it's flying, which is somewhat common defense theme for financial cases. And I thought that I'm sure we're going to hear that again, but I would tell you what, right now, the prosecutors love when defense lawyers use those kind of metaphors because they will slam them, in my opinion, in the close with that. They'll talk about the plane and how, I mean, they, they love that. That's always a danger. I don't like using analogies or metaphors and things like that in the opening of the defense lawyers. I always worry that it will get turned on me because I've seen it and I've done it when I was a prosecutor and I've seen what happened on both sides. So you've got to be very careful in your opening because you will comment on someone's opening at the close. You will say, if you're, remember when they told you this, this, and this, and I'm going to tell you right now, those three things didn't happen, or you heard this and it's different. The government will do the same. Remember when that defense lawyer got up and told you this and we talked about that plane? Well, guess what? I'm gonna talk to you about a plane right now. So let's talk about the government's first witness who was a trader on, or I should say customer on FTX, Marc Antoine Julliard.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from UNCHAINED: Did Sam Bankman-Fried Have Intent to Defraud FTX Investors?
"Today's guest is Joshua Clayman, senior counsel, U .S. head of fintech and head of blockchain and digital assets at Linklaters. Welcome, Josh. Thanks, Laura. It's great to be here. This week saw the beginning of the criminal trial of the United States versus Sam Pinkman Freed. We are recording on Thursday afternoon and you and I were together in the courtroom or at least in the overflow room, I guess. So what are your biggest takeaways from the trial so far? Wow. Well, that was a lot of information. I mean, that's one of the big things that comes to mind. So one of the takeaways, and I'll say nothing is legal advice, investment advice, nothing like that, just personal views only as usual. But there was so much to hear and so much detail to understand. One of my takeaways was the judge in his own respectful way, you know, was saying, OK, this is too much repetition. Let's not keep going over the same thing. He said that on several occasions. But as I was sitting there personally hearing about all of these sorts of things from, you know, depositing your stablecoins, your fiat and the methods for that or your crypto, things like that, all the way to, OK, VC investments and due diligence and financial statements and coding and developers and traders and all the sorts of things. I kept thinking to myself, you know, we've been in this space a long time, you know, for people who may not have any technical background or legal background or have not been in the space as you have, right, as like reading journalists and things like that. This is a lot to take in. And so that was one of my big takeaways was that it was information. What is the saying like drinking from a fire hose? And I was I was trying to I mean, we talked about this earlier. My hand was so sore from taking furious notes, you know, and I just kept wondering, you know, how much of this is sinking in and what will the jury remember? Yeah. And so I happened to be there during the jury deselection, as one of my guests called it recently, because even though it's typically called jury selection, he's right. It's actually a process of deselecting people. And what I ended up noting was the different professional backgrounds of the jury, our physician's assistant, social worker, Metro North train conductor, a librarian, United States Postal Service vehicle maintenance worker, special ed teacher, a nurse. There was a Ukrainian woman who worked in advertising and then there was a retired investment banker. He's actually born in Hong Kong and and he's retired now. But, you know, it was also, by the way, I think three quarters women and one fourth men. So like given this kind of background, basically of the jury, what are you what are your thoughts on how this is going over with them or how this could affect the trial? Well, one way I think it has affected the trial is we went over in painstaking detail, step by step, watching videos of, again, how to deposit money, how to withdraw money, all these things. Step onto FTX. Yes. As though you're actually doing it. We listen to the video. And so I think that was done to get to level set, really to bring everyone up so that when they start talking about, OK, well, what was the balance in the account where we had the tutorial of how to pretty much create our account and what to do and things like, OK, you're going to send wire instructions to this named beneficiary. You got to get it right. And then lo and behold, that named beneficiary keeps coming up again and again because it's actually an account owned by Alameda. Right. So so I think that's part of it, just the building blocks, the constant building blocks. But I think for the prosecution, I mean, what they're trying to show is no matter that it's a highly technical area, the allegations are this is simple fraud. Right. This is untruths. This is misstatements. And this is, you know, inducing people to trust or to invest or do other things on false pretenses. And I think so that is the message on the one hand. From the other side, you know, the defense and certainly we saw this with the opening statements, but also throughout in some of the the cross examinations today, which I'm sure we'll talk about, but trying to say, like, look, this is this case is based on hindsight just because FTX went bankrupt, just because all these things happened. That doesn't mean that there was fraud involved. That doesn't mean that there was conspiracy, because guess what? The whole digital asset space was going through crypto winter and we had all of these other events. So and maybe we'll go into some of some of the statements about, you know, bulletproof and things like that that that popped up. But there were there were some notable quotes and some of them were pretty surprising today. Yeah. So just so I know you weren't there the day that they gave the opening statements, you know, which was Wednesday, but I know you you did read a little transcript that I was able to send you. So just from that, like, what was your take on the opening statements of the prosecution and the defense? I think I mean, as as I kind of said, like they're trying to simplify it, right. They're trying to say, like, look, SPF was larger than life. He was he was living in a 30 plus million dollar penthouse. Right. You're talking about the prosecution. Yes, exactly. Sorry. The prosecution was trying to show this. You know, this is a person, you know, this being broadcast into your living room, you know, the person who positioned himself as being, you know, the the face of crypto. And you can trust him and the adult in the room. And yet in the prosecution's view, it was all a lie. So trying to give that kind of simple message without going into so much detail for the defense, as I mentioned, a lot of it was saying this is looking this is a backwards looking thing, but also saying, like, look at who who is testifying. Look at who these alleged co -conspirators are. They're people who got deals. Right. And you need to think, Jerry, about why they might be testifying in a certain way. And I think another thing was and this has been something that the defense has been trying to show is, look, there was no intent, like there was no there was no fraud and there was no fraud also because there was no intent to defraud. Right. Like the things that are being alleged by the prosecution, the defendant thought were legal, for example, loans from FTSE Alameda, things like that, where there was reliance upon other people who were more knowledgeable in that area. So I think that's that's what I really took away from both of those opening statements. They were both impassioned, of course. Yeah. And just one thing that I wanted to clarify, because I saw some of the other media accounts didn't have this nuance, but about whether or not there was ever a plea offer to SPF. I saw some of the other media were saying that the government never offered a plea deal. However, there was a nuance there, so it's not quite accurate. Basically, at the beginning, the government said we would like to put on the record kind of like what happened with a potential plea deal. And they said that basically shortly after SPF was charged, the prosecution did raise the possibility of plea discussions with the defense and the defense refused. And so therefore no discussions ensued, which is why there was never a plea offer that was made. So it's really it really sounds like Sam was the one who decided, no, I'm not going to do a plea deal. I'm pleading not guilty. So it really is more his decision than it was the government's, at least from from their recounting of it. That is what I took away. Let's now just jump to the first witness, which was a customer of FTX.
Bankless
A highlight from ROLLUP: SBF Trial Underway | ETH ETFs Are Here | Ripple Wins Again
"He said you have to understand that when it went in there, it was a rounding error. That I felt like we had infinity dollars in there and that I wasn't even thinking about it. That, I think, is very revealing. That is how SPF treated FTX. I have infinite money. And I was like, where did I put that $5 trillion? Is it under my desk? And the reason why they had to send it to Alameda is because they knew FTX could not get bank accounts. It's not like, oopsies, we don't have bank accounts to send it to Alameda. Like, it's their biggest problem. Bankless Nation, it is the first Friday of Uptober, I mean, October. David, what time is it? Oh, it's time for the Bankless Friday Weekly Rollup, Ryan, where we cover the entire weekly news in crypto, which is always an ambitious endeavor, especially this week. It's one of those weeks, yet we persevere into the frontier nonetheless. How are you? David, are you team Uptober? You think it's going to be up month, down month? What do you think? I'm not ready to be hurt again, so I have no strong opinions. You've been hurt? You've been hurt too many Octobers previous? Not just like, there's so many reasons to be bullish. And if I keep on saying like, look at all these reasons to be bullish, and then we get like $1 ,200 Ether, I'm going to be like, it did it to me again. It's that time in the market. But OK, but let's contrast this with October last year. All right. So October last year, it was just before the fall of SPF. Yeah, right. We were watching. And we got through an absolutely grueling summer, where we had like the collapse of Terra, Luna. We had three hours capital liquidation. We had triple digit ETH. It was an absolute grueling summer 2022. And here we are in October, and we're getting ready to take a breath and be like, oh, man, that was crazy. We're on the other side of that. And yeah, I'm so glad all of that's over. Like we're good, right? It's like that wasn't so bad. Like we're good. We're good. We made it. And then what happened? Meanwhile, CZ and SPF are just duking it out on Twitter. Yeah. That was a year ago. That was a year ago. But we got some SPF news. Now, one year later, what's happening with SPF this week? The SPF trial has begun. It began on Tuesday. So there's been the jury selection that has happened. So we know who the jurors are. The opening statements have come out from each side, both the prosecution and the defense. So we know what their general strategies gist is. We've had the first witnesses. So the first witness has come on. And then we have today, Thursday, the second round of witnesses. Some familiar names that you will be familiar with. All of that happened this week. It's going on. And it will go on for the remaining six weeks of this whole thing. So we will recap it all and also tell you what's to come. But that's not all. Ryan, what else is going on? The ETH Futures ETF Derby. OK, remember last week we said we might have ETH Futures by Monday and boom, we got ETH Futures. So we're going to talk about that. Who's in the arena? Who's ahead in the race? What all of this means for crypto. The SEC takes another L. Gary just can't stop losing. But to top it all off, Suzu of 3Rows Capital arrested in Singapore while trying to leave the country. And the order is out for Kyle Davies arrest as well. Kyle Davies on the run. Man, like that's just good stuff, man. But then, of course, the market's not necessarily doing following suit. So this is why I'm saying I'm not ready to get hurt again. Well, not ready to get hurt again. Not ready for October, though. There are some believers. We'll talk about that in the market section. But before we get there, David, it's back to school time. And I'm not talking about regular school. I'm talking about crypto startup school, my friend. This is from A16Z. What is crypto startup school? A16Z crypto startup school is famous. It is an accelerator, a 12 week accelerator program with some of just the biggest entrepreneurs and founders as your mentors in the industry, along with a lot of the partners at A16Z. So you apply, you apply with your startup, and you apply to the school, and then you get accepted, hopefully, to go and be a part of this accelerator. We at Bankless Ventures look at a lot of the startups that come out of accelerator programs like this, especially A16Zs. And so being accepted to the A16 startup school, I would call that bullish. So like I said, 12 week program is in London from March 27th in London in Britain. And so, I mean, it's just like some straight market experience. Don't get your MBA. Don't do that. Just go to A16Z crypto startup school. Yeah, it's like a startup MBA. I can't recommend a program like this enough. Chris Dixon, of course, is a mentor there. Jing Wang from Optimism, just absolutely world class. I don't think anyone else does it better. And the call to action is if you are a crypto founder, Web3 founder, make sure you hit the deadline and apply to A16Z crypto startup school. You've got to do this by October 20th, 2023. There's a link in the show notes to apply. 14 days. 15 days. Get on it. Let's do it. This is a build market. So let's get building. David, market section. Let's talk about it. What's Bitcoin price doing on the week? Bitcoin price, happy, up 2%, 26 ,900 where we started. We are up 600 more dollars to 27 ,500, up 2 % on the week. Nice job, big. Oh, we kind of erased a little bit of the gains. Just a little bit. Just a little bit. All right. So hopefully 2 % by the time you're listening to it. Overall, overall, a good, good 30 days. Good 30 days. Eth price starting the week at 16 ,060, down 2%, WTF at 1620, Bitcoin up 2%, Ether down 2%. What gives? I don't know.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from SBF Trial: 10/05 Update
"Welcome to the SBF trial, a Coindesk podcast network newsletter bringing you daily insights from inside the courtroom where Sam Bankman -Fried will try to stay out of prison. Follow the Coindesk podcast network to get the audio each morning with content from the Coindesk regulation team and voiced by Wondercraft AI. A Parisian cocoa trader told Sam Bankman -Fried's pricey ads and FTX's confident CEO helped convince him the crypto exchange was a safe place to deposit over $100 ,000 so he could trade cryptocurrencies. But he never expected that anyone but him would touch his funds. The federal government began its prosecution of Bankman -Fried in earnest Wednesday afternoon with a customer turned witness who introduced the jury to crypto trading, the FTX exchange and the allegedly illegal loans that felled last November. Marc -Antoine Jolliard, a commodities trader who lives in London, said he only intended to spot trade cryptocurrencies on FTX, which is to say buy and sell tokens like Bitcoin. Critically he said he never agreed to loan his assets out. The finance professional said he avoided FTX's more lucrative margin lend feature because he wanted to have full control over his assets. Did you ever consider the possibility that FTX was borrowing your money? Asked Assistant U .S. Attorney Danielle Kudla, a prosecuting attorney, Jolliard responded, No. More than 100 reporters and onlookers gathered in one of Manhattan's largest wood -paneled federal courthouses to catch a glimpse of Bankman -Fried, the 31 -year -old who prosecutors say defrauded his crypto customers, investors and lenders of billions of dollars. In their opening argument, prosecutors cast Bankman -Fried as a calculating villain who told few in his empire about the alleged illegal activity that they said ruined his companies and ravaged investors. They bolstered this image of a secret conspiracy with their second witness, Adam Yedidia, a college friend of Bankman -Fried, who followed him to the crypto hedge fund Alameda Research and then on to FTX. During questioning from AUSA Danielle Sasson, Yedidia said he resigned from FTX the week of its bankruptcy when I learned that Alameda Research had used customer deposits to pay back lenders. The legality of the loans are central to the case against Bankman -Fried. Prosecutors allege Alameda backstopped its bad bets on the crypto market with FTX customers' dollars plus their crypto deposits. Defense attorneys said the relationship between those two companies was neither secret nor illegal. Bankman -Fried and his companies were building the plane in flight, Mark Cohen, who anchors the defense, said in his opening statement. He told the jury his client, a math nerd, did nothing illegal but perhaps unwise, like never hiring a chief risk officer to watch the health of his innovative crypto exchange. And he began casting blame at former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, Bankman -Fried's ex -girlfriend and a key witness, saying that the defendant told her to hedge the trading firm's risk on multiple occasions, but she didn't. Day one of witness testimony gave both sides a taste of Judge Lewis Kaplan's hold on the courtroom. The 78 -year -old Clinton appointee cracked the rare joke and on occasion lightly tussled with trial teams for asking what he found to be leading or irrelevant questions. In one of the stranger back -and -forths of the day, he challenged prosecutors' attempts to show the jury a zoomed -in version of the first witness's FTX wallet. When the DOJ was showing various advertisements, he asked, just so we're all complete, who's Tom Brady, to get an answer on the record. He's a professional football player, Yedidia said. He ended the day at 4 .25 p .m. before prosecutors finished questioning Yedidia. That will resume on Thursday. Prosecutors said they hoped to call at least two more witnesses this week, including Matt Huang of Paradigm, a venture firm that invested heavily in FTX equity, and Gary Wang, a member of Bankman -Fried's inner circle. After the jury left the room on Wednesday, Bankman -Fried's trial team asked Kaplan to make accommodations for the defendant's Adderall prescription. He is not getting the four doses he needs to stay focused throughout the day, they said. Kaplan deferred on taking immediate action and told them to take the issue up with an official in the Bureau of Prisons. I'm not a medical professional, Kaplan said. For his part, Bankman -Fried himself was glued to his laptop throughout the day, where he appeared to be typing up notes. Former FTX developer Adam Yedidia will complete his testimony Thursday, but the anticipated names are more likely to be Paradigm's Matt Huang and former FTX executive Gary Wang. Huang's name was first mentioned on Tuesday and confirmed by prosecutors on Wednesday. The DOJ's case so far seems to be focused on casting FTX as a troubled company and Bankman -Fried as the face and director of those troubles. Early testimony was light on the specifics of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Marc -Antoine Jolliard, the London -based French commodities trader and FTX customer, briefly told the jury what cryptocurrencies are, saying he invested in coins like Bitcoin and Dogecoin. Prosecutors had former FTX developer Adam Yedidia take this description a step further, mentioning that they are decentralized currencies, but not delving too deeply into what that means. It is a tactic seemingly geared toward easing a jury composed of laypersons into what promises to be a complex case stemming from the digital asset ecosystem. The first set of witnesses is also revealing, no law enforcement officials are expected to take the stand just yet and we're barely scratching the surface of the technical details about what blockchains are or how FTX actually operated. Instead, we're hearing from people immediately affected. A trader who lost north of $100 ,000 and still hasn't gotten it back and deeply involved in the company's operation. Paradigm was part of a massive fundraising round for FTX US, the US branch of the global crypto empire, which raised $400 million in January 2022. Huang, being the next witness, suggests the DOJ will continue to pursue a way of expressing the idea that FTX seemed like a safe, good place to store funds, but in reality wasn't. The DOJ said in its opening argument that it intends to show that Bankman Freed directed all of the activities that led to his company's failure. Wang, who is expected to discuss FTX's software, including possibly the backdoor that allowed Alameda to borrow so heavily from FTX, may then be the kicker at the end of the first week of the trial.
