Why have Political Ads Turned Anti-lawyer? Wu Tang, and Headline Stories Discussed.

This week on The Outlaw Lawyer, Josh, Cassandra and Taylor. The law is the discussion how it affects everything around us. We get into it today. And as always here on The Outlaw Lawyer, the attorneys tackle all of the most urgent burning legal questions such as why have political ads turned anti-lawyer?

We've all seen them. What crime can you be charged with for transporting immigrants to sanctuary cities? And can you buy a gun if you have a gun? You have been charged with a felony. That's all coming up on The Outlaw Lawyer. We'll have more on that here in North Carolina. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate.

Each and every week we get into legalese. We also give you an opportunity if you've got a legal situation and you've got questions. You can always get in touch with Whitaker and Hamer by calling 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. You can also email your questions to the show.

That's questions at theoutlawlawyer.com and we'll answer them on a future program. But when you call that number 800-659-1186. Just leave your contact info.

Briefly what the call is about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. So here we go folks. Josh, what do you got for us? Taylor, have you guys been paying attention to the political ads? Are you seeing those? Yeah, so many hitting me already.

It's too early. So much. This is why I don't watch TV anymore. As I've gotten older, I get up to take a shower and get ready and in the bedroom I always turn on the news. That's really the only news I'll watch is just kind of the local news in the morning.

Really just for the weather and the traffic. But the political ads are killing me. And I do like to watch Jeopardy and the political ads really hit you hard during Jeopardy. But I've noticed, you know, we got I think the two races that I see the most political ads for. I guess Sherri Beasley is running against Ted Budd for a Senate seat.

And I guess is it is it Bohans and Wylie Nickel that are running for the Congressional seat, the House? And Sherri Beasley, hers is the one that always pops up on YouTube for me. Like all the time. It's on YouTube. Yeah, all the time. All the time. And I get it.

We're in that season. That's what happens. But, you know, political ads have kind of, you know, they're not really trending up, right? They seem to get dirtier and dirtier and more mudslingy, if that's a word, as we get closer and closer to the election. But I have noticed and again, here at the Outlaw Lawyer, our attorneys were all different political affiliations. We really try our best to stay apolitical. So this is not a political commentary by any means. But I have noticed that the ads against Wylie Nickel and Sherri Beasley, they're both attorneys.

OK. And so it seems like the tactic that the other side has taken is to make them try to make them look bad for their profession, for what they do, for being attorneys. Have you guys seen those yet? Have you seen that? Yeah, they've been really intense and they make me giggle and cringe simultaneously every time. Can I see that real quickly? Can you giggle and cringe at the same time? I just want to see it.

I just want to see it every day. The the Wylie Nickel one is the one that first I don't really pay a lot of attention. And there's there's one against Wylie Nickel. And it's it's saying that you can you know, if you're a child, if you're a pedophile, if you're a child pornography, you can call Wylie Nickel.

He'll defend you as long as you've got enough money. Oh, you mean a defense attorney? That's right.

And I turned to my my boys are in the room with me watching this. Right. My wife, I was like, he's a criminal defense attorney. That's his job. That's his job. You know, but it just it just and it's very you know, it's it's very effective if you're not thinking about it.

Right. If you're like, oh, my God, you know, like but and then Sherry Beasley, Sherry Beasley is a very accomplished attorney. You know, she's a Supreme Court justice. She was Supreme Court during the pandemic and just very widely respected amongst attorneys. Again, I think she's running as a Democrat.

We're not here to support Republican versus Democrat. But among attorneys, I think there's very few attorneys that have a negative impression of Sherry Beasley, especially those who follow what the North Carolina Supreme Court does and the opinions they write and issue. And they have an attack ad against her, too, because she worked for the law firm that did, I guess, did some lobbying. I'm basing this all on political ads.

I don't I haven't researched this. Yeah, that's the one I see all the time. They're always like, she did these things for lobbyists. So it doesn't really care about the individual person because of her previous job. And I'm just like, well, she had to have a job.

I mean, if that's if that's the the the the toughest mud that you had, the dirtiest mud that you have to sling, that's not a lot. And that actually, you know, and I don't know what I don't know what a non-attorney I don't know how a non-attorney feels about those ads. I think we start to do a poll. Right. Like call in if if those ads worked on you, if you if you would never vote for a criminal defense attorney to serve in any kind of public.

But they never say like he is a criminal defense attorney, like they don't say it that way at all. I think if you aren't thinking about it, any ad where it says the other person defends pedophiles is effective. Right. Right. That's going to that's going to hit something deep down that's going to to get to you. But anyway, it's been killing me that the turn that these are taking and you know, I really like Sherry Beasley's counter ad because she has some of the other Supreme Court justices in North Carolina on both sides of the political spectrum kind of stepping in and saying, hey, Sherry Beasley's pretty good and you should support her.

You know, like I like that works more on me. I don't know the mudslinging ads. They must be effective.

People do them to pay millions and millions and millions of dollars to do it. But it reminds me of was the movie with Will Ferrell and Galifianakis where they're running against each other. You're really struggling here. Will Ferrell, Galifianakis, they're running against each other to be a senator in North Carolina. We're going to obviously have to Google this movie.

