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Advisory Opinions

Prosecuting Foreign Leaders

Advisory Opinions

The Dispatch

Politics, News, Government

4.8 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2026

⏱️ 55 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

David French and Sarah Isgur discuss the legal arguments underpinning the arrest of Nicolás Maduro and dive into a legal challenge to mandatory diversity and inclusion training. The Agenda:—Can we and should we arrest foreign leaders?—Official acts and sovereignty—Military response vs. legal prosecution—How real is international law?—Legal argument for regime change—Trump v. United States—Compelled speech in mandatory training—Qualified immunity Show Notes:—Jack Goldsmith on Venezuela—Steve Vladeck on Venezuela—Trump v. Illinois—David Lat's top 10 stories of 2025 Advisory Opinions is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including access to all of our articles, members-only newsletters, and bonus podcast episodes—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Ready?

0:02.0

I was born ready.

0:04.0

Welcome to advisory opinions. I'm David French. That's Sarah Isker, and you might have noticed a reversal of roles here for a moment. I'm weighing in as host today because Sarah has returned from vacation and is recovering from what? Fried rice induced food poisoning, Sarah? Is that what we're dealing with?

0:40.7

There's good news and bad news. The good news is I had chronic bronchitis for seven weeks.

0:47.2

After two rounds of antibiotics, I am good to go. No more chronic bronchitis. The bad news is that I celebrated with some airport

0:55.4

fried rice. That was a mistake. I see that now. Yeah, celebrating, the phrase celebrated with

1:02.9

airport fried rice has never been uttered before in the English language and may never be

1:08.7

uttered again after your experience. But that's not what we're going to be talking about today.

1:13.3

So we're going to do the B side of the Venezuela operation.

1:18.7

Earlier this week on Tuesday, David Latte and I talked about what you might call the A side.

1:22.9

In other words, was the actual operation lawful?

1:25.9

We talked about that at great length.

1:28.0

And then this is the B-side.

1:29.8

What about the indictment?

1:31.8

It's the indictment itself,

1:33.4

as opposed to the military operation,

1:35.3

is the indictment lawful is the indictment

1:38.2

going to survive in federal court.

1:39.9

So we're going to talk about that for a bit.

1:41.5

We're going to tie up loose ends from reader questions

1:44.2

about our Venezuela discussion from before. And then we've got a really apopery of really

1:50.1

interesting circuit court opinions, one about mandatory diversity training, one about the

...

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