Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with Trump's appeal to the Supreme Court to prevent his sentencing on Friday in New York

on his hush money conviction on 34 counts, as well as the move by Trump's wholly own Judge

Eileen Cannon, who tried to block the release of Special Counsel Jack Smith's reports and appears to have

succeeded in blocking the documents report, although Attorney General Garland is poised to release

the January 6th report. We will discuss the Orwellian nature of how Trump has turned his serial

guilt into a clean slate with the lawfare tactics of his

mentor Roy Cohn, who is now the model for MAGA jurisprudence, and speak with Harry Littman,

a former United States Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department.

A professor of constitutional law and national security law at the University of California,

San Diego, and University of California, Los Angeles.

He is a senior fellow at the Annenberg Center at the University of Southern California,

the host of the Talking San Diego speaker series, and the executive producer and host of the

Talking Fed's podcast, as well as the author

of the Talking Fed's Substack, where his latest article we will discuss is securing history's

verdict, the urgency of defeating Trump's efforts to cancel his sentencing.

Then we'll look into the environmental factors behind the devastating wildfires in and around Los Angeles that are incinerating urban areas as wind-wipped fires fueled by dry conditions caused by climate change continue to rage.

Joining us is Dr John Keely, a research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey stationed at

Sequoia National Park. Previously he served in Washington, D.C., as director of the

Ecology Program for the National Science Foundation and was a professor of biology at Occidental

College for 20 years and is now a professor at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at

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