Out of all things you could have gone. Well, there's a movie that's very good and very funny. It's got Galifianakis and it's got Will Ferrell and they're running for a Senate seat in North Carolina. That's the whole premise of the.

I'll put it on my list. But anyway, that's one of the things he's disappointed. But anyway, one of the scenes campaign. Sorry about that. The campaign campaign.

I can't type very fast. Sorry. So Will Ferrell is this kind of character of a bad senator. You know, he doesn't really care about his folks and he's running. He gets this high paid guy to come in and he's you've seen it. He punches the baby by accident. You never saw that.

He punches the baby by accident. So he's got his campaign has to like come back from this. And so he calls in this high powered media guy who who does these crazy ads to try to like get him back on track and make people think more negatively about his opponent as his opponent has a beard. So one of them is like accusing the guy being in the Taliban. Right. And where was he on 9-11?

No one knows. You know, just this like bombastic, like terrible. Anyway, that's what it reminded me of. But I wanted to at least here on our show, just tell everybody that it's OK if you're a criminal defense attorney. That's your job to defend people who have been accused of a crime and that is right under their constitution to have an attorney.

That's right. If we get to the point as a society where we frown on that and we don't think people deserve a defense and we've we're getting to a bad spot. But I don't know. Maybe we should do a show with, you know, all the really bad lawyer jokes you've heard over the years. I'm sure there are quite a few.

That'll fill an hour easily. The the other thing I want to talk about is I don't think any of you guys were there. Anybody go to Wu-Tang?

Wu-Tang was that not able to go. I missed it. I was like, I saw your picture on Facebook and I just stared at it and was like, this isn't fair. And I like immediately turned my phone off and like went to go pet my dog. So we you know, I like to go to concerts. I got a chance to go with some friends to to see Wu-Tang had a really good seats were not in the lawn.

I'm too old to sit in the lawn for these shows that are packed out. But it was packed out. It was packed. But they were missing a lot of people. Right. If you go see Wu-Tang now, obviously old dirties passed away. Right.

Method Man was not I don't know if he's on the tour, but Method Man was not there, was not advertised to be there, but wasn't there. There's missing a lot of you know, if you grew up in the 90s, when when Wu-Tang really came up, they're missing a lot of their their their top guns, you know. And it reminded me of going to see Lynyrd Skynyrd like in the 90s. Right. You go see Lynyrd Skynyrd because it's Lynyrd Skynyrd. You grew up with Lynyrd Skynyrd, but like half the band is gone. Right.

They died in a plane crash. Right. So you're but you still go and you enjoy the music. It's almost like a tribute band at some point.

Right. That's kind of I don't know if a lot of people would draw a comparison between going to watch Wu-Tang in the 2020s and going to watch Skynyrd in the 90s. But that's what it reminded me of.

That's the comparison. That's like you're almost you're watching a show of the former band or outfit or group. But it sounds like you're almost complaining, but you really enjoyed it.

Am I right? I did enjoy it. I did.

I did enjoy it. I'd go. I'd go next year.

You know, if they come back, I'd go next year. But I also tell you, it was slam packed. I don't know. There could have been any more people on that lawn. I don't know what the laws are.

The rules are for the amount of people that can be on the lawn at any given time. But it was craziness. Have you guys ever seen Wu-Tang or Skynyrd? I've never been I've never had the chance to go see Wu-Tang in concert.

This would have been like the first time I couldn't could have gone and we had other things we had to do. I'm I'm I'm old. So I only you know, the first two are really the only ones that I've listened to. You know, I didn't really I didn't keep up with anything after the 2000s.

I'm not good with new music. That's about when I aged out. 2000. Yeah. Like 20 years ago.

2000, 2003. That's probably when I was falling off. And, you know, it happens. It's a thing that happens to people. It'll happen to you guys. Gotta grow up.

You're too young. Right. But anyway, we got we got a lot of legal topics. The first thing I wanted to do, you know, here on the show, we'd like to take news items that have legal components and kind of look at them through through an attorney's lens, a lawyer's lens. And so the first thing we were going to look at is big stories. How was Governor Abbott in Texas and Governor DeSantis in Florida or flying or busing immigrants from their states to sanctuary cities up north? And the legal that came up in a couple of the stories.

What could the legal ramifications be for doing that? You know, so it was a very popular story, very I think I've said bombastic twice today and I never say that, but a very bombastic story. So we're going to talk about that. There was a federal judge out in district court in Texas who has a kind of new new ruling on a kind of an old gun law. So we're going to talk about that. We talked about on a previous show, Trump, former President Trump, the FBI rating his home and having a special master appointed. We talked about what a special master actually was and why you would have one appointed.

So I wanted to follow up there with that story because that's kind of progressed. And then we have a family family law based listener question. And so we always do that when we have Taylor with us, because Taylor is a practicing family law attorney. I am not. Cassandra is not. So when we have Taylor, we always want to explore those family law listener questions because we we get a lot. But that's Morgan. That's what we got coming up for the show today. All right.

Good stuff. The outlaw liars, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, they are your hosts. They're managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina and our special in-studio guests today.

Cassandra Nicholas becoming a regular should be getting paid a little bit more. Taylor Scruggs Smith also here on a regular basis, and we'll get into all the different topics. But just a quick reminder, offices are located for Whitaker and Hamer in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia, and now in Morehead City. And if you have a legal situation you are facing and you need some answers to your questions, I've got a phone number for you. Eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six.