Unchained
A highlight from SBF Trial, Day 2: DOJ: Sam Bankman-Fried Lied His Way to Wealth, Power, and Influence
"Hi everyone, Laura here. This is the Unchained Recap for Day 2, October 4, of the criminal trial of Sam Pinkman -Fried. The U .S. Department of Justice started the criminal trial for Sam Pinkman -Fried this Wednesday afternoon by declaring in its opening statement that Pinkman -Fried deliberately lied his way toward, quote, wealth, power, and influence, allegedly stealing billions of dollars from thousands of individual people. The defense team for Pinkman -Fried, on the other hand, described the former FTX CEO as, quote, a math nerd and a, quote, hard worker who acted in good faith and took reasonable business actions during his time as FTX's founder and CEO. The opening statements from both sides occurred on the second day of the trial, following the finalization of the jury selection process earlier that morning. Pinkman -Fried's trial also saw testimonies from a former FTX customer and a longtime friend of the defendant. Overall, the prosecution's opening statement was cleaner and easier to follow, using simple words such as lied or stole repeatedly, and sentences like, Pinkman -Fried, quote, was using his company FTX to commit fraud on a massive scale, and the money he was spending to build his empire, it was money he was stealing from FTX's customers. It even referred to infamous tweets of SBS that he deleted, as well as testimony to Congress that contradicted what prosecutors allege actually occurred at FTX. The defense's opening, which brought up terms like margin loans, collateral, and liquidity, was harder to follow, even for someone familiar with crypto and this case. Chosen jurors included numerous people with professional backgrounds far from finance, such as a retired corrections officer, a trained conductor, a social worker, and a nurse. The only juror with a financial background was a retired investment banker with a Stanford MBA. However, Pinkman -Fried's attorney, Mark Cohen, also had some easier -to -follow moments in his opening. He called his client Sam and said the government's portrait of him had been, quote, almost a cartoon of a villain. Cohen also used some simpler statements, such as, quote, The first witness called by the prosecution was Marc -Antoine Julliard, an FTX customer who had lost roughly $150 ,000 worth of cryptocurrencies and fiat money he had deposited into or purchased on FTX. He explained the due diligence he conducted before deciding to use FTX and how his research on Pinkman -Fried led him to have a picture of SBF that was, quote, Julliard shared with the courtroom how, on November 6th and 7th, the days before FTX's insolvency became public, tweets by SBF stating that customer assets were safe assured Julliard so that he didn't try to withdraw any of his funds. The second person to testify was Adam Yadidia, who called himself a close friend of Pinkman -Fried's since their college days at MIT and who also worked at FTX as a software engineer at the time of its collapse and Alameda Research as a trader prior to that. Yadidia said he had resigned immediately from FTX upon learning that Alameda, Pinkman -Fried's crypto trading firm, had used FTX customer deposits to repay Alameda loans. Just before the trial closed for the day, Yadidia acknowledged he had been living with nine roommates, one of whom was SBF, in a luxurious penthouse in the Bahamas worth about $35 million. The 31 -year -old Pinkman -Fried currently faces seven felony charges ranging from wire fraud to conspiracy to commit money laundering. The trial will resume tomorrow at 9 .30 a .m. Eastern Time with a continuation of Yadidia's testimony. The government then stated that its next witnesses this week will likely include Matt Huang, co -founder and managing partner at Paradigm, and Gary Huang, former CTO of FTX. Unchained will be back with more updates tomorrow.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from The Cause of Conversion
"Thank you gang, good morning everyone. Typically when I'm preparing a sermon I do my very best to make sure that it's balanced and here's what I'm looking for when I say balanced. There are lots of ways you can deliver a passage of the Bible and I'm trying my best to keep some parts of the sermon theological and some parts practical. If you aren't familiar with that first word, as I wasn't until I was like in my late teens, theological meaning I want us to think, I want us to think right thoughts about God. That's theology. And then practical, based on what we know about God, I want us to act. So a sermon, I try my best to balance them, theological thinking about God and practical acting on what we know about God. And yet when you go through the Bible, some parts of it are more one than the other. And that's okay, that's the way the Bible works. Today is going to be one of those messages that are a little bit more heavy on the theological side than the practical side. So on days like that you have to pray and you have to ask God, remember what Jesus said? We're supposed to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our mind. So I'm going to ask that God would grant a very attentive mind. Because I'm going to ask you to worship the Lord your God through the word with a mind that thinks right thoughts about God. So Lord, that's our goal. We want to think. You've given us a mind, a working mind to be able to think. It's unlike the animals who can't think didactically like we can, but we can rationalize. We can think in ways that honor you and we can think in ways that don't honor you. So I'm asking that you would grant first, that you would grant in this room a very attentive mind, that we would all aim our minds toward God to tune out other thoughts and to just spend a little time on a Sunday thinking about nothing else but the greatness of the glory and the beauty and the majesty of our great God. So help us now as we worship through the word to love you by thinking about you. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen. We're in John chapter four. So if you have a Bible, grab it, open it, go to John. That's in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, fourth book of the New Testament and open to the fourth chapter. We're almost done with it, sort of almost done with it. We're about three quarters of the way through with it. Let me catch you up as you're tuning there. Jesus has been having a conversation with an immoral Samaritan woman, and no one wants to be around this woman, but Jesus did. And so he intentionally met her at the well. And boy, what a meeting they've had. John, the writer of this book, records the true historical account of what happened between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, and we've gone through most of it. Let me tell you what we've seen so far. Right now, Jesus has revealed certain things to this woman that she's gone away from this conversation knowing only one thing. She doesn't know about the cross, she doesn't know about the grave, she doesn't know about anything except she knows one thing. I met a man who told me everything there was to know about me. And she runs off and tells the townspeople, who she's going to in our passage today. She doesn't know about him being a savior yet. She just knows, I met a man who has the ability to tell me things that a mere man doesn't have. So she thinks, I just met a prophet. That's it. That's all she knows. Last Sunday, if you were here, as you're reading through John 4, John takes a pause, and he tells us this other lesson that's related that Jesus wanted to teach his disciples about this. And here's, in a nutshell, what that lesson was. Jesus says, look around you guys, God's field is full and it's ready for the picking with women and people just like this woman. The time has come when God's mission field is full of women like this one I'm talking to, women and men and children whom God wants to save. They're unconverted and God wants to bring them to the truth. And so now John is going to bring us back to what happened with the woman. So there's a story about the woman, I'm going somewhere with this, follow me, story about the woman, an intentional pause, and then it returns to the narrative about the woman. If you were paying close attention last week, if anybody comes up to me afterwards and says they knew this, I'm going to be shocked. If you were paying close attention last week, I skipped three verses. Usually I go one verse, then the next verse, then the next verse. We don't skip anything. And that's a big no -no. We don't skip verses. And so I skipped three verses because as I was studying, I realized these really belong with the text I'm going to show you today. So I purposely skipped them to save them for today. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to look at those three verses I skipped, which is found in verse 28, 29, and 30. Then we're going to skip the passage I preached on last Sunday, which is verse 31 through 38. And we're going to take the part I skipped and join it to the part where you'll see why. Can I show you why? This reads, this portion, you're going to go, wow, that reads so smoothly. It's almost like there was no interruption. Watch how smooth the narrative goes now, okay? So starting in verse 28, where I skipped, 29 and 30, then jumping down to 39, the narrative reads smooth. Check this out. So the woman, she's just finished talking with Jesus, and now this is what happens after. So the woman left her water jar and went away into the town and said to the people, come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ? They went out of the town and were coming to him. Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, he told me all that I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, it's no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the savior of the world. Now, there is a primary lesson that most preachers, when they preach this passage or if you've ever been in a Bible study or a Sunday school class, there's one primary lesson that's being taught here. In the job of an interpreter, you when you're home and you open your Bible in the morning with your cup of coffee or your spot of tea or whatever you drink and you're reading the Bible, you're all interpreters at that moment, there's only one lesson. And the job is to get at that one lesson. What did the author mean? If we get somewhere else, we've missed the interpretation. So our job is to find out what John meant by what he wrote and then get at that meaning. The meaning of this is not real difficult. It's very simple. Here's what happened. A woman had an encounter with Jesus and she went home and told everybody about it. That's it. That's the story. That's what happened. So if this passage is preached a hundred times this year in a hundred different churches all over the world, 99 out of a hundred times, here's what the sermon's going to be about. She's a witness. She's really the first witness in the Gospel of John. And so the message is going to be about witnessing. And they'll tell you, go home and do likewise. And they'll take you through it piece by piece, showing you how she witnessed, because she did a good job, and they'll say, this is how you witnessed. And I'm telling you, that is the faithful way to handle this text. A hundred percent of the time, that's the way to do it. I'm not going to do that today. Here's why. Knowing the majority of the people at our church and knowing that the majority of you have been in church your whole life, you've probably heard this preached 20 times. And I'm knowing that I could give you the main lesson in about 30 seconds, which I just did. I want to show you how the Bible can be like an onion, like an onion, and how you could read this. My grandmother's 105. You're probably getting tired of me telling you that. She woke up this morning and read her Bible for close to an hour. I'm telling you. You know how I know? She's done it her whole life. She's probably read this passage 105 times, I'm exaggerating. Every time, there's some new layer of the onion that gives her food for her soul. I want to peel back a layer. Again, there's only one meaning, but there's lots of ways, vantage points, to look at that one meaning and glean new food from this never -ending nourishment that is God's word. In narratives like the one we're reading, especially the gospel narratives where you're reading about a true historical account, this really happened in history, and where there's lots of different people in the story, you can look at it from her perspective or the perspective of Jesus or the perspective of the Samaritans. If there were other people, we could read it from different perspectives, and every time you do, you peel back a new layer of the onion. Isn't the Bible awesome? It'll keep you nourished for the rest of your life. Well, this week, I looked at the woman and I said, Lord, I'll preach this. If that's what you want, I'll just go and I'll preach a message on witnessing. I just couldn't do it. I wanted to peel back a little bit and look at this from the lens of the Samaritans. I wanted to see how it was that God converted them through first this woman and then through an encounter with Jesus. And so this morning, what we're going to do is we're going to do a case study in conversion. The Samaritans were my focus this week, which is why I've entitled this sermon, the 20th sermon, by the way, in our series through John, The Cause of Conversion. Would you give me two minutes before we start picking apart this text? Would you give me two minutes to define conversion? Because I imagine that there might be a lot of different definitions that people would come up with as to what that word means. What is that? Most people may have grown up believing, as I did, that conversion was the same exact thing as being born again. It isn't. Oh, it's related. As a matter of fact, you might think of conversion as the other side of the coin of being born again. Let me explain. Get your thinking cap on. Here we go. Being born again, theologians have a term for it just like they do conversion, and the term is regeneration. How many of you have heard the term regeneration before? How many of you have read the book of Genesis? Genesis is the beginning. When you were born, you had a Genesis. When you were born again, you had a re -Genesis. God made your birth happen again on the inside. Conversion is not the same thing, and here's how. What happens on the inside when you're born again, when God takes your dead soul, which is the way you were born, you're dead in your sins, so was I, when God makes you alive to Christ, that happens at the soul or the heart level, and at that very same instant, you mind falls, but at that very same instant, after God makes you alive, something happens in the mind. What happens in the mind is conversion, and it's really important. Here's why it's important. Look what Jesus said. This is going to get juicy. Jesus said, truly I say to you, unless you are, say the word, and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. So you tell me, is conversion important? You better believe it. Here's the word Jesus used. He used the Greek word, strepho, which simply means, look on the screen, to be changed, or a better definition, to turn and go another direction. Someone is born again. At that moment, their eyes are open to see the truth. Once that happens at the soul level, something happens instantaneously in the mind. In the mind, you are able to believe the truth about Jesus. You see him as he truly is. You no longer see your old life the way that it was. You turn away from it, and you turn to something new. That is the moment when conversion begins. It continues throughout your life. God continues to make you into something new. We call that process sanctification. It starts the moment you're converted, and it continues throughout your life. He's continually renewing your mind, changing how you see first God, then you, then the world, then every little thing continues this process of being converted into the image of Jesus Christ. So conversion is the flip side of the coin of regeneration, but it's not exactly the same thing. caused