Hello. Hello and welcome to opening arguments. This is episode 1178. I'm your host Thomas Smith, and it's here, folks. It is part two with Chesa Boudin. I've been waiting for it. I know you've been waiting for it. Chase is just so fantastic. I could listen to this guy forever.

I don't know if he ever plans on running for office again, but if he does, I will vote for him if I can.

And I wish we had more chases out there.

We probably do.

But anyway, make sure you listen to part one, of course.

In that one, we talked about his life and his campaign and sort of the stuff prior to being in office, a little bit of stuff in office as well. Today we're talking much more about his time in office, what he tried to accomplish, what he did accomplish, how that went, what it was like, and ultimately why he is no longer in that office. So let's go ahead and get right to it. Oh, in this recording, my voice was terrible. That was last week when my voice was awful.

So don't worry, I'm better now.

I'm all better.

All right, we're going to take a little break, which you can avoid at patreon.com slash law. Please support the show. We've got a lot awful movies coming soon, by the way. Patrons only. We watched juror number two, so you don't have to, although you should. It's actually a good movie.

Me, Lydia, Matt, Casey, had a great recording. Still working on the edit to that. We'll have it out soon.

Patreon.com slash law. All right, we'll jump on with Chesa Boudine.

So, Chesa, we talked a lot about your story of both your background and when you ran for office.

We got a little bit into your turn, but we would love to dig more into that. Just remind us, reset us, you know,

kind of what year are we talking? Where are we the time and place? And let's get into what

happened during your term. Sure. So I was elected in November of 2019. I was sworn into

office the first week of January 2020. And I think probably any new elected official in a big city, you know, especially after a really close race, ranked choice race in particular, where I only ended up with, including first, second and third choice votes, I think it was 42% of the vote. You know, you've got work to do. You've got to meet people that you didn't know before. You've got to get to know how city government works. You've got to get to know the bureaucracy that you're now in charge of, you know, your staff. I had to find where the bathroom was, that kind of thing. You know, I mean, seriously, there's like a lot of, it's a very steep learning curve

when you, when you're a newly elected official for the first time in office.

And then add to it, the, just kind of the politics of the moment, the resistance that we'd

faced, the fact that I was really an outsider to the DA's office coming from the public

defender's office, not, not from a career, you know, in the DA's office coming from the public defender's office, not from a career

in the DA's office. It was a very, very steep learning curve. Then less than two months later,

COVID-19 shuts the whole city down, shuts the whole world down. And to be clear, I had expected

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