That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. Leave your contact information briefly what the call is about. An attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. You can also email your questions to the program questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com and we'll answer them on a future show.

And coming up next on the other side, immigrants being flown or driven all over the country. The attorneys will talk about it coming up next on the outlaw liars. Welcome back into the outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker, Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer law firm. Again, the power behind the program is the firm. And on the show today, Cassandra Nicholas, Taylor Scruggs Smith, also attorneys at Whitaker and Hamer.

We get into all the different topics. You're going to have legal situations you're facing. You may have questions. You can always contact the firm by calling eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six.

That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. Leave your contact info briefly what that call is about. An attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. And you can always email your questions to the show.

Questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Josh, I hand it back to you. Where are we going first? All right. First up, Morgan, we want to talk about a big news story.

It was covered by everybody for the whole week. I think besides the death of Queen Elizabeth, this was probably the second biggest story. But we have a we have the Texas Governor Abbott, Florida Governor DeSantis. Both of their states get a lot of immigration. They have a lot of immigration through the borders there. And so they deal with an influx of immigrants.

And so you might again, we don't try to draw any conclusions. That might be depending on how you view it. Maybe that's a problem.

Maybe that's a great thing. But either way, they do have an influx of immigrants that come into their states that have to be dealt with, processed, you know, kind of brought in. And so that has been a source of frustration for those states for a long time. And they don't necessarily agree with how the Biden administration or maybe even if you go back to Trump or Bush, I mean, it's been an issue for a long time. I don't think anyone's really solved the issue. But anyway, they seem pretty dissatisfied with it. So they kind of took it upon themselves to bus fly some of these folks who are coming into the country to sanctuary cities up north.

They don't usually deal with a lot of immigration just because of where they're located. But I'm not the only one that saw these stories, right? This is not like the movie, The Campaign. You guys saw this, right? No, I think I saw it mainly when it came up about everybody getting transported in some way to Martha's Vineyard.

That was how the stories started showing up on my social media feeds and things like that. It's like all these people ended up in Martha's Vineyard. And from reading some of these articles, it sounds like they're complaining that they were promised opportunity schooling or something like that. And that's why they got on the buses or the fights or whatever to get transported out to these other areas.

But then when they got there, there was nothing. And so that's what they're alleging. Like this is a political stunt. They weren't really getting support. Yeah. Not as a political statement whatsoever, but it's a good political stunt. Like what a clever like, oh, you've got sanctuary cities.

Here's some people. Right. Right.

Right. So it's been going on. You know, I started seeing the stories several weeks ago, you know, because I guess Governor Abbott, at least the way I read it, is, you know, taking folks and giving them an option like, hey, you can stay here or you can go to New York, Chicago, D.C. There might have been somewhere else, but he's giving these folks some options that they would voluntarily, at least this is what Governor Abbott said, they could voluntarily take or they could just stay where they were. A lot of them didn't want to go to.

This is what he's saying. A lot of these folks didn't want to go. And so he's been busing folks to the Bronx and to Chicago. And then that's been a new story for several weeks. But DeSantis followed suit and made it a bigger splash. That's right. So DeSantis, you know, did.

Yeah. So I think Vice President Harris was on the news shows, I guess, this past Sunday. I don't watch a lot of those on Sundays, but was on a couple of news shows and pretty much, I guess, had seemed to have stated that everything was good at the border.

Everything was fine. And that was, I think, Governor DeSantis's play there was to to fly on, I think, private jets. I can't remember what the story was, but but fly folks to near her house. Right.

I guess she has a house close to there. Is that the. Oh, I wasn't. I didn't even hear about that part yet.

You're beating us. It makes it even interesting. It's not funny. It's not funny. Right. It's effective.

It wasn't. What a cheeky. Yeah.

I'm going to move them closer to you. And so Governor Abbott, as far as I can read, when you when you get when you look at the legal aspects of this, which is what we're concerned about here, when you look at the legal aspects, Governor Abbott, you know, presents folks stuff. He's got translators.

He's got things in like seven, eight different languages. There's paperwork for each person that he's he's moving across the country. And it looks like he's really diagnosed and crossing his teeth to make sure these folks know what's going on and they're voluntarily accepting his offer to transport them to to a city up north, a sanctuary city. And he's been getting a lot of media coverage for it. So it's that's what he wants. I'm assuming he wants everybody else to say, hey, this is what we deal with again, whether you think it's good, whether you think it's bad. This is what we're dealing with. You need to understand what we're dealing with, because only the border states really have this this issue that they have to deal with.

And to that effect, it's really worked out well for him, because certainly everybody's talking about it. And these these these cities are having to get the federal government involved. But the Martha's Vineyard one was really that's the one where I think there's a couple of folks investigating it. Yeah, we're not they opened investigation because they weren't sure or somebody's alleging that immigrants weren't actually told their options.

They were put on the buses. But speaking of like the legalities, like reading these articles, obviously none of us handle immigration law. So we're going off of the research that we've done. But a lot of them were saying about how technically, once the border officials have given them their paperwork and they're aware of their court date, they're allowed to travel across the country.