Conversion is by having the eyes of your heart opened, listen to these words, to a knowledge of God that you were prior blind to, and it's this spiritual knowing and believing that I see in this text. Martyn Lloyd -Jones said something about conversion that I think sums it up better than anybody else. Look what Martyn Lloyd -Jones said. He said conversion is the first exercise of the new nature. So once you're born again, the first thing you do, the first act is conversion in ceasing from old forms of life, my old sinful life, and starting a new life. It's the first action of the regenerate soul in moving from something, something I used to be, to this new life. That's the best definition of conversion that I could find, a way that I think will be helpful to you in your life in understanding salvation. In this text, I see a great case study of how conversion works. These people went from believing something to suddenly having their eyes opened to see something new. If you did what I did, some people, it's funny, they think that preachers somehow have some supernatural funnel from God where he pours information in your head. That is not at all what happens to a preacher. It's just discipline. That's all it is. Discipline to study the Scriptures and sit in it and sit in it, and then when you're done, sit in it some more. And God does for a preacher what he would do for you if you spent as much time in a text as I do. I spend on average about 20 hours a week preparing for a sermon, roughly 20 hours, sometimes more, sometimes less. If you spent as much time as I did in this little text, I promise you, you'd start to see little observations popping out, little things you're like, oh, I never saw that before. And if you spent as much time with me this week looking at this text and looking at it, looking at it, looking at it, can I show you a few things that might start popping out to you? There are three because statements in this text. If you're reading in the morning in 20 minutes and you're reading the story about the woman at the well, you're not going to stop on the word because, would you? Because it's just the because. No one stops at the word because. But if you did stop, you would see the cause of things. Can I show you these three because statements in the text? Take a look. I put them on the screen for you. Well here's the whole text. You'd see these three because statements. Here are the three because statements popping out. Put those up for me, Logan. You have the first one? Poor Logan. The first because statement, we'll get to the second one in a second, many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony. So they believed in him because of the woman's testimony. Look at the second because statement. Now Logan. And many more believed in him because of his word. But now here's the cause that changed my whole trajectory of this sermon, verse 42. They said to the woman, look at this, look church, it is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves. And we know, it's the first time this word is used in the chapter, we know that this is indeed the savior of the world. Church, look at me. Something caused the water bottle. What was it? Me. I pushed it. All I want to do is look at this text as a case study of what caused you to be born again, to be converted. I want to look at this as a case study to see what caused them to be converted so that you will know first how to pray for your unbelieving family, but second even more importantly, to know whether or not you're converted. There are lots of people who've been going to church for years who may not be converted. There is a major difference between being convinced and being converted. There is a major difference between being convinced about Jesus and being converted by Jesus. Not all belief is the same kind of belief. I'm telling you, I want to show you this morning, based on verse 42, there's a journey, a progression of conversion that I want to show you in this text. They were convinced and called by this woman's testimony, but they were not yet converted because they did not yet know him. There is a kind of belief in Jesus that does not cause conversion. It's the kind that maybe the brother of Jesus was talking about when he wrote this. Look on the screen. You say that you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Well, good for you. Even the demons say the word. Wait a second. And they tremble in terror. So according to James, there's a category of belief that does not cause a creature, a human creature or a demonic creature, to be converted. So just because you see belief in the Bible doesn't mean it's the same kind of belief that leads to conversion. My prayer all week this week is that God would bring us somebody who needed to be converted today. What I aim to show you in this case study is the call to salvation used by God. This woman was used by God to invite them. Being convinced about Jesus. And then finally being converted to Jesus. Here's the big idea. I'm going to spell it out for you. If you want to snap a photo of this with your phone so that you can't forget it, it's fine with me. Some people are convinced because of a personal testimony. And God uses personal testimonies to convince people. Others are convinced because of a personal experience. Lots of people have had spiritual experiences and God uses those to convince people. But there's only one cause of conversion. The cause of conversion is knowing Christ as personal Savior. Let me show you this in the text. I'm going to split the big idea into three parts. Everybody still with me? Part number one. Some people, they're called during someone's testimony. They feel God calling to them. And they're convinced when they hear someone give a personal testimony. But it's not the same thing as being converted. Here's what I'm going to show you in this text. God has been pleased down through church history to use people's personal testimonies. To draw people to himself. Theologians call this an effectual call. He calls out to people, come to Jesus. Come to Jesus. By the testimony of someone that you love or a friend. And people feel and hear God's call. But it's not the same thing as being converted. Let me show you that right here in the text. Verse 28, 29 and 30 and then verse 39. Look what it says here. So the woman left her water jar. There's lots we could say about that. She left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people. So now she's suddenly an evangelist. Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ? God in this moment is using a vessel, a woman's mouth who just had an encounter with Jesus to call people to come. Come meet Jesus. That's what's happening here. They went out of the town and were coming to him. Many Samaritans from that town believed. And now based on what you just read about James, you should go, wait a minute, what kind of belief? So glad you asked. We're going to get into that, okay? Many from Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony he told me all that I ever did. So remember something. Follow me, church. All she knows at this point is that she met a prophet.
The Dan Bongino Show
Joe Biden Is Afraid Hunter Biden Will Turn on Him
"Right? It's the right thing to do. Joe Biden is angry about questions about his kid, not because he loves his kid. No one who loves their kid does what he did to his kid and sticks a guy with a drug problem in front of a bunch of enemies of the United States, a bunch of vultures to grift for him because can't he make money himself. Nobody doesn't love. What kind of love is that? How do you think that sounds to actually love their kids? Love. You loved your crack addicted kid. You're going to send them overseas grifting for you. Give me a break. Joe Biden doesn't love his kid. He loves money. And Joe Biden's afraid. Joe Biden is afraid that his son is going to flip because his son is the one witness who could probably turn this thing around in a heartbeat. The evidence is overwhelming with or without his son. However, the political case is harder to make. Why? Because you've got, as I said before, about 30, 40 percent of the Democrat Party. That's convinced absolutely that Joe Biden's their useful idiot, and they don't even care about the corruption. They will ignore it and try to make it go away to interfere in another election. They don't care what you think about it. Hunter Biden actually fessing up to what he did in a plea deal and putting his dad on the stand would force it in front of all America. Think about this, Jim, how bad this would be. It would be court a proceeding where everybody's sworn in. There's no special exception for the president there, where would he either have to tell the truth or could be convicted of could be charged
The Breakdown
A highlight from Courts Hand SEC Half an L in Binance US Case
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Tuesday, September 19th, and today we are talking about Binance and their SEC court decision yesterday. Is it significant? And is it just kicking the can down the road? We will go through all of that. Before we do, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Well, friends, it is a day that ends in Y, so there is, of course, another Binance story. Binance had a fairly big day in court on Monday in their legal battle with the SEC. Leading into the hearing, the allegations and speculation had started to reach a fever pitch. The SEC had begun to hone in on the theory that Binance U .S. did not and never had exclusive control over customer assets. That if true would be a big deal as Binance had always maintained that U .S. customer assets were strictly segregated from the international exchange. Indeed, they used this argument to defend an SEC injunction shortly after the legal proceedings commenced in June. If granted, the injunction would have frozen assets at Binance U .S., which would have functionally been a death sentence for the domestic exchange. In deciding that injunction, the court ordered the parties to come back with an agreement that they could both live with rather than making a decision on their own. As part of those consent orders, Binance agreed that they would ensure that only local U .S. staff would have access to customer assets. However, as the SEC dug further into their investigation, they claimed that Binance U .S. which they viewed as intimately linked to Binance International. Cefu was launched under the name Binance Custody in December 2021. It was renamed in February of this year, around the same time that rumors of an in -depth government investigation into Binance first emerged. On Friday, Cefu asserted in a press release that they were entirely separate from Binance International and that they don't even service BAM Trading, which is the company that operates Binance U .S. They wrote, We strongly reject this claim. As a custody technology services provider under Cefu Holdings, we are committed to servicing institutional clients with digital asset custody solutions in select jurisdictions, excluding the United States, among others. Furthermore, Cefu's operations and services are distinctly separate from BAM and Binance Holdings Limited." A Cefu spokesperson added that, Unfortunately, earlier in the week, Binance U .S. had contradicted parts of that claim in a legal filing. Rather than denying the use of Cefu in their operations, Binance U .S. acknowledged that the service was developed by Binance International and licensed to the U .S. entity. And while the specific origin of the Binance U .S. custody system might seem like a minor detail, this is the main focus of the lawsuit at the moment. The SEC is claiming that Binance International had de facto control over customer funds at the U .S. exchange. If that's the case, then Binance could be viewed as deliberately misleading the court surrounding this issue. It would also advance the SEC's argument that Binance U .S. was nothing more than a front to allow U .S. customers to access the international exchange and provide a veneer of domestic regulatory compliance. So that's a bit of the background. Now on Monday morning, the SEC filed additional material to support their order, which asked the court to compel Binance to cooperate with the discovery process. They said, quote, Indeed, in earlier filings, the regulator had raised issues surrounding the lack of disclosure. They noted that Binance had only produced 220 documents, many of them characterized as quote, unintelligible screenshots and documents without dates or signatures. Further, according to the SEC, Binance U .S. were resisting the deposition of a number of key executives. In a court filing in August, Binance claimed that the deposition of CEO Brian Schroeder would be, quote, You'll remember that Schroeder was confirmed to have left the company in early September, although his lack of social media presence has led some to speculate that his departure was closer to the beginning of the year. The SEC appears to have been informed of Schroeder's departure only recently and clearly haven't recruited him yet as a cooperating witness. They said that this strange turn of events and Binance's continued resistance to producing Schroeder, quote, Now, the SEC was primarily concerned that Binance U .S. was continuing to use SEFU for its custody, which could be used to shift customer assets offshore. They said that Binance U .S. had failed to convince the regulator that they had control over customer assets, adding that these claims were, quote, Binance U .S. had provided, quote, They said that, quote, BAM insists that this court, like the SEC, should accept packaged counsel narratives, carefully drafted declarations, and small curated sets of documents regarding control of BAM's customer assets, and that any lingering concerns are much ado about nothing. To top it all off, the SEC warned that Binance CEO CZ is, quote, The SEC claimed that they have demonstrated that, quote, Binance has a long history of controlling BAM to serve Binance's own unlawful purpose. Ultimately, the regulator asked the court for an order, quote, Now, in their opposing court filing placed on the record on Monday morning, Binance U .S. reiterated their claim that SEC demands were unreasonable. They called the documents requested overbroad and too much of an inconvenience. Binance U .S. further alleged that many of the documents requested are either not in the exchange's possession or fall outside the scope of the lawsuit. At 3 p .m., the parties entered the courtroom for what would be a tense hearing. Binance U .S. called the demand for documents so broad they would be impossible to produce. A lawyer representing the exchange said that, quote, The judge indicated that Binance U .S. really would need to provide a bit more documentation of their custody arrangements. They said, adding that they weren't, quote, The SEC lawyer, meanwhile, explained that the problem at the moment was that, quote, They argued that the SEC needed much more information about the wallet set up at Binance U .S. than they currently have. At one stage, the attorney for Binance exclaimed, They said that the exchange had responded to every targeted request from the regulator. The lawyer added that, quote, So what came out of all of this? Well, ultimately, the judge declined to make any orders to compel discovery from Binance, but it was made clear that the exchange would need to increase its cooperation, let's say. The judge said that they were not, adding that, quote, I'm not going to order from the bench right now that they produce or not produce things. Let's continue to try to work this out. I just want to keep things moving. The judge also noted that, quote, As investor Adam Cochran summed it up, the judge did deny the inspection but also said they needed Binance U .S. to comply and produce more documentation as the judge was not convinced of the asset backing. This is saying the inspection is overkill for now and giving Binance the chance to comply. Now, ultimately, these issues around Sifu are largely still about litigating whether the assets of Binance U .S. should be frozen to prevent customer funds from being sent offshore. However, given that volumes on the exchange have collapsed