YouSaid · the spoken record

Zephyr Teachout

lines on the record: 59
first: 2026-05-14
most recent: 2026-05-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Department of Justice is absolutely dismantling the entire infrastructure for going after rich criminals. They disbanded the tax division, which goes after rich tax cheats. They've kneecapped the antitrust division. They disbanded the Klepto Capture Task Force, which goes after Russian oligarchs. So, you know, we're really sort of destroying all the tools that we have for going after rich criminals. Those are the federal enforcers. I will say that there's a difference with federal courts. Now, obviously, the Supreme Court is an extraordinarily conservative court that's extremely supportive of this administration. But I can say as a practicing lawyer, the lower courts, I think, by and large are appalled by the corruption that's going on right now and have been taking actions to stop it. And there are a lot of tools that exist outside of federal enforcers that can be brought in state and federal court that actually can make a difference. You know, state attorneys general, like we just suggested, can be enormously valuable here. They have the ability.”
2026-05-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How companies weaponize the terms of service against you · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'd make a distinction there between the federal enforcers and the federal courts. I think you're exactly right that the federal enforcers now controlled by the Trump administration are absolutely indifferent to corporate corruption and in many ways seem to be trying to enable it. You see all these frankly horrifying examples of rich people in companies giving money to various Trump allied campaign committees or businesses and so forth and seeing their government investigations drop, their government lawsuits dropped in some cases their criminal prosecutions dropped. Like these are extraordinary essentially unprecedented actions where people are able to literally buy their way out of the justice system. So I think we live in an era where we absolutely cannot count on federal enforcers to have any interest in going after rich criminals. And in fact, if I can just add to that, there's sort of these individual examples of people buying their way out of the justice system. But at a more programmatic level,”
2026-05-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How companies weaponize the terms of service against you · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me ask about that a little bit more in depth because your book is about the court system and how it has generally pushed Americans towards private dispute resolution, private systems of law, and how that's bad. Hopefully you get your books and records and you can move forward with whatever happens next.”
2026-05-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How companies weaponize the terms of service against you · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Stuff that we can surface as private parties. And what we can get out there in the public record can be enormously important. But the folks who can really get at this information are state attorneys general, because they have what's called pre-complaint discovery. So they can actually demand this information before even filing a lawsuit. And so if we find interesting information, potentially this is the sort of stuff that can empower state AGs to take action here.”
2026-05-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How companies weaponize the terms of service against you · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, absolutely. And you have the question about, you know, did they write it down? Do the documents still exist? All these sorts of things. I think there really is really interesting public reporting about the actions that Paramount took in its various acquisitions. So when David Ellison was trying to buy Paramount in the first place when he just owned Skydance, there was really interesting public reporting saying that the Ellisons had agreed to a quote-unquote side deal with the president to provide millions of dollars in free advertising for causes that he supported to settle transparently bogus lawsuit that he had against 60 minutes and in exchange potentially get regulatory approval for the Paramount acquisition. So those are the sorts of decisions that actually a board would have to be involved in. And so it wouldn't be terribly surprising if there actually is some documentation at a high level about this stuff. And what's really great is this is the”
2026-05-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How companies weaponize the terms of service against you · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Strikes me as a very interesting sort of mechanical approach to how to bring corruption to light, right? You're going to find an interested party who is a shareholder. You're going to say, hey, there's these standard practices. Shareholders have access. Show me the documents that led to whatever deal we're going to get to. And then we can use that to prove that there is some corruption at play. I think that's very clean. I respect the cleverness of it. It strikes me that maybe these guys didn't write down like do corruption tomorrow. How do you think that's going to go?”
2026-05-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How companies weaponize the terms of service against you · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are representing two great organizations, the Foundation for Freedom of the Press and Reporters Without Borders, both of whom represent journalists and the interests of the free press generally. They're also individually as organizations, shareholders in Paramount and so have the right to demand these books and records. And I should say this is about a big, huge issue, but the actual thing that's being asked for here is very standard. Shareholders ask for this information all the time. So at least on the law, this is a very straightforward request”
2026-05-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How companies weaponize the terms of service against you · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Regulatory approval of their acquisition of Warner Bros. You know, that's profoundly troubling the idea that a company or billionaires might agree to reshape the media landscape to the president's liking. And so we've made what's called a books and records demand too paramount to understand what documents the board has about specifically these potential acts of corruption. So they have five calendar days to respond and then potentially we can bring this to litigation in Delaware Chancery Court.”
2026-05-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How companies weaponize the terms of