So, yeah, that's my again. Yeah, we do not do not practice immigration law. It's a very interesting area of law, but very specialized. And so a lot of the attorneys that practice immigration law, that is their entire practice is immigration law. But yeah, the way I understand it is once someone has entered the country and they've been found to be a, you know, they've immigrated here, they are processed, given a court date and then and then kind of released.

I understand there's a big backlog, right? It's going to take them a while to get to court. But then they're they're allowed to travel. They're allowed to leave. So if this is all voluntary, then there's no no charges to be filed. I would think if they cannot prove it was voluntary, then that's where they're going to run into. Right.

But I'm wondering what the plan is. So they're given a hearing date. But then if they're somewhere else in the country without like a governor has brought them there, but they have no way to get back.

Or their hearing date and then they're in violation. I think what that sounds like, what some of the people are concerned about, especially for those that are seeking asylum. So I think that's why there there's so much news story about this now.

You know, definitely creates an interesting conversation, which I think is it was the point. Of course, you can't commit a crime to do it. Right. So I think the folks out there who think this was a a stunt by DeSantis, a show there, they're calling for kidnapping charges. You know, these people didn't know what you were doing and you've forcibly removed them across the country. I don't think any of that is going to stick.

I mean, I would assume that the folks down there in Florida have all their documentation and can show where everybody voluntarily was on board. But what I'm really interested in, it kind of did start the conversation again. So I'm interested to see where it goes. And it's kind of like these these ads we were just talking about that demonize attorneys, these political ads. It's a it's a political stunt.

Right. It's supposed to make you. And that's what it raised. That's what that's good or bad or however you feel it's supposed to get you talking about it. So if you support DeSantis and you think immigration is a problem, that the federal government's not doing much about it, you were really pumped. You're like, all right, stick it to them. And if you if you don't feel that way and you're horrified that, you know, you know, immigrants were treated in this manner.

Right. It's just inflamed both sides. It hasn't gotten us any closer to to a solution, but it definitely got everybody talking, which I which I guess was the point. There actually was another article I think I saw just this morning. They're now considering housing people on cruise ships because of these type of immigration problems at Border State. So a lot more people are just starting to talk about how people are coming in and where they're staying in general.

So this has sparked conversations in like five different areas of immigration law. I'm just I'm just curious as we as we come to the end of this this news item, Cassandra and Taylor are younger than me by a decent amount of years, I would say. Fair stretch.

That's right. Decent amount. But just curious, like, Taylor, how do you get most of your news? Twitter. So you follow I follow actual news sources and then most of the time there's a lot of people on Twitter who will get a news story and go out and talk to the people in the area more so than some of the bigger chains are able to do sometimes. So I honestly find out things through my Twitter feed quicker than I will see the news story for it. Right. But you but on that Twitter feed, you're following what we would maybe call traditional news outlets, like maybe newspapers, CNN, that kind of stuff. So you're getting those things.

But then you're also getting more non-traditional. Yeah. So it's a nice mix for me and I get all my news and like I think I saw it drop on Twitter first about Queen Elizabeth dying before I saw CNN or anybody else run the story for it.

Do you that I'm not this is not meant to be a demeaning question. I'm always very interested as a kind of journalism background, how people get news, how people absorb news. How often do you click on something? You know, you got the summary on Twitter, but how often do you click and actually read what's there?

It depends, because what a lot of the big news stations are doing now is that if you're not paying a fee, they won't let you read the story. Right. I'll give you a taste. Right. Fades out. Yeah. Right. So you only get like one free article a day. So if I see it on one thing and I really, really want to know what's going on, I'll try to go on Google's type in some keywords and see if I can get a free article somewhere else. But sometimes all I can get is a summary, which is why I like my other non-traditional sources, because they'll give you the full article for free and it links back to that big news source. But they add in some more information. So I feel like I still still stay well-rounded in the information that I'm getting.

How about you, Cassandra? We do keep like traditional news media on just in the background at home. But my other main source is probably Instagram, where I do follow a lot of the main traditional media outlets. But then some of the like really breaking news comes through, like Jerry news, because they vet their stuff, but maybe a little less than the biggest media outlets. So their stuff comes through a lot faster because they're not doing more of that background work. So I learned about that pesky background work.

Yeah, verifying. So I learned about the queen passing from them. And then I really like following outside of the U.S. news sources on Instagram, like BBC, and then clicking on their headlines about American news just to see what they think about us. The British ones are always hilarious. Yeah.

I don't know if they're fans. Well, if you go to if you go to BBC, they have the headers up top and they have a U.S. Canada header. You just click on it and they're the headline.

So you can kind of go check that out. But BBC is very, very good. And I've never I don't know if they have different restrictions for like paywalls, but I've never been blocked out of their content. I can always get the full articles.

Well, and from a sports angle, Josh, we all love sports. ESPN is doing it now because they're the main hub for sports. And so they're ESPN Plus if you don't have it. It's just like Taylor was saying, you get to a certain level and it starts to fade out and you have to pay for the service to get the full article. And they I mean, look, they pay their people a lot of money.

They have a lot of good information on there. But when I was trying to set up my fantasy football team, I was going bananas because I couldn't get past the first two or three articles on on who I should be picking. And I think the reason they're making us pay for those online articles now is because they don't have as many print newspaper subscriptions. Like nobody does that anymore.

But most people, most people don't do it anymore. So much more from ads. So much more down our throats. I don't know if they're getting paid more per view than they would have been, obviously, from like a print perspective. But there's so many ads. I feel like there's so many ads they make more money off of that, like I can have more than one free article a day.

Like what's up this to like 10? I still I still pay for access. I don't get the news and observer anymore because that's really the only place to get good local sports news. So you kind of if you like ACC sports, you kind of how you get stuck paying for the Internet, the Wall Street Journal.

I still get delivered to the house. I crack that one open and and read it, I guess, like it's 1902. But but do you actually make time to read it like, well, during the week, it's during the week, it's tough.

The Saturday one, I kind of go through and then I get the New York Times on Sunday, but then I subscribe to them so I can I look at them online, too, because I've paid to get behind the paywall online, obviously, by having the print subscription. And then they text me. They text me the news. That's how I get a lot of my news. But I like Twitter, too.

I don't really get on Instagram much. And then I avoid ESPN because I only like local sports. I hear you.

You know, so I try to follow ESPN on. Well, back and back before these young ladies and now practicing attorneys were probably still in high school when I was when I was in college. I mean, it was a cool thing on a Sunday to go spend a buck fifty on a Sunday paper that's this thick and go have coffee and flip through that paper. It was nice. I mean, it was nice, real nice.

You just don't you don't have that anymore. I just remember couponing with my mom before we went to the grocery store. And being from Maryland newspaper was just tablecloth for when we had crab.

But you had the Washington Times up there. That's a great paper. It is. And I saw it when we ate crabs because it goes on the table.

So we kept it for that purpose. But wait, I'm reading this article. Hang on a minute. All right.

All right. Well, the outlaw lawyer, we've got more to talk about. We'll come up on the other side again, visiting with us today. Cassandra Nicholas, Taylor Scruggs Smith, also attorneys at Whitaker and Hamer and Josh Whitaker hosting the show. Joe is on assignment this week.

He'll be back next week. But want to remind you, too, that if you've got a legal situation and you you've got some questions, we've got a phone number for you. Get in touch with Whitaker and Hamer. Eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six.

That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. Leave your contact information briefly. What the calls about an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be calling you and helping you with those questions. You can also send your questions to the show. Questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com.

We're back on the other side. Welcome back into the outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer law firm. The power behind the program is the firm in studio, Cassandra Nicholas and Taylor Scruggs Smith, also attorneys at Whitaker and Hamer.

We're talking all kinds of legalese. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Want to remind you that Whitaker and Hamer, they are almost everywhere. They have offices in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia, and now in Morehead City. They are practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. If you have a situation you are facing, you can always call the firm and get some answers to those questions. Eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six.

That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. And email your questions to the show. We'll answer them on future programs. Questions at the outlaw lawyer dot com. And there is a great website to visit. That's the outlaw lawyer dot com. Josh.

All right. So we've got a federal case out of Texas. This is federal. We always talk about where we're at because every state has state courts. They have federal courts. There's different levels, you know, district appeals, Supreme Court.

So we always want to know where we're at and what we're what we're talking about. So we have a case that comes out of Texas Federal District Court that's kind of changing the way we think about gun laws. And so this this analysis here, we have someone who was under the terminology used in the case. And again, every state's different was felony indictment. Right. So we've got someone who had a felony indictment, meaning they were awaiting a trial or some sort of resolution on felony charges of some sort. And they went to go buy some guns, which is that's always a good time to do it when you're under felony indictment to go buy some guns. And they were denied.

Right. The background check said, hey, this guy's under federal indictment. He can't buy guns.

He didn't like this. And he sued in federal court saying that was a violation of his Second Amendment right to to own guns. And so we talked about it a lot this past Supreme Court session. One of the cases we discussed was New York State Rifle and Pistol Association versus Bruin. This was a case where folks in New York, there was a very restrictive concealed carry permit law. And these folks basically said it amounted to not being able to get a concealed carry permit unless you had some extenuating circumstances. And it wasn't it wasn't legal under the Second Amendment. And the Supreme Court said agreed with them. They said, you're right.

This is too restrictive. They struck down the New York concealed carry permit law and kind of kind of said the Second Amendment is not a second class. Right. It's just as important as the First Amendment and kind of started this this new thinking of how to treat the right and restrictions to the right to own a firearm under the Second Amendment. And so here our district court judge agreed with that, you know, kind of saying all law abiding law abiding Americans have a right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense. That was the finding in the in the Bruin case that we talked about. Do you guys do you guys see this case? It was just this week.

I think I just saw it yesterday, but I don't know much about it before reading for this, but it's definitely interesting. And I'll have a lot of impact, even like a lot of places are implementing the red flag laws where people's right to purchase and have guns can be restricted before they've committed any kind of crime when there are risk factors involved. Whereas this one, they've already been charged with a federal crime, a federal felony, and they're saying that not allowing them to buy guns is prior restraint. And prior restraint is normally talked about in the First Amendment context where someone, usually a newspaper, is trying to be prevented from releasing something, releasing news, saying something they shouldn't. But they can't be prevented before they do it. They can only be sued or charged, depending on the context, after it's done. So using the prior restraint language in context with guns, you just have to wait for them to use the gun to do something about it?

I thought this was just interesting. No matter what side of the line you fall down, I don't think, and I think I was talking about this with Josh during the Brankly, I don't think we've actually seen a case in like the modern era where we've actually questioned whether or not somebody that's been charged about to go before a jury to figure out if they're guilty and potentially sentenced has the right to a gun. Like, you know, you go to court for a criminal charge, you have a bail hearing potentially. If there's a bail hearing, one of the conditions typically is, like, you won't have weapons. And judges typically have a pretty wide berth of what they can put as restrictions. They can put a lot of different restrictions on if we're letting you out of jail, you can't, like, they can have you restricted to your home.

Not leave the state, making sure you're not a flight risk. So it's interesting just to see how this is coming up, because I don't think we've ever really questioned this before. And I think it will have where however this gets decided will have impacts in the criminal field in a pretty big way. So our guy here, Jose Cuiras of West Texas, so what he was under, he was facing state charges of burglary. And then I guess he jumped, he also jumped bail according, this is what he's charged with. This is all allegedly, allegedly burgled someone and jumped bail.

But he was trying to buy a semi-automatic handgun. And he was denied at the time of the sale because the background check showed he was under indictment. So he has federal charges now of making a false statement during a firearm purchase and a legal receipt of a firearm by a person under indictment. So the whole incident left him with additional federal criminal charges. A jury convicted him on both accounts. And he asked the court to reconsider considering the Bruin ruling.

And so this district court judge agreed with him and say there's nothing, there's nothing constitutional about preventing someone who's been charged with a felony from, from owning a firearm. Now I'm guessing a judge could have added that to his bail. I guess he jumping bail. So he paid bail was released and never, never came back to court. That's what jumping bail, that's what I take jumping bail to mean is you, you're processed, you're charged. You go before a judge, the judge allows you to, to be released. And then you don't, you don't come back after you post a bond, you post bail.

And just so our listeners know, indictments are typically only done in federal big felony cases, but that means a DA had to go before a grand jury and present the evidence first to get an indictment. And then they are arrested, taken before a judge, have a bail hearing. The judge can say, you know, bail's at $100,000, but if you get out, you can't leave the state, you can't do this, you can't do that. And those are kind of standard restrictions put on somebody if they decide to bail out until the trial.

And so I thought, I thought this was interesting. You kind of have a quote from the, the judge in this district court case. So he, uh, uh, the judge counts said the Supreme Court's ruling had changed the legal landscape on firearm restrictions. He found prohibiting this, uh, queer odds from receiving the gun while under indictment amounted to a form of prior restraint that violated the second amendment.

And so then the comeback from the other side, so the defending party here is the state, uh, the state of Texas. And they said there are no illusions about this case's real work, real world consequences, certainly valid public policy and safety concerns exist. Um, so, you know, you got these, you got these two competing interests here and, and you can, I, I can kind of sympathize with both sides, right? But at some point we have to draw a line. Where is it fair to draw a line?

What does the second amendment really guarantee us? Uh, I thought it was interesting that they are now potentially looking at how this could affect people only in a gun that's under 21. Um, well, and there was a separate ruling in Texas, uh, where a federal judge struck down a state law, Texas state law, barring adults under 21. It's been at 21 for a long time, hasn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Since I was, since I was, you know, we used to write our with your handguns when you're 12 years old, I saw a stat I don't have in front of me and I'm probably, I'm probably embellishing it cause I'm just remembering it, but I saw the amount of guns sold in the U S for like the past 10 years or whatever. They had this number of total guns sold and then they divided it by the total population of the U S and it came out to where it'd be enough guns for everybody to have like 7.4 guns.

I don't have a woman child. I was like, I don't have quite that many guns. So somebody out there probably got like 10 or 12 to account for the 7.4, uh, limit. I have not reached, but, um, but I tell you what, if I won't, if I want someone hearing gun cases, if you're pro second amendment, you won't gun rulings coming out of Texas.

That's where you won't. Yeah. Seems to be the case.

It is. I was trying to look up stats specifically on the number of federal felony indictments because it is, I believe fewer than state felony indictments, uh, throughout the country just because states control a lot more of the criminal law at the ground level in the country. Um, so this won't immediately at least affect anyone charged with a state based felony, uh, just folks with federal felonies. But it'll be interesting to see how that plays out.

Yeah. I didn't think that ruling, that ruling was a big ruling and, and I didn't, I didn't think we'd see changes from it this fast, but apparently, you know, uh, federal judges, uh, see that as the new precedent and they're kind of interpreting that to be much more lenient than what was in place before. So it's, it's definitely changing kind of the way we look at gun laws in the U S the outlaw lawyers. We will be back with more legalese, more discussion. Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer are the hosts managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm. We have again, Cassandra Nicholas and Taylor Scruggs Smith, also attorneys at Whitaker and Hamer in studio with us today. Office is located for Whitaker and Hamer, Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Varina, Gastonia and Morehead city. And just a reminder again, Josh and Joe managing partners and also practicing attorneys here in the great state of North Carolina. If you've got a legal situation you're facing and you've got questions, call this number 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. That'll get you in touch with Whitaker and Hamer and leave your contact information briefly.

What the call's about and someone with Whitaker and Hamer and attorney will be in touch with you. You can also send your questions to the program. We'll answer them on future programs, questions at the outlawlawyer.com. When we come back, we'll talk more about the special master discussion.

It's coming up next. The outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, your hosts. They are managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm.

Office is in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Varina, Gastonia and now in Morehead city. Our special guests in studio, Cassandra Nicholas and Taylor Scruggs Smith, also attorneys at Whitaker and Hamer. Joe Hamer is on assignment this week and I understand because he's the boss, he can change direction on the show and that's going to happen right now.

Josh, where are we going? Well, you know, I want to, I want to make sure we have enough time to answer our listener question. Cause we, like I said, we have Taylor with us. Taylor is one of our family law attorneys. And anytime we have her with us, it's a good time to tackle all the family law listener questions that build up when she's not here. So again, these are real questions that we get from, from real clients.

And what I do is I kind of, sometimes I combine these questions, uh, but I kind of turn them into general, uh, questions. And so my question today, uh, is why do people get prenuptial agreements? All right. Why do people get prenuptial agreements and what can you handle and not handle with a prenuptial agreement?

All right. So we're talking about prenups. Uh, all my boys, when they get old enough, they're going to have prenups because their father's an attorney and that's how we're going to, that's how we're going to do. Josh, do you have a prenup? I don't. I don't. I'm all talk.

The boys will have prenups. I do not. Luckily when I married my wife, I own nothing.

I had nothing of value and she didn't either. So it worked out. Okay. Uh, but Taylor, tell us what a prenuptial agreement is.

Okay. So prenuptial agreements, we hear about these a lot for, um, celebrities and their assets, but everyday people can get them, get them often. Um, it's just an agreement saying in a sense, this, I'm coming into the marriage with this and no matter what happens to this relationship, if we decide to divorce, that stays mine. Um, so you're kind of setting a line early about what stays yours, what stays your future spouse, um, and how you guys are going to split things going forward. Cause you, there's always language in there about, okay, well if you make something joint, this is how it gets split, things like that. So it's a way of protection. We often see them when people have kind of already gone through a divorce and they don't ever want to have to worry about splitting assets like that again.

Um, or they've heard the war stories. It's, is it a pretty flexible agreement? Like how much can you build into there? I know with celebrity ones, I've seen examples of like formulas. Like if you stay together X amount of years, then you get X dollar amount, stuff like that. So you can go that detailed in a prenuptial agreement and kind of go into, all right, let's say somebody becomes a stay at home parent. This is how much support they'll get if we separate after that. You can't get that detailed. Um, I've even seen clauses put in about, um, you know, somebody cheats or we in the marriage because of drugs or alcohol or anything like that. This is what's going to happen. It's kind of like morality clauses.

You can go that detailed. Um, the main thing I always have to warn clients about is you can't really put anything in a prenup in North Carolina anyway. Um, you can't put anything in a prenup that has to deal with child custody or child support. The court is like, you can decide whatever you want between yourselves, but you can't make those decisions early on about a kid.

It's considered against public policy. And almost every CLE I've done, every family law attorney I talked to in law school, they were like, even if it's not explicitly mentioned, never put kids into a prenup. So I see these a lot in my area of practice. I deal a lot with the real estate business law. So we'll have, uh, you know, two spouses who are already older, right?

Have already been professionals, have already acquired real estate, proper real estate, have already acquired things. And going into this marriage, they, they kind of want to continue to, to handle those kinds of things separately. Keep them separate. They don't want them becoming marital property. They don't want a spouse to get a marital interest in something they've already spent 30, 40, 50 years acquiring.

And so I see a lot of simple ones were like, look, this is what I got. This is what you got. It's going to stay our personal, if we want to make something joint, we'll do it. Right.

But everything else, you know, and then that can be combined. I think we've talked about a free trader agreement. Sometimes these prenuptial agreements. Just have that free trader language kind of built into it. Right.

So North Carolina is a statute that allows you to be a free trader. And basically that's to be a married, a married person who kind of operates individually, right? Because if you just, if you, if you do what me and my wife did, you just get, you just go get married, uh, then, and, and you didn't have anything before you get everything afterwards, then your spouse, it doesn't matter who owns it. That spouse, the other spouse is going to have a marital interest in it. It's going to be presumed to be a marital property.

There's exceptions, you know, and what have you, but that's just kind of the general rule. But if you have this prenup, then you could continue to acquire property separately. You know, you can buy and sell property without a spouse joining in. Um, but like you said, Taylor, there are some things you can't, there's a lot of stuff you can agree to, like Cassandra said, and you get very specific about post separation support, alimony, uh, you know, you can make things fault-based like you were talking about, right?

Right. Cause, and that's a big thing because North Carolina in general is not a fault state. Um, when it comes to divorces, North Carolina is a no fault state.

So if you want to say, if you cheat, all these things happen, usually it has to be in a prenup. But child custody and child support can't be, court does not want you deciding how custody will be split early on. They don't want you limiting child support early on. Um, North Carolina is very particular about, um, especially child support.

They have a North Carolina child support guidelines, which is a calculation that the legislator came up with to figure out how much support should be given to a child based off the parent's income and who's mainly keeping the child. Courts are always a big thing when it comes to children that they should have the benefit of both parents and the income coming from both parents. And so, So if it made its way into a prenup and then the couple gets divorced, the court would just invalidate that portion. Have you seen courts invalidate other things in prenups other than dealing with kids? Like just based on like if a fairness, like if it's just leaving one spouse destitute? So actually, um, North Carolina came up with a statute that says even if you're in a prenup waiving, um, your right to spousal support, if you would have to get on state assistance because of the divorce, the other spouse has to pay you some type of spousal support until you would be off state assistance. They can't leave you broke and going off of state assistance or on welfare or something like that just because of the divorce.

So even if you're waiving your right to alimony and the other spouse is waiving their right to give you alimony, doesn't matter if you're going to have to go on state assistance after the divorce. And prenuptial contracts are like, agreements are like any other contract, right? So you're subject to all the normal requirements of a contract. There has to be some sort of consideration, I guess, entering the marriage. You got to be on equal footing to, you know, and so I think if you agreed, you know, you have your own attorney review, you know, I think if you agreed that if, uh, like if I entered one and I agreed, if my wife left me, I didn't have to get any support or anything like that.

And I was left, you know, to have to pursue food stamps or whatever. Um, you can argue that I didn't understand what I was signing, right? Maybe there's some consideration issues. There's some things that can... Voluntariness is a big thing when it comes to those type of marital agreements in North Carolina. So they always got to be signed and notarized. And if they can show it's not voluntary, like you didn't understand what you were signing or you were forced into it. Yeah.

And even if you're on equal footing at the time you sign, marriages are sometimes long and circumstances can change where someone was on equal footing when they signed, but then lose their job, income, get sick. Right. I'm glad there's that kind of safety net. Yeah.

There's that safety net. Um, definitely. And then courts have gotten very particular about when somebody gets the prenup. Like it's, it's okay if you get it like before the wedding, but like you can't tell somebody like they have to sign in that moment.

You got to watch when you're giving it to them, how much time they had. All right. Well, we are up against the break.

We will take that. This is the Outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, your host managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer law firm. Again, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina and in studio this week, Cassandra Nicholas and Taylor Scruggs Smith, also attorneys at Whitaker and Hamer. If you've got a legal situation you're facing and you've got questions, call this number, 800-659-1186.

That's 800-659-1186. You can leave your contact info briefly what the call's about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. And you can always email your questions to the Outlaw lawyer, questions at theoutlawlawyer.com.

Back after this. Welcome back in for the final segment of the Outlaw lawyers, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, your host managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer law firm. Special guests in studio this week, Cassandra Nicholas and Taylor Scruggs Smith, also attorneys at Whitaker and Hamer. Offices located Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay-Varina, Gastonia, and now in Moorhead City. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. If you've got a legal situation, you can always call Whitaker and Hamer, 800-659-1186, 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact info briefly what the call's about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. All right, Josh, wrap it up. Well, before we leave, I wanted to really follow up real quick on the special master discussion that we had a little while ago. It was a couple of weeks back now, but, you know, former President Trump's personal residence was raided by the FBI. It was alleged that he had some classified materials that he should not have in his possession. Things were seized.

We talked about it a couple of weeks ago. Nothing like this has really happened before. It's kind of something you don't see every day and, again, had some kind of shocking news, kind of, I'm going to say bombastic for the third time today.

Had a bombastic quality to it when it was reported on the news. Former President Trump's lawyers made a request that a special master be appointed. We talked about what that is, when that's appointed.

You don't hear about it a lot in the news. It's something that's fairly common in the court system. And so a special master was appointed, Judge Raymond Deary, and he had a meeting, I think it was yesterday. He had a meeting yesterday with the parties, and it looks like he means business. He doesn't want to delay anything. He's asked some tough questions of the Trump attorneys that they don't seem to have good answers for.

Have you guys followed this at all? Not as much as you have. What happened? I just got tired of hearing special master in the news, and I was like, yeah, I had to look at that. But anyway, we're going to continue to watch that one because that is a legal matter that is certainly worth keeping eyes on. Guys, I don't have any more. That's all the legal news I had. That's all I picked out for us to talk about. That was jam packed. There was a lot of news this week. A lot of things were going on.

All right, good stuff. The Outlaw Lawyer's big thank you again to our special guests in studio, Cassandra Nicholas and Taylor Scruggs Smith, attorneys at Whitaker & Hamer. Of course, our host is Josh Whitaker. Joe Hamer on assignment this week.

He's back next week. I want to remind you, too, that Josh and Joe are managing partners at the firm, practicing attorneys here in the great state of North Carolina. Office is located in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia, and now in Moorhead City. And if you've got any legal situation you're facing, you've got questions, give the firm a call. 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact information and briefly what the call is about. An attorney with Whitaker & Hamer will be in touch. I'm Morgan Patrick. And until next time, next week, we'll see you on the radio. Outlaw Lawyer is hosted by an attorney licensed to practice law in North Carolina. Some of the guests appearing on the show may be licensed North Carolina attorneys. Discussion of the show is meant to be general in nature and in no way should the discussion be interpreted as legal advice. Legal advice can only be rendered once an attorney, licensed in the state in which you live, had the opportunity to discuss the facts of your case with you. The attorneys appearing on the show are speaking in generalities about the law in North Carolina and how these laws affect the average North Carolinian. If you have any questions about the content of the show, contact us directly.