by more than 99 percent over the past six months, it seems likely that users have largely taken that issue off the table already. The matter is scheduled to return to court on October 12th for a follow -up hearing. Now, outside of the hearing, the court docket continues to bloat with additional evidence gleaned by the SEC. Much of this evidence was originally filed under seal or in a heavily redacted form, but the regulator is currently in the process of unsealing documents. Earlier this month, the SEC obtained the cooperation of the former auditor for Binance U .S., which produced in excess of 6 ,500 pages on the accounting at the exchange. The document was unredacted on Monday, revealing the auditor's conclusion that it was, quote, very difficult to ensure the company was fully collateralized at specific points in time. One of the SEC's requests for further information filed in June related to a 250 million dollar intercompany loan given to Binance U .S. by the international exchange in December of last year. The convertible note was funded using BUSD, 183 million of which was sent to Paxos to convert into dollars. The SEC wanted some additional details about the reason for this transaction. The topic was initially flagged as confidential by Binance, but that designation was apparently successfully rebutted by the SEC. Now, there was a lot of chatter on this on Twitter. With many people taking it as evidence of some smoking gun, Binance had been less than honest about their dealings with Binance U .S. Perhaps the most intriguing tidbit, however, filed recently was a declaration given by J. Emmett Murphy of the SEC's trial division. The document, again filed on Monday, introduced into evidence three additional depositions. All three were filed under seal, but were used to support the need for further examination of the SEFU system. The declaration identified one witness as Eric Kellogg, BAM's chief information security officer, but the other two identities were redacted. All three depositions occurred over the last month, with the latest taking place last Wednesday. So here's the way that Adam Cochrane summed this all up, which I think is a pretty good TLDR. He tweets, SEC seeks court order for inspection of Binance U .S., now expressly calling out that SEFU is indeed a Binance -related entity and that Binance U .S. has been misleading the court. The SEC calls out that this violates the consent decree that required new wallets expressly away from Binance International Control and Access, but interestingly specifically notes this is important as Binance has controlled BAM for its quote, own unlawful purposes. That's a claim we've not seen the SEC lobby here before, at least not outside of anything sealed or redacted. We also learned for the first time that the SEC sought the testimony of Brian Schroeder, U .S. CEO, and Jasmine Lee, U .S. CFO, but have been denied and fought on that and only just got told that Schroeder is no longer CEO, despite Schroeder being missing for eight plus months. They had argued that Schroeder's testimony would be too disruptive to business and now got told he isn't on the job, which is wild, as I think we all assumed he pulled a Catherine Coley Brian Brooks and gave testimony. Seems he's just disappeared and gone silent? Either way, the SEC here is suggesting, one, there is evidence of crimes, two, there is indeed evidence that SEFU is Binance International, three, SEFU is not simply a wallet provider, and four, BAM executives themselves lack insight on Binance U .S. assets and tooling. Now, for completeness, Adam Cochran also tweeted about the deposition from the auditor that said that it was impossible to tell whether Binance U .S. had been fully collateralized at specific points in time. He said, if your own external auditor can't say you are fully collateralized when you are supposed to be a 100 % reserves exchange and have your own proof of reserves that claim you're over collateralized, that is a problem. Binance uses the SEFU wallet custody system, previously Binance Custody, for both Binance International and Binance U .S., as noted in their filings. If this system is not capable of managing the small Binance U .S. numbers, how could it keep track of International? And if Binance U .S., its more compliant exchange, never commingled or misused client funds and was isolated from International as they claim, then it would be literally impossible to have a gap. The only way this is possible is the misuse of customer funds resulting in losses. I believe at some point in their scaling, they had material losses when misusing customer funds and exposing themselves to leverage via BNB. They've continued to misuse customer funds to try and cover this hole, but a declining market has made that an ongoing shell game. Whether you think that is a fair assessment or not, there should at this point be absolutely no doubt that the correct risk model is to move your assets off of Binance. Now, for the sake of a counterpoint, Bruce Fenton tweeted this morning, Binance is perhaps the most scrutinized and attacked company in modern history. The United States has investigated them and thrown everything they can at them. Yet, despite all this, we don't have a single accusation, let alone evidence, that Binance has lost customer funds. Now, trying to wrap this all up, a lot of the commentary around this is trying to figure out if the SEC won or lost this court trip. Will Clemente from Reflexivity Research tweeted, courts have been handing the SEC L after L lately, but others aren't so sure. CZ certainly didn't think so, retweeting someone who wrote, seems like they can't find anything but they want to continue making headlines. Maybe the most middle of the road interpretation came from the headline from Bloomberg, which read, SEC fails to win immediate inspection of Binance US software, and I think that that fails to win is probably a better representation at this point than actually getting the loss. But my friends, as you can tell, we are well in the minutia of this, but the details matter. There certainly is a feeling of crescendo to this story. And either way, it's hard for me to imagine that the industry isn't better on the other side of it. Better because Binance has vindicated, or better, unfortunately, because the last giant has fallen, and we can finally move on, largely rid of what came before. In either case, I will be sure to keep you updated. So until next time, be safe and take care of each other. Peace.
The Eric Metaxas Show
A highlight from Ch Ahn (Encore)
"Welcome to the Eric Metaxas show. They say it's a thin line between love and hate. But we're working every day to thicken that line, or at least make it a double or triple line. But now here's your line jumping host, Eric Metaxas. I have a very special guest today. As you know, on Miracle Mondays, we try to have someone on who believes in miracles, who's maybe experienced some miracles, whose life itself is a miracle. Today, I am thrilled to have in the studio with me, all the way from Pasadena, California, Che Ahn. How do I describe Che Ahn? He's the founder and president of Harvest International Ministry, a worldwide apostolic network of churches in over 60 nations. My goodness, he's also the international chancellor of Wagner University. He's received his master's and doctorate in ministry from Fuller Theological Seminary. He's written many books. He's been married for 40 years to his wife, Sue. They have four adult children, six grandchildren. I think that says it all. Che Ahn, welcome to the program. Well, thank you. What an honor to be on your show. Listen, it's my honor to have you. I've known you for many, many years. You haven't known of me, but I've known of your ministries. What was the one with fire in the title? I can't remember. It was Teen Mania, or what was it? It was something you did here in New York, like 12 or 13 years ago. Well, we did the Call New York. That's what it was. The Call New York. It was the Call New York. Yeah, 2001. That's, you know what? 2001? Yeah, after 9 -11. That is 18 years ago. Yeah, and it's interesting because initially when we came to mobilize the pastors, actually they were very, very rude. They said, we don't need the Call to come in. And then after 9 -11 hit, they said, we need to gather together and have a solemn assembly. We need to come together and repent of our sins. And before we knew it, over 100 ,000 people showed up in Flushing Meadow. The fact that that is 18 years ago completely blows my mind. Yeah, it's been a long time. Because I spoke briefly, I was on the stage, and I remember being amazed at the crowd. It was a huge crowd. Right. And I grew up in Flushing Meadow. I mean, I grew up a couple of miles from there, and we would, as a kid growing up in Queens, New York, I would hang out there. And so to see thousands and thousands of people, then that's when I met you. But for folks who know nothing about you, what is your story? How long have you been, by the way, in Pasadena? Well, I moved in 1984, but I grew up in Washington, D .C., in Montgomery County, Maryland. So this is out of D .C. My father was the first Korean Southern Baptist pastor in North America, so he immigrated in 1958. From Korea. From Korea, South Korea. There was no Korean Southern Baptist church in the United States. He was the first one, and so they wanted him at the nation's capital. There was a handful of Korean students who were studying at Georgetown, George Washington, Catholic University, to help rebuild Korea after the Korean War, which ended in 1953. Actually, it was a ceasefire that took place. And so they wanted the Korean government, wanted the top students to learn public policy, how to do government, and to rebuild Korea. And so there were around 200 students in Washington, D .C., but they wanted a Baptist pastor. There was a Presbyterian church, there was a Methodist, but not a Southern Baptist. And it was like my dad won the lotto. He applied and got the job because it was so hard to immigrate. I mean, it's hard now, but back in 1958 to immigrate to the United States, it was almost impossible because the U .S. government realized there was no Korean Southern Baptist church. So you were born here? No, here's the problem. We had a visa problem. So my sister, my mother, and I, we were separated from my dad for three years. And so finally, after three years, during my formative year or so, almost when I was five, then we got the visa to come to the United States. And so, to say the least, when I saw my dad, I couldn't recognize him because, you know, I was just two years old when he left. People have no idea what others go through. I mean, when you describe that and how many people want to come to America. But I mean, the idea that your father is a Southern Baptist preacher in America. Well, he passed away, but he was a pioneer. No, no, I mean, but in those days that he's from Korea. Right. And so you were raised in the faith, in the Christian faith. Well, I was, but I rejected Christianity very early on because of two things, you know. There was no kids in my Sunday school. It was just students, college students. And so there was no families. There was no other kids my age. And then I went to an elementary school, Forest Grove Elementary School. And my sister and I were the only two people of color in an all -white elementary school. And now, if you go to that school, it's very, very diverse. But back in those days, it wasn't until the fifth grade I remember someone of color coming in. And so there were no other Asians, no African -Americans, no Hispanic. And so we stood out. And so I got in fights all the time because people were calling me chink, even though I'm not Chinese. That's a drug term for Chinese and Jap, even though I wasn't Japanese. You know, by the way, I have a little joke. I say you could tell the difference between a Chinese, Japanese, and a Korean. If you see a rich -looking Asian, they're Chinese. A smart -looking Asian, they're Japanese. But if you see a handsome -looking Asian, he's Korean. Ha! Ha! Take that. Yeah, so anyway, but I got in fights all the time. And I wanted to be so accepted. Plus, my parents were working day and night just to survive in America. And so as a result of that, my craving for acceptance and to be popular led me into the whole hippie drug culture of the late 60s and early 70s. I joke I may have been the first Korean hippie in North America because I never met anyone. I stopped cutting my hair for three and a half years. And my dad is freaking out. He doesn't know what's going on. And by the time I'm 15, I'm doing everything under the sun. Heavy drug user, cocaine, heroin, LSD. And then by the time I'm 17, I'm pushing drugs to support my habit. And so I was totally out of control. But one thing my parents did was pray for me. And I really want to encourage people not to stop praying no matter how bad it looks. Because the Bible says in Acts 16 31, believe on the Lord Jesus and you and your family will be saved. And so my parents prayed me into the Kingdom. And so I'm here by the grace of God. I got radically saved at a Deep Purple concert. So that gives you a little clue where I was at. Wait a minute. You got saved at a Deep Purple concert? Yeah, in May 1973. They were just touring with Smoke on the Water, a new song that came out in 1972. And they were touring in 1973. And it was at the Baltimore Civic Center. I made a concert, 15 ,000 tickets sold out in two hours. They were the number one band in America at that time. And during the intermission I had an encounter with God where the Lord spoke to me for the first time. I'm not talking about audibly in the small still voice. Because I was having this for two weeks, this visitation from the Lord Jesus. Without anyone witnessing to me. That's why I'm saying the power of... Now when you say that because people are listening and I'm really one of them. Like you're thinking, what do you mean by that? I mean here you are, you know, you're a teenager, right? Right. You are big time into drugs and you're selling drugs. You go to a Deep Purple concert. Now you say that for two weeks up to that, God had been somehow communicating with you or visiting you. What do you mean specifically? Okay, so two weeks before I'm at my friend Sal's. We're at a party. Just guys bonging on marijuana and smoking and drinking beer. Nothing heavy. It wasn't like we were tripping on acid or anything. But I was just bored because I was just doing that every day. It was just so monotonous. You know, day in, day out, just getting high. So I went to another room and I was into Zen Buddhism at that time. Just experimenting with Eastern religion. So I went to the room just to go through my chant and after saying the stupid chant, I was saying it incessantly for almost a year. And finally I just said, you know what, this is the stupidest thing I've ever done. I said that to myself. I got nothing out of it, Eric. And you just said, duh. Yeah, right. No, but this is how he said that. So I said God, I said this audibly by the way, no one was in the room. I said, God, I don't even know if you exist, but if you do exist, if my parents, what they told me is true, that there's a heaven and a hell. Well, I don't want to go to hell if there is a hell, but I don't know. So reveal yourself to me. So I was expecting him to show me if he does exist in the days ahead. But as soon as I prayed that right there in the party, the presence of God came all over me and I started to weep because I felt so much love and peace about me. Alone in the room. Alone in my room. And I was sobbing and I knew, I knew it was Jesus. I just knew because I just prayed if what my parents told me as a Christian pastor, if Jesus is the way, if there is a heaven and a hell. And so I thought I was having some kind of emotional breakdown, but it lasted for three days. Every day that presence came on me and I would just start weeping. And I said, what is going on? No one witnessed to me. Are you kidding? Now hold on because we're going to go to a break. Jay on is my guest. It's Miracle Monday. I love these kind of stories. We'll be right back with the rest of the story. And there's plenty more. It's the air from Texas show.
