You ready?

I was born ready.

Welcome to the advisory opinions podcast. I'm David French with Sarah Isger and we've got a few things to cover here. We got some requests for an emergency pod after the special counsel decision or merit garland made it.

Decision to appoint a special counsel to investigate the Biden classified documents matter.

But we thought nah, we talked about it a little bit already and besides Monday was coming and fast enough when we record so we're going to talk about the special counsel.

We're going to talk about the Biden classified documents mess more broadly.

We're also going to talk about the question of is scotus getting along some folks sent recipes from the Atlantic asking that question.

And then we'll also talk a bit about a lawsuit in Eugene Oregon that I wrote about over the weekend that was a clinton appointee tossed a threat to religious liberty in response to arguments made by the Biden administration defending religious liberty.

Wait, what? Hold on.

So we're going to talk about all of that. But Sarah, why don't we start with the special counsel and I think you were the one who immediately squelched any talk of your plan.

You're planning me for this.

I'm blaming it because I saw an email come in and said emergency podcasts before I could even open the email. I saw a response from Sarah that said no.

So explain yourself. Why does this not merit in emergency podcast?

It's so funny how different the world looks now in the equivalent compared to when Mueller was appointed.

I mean, we have two special counsels at this point looking into the current president and the former president and yet somehow the entire temperature is 20 degrees cooler than on any given day during the Mueller investigation.

And just, you know, funny enough. So Rob, her was appointed special counsel. And yep, I worked with Rod every single day at the Department of Justice.

I know.

So Rob was Rod, Rosenstein's number two in the deputy attorney general's office. So called the paydag, the principal associate deputy attorney general.

And of course, Rod was also acting attorney general for the purposes of the Russian investigation making Rob, basically the principal person overseeing the day to day operations of the Russian investigation and overseeing Robert Mueller and his whole team.

So that's all to say Rob, her has significant experience, maybe more than anyone else on the planet really with special counsel investigation at this point. There's probably no one better to be the special counsel for this little background on Rob, her, by the way, in case you're wondering incredibly experienced federal prosecutor.

He was in the US attorney's office in Maryland under Rod Rosenstein, then becomes the US attorney himself. That's why he leaves the Mueller investigation Harvard undergrad, Stanford JD, clerked for judge Kaczynski, same as husband of the pod.

So they're little clerk brothers and then goes on to clerk for the chief justice. That's an unusual resume for an A USA in any number of respects actually.

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