AP News Radio
Carolyn Bryant Donham, at center of Emmett Till death, dies
"The white woman who was at the center of the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955 has died in hospice care. 88 year old Carolyn Bryant Donna has died. In the summer of 1955 in Mississippi, she accused 14 year old Emmett Till of making improper advances toward her at a grocery store. One witness says the black teen whistled at the 21 year old donham, which violated social codes at that time. Till was brutalized and killed his body dumped into a river and post mortem photos were published that shocked the nation. Donna's husband at the time and a relative were acquitted by a jury, but did later confess to killing the teen. In an unpublished memoir entitled, I am more than a wolf whistle. Donham said she was unaware of what would happen when she identified till. Louisiana authorities say donum died this week in hospice care. I'm Jackie Quinn
AP News Radio
Storms bring down trees at Masters, play halted in 2nd round
"Storms rattled golf spectators and disrupted play at the masters. I Norman hall, the skies turned ugly at Sydney Augusta national, where the top golfers in the world are competing on a layout known for flowers, hills, and towering pint. One witness Katie waits saw several pines brought down by Wen gust. Everybody looked at each other and I grabbed my Friends and club said no one was injured the sound of fans roaring were replaced by the rumbling motors of chainsaws. The second round was suspended until Saturday morning. I Norman hall
WTOP
"one witness" Discussed on WTOP
"Wouldn't have come back yet. Should be as news roxanna saberi reporting there. Top stories we're following for you this hour, the Georgia grand jury investigating whether then president Trump and others tried to overturn the 2020 election, believes at least one witness was lying. President Biden says those flying objects that were shot down recently were not spy balloons and were not related to the Chinese spy balloon shot down nearly two weeks ago. Stay with WTO beer. 1118, traffic and weather on the 8s and when it breaks, Ian Crawford in the traffic center. Waiting for a visuals to throw the switch on the drawbridge opening the Woodrow Wilson bridge was scheduled for 1115 to three and a half minutes ago, has not happened yet, but it is an imminent thing. Extra caution and expect delays affect stoppages, both sides of the capitol beltway between Maryland and Virginia across the Woodrow Wilson bridge. In Virginia collar finds a vehicle fire inner loop after Braddock road should be over on the right side no help on scene yet first responders should be rolling that direction very quickly, inner loop after Braddock road for the vehicle fire on the right side of the interloop heading toward Tyson's on 95 itself. We've got work southbound up to garrisonville, the right lane is blocked on northbound 95, coming through falmouth, the two right lanes blocked by the work overnight on 66 westbound working a couple of spots after the fairfax county Parkway, a left lane getting by and then after the manassas rest area, you're going to be over to the right in a single file. Eastbound is your work is going to be after 28 Centreville. And that'll have one left lane getting by. Southbound on 28 as you come from dulles international airport, heading for I 66, the work after, before and after westfield's boulevard, it's a single left lane to get by. Maryland, there had been crash activity in northbound 95 near exit
The Dan Bongino Show
Rep. Dan Bishop: Omnibus Bill Is a Betryal of the American People
"A listen to something that representative Dan bishop has had to say about the omnibus bill say that 5 times fast clip 6 This is the way Washington works This is the system in Washington It's not a departure from the system It's what the uni party wants to do actually if you include all $15 billion plus an earmarks it clocks in at $1.85 trillion over 4800 pages when you include all that It's a betrayal of the American people 47 billion more for Ukraine $11 billion for the FBI before we've had a chance at the first witness to see what they're doing in terms of sensory speech and harassing Americans half a $1 billion more than the Biden administration asked for $400 million for a new FBI headquarters They have the provision in their 1 billion 5 and operating funds for the customs and border patrol is prohibited from being used for security of the American border but $400 million for the border security of certain eastern certain Middle Eastern countries like Egypt is just amazing what they've done It's a betrayal by Republican senators Mitch McConnell and Republican senators It's a middle finger in the face of Americans
The Dan Bongino Show
Harriet Hageman: Liz Cheney Has Failed & Betrayed Wyoming
"Our leaders are therefore us This is a government of by and for the people Yet what we have is we have people who are intentionally hurting the citizens of this country None of them not under our constitution None of them were elected to adopt policies to hurt the people of the United States of America or Wyoming specifically That isn't why they're elected We didn't elect her to be the judge and jury of president Trump We elected her to push back against policies that hurt the state of Wyoming She's not doing that And not only is she not doing it she is aligned herself with the people who are So she's not only failed in her job but she has betrayed us in the process And when she comes out and she talks about the various things she does the insurrection and overthrowing the government we all know that that's hogwash We all saw what happened And we also know that this is political theater Here's the reality nobody that they are attempting to attack through this process are receiving due process As a constitutional attorney as someone who's tried over 30 lawsuits in my life you always have the right of confrontation You always have the right of cross examination You always have the right of due process You always have the right of notice and an opportunity to be heard This is a show trial They are not going to present one snippet of evidence or one witness or one document or one photograph or one piece of video that shows a contrary contrary narrative to what they're putting forward In other words this is a Soviet stalinist show trial We out here in the real world know it They seem to forget that we're a lot smarter than a lot of those people back there They think they can pull the wool over their eyes They can't They're failing us She's failing us They all need to go
Live Behind The Veil
A highlight from The Living And Abiding Word Of God Part 3
"Welcome to live behind the veil and atmosphere where men and women of God speak his word to this age and bring his kingdom to this earth. Do you have ears to hear and eyes to see what God is doing in this hour? Let us join our host and the family's conversation as the Holy Spirit is unfolding. There were behind the veil. How do you Christ walk in this deep relationship with the father? How did he know who he was in here and see what the father was speaking to him each day? I'm Ron your host, and these questions have been mysteries to me. To be led by his spirit, to hear his voice speaking to me, and to know who I am in him has been the cry, and I feel like it is the cry in most sincere Christians hearts. Well, let's listen in as the Holy Spirit begins to unfold to us some of these deep mysteries so that we too can have this deep relationship with our father, as Christ did, by a living word. I used to think in my youth that having a relationship with God was this mystical thing that God would appear to me or God would speak to me out of the air and give me revelation and lead my life. When all the time, he had a provision, which is called the Bible, and if I open it up, and I start reading it the Holy Spirit begins to speak to me, and reveal to me the very things that I've wanted. A relationship with the father, relationship, to be led. It talks about how Christ always did those things he saw the father doing. Exactly. He only spoke those things that he heard the father speaking, well where did he hear that was that some mystical gift that he had that he could hear the father's voice that nobody else could hear? That wasn't in it. He knew the Torah he knew the word of God. That word, the father spoke to him through that word. That's where he got his leading. That's where he got, his wisdom, that's where he got, everything. Through the word of God. Exactly. I feel like the satanic spirit realm de emphasizes the word of God. That's true. And tries to make it to make a walk with God in a relationship with the God, so hard and so impossible. When the very provision that you've been crying out for, your whole life is right in front of you. It's just opening on that Bible up and reading it and knowing that God will speak to you. He will meet you. He will lead you through that word. Yeah. I challenge people to try it. I challenge people to try and say, lord of your real, and if you are speaking through this, then show me, reveal yourself to me. If you're real, let me know. I challenge people. The relationship with the lord is so simple. And yet so real, and so easy to get to. Because the scriptures are right there. And they express his heart. Express his heart for you, and for the earth. And for the ages to come. What you're talking about, Ron is deuteronomy, 1915, we pick up the Bible, and we can say this is the word of God, written on paper. Written in a book, and it can be much disputed. It talks in deuteronomy. 1915, about two witnesses, and the key is the two. In a court of law, you can have one witness, and that's good. But what really gets you a verdict in your favor is a second witness. We can pick up the Bible and we can read all kinds of truths. And say, yeah, that's true. That's true. But that second witness comes by the spirit. And we know the Holy Spirit is that second witness. That speaks the same thing. It's that second witness that gives it truth. It's that second witness that makes it solid. It makes it complete. That's how we read the scriptures, is to find truth. Right. And to have that truth, witnessed, by the Holy Spirit. You know, when Jesus was tempted, by Satan, he knew the scriptures, and we know that Satan quoted scripture to try and get Jesus to do something. If you fall from this precipice, he'll call 10,000 angels to protect you. It's knowing the scripture that much. We need to know the scripture so much that only the scriptures move us. And then any other input can not move us. That's what makes us immovable is because that wisdom and knowledge of the scriptures that the Holy Spirit gives us see, that's where eve was deceived as because she knew what God said, but Satan twisted it, and she was not prepared for that. Jesus, on the other hand, was very prepared, that was when his defeat over Satan took place is as he came back with the word. It's not only understanding what is written, but it's that relationship that we talked about earlier with the father and knowing his heart. The children of Israel knew though, acts of the lord, but Moses knew his ways, and I think that's where we need to understand, is getting into this word to know the ways of the lord so that we can have a correct response when circumstances present themselves similar to the testing Jesus went through. I think that's an important point that you're making Alan because I feel like it's not just memorizing scripture all over nothing wrong with that. But it's Dale was saying also there is the double witness. It's the witness of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit must meet you in those scriptures and reveal those scriptures to you. It's the only spirit that brings the correct and proper emphasis in every situation, whatever happens during your day, I've seen people, they come up to a situation, and they look through the Bible to find description and go, oh, here it is. That's the way I should think about it. They take in action on something that they found in the scripture. And it wasn't the Holy Spirit, bringing it to them. It's them looking for an answer and using scriptures like that. There's a difference, the difference is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit must bring the correct emphasis. That's what happened when Christ was in the wilderness. Satan was quoting scripture. And it was true scripture, and he's going, well, look, this is what it says. So you can do this, make the stones bread, right? But it wasn't the Holy Spirit bringing that emphasis. Exactly. Reading the scriptures, to me, there has to be an attitude behind that. You're looking to the lord. You're looking to the Holy Spirit to show you, give you revelation, give you the correct emphasis that those scriptures mean, impart to you, the Bible is not human. No. Yes, it was written by human beings. Filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the author, and if you want to know what the Bible means, go to the author. Father gave us the spirit to teach us to instruct us, make things come alive to us. Let us know the truth. If you do not have the Holy Spirit, like you're saying, right? We're become like brass. I mean, just another book. Right. But with a hoist spirit, life is ministered to it. The Holy Spirit gives you. The ability to see and to know your gills and teaches you about it. Exactly. You know that scripture that says, who knows the heart of a man. But the spirit of the man. And that's what that is talking about is who knows the heart of the father. The spirit. Does because it is his spirit. While you read John, 14 17, those chapters in there, and you'll see the whole purpose of the Holy Spirit is to reveal everything that God and Christ want us to know about. I got to tell a quick story that I think will resonate with all of us and hope if there are somebody listening to this podcast that is asking for more that this may help. I was around 20 two years old. And I come to the end of my rope. I had everything I wanted, and it was starting to fall apart. And that's all for young to be able to say that, and that I had it, but that's the truth. I can remember as a small child. 8 ten years old. You go to school and you fill out papers. And they would ask you what religion are you? And I put Christian. Because that's what they told me I was. I didn't know. So I put down Christian, and for years, that's what I put down. I went in the service. And filled out my dog tags, Christian. It's amazing how I sat in church, my parents made me go. And as soon as I graduated from whatever they called it was into the membership, I quit going, and I had gone off to school. But I still thought of myself as a Christian. I then when I like I said I came to the end of my rope and I said, okay, I want more. I want to be more than just a Christian because I tried to solve on my problems with the you might say the limited relationship I had to the lord. It was limited because I hadn't even been filled with the Holy Spirit. I saw a lot of alter calls, but never answered one to be saved. So I decided it was time to answer an altar call. I didn't know what to expect. I just saw other people do it. But I had a meeting with the lord, and I didn't even know what it was. Well, when I walked outside of that church, the sun shone brighter. Than I ever saw it, and there was a feeling that I had. It was awesome. And I carried that feeling till I come to the point where I want more. I wanted more of that. Whatever that was, I wanted more of that. So I started asking around and people told me that part of Salvation is being filled with the Holy Spirit. I figure what the heck am I as well as for that I've come this way. And then the door opened up. I asked for the Holy Spirit, and then I understood the meaning of being filled with the Holy Spirit. And my Salvation. That they were tanned in hand. That all constantly be working out my Salvation by the Holy Spirit. Because he will lead me into all things. If you sat around in wandered about Salvation, go for it. If you wandered about the Holy Spirit, go for it. And hang on tight because when you put the two together, it is an exceedingly abundantly beyond what you can ask or think. Experiencing the impartation of God's word through his family is life. As this time in his presence blessed you, then please subscribe to our podcast at live behind the veil dot com. If you would like to contact the family with questions or topics that you would like to discuss, you can email them to living epistles at live behind a veil dot com. Stay connected, tuned in and grow with the family as the lord unveils his word to us live. Behind the veil.
Mike Gallagher Podcast
Texans Owner Cal McNair Used Anti-Asian 'Slur' During Golf Event
"The owner of the Texans. Cal mcnair used a racist slur at a charity golf tournament back in May. I thought, oh gosh, what did he say? What do you mean? What does that mean? Headline Texans owner Cal mcnair used anti Asian slur. During team golf event, this happened back in May. Cal mcnair wrapping up his remarks with according to a report at bally sports using a racist slur. And I'm thinking, gosh, that's tough. That's hurtful. That's hateful. One witness told a reporter, Michael silver, everyone gashed. Especially the people directly across from him. He and his wife seemed to think it was hilarious. It was dead silent. And then the article goes on to list scandals that his father had been involved in. His late father, who evidently used the phrase, you can't have the inmates running the prison. Referring to player protests about police brutality. I use that expression all the time. You can't have the inmates running the asylum. You can't have the inmates running the prison. I never thought of that as a slur. Or an attack. Certainly not racist. It's an expression that we've used for everybody uses. But back to Cal mcnair, I'm thinking, what did he do to use a terrible name to call you some racial horrible, you know, attack? Here's what he said. In fact, if you're driving, you might want to pull the car over to the side of the road. Because this is awful. You're going to be so shocked. At this monster, Cal mcnair, the owner, of the Texans, you're going to be so mortified, you're going to want him to be lose control of the team. You're going to want him to be incarcerated. I think incarceration is the is so egregious. It's so awful. It's so horrendous. I mean, even a New York newspaper calling this a racist slur. And when you hear it, it's worse than you think. Here's the quote, addressing a crowd of over a hundred. Over a hundred people, gasping. Fainting. Vomiting. Being taken away in the hospital, the hospital, they were so offended by this monstrous villainous evil racist named Cal mcnair. What did he say? Get to it Gallagher? He said, I'm sorry, we couldn't get together last year because of the China virus. That's it.
I Love Sleep
"one witness" Discussed on I Love Sleep
"No mark on the slate harold. Read the accusation on this the white rabbit through three blasts on trumpet. And then i'm enrolled the parchment. Scroll and read as follows. The queen of hearts has made some tarts all summer day novel hearts. He stole these tires and took them quite away. Consider your verdict. The king said to the jury not yet not yet the rabbit. Hastily drafted does a great deal to come before the call. The first witness to the king and the white rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet and called out. I witness first. Witness was the mad hatter. He came within a teacup in one hand and a piece of bread and butter in the i. Beg pardon your majesty. He began her bringing museum. But i hadn't quite finished my tea when i was ten for you to finish so the king. When did you begin the hat. I looked at the march hare. Who followed him into the court arm-in-arm with dorm rooms of march think it was. He said fifteenth so the march hare sixteenth added the door mouse. Write that down the kings to jerry. Jerry eagerly road to all three dates on their slates then added them up and reduce the answer. two shillings and pence. Take off your hat. The kings to the hatter. It is in my stolen. The king explained turning to the jury who instantly made miranda of the fact. I keep them to sell the header added as an explanation. I've not at my own. I'm a hatter. Here's a queen put on her spectacles and began staring at the hotter who turned pale and visited. Give evidence of the king and don't be nervous or i'll have you executed on the spot. Not seem to encourage the witness at all. Any kept shifting from one foot to be either looking uneasily at the queen and confusion..
The Patriot AM 1150
"one witness" Discussed on The Patriot AM 1150
"Pam, who sell Fox News. That's the mission on day Two of the G seven Summit. World Global Infrastructure plan is expected to be unveiled. There's also agreement on the Covid 19 Vaccine sharing initiative, The G seven is rolling out a global vaccination plan. They and guest countries will give more than one billion covid 19 vaccines around the world, with the United States leading the charge, providing 500 million doses. Foxes meddled in Rivera Later this morning, President Biden will hold a bilateral meeting with his French counterpart, but it's his meeting on Wednesday with Russian leader Vladimir Putin that's attracting the most buzz. For the last few days, there has been one question that the press has been repeatedly asking of President Biden. And it is what are you going to make of that summit? With Vladimir Putin coming up in a few days, he has refused to answer. He's pushed the question away, Fox says Benjamin Hall, Putin is talking. He spoke to NBC News through a translator about the differences between President Biden and his predecessor. President. Biden, of course, is radically different from Trump because President Biden is a career man. He spent virtually his entire adulthood in politics. The White House says the meeting in Geneva is expected to be candid and straightforward. We've also learned President Biden will hold a solo news conference after the summit. Shootout in Seattle has left two people dead and two others hurt. One witness tells Q 13 news that at least 100 gunshots were heard yesterday afternoon. Police haven't released information on the victims or suspects. Five years ago. A man shot up the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, attribute was held last night for the 49 victims. I.
Xtra Sports Radio 1300 AM
"one witness" Discussed on Xtra Sports Radio 1300 AM
"When he first witnessed the 92 Dream team hit the court. What we learned brought to you by Mercedes friends fans, they go far beyond from their customization options. Cutting edge Tech five stars, sales service and financial support crew. Mercedes Benz vans build equipped, engineered to be ready for anything Go the extra mile. Taking the all important first step into unauthorized dealership today. Once again, Chris Webber will join us on the program tomorrow as well. Robert Auri will recap Lakers warriors as well. Great day to talk to you tomorrow. Oh, one more item here. PGA Tournament gets ready to start tomorrow. Akila. I'm always curious If the pros they're playing what I play course I have Callaway clubs, but also the Calloway. Odyssey putter. Yes. Back. White hot O g line of putters. When you think about it, the tube all the Rossi the number seven. The rest of the head shapes that sport modern upgrades Find surface milling. You get that ultra premium look the confidence over the ball Plus that sound that you have. It's a Mythical combination of sound and feel and roll toward players, Amateur golfers alike and rejoice with the return of the cherished icon. White hot Ogi putters feature the most popular insert of all time, beautiful balance of nostalgia and craftsmanship that you have to see to believe, actually not only seeing it but feeling it just that ball when it leaves the putter, the insert legendary, then iconic now see the white hot Ogi family of putters today at Odyssey golf dot com. The thing about comparing rates at progressive dot com is that by now you've heard a lot of ads about comparing rates of progressive dot com. We probably don't even need the words comparing rates anymore to remind you that seasoning stakes at progressive dot com is an easy way to save on car insurance, or that swimming in trousers helps you find the lowest rate. And that's the thing about foraging for truffles. You've heard a lot of ads about standing tiptoe on a cinder block compare rates in Spain. Sing softly to a wounded field, mouse and save at progressive dot com. Progressive Casualty insurance Company and affiliates. Comparison. Reach not available in all states of situations. Hello, This is your apartment. I need some favors.
KLBJ 590AM
"one witness" Discussed on KLBJ 590AM
"What's better than faves on the radio babes in your kid's hands right now, she says. Milkshakes for 3 99 or left all the goodies like chocolate peanut butter Crunch milkshake made with butter finger peanut butter fudge brownie milkshake made with recent peanut butter sauce. Peanut butter pretzel? No. Shake me with recent Take five or Oreo cookies and cream milkshake made with Oreo cookies, so taking the happy sound of stepping order on the app and pick up curbside at select locations. Chief run and done. It could be dangerous and they knew it. A new report out of Ohio sheds light on with the organizer's of a fraternity party were aware of before a pledge died of alcohol poisoning. Law firm hired by Bowling Green State University says its investigation revealed that organizers were aware new members would need to be monitored for safety reasons. Arranging watchers designated drivers and trash cans for vomiting, the report says. 20 year old Stone fault who stopped breathing after he was driven home and died three days later drank an entire bottle of bourbon in 20 minutes, one witness said. And while he may not have been required to finish, it was under the impression he should try. As part of PI Kappa Alpha tradition. The family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit. Eight current or former frat members have been indicted on charges ranging from hazing to involuntary manslaughter. Lisa Brady Fox News The colonial pipeline is back online. But lots of gas stations in several states are still running on empty. It is hit or miss. When it comes to finding gasoline in Georgia were about 50% of.
WTOP
"one witness" Discussed on WTOP
"Com 9 41. Now the Israeli army has called in troop reinforcements in the country's south as hostilities in Gaza Press into a second day. Defense Minister Benny Ganz has approved the mobilization of 5000 Reserve troops as another wave of violence has erupted, killing at least 20 Palestinians. Raid sirens went off here in Jerusalem and in southern Israel as Palestinian militants in Gaza fire dozens of rockets. Across the border. Israel responded with heavy air strikes on Gaza. The escalating violence follows clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians that the AH locks a mosque in Jerusalem, raising fears of a religious war. Robert Burgers, CBS NEWS Jerusalem, The House Committee on Administration held an important hearing yesterday with one witness, the U. S Capitol police inspector general and he told the committee that the Capitol police need to change there. Outlook on their work. What are the key resource is the Capitol Police are short on our intelligence and threat. Analysts There's a 32 1 officer to analyst ratio within the threat assessment section, Maryland representative Jamie Raskin asked how the Capitol police compared to other federal agencies, Inspector General Michael Bolton responded. Generally, It's like either 5 to 25 to one ratio is more. The optimal fixing that would happen is a part of what Bolton calls a culture. Rule change with the Capitol police instead of acting like a traditional police department, it would serve as a protective agency. JJ Green w T O P. News, It's 9 43. University.
Heartland Newsfeed Radio Network
"one witness" Discussed on Heartland Newsfeed Radio Network
"Witnesses on saturday Yeah i think so i i it was. It was a surprise when The house impeachment manager jamie raskin got up and said we want to call witnesses. Are we wanna call one witness for one hour with zoom It was a surprise of we had had a caucus call with the democratic caucus. The a couple about an hour before and chuck schumer said basically that. The witnesses mush. This is going to be up to the manager so it really wasn't coordinated in that sense of it's been characterized as a democratic retreat..
Heartland Newsfeed Radio Network
"one witness" Discussed on Heartland Newsfeed Radio Network
"Is great to be with you looking forward to the conversation. So can you explain what happened. There with the witnesses on saturday Yeah i think so i i it was. It was a surprise when the house impeachment manager jamie raskin got up and said we want to call witnesses. Are we want to call one witness for one hour with zoom It was a surprise We had had a caucus call with the the democratic caucus the a couple about an hour before and chuck schumer said basically that the witnesses mush. This is gonna be up to the manager so there really wasn't coordinated in that sense It's been characterized as democratic retreat. I don't think so at all and frankly if if it had gone to sort of witness calling and and lawsuits it you mentioned weeks. I think it could have been months In fact somebody told me the lawsuit to compel don mcgann to to testify in a year and a half ago is still going on so Frankly i think the democratic managers got what they want they got they got that statement into the record about mccarthy's call with the president and we ended up moving forward i don't think further proceedings with witnesses would have changed any votes if you honest with so the with the trial behind behind us. Presumably that means the the full focus right now in the congress is on this covid relief package. I'm wondering what your view is is relatively moderate members of the senate on the role of moderates in shaping this package because we saw the last round back when the president was republican. You had this bipartisan. Gang of moderate senators. Who played a significant role in shaping. What was in that package. It looks like the offer from a group of ten republicans was just so far from what president biden proposed There's not really going to be a bipartisan negotiation. Here so what is the role for for members. Like you and shaping that package when it's going to be basically a democratic package. Well i think there will be a role in particular issues as part of the package that republicans can play if they want a man. They're they're going to have to decide whether they want to have some voice in this. And and i think they're going to have an opportunity to do so And then the question will be okay. Let's say there's some. Bipartisan amendments to the package will the republicans are any of them. Vote for the package as a whole when it comes to the floor. The conventional wisdom is that they won't. But i said to a friend the other day. I don't know if you have a bill on the floor. That's going to send fourteen hundred dollars to virtually every american and Extend unemployment benefits and provide money for vaccines to vote against. Go home say well. I didn't like the extension of the child tax. Credit amid i i i'm not so sure. the republicans won't vote for it in the end but I'm a perennial optimist. So that's possible. An answer to your the other question is every member of the democratic caucus has total leverage You gotta have every single vote. Chuck schumer has zero margin for error. So if one member says. I ain't going for this unless xyz is fixed That's gonna be That's got to be considered. So i think there will be considerable negotiatied for example on how to target the fourteen hundred dollars And and and that's an example How the unemployment benefits work. How the state and local funds work because the biden package has a huge amount of money in it. How that's going to be allocated to the states is it going to be based on actual revenue losses. That kind of thing. So there's plenty of room left for negotiation david. I know you had a question center. Thanks for being here You know one of the flashpoints or one of the sort of things that are is a bit unsettled. Is the future of the minimum wage increase in the bill Do you support that being part of this package. And if it's not a because of procedural reasons because of the way in which democrats are passing this bill. Would you support putting that on the floor. Anyway for For votes. yeah. I think it ought to go to the floor. I don't think as even president biden has acknowledged. It's it's not likely that it will fit within this reconciliation package. Reconciliation is an incredibly arcane Very specialized procedure that allows a bill to pass with a simple majority But it has to involve directly budget items and the the the sort of simple way to think of it as you can't legislate in reconciliation package you can you can do things like taxes and budgets and spending But to do something like the minimum wage will probably be ruled. Out of order now bernie. Sanders will probably bring a motion to overrule the chair on on that question But my view is that it ought to come to the floor separately that we ought to try to work it through the normal legislative process. Do you support it at that. Fifteen dollars an hour level by twenty twenty five with a phase in. Yeah i think. I think you'll added important. Phrase netted by twenty twenty five. I think a phase in is important. It would be a huge shock to a lot of small businesses particularly in rural areas Wages in You know montana and and rural maine and vermont at rural oklahoma. A lot different than they are in in hoboken or los angeles I think phase in is important. Alan what do you. What do you make of this this effort to do the the minimum wage increase. Either as part of this package or separately if it comes to the senate floor separately It's gonna require at least ten republican votes and there's been significant republican opposition to that but the minimum minimum wage increases poll very positively On a national level much like a lot of what's in this in the relief package polls very positive lease to one support for another round of these fourteen hundred dollar checks. So is there going to be pressure for republicans in the senate to get on board with some of these democratic priorities Or are they in a position where they can just say no to these things. I think they will be able to say no to these things because even though the minimum wage might pull very well nationally i think trying to sandwich it in with the covid relief. Bill is going to look like overreach and the more things like that democrats. Try to put into this bill. The more overreach voters are going to perceive. I think this bill has been a an inauspicious beginning to biden's first term because despite everything we heard from the biden white house about wanting bipartisanship. I think if you take one meeting with ten republican senators And then reject their opening bid And say after one meeting you're giving up on bipartisanship. I think that looks like they prefer to pass this bill without any republican votes. But i think if that happens Voters are going to see that It's gonna come back to bite them especially when they try and get more bills.
WTVN
"one witness" Discussed on WTVN
"Down through the week. No, they're not very No. That's way in the weekends. It's like, where will you find Josh? Anywhere? But what the consuming news. Well, I'm in a corner typically. Yes, you don't position you can fight And look, I don't want to go with us. OK, but not one witness. I was a great job in the world. Know what There's no question about that. It's just you're right. It is a some days man trying to shine a spotlight on all of this. The spotlight's not big enough and sometimes not bright enough, and Feels like it's going to burn out at any second some days, too. I wish we had a bat signal. We just shine it up in the air, and somebody would come along and solve all this for us. Yeah, we're at least give us away. Give us some 100% concrete solution. Way out of it. Amen. You know, I'm not going to say we're all in this together. I'm not doing it because we're clearly not all in this together. I promise you traffic and weather together. Temp start heating and cooling products. Johnny Hill Sullivan Accident. See reported on 33 East Down near Bixby Road. Careful We're slowing down from 2 70 on down. Not much freeway delay through downtown Columbus, though 70 westbound. Just a little heavy right at the East Side. Split on accident seems still reported on Cleveland Avenue north of schlock, but traffic has been improving their near Sharon Woods. This report sponsored by fresh thyme market Get ready for a better way to feel your day with curbside pickup at fresh thyme market. Start your order at shop dot fresh time dot com and let them do the shopping, fresh time. Real healthy foods, real affordable prices, Traffic and weather together. Powered by temp starring custom air. I'm Johnny Hilla NewsRadio 16 w TVs Your ABC six first warning Whether chief meteorologist Marshall McPeak says few flurries overnight 28, then a chance of scattered.
Heartland Newsfeed Radio Network
"one witness" Discussed on Heartland Newsfeed Radio Network
"Josh great to be with you looking forward to the conversation sue. Can you explain what happened. There with the witnesses on saturday Yeah i think so i i it was. It was a surprise when the house manager jamie raskin got up and said we want to call witnesses or we wanna call one witness for one hour with zoom It was a surprise We had had a caucus call with the democratic caucus. The couple about an hour before and chuck schumer said basically that the witnesses mush is going to be up.
Daily Pop
"one witness" Discussed on Daily Pop
"A look at towered slid site in joining us. Now are the stars of the show. Tarraco mussa in heaven. You have to like trick him into trying vegan from time to time you know. He did go vegan with me for about three months when we started dating yes and he lost way too much way because when he's not with me he doesn't know what to eat. I try to be vegan. And she's not with me. I'd go to the store. I go to buy food or i'd go to a restaurant and you know so just eating next thing i know i'm like one hundred eighty pounds. I said honey. I need start eating okay. Fine so now. We are gluten free in our house and we are part via yes. It's so crazy with men will do to impress the woman. You completely change your whole lifestyle for this woman. You're about to get it. worked out. Healthy should even eight until about two months of dating. We'd go to dinner. i wouldn't eat. I'd leave her. And i go to del taco and get dinner. Every time we were together on our first date. He wasn't eating. This guy has an e and he's nervous the whole time. Okay so trying to kick for the wedding yes. So what are the wedding plans. What's going on with them. And which cake did you say. Oh well i picked all of them. I think i did. Did i like the vegan cake and then he tried normal ones. I think we're going to have one and we're going to have one witness wedding when you like to only waiting off the pandemic or you're just going to do it and take precautions. I've been to a few pandemic weddings. They're not bad so we can say it. Is this year. So we're hoping that you know things are settled down by then. We'll take precautions. If needed which i think they will be so. We're really excited to tell you when it is or where it is. I think the real fight is three networks three shows. Who's going to get the wedding netflix. Plus our tv really or we just have a normal wedding no cameras so we're thinking no cameras. No i need to every detail of that wedding nobility. they'll sell the pictures or yes. We're taking it over that ring tattooed to.
NewsRadio WIOD
"one witness" Discussed on NewsRadio WIOD
"We also make sure that their state plan is bund up and up to date. You know, a safe planet could be very complicated, but it doesn't have to be sometimes if you don't do things correctly. It won't work the way you want. For instance, one of my first cases as a young attorney client came to me and said that her father had disinherited her. Now they had a relationship that was on again, off again. Hot and cold. He would Justin hired her. You put her back in the will and At this particular time when he passed away, he disinherited her. He left everything to his own half brother instead of her and the half brother was actually a law school graduate, not a toucan attorney. He made the will himself for the brother and he actually videotaped her father signing the will, saying that he was disinherited his daughter. Um And so the daughter came to me to see if I could help her get the inheritance. And so we round up looking at the will, and we thought a lawsuit and we took the deposition of the witnesses. It turns out that even though they videotapes toe will on Lee, One witness actually signed in the presence of the tests later, the person who made the will her father, and then after that person signed, they brought the will over to the neighbors and the two neighbors signed his 2nd and 3rd witnesses, but neither of them actually saw the test paper sign. So there are witnesses signatures were invalid, So it only had one valid witness. We got the will thrown out and because there was no will. Everything went to his daughter by intestines. See? And she got everything. So the point is, is that you have to execute your documents correctly. But for some people, uh, the main concern of estate planning is to make sure that their heirs Get everything right that the right people get Their assets. They worked hard. They have their money, and they want to make sure that if they have kids, for instance, everything goes to their kids. Or if they have a spouse, everything goes their spouse and then the kids. And so for many people, the estate plan, the primary component of the estate plan is the plan of distribution. Another thing that people want to do many times. Is avoid probate. And they want to avoid probate because probe it's expensive. It could cost two or 3% of the value of the estate. So if you have $500,000 could cost your kids $15,000 in probate It also takes time. It's time consuming. Um, and a lot of people say Well, if I ever will. Why don't have to do, probie. Well, A will is that the reason you have to do probate because In order for will to be valid. A court has to approve it. And they have to make sure that it was your last will that you've made no subsequent wills that it was executed correctly, and they have to give notice to potential predators so that they have a chance to claim money that's owed to them before it goes to the heirs. So let's say you have a house, right? And it's in your name and your will says I leave my house to my son. Well, your son can't sell that house because it's not in his name. And he no one can make a deed to put it in his name because the person who owned it is no longer alive. So the only way the house and get it in In someone's name is through probate, and then a court issues a probated and transfers the property. At that point, whoever inherited can sell it so Again. A lot of people. The main concern is that I want to make sure that my stuff goes wherever Wanted to, and I want to avoid probate. So a lot of people think you need a willing to trust to do that. But the reality is, you don't necessarily need a willing to trust you may not even need a lawyer at all. To play in your state in terms of the distribution and to also make sure that your assets avoid probate because some assets avoid probate automatically. For instance, if you have an IRA account, or if you have annuity or a life insurance policy where 41 K those have been officially so when you sign up for the account. They ask you to name your beneficiaries and no matter what your will says. You're those assets are going to the beneficiaries on those account documents. And if you want to change the beneficiary, you don't need a lawyer. It's free. You just call the institution. You just call the insurance company of the brokerage firm where the company you work for and say, I need to change of beneficiary form and then you change your beneficiary so you could make The main beneficiary. Ah, lot of times people make of their spouse. And then you could put what's called a contingent beneficiary. If your main beneficiary is not alive at the time of your death. Then we'll go to your contingent Beneficiary. So in that case, all these assets will avoid probate and go exactly to who you want them to, and you can change that that as often as you want. There's no cost to do so. Now, A lot of people have nonretirement accounts, brokerage accounts and bank accounts that don't have beneficiaries on them. However, you can add beneficiaries to brokerage accounts and bank accounts. It's called a transfer on death designation. You can go to the financial institution and you could tell them I would like to have beneficiaries on these accounts. Please give me a transfer on death designation form so I could fill out so that at my death The beneficiaries. Although only the show is the death certificate on the cat will be transferred to them again. It could be your spouse is the primary and then your Children or whoever you want is the contention beneficiaries. And that that would be a great thing to do to avoid probate, and it's free to do that, And now you have all your assets except your house. We'll get to that. The second Going exactly where you want them to go. Now, if if you have a house You have real estate That's investment property back typically does not have a beneficiary, right? When you get a deed, someone gives you a deed. And now you wander in your name. But you can make a deed from you to yourself with the beneficiary. It's called a Lady Bird eater, Florida so you can record a deed that says that your death This property will go to your spouse or this property will go in equal shares to your kids, and then all the need to show a death certificate to the county clerk. And that that property will be transferred to their names, and then they'll be able to sell that for your program. Okay, So essentially, If you have real estate, you have stock and bond accounts. You have retirement accounts. You've insurance. You've annuities your bank accounts..
NewsRadio WIOD
"one witness" Discussed on NewsRadio WIOD
"We also make sure that their state plan is bund up and up to date. You know, a safe planet could be very complicated, but it doesn't have to be sometimes if you don't do things correctly. It won't work the way you want. For instance, one of my first cases as a young attorney client came to me and said that her father had disinherited her. Now they had a relationship that was on again, off again. Hot and cold. He would Justin hired hurry, put her back in the will and At this particular time when he passed away, he disinherited her. He left everything to his own half brother instead of her and the half brother was actually a law school graduate, not a toucan attorney. He made the will himself for the brother and he actually videotaped her father signing the will, saying that he was disinherited his daughter. And so the daughter came to me to see if I could help her get the inheritance. And so we wound up looking at the will. And we thought the lawsuit and we took the deposition of the witnesses. It turns out that even though they videotapes toe will on Lee, One witness actually signed in the presence of the tests later, the person who made the will her father, and then after that person signed, they brought the will over to the neighbors, and the two neighbors signed his 2nd and 3rd witnesses. Neither of them actually saw the test safer sign. So they're witnesses. Signatures were invalid, so it only had one valid witness. We got the will thrown out and because there was no will. Everything went to his daughter by intestines. See? And she got everything. So the point is, is that you have to execute your documents correctly. But for some people, uh, the main concern of estate planning is to make sure that their heirs Get everything right that the right people get Their assets. They worked hard. They have the money, and they want to make sure that if they have kids, for instance, everything goes to their kids. Or if they have a spouse, everything goes their spouse and then the kids. And so for many people, the estate plan, the primary component of the estate plan is the plan of distribution. Another thing that people want to do many times is avoid probate. And they want to avoid probate because probe it's expensive. It could cost two or 3% of the value of the estate. So if you have $500,000 could cost your kids $15,000 in probate, it also takes time. It's time consuming. And a lot of people say Well, if I ever will. Why don't have to do, probie. Well, A will is that the reason you have to do probate because In order for will to be valid. A court has to approve it. And they have to make sure that it was your last will that you've made no subsequent wills that it was executed correctly, and they have to give notice to potential predators so that they have a chance to claim money that's owed to them before it goes to the heirs. So let's say you have a house, right? And it's in your name and your will says I leave my house to my son. Well, your son can't sell that house because it's not in his name. And he no one can make a deed to put it in his name because the person who owned it is no longer alive. So the only way the house and get it in In someone's name is through probate. And then a court issues a probated and transfers the property. At that point, whoever inherited can sell it so Again. Ah, lot of people. The main concern is that I want to make sure that my stuff goes wherever Wanted to, and I want to avoid probate. So a lot of people think you need a willing to trust to do that. But the reality is, you don't necessarily need a willing to trust you may not even need a lawyer at all. To play in your state in terms of the distribution and to also make sure that your assets avoid probate because some assets avoid probate automatically. For instance, if you have an IRA account, or if you have annuity or a life insurance policy where 41 K those have been officially so when you sign up for the account. They ask you to name your beneficiaries and no matter what your will says. You're those assets are going to the beneficiaries on those account documents. And if you want to change the beneficiary, you don't need a lawyer. It's free. You just call the institution. You just call the insurance company of the brokerage firm where the company you work for and say, I need to change of beneficiary form and then you change your beneficiary so you could make the main beneficiary. A lot of times people make of their spouse. And then you could put what's called a contingent beneficiary. If your main beneficiary is not alive at the time of your death, then it will go to your contingent Beneficiary. So in that case All these assets will avoid probate and go exactly to who you want them to, and you can change that that as often as you want, and there's no cost to do so. Now, A lot of people have nonretirement accounts, brokers, accounts and bank accounts that don't have beneficiaries on them. However, you can add beneficiaries to brokerage accounts and bank accounts. It's called a transfer on death designation. You can go to the financial institution and you can tell them I would like to have beneficiaries on these accounts. Please give me a transfer on death designation form so that I could fill out so that at my death The beneficiaries. Although only the show is the death certificate on the cat will be transferred to them again. It could be your spouse is the primary and then your Children or whoever you want is the contention beneficiaries. And that that would be a great thing to do to avoid probate, and it's free to do that, And now you have all your assets except your house. We'll get to that in a second. Going exactly where you want them to go. Now, if if you have a house You have real estate that's investment property. Actively does not have a beneficiary, right? When you get a deed, someone gives you a deed. And now you wander in your name. But you can make a deed from you to yourself with the beneficiary. It's called a Lady Bird eater, Florida So you can recorded deed that says that your death This property will go to your spouse or this property will go in equal shares to your kids, and then all the need to show a death certificate to the county clerk. And that that property will be transferred to their names, and then they'll be able to sell that free appropriate. Okay, So essentially, If you have real estate, you have stock and bond accounts. You have retirement accounts. You've insurance. You've annuities your bank accounts..
NewsRadio WIOD
"one witness" Discussed on NewsRadio WIOD
"Uh, you know, it's a planet could be very complicated, but it doesn't have to be Sometimes. If you don't do things correctly, it won't work the way you want, for instance. One of my first cases as a young attorney client came to me and said that her father had disinherited her. Now they had a relationship that was on again, off again. Hot and cold. He would Disinherit her. You put her back in the will and At this particular time when he passed away, he disinherited her. He left everything to his own half brother instead of her and the half brother was actually a law school graduate, not a toucan attorney. He made the will himself for the brother and he actually videotaped her father signing the will, saying that he was disinherited his daughter. And so the daughter came to me to see if I could help her get the inheritance. And so we round up looking at the will, and we thought the lawsuit and we took the deposition of the witnesses. It turns out that even though they videotapes toe will on Lee, One witness actually signed in the presence of the tests later, the person who made the will her father, and then after that person signed, they brought the will over to the neighbors and the two neighbors signed his 2nd and 3rd witnesses, but neither of them actually saw the test paper sign. So there are witnesses signatures were invalid, So it only had one valid witness. We got the will thrown out and because there was no will. Everything went to his daughter by intestines. See? And she got everything. So the point is, is that you have to execute your documents correctly. But for some people, uh, the main concern of estate planning Is to make sure that their heirs Get everything right that the right people get Their assets. They worked hard. They have their money, and they want to make sure that if they have kids, for instance, everything goes to their kids. Or if they have a spouse, everything goes their spouse and then the kids. And so for many people, the state plan, the primary component of the state plan is the plan of distribution. Another thing that people want to do many times is avoid probate. And they want to avoid probate because, probie it's expensive. It could cost two or 3% of the value of the estate. So if you have $500,000 could cost your kids $15,000 in probate, it also takes time. It's time consuming. Um, and a lot of people say Well, if I ever will. Why don't have to do, probie. Well, A will is that the reason you have to do probate because In order for will to be valid. A court has to approve it, and they have to make sure that it was your last will that you've made no subsequent wills that it was executed correctly, and they have to give notice to potential predators so that they have a chance to claim money that's owed to them before it goes to the heirs. So let's say you have a house, right? And it's in your name and your will says I leave my house to my son. Well, your son can't sell that house because it's not in his name. And he no one can make a deed to put it in his name because the person who owned it is no longer alive. So the only way the house and get it in In someone's name is through probate. And then a court issues a probated and transfers the property. At that point, whoever inherited can sell it so Again. Ah, lot of people. The main concern is that I want to make sure that my stuff goes wherever Wanted to, and I want to avoid probate. So a lot of people think you need a willing to trust to do that. But the reality is, you don't necessarily need a willing to trust you may not even need a lawyer at all. To play in your state in terms of the distribution and to also make sure that your assets avoid probate because some assets avoid probate automatically. For instance, if you have an IRA account, or if you have annuity or a life insurance policy where 41 K those have been officially so when you sign up for the account. They ask you to name your beneficiaries and no matter what your will says. You're those assets are going to the beneficiaries on those account documents. And if you want to change the beneficiary, you don't need a lawyer. It's free. You just call the institution. You just call the insurance company of the brokerage firm where the company you work for and say, I need to change of beneficiary form and then you change your beneficiary so you could make The main beneficiary. Ah, lot of times people make of their spouse. And then you could put what's called a contingent beneficiary. If your main beneficiary is not alive at the time of your death. Then we'll go to your contingent Beneficiary. So in that case, all these assets will avoid probate and go exactly to who you want them to, and you can change that that as often as you want. There's no cost to do so. Now, A lot of people have nonretirement accounts, brokerage accounts and bank accounts that don't have beneficiaries on them. However, you can add beneficiaries to brokerage accounts and bank accounts. It's called a transfer on death designation. You can go to the financial institution and you could tell them I would like to have beneficiaries on these accounts. Please give me a transfer on death designation form so that I could fill out so that my death The beneficiaries. Although only the show is the death certificate on the account will be transferred to them again. It could be your spouse is the primary and then your Children or whoever you want is the contention beneficiaries. And that that would be a great thing to do to avoid probate, and it's free to do that, And now you have all your assets except your house. We'll get to that in a second. Going exactly where you want them to go. Now, if if you have a house You have real estate that's investment property. Activity does not have a beneficiary, right? When you get a deed, someone gives you a deed. And now you wander in your name. But you can make a deed from you to yourself with the beneficiary. It's called a Lady Bird eater, Florida So you can recorded deed that says that your death This property will go to your spouse or this property will go in equal shares to your kids, and then all the need to show a death certificate to the county clerk. And that that property will be transferred to their names, and then they'll be able to sell that for your program. Okay, So essentially, If you have real estate, you have stock and bond accounts. You have retirement accounts. You've insurance. You've annuities your bank accounts..
NewsRadio WIOD
"one witness" Discussed on NewsRadio WIOD
"Know, it's a planet could be very complicated, but it doesn't have to be Sometimes. If you don't do things correctly, it won't work the way you want, for instance. One of my first cases as a young attorney client came to me and said that her father had disinherited her. Now they had a relationship that was on again, off again. Hot and cold. He would Disinherit Hurry! Put her back in the will and At this particular time when he passed away, he disinherited her. He left everything to his own half brother instead of her and the half brother was actually a law school graduate not out to an attorney. He made the will himself for the brother and he actually videotaped her father signing the will, saying that he was disinherited his daughter. And so the daughter came to me to see if I could help her get the inheritance. And so we round up looking at the will, and we thought a lawsuit and we took the deposition of the witnesses. And it turns out that even though they videotaped the will Only one witness actually signed in the presence of the tests. Later, the person who made the will her father, and then after that person signed, they brought the will over to the neighbors and the two neighbors signed his 2nd and 3rd witnesses, but neither of them actually saw the test paper son. So there are witnesses signatures were invalid, So it only had one valid witness. We got the will thrown out and because there was no will. Everything went to his daughter by intestines. See? And she got everything. So the point is, is that you have to execute your documents correctly. But for some people, uh, the main concern of estate planning is to make sure that their heirs Get everything right that the right people get Their assets. They worked hard. They have their money, and they want to make sure that if they have kids, for instance, everything goes to their kids. Or if they have a spouse, everything goes their spouse and then the kids. And so for many people, the state plan, the primary component of the estate plan is the plan of distribution. Another thing that people want to do many times is avoid probate. And they want to avoid probate because probe it's expensive. It could cost two or 3% of the value of the estate. So if you have $500,000 could cost your kids $15,000 in probate, it also takes time. It's time consuming. Um, and a lot of people say Well, if I ever will. Why don't have to do, probie. Well, A will is that the reason you have to do probate because In order for will to be valid. A court has to approve it. And they have to make sure that it was your last will that you've made no subsequent wills that it was executed correctly, and they have to give notice to potential predators so that they have a chance to claim money that's owed to them before it goes to the heirs. So let's say you have a house, right? And it's in your name and your will says I leave my house to my son. Well, your son can't sell that house because it's not in his name. And he no one can make a deed to put it in his name because the person who owned it is no longer alive. So the only way the house and get it in someone's name is through probate. And then a court issues a probated and transfers the property. At that point, whoever inherited can sell it so Again. Ah, lot of people. The main concern is that I want to make sure that my stuff goes wherever Wanted to, and I want to avoid probate. So a lot of people think you need a willing to trust to do that. But the reality is, you don't necessarily need a willing to trust you may not even need a lawyer at all. To play in your state in terms of the distribution and to also make sure that your assets avoid probate because some assets avoid probate automatically. For instance, if you have an IRA account, or if you have annuity or a life insurance policy where 41 K those have been officially so when you sign up for the account. They ask you to name your beneficiaries and no matter what your will says. You're those assets are going to the beneficiaries on those account documents. And if you want to change the beneficiary, you don't need a lawyer. It's free. You just call the institution. You just call the insurance company of the brokerage firm where the company you work for and say, I need to change of beneficiary form and then you change your beneficiary so you could make The main beneficiary. Ah, lot of times people make of their spouse. And then you could put what's called a contingent beneficiary. If your main beneficiary is not alive at the time of your death. Then we'll go to your contingent Beneficiary. So in that case, all these assets will avoid probate and go exactly to who you want them to, and you can change that that as often as you want, and there's no cost to do so. Now, A lot of people have nonretirement accounts, brokerage accounts and bank accounts that don't have beneficiaries on them. However, you can add beneficiaries to brokerage accounts and bank accounts. It's called a transfer on death designation. You can go to the financial institution and you can tell them I would like to have beneficiaries on these accounts. Please give me a transfer on death designation form so that I could fill out so that my death The beneficiary is all they'll need to show is the death certificate on the cat will be transferred to them again. It could be your spouse is the primary and then your Children or whoever you want is the contention beneficiaries. And that that would be a great thing to do to avoid probate, and it's free to do that, And now you have all your assets except your house. We'll get to that. The second Going exactly where you want them to go. Now, if if you have a house You have real estate That's investment property that typically does not have a beneficiary. Right? When you get a deed, someone gives you a deed. And now you wander in your name. But you can make a deed from you to yourself with the beneficiary. It's called a Lady Bird eater, Florida So you can recorded deed that says that your death This property will go to your spouse or this property will go in equal shares to your kids, and then all the need to show a death certificate to the county clerk. And that that property will be transferred to their names, and then they'll be able to sell that free appropriate. Okay, So essentially, If you have real estate, you have stock and bond accounts. You have retirement accounts. You've insurance. You've annuities your bank accounts..
Bloomberg Radio New York
"one witness" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"Now. Global News update. Senators are allowing witnesses in the impeachment trial of former president Trump. This could extend the time line of the trial by many weeks, House impeachment managers said. Initially, they wanted to call one witness. Trump lawyers warned it could open a Pandora's box and suggest they may want to call 100 witnesses. It is likely that individual debates and votes would be required for each requested witness on either side. A new poll says. A majority of Americans are in favor of President Biden's work in the White House so far. The New Hill Harris. Ex poll shows Biden with a 60% job approval rating, a new study says another round of stimulus checks would help millions of Americans stay afloat during the pandemic. Study by research company Morning consul to finds President Biden's proposed $1400 payments would help over 22 million Americans. That's the latest I'm Cameron Fairchild. This is Bloomberg Intelligence. But Alex Steel and Paul's Weenie on Bloomberg Radio Time to look at the increasing focus on building hydrogen production facilities from where we want to welcome Bloomberg intelligence, Senior industry analysts Elgin Mamedov. Okay, so we have great way have blue. We have green three different types of hydrogen. Before we even get started out tonight and get a break it down for Paul? Yes. Oh, great. Hydrogen is basically hydrogen from.
KOA 850 AM
"one witness" Discussed on KOA 850 AM
"100 or 9708708989. We're here for you. We'll be right back. Stay away news radio time. 10 30 The Senate has voted to allow witnesses in the second impeachment trial of former President Trump. The vote could stretch what was expected to be a short Senate trial into a weeks long process against the hopes of the Biden White House, ABC, Cecilia Vega reports. Biden team president of spite himself has made it very clear and that they wanted this to be a short trial, and everybody in the Senate had said Look, this will prove that the Senate can walk. Can chew gum at the same time that we can work on passing his nominees that we can work on passing covert relief on so they had this decision Early on T O not call witnesses. House impeachment managers had said they wanted to call one witness, but Trump lawyers warned that could open a Pandora's box and suggested they might want to call 100. We continue in the polar vortex single digit temperatures through the weekend. Next update at 11 David Ko Ko, a news radio 8:50 A.m. and 94 1 FM's big problems on the north side of town. In the bed. Fred Sports Traffic Senator We have a crash is closed the highway I 25 South founded 84th Avenue, backing up to 104th another. Close your eyes 70 westbound at Brighton Boulevard. That's been there for a while, but the highway is now closed back in. You have to Colorado Boulevard you drive up in the mountains now looking pretty good. No major problems between C 4 70 in the Eisenhower Tunnel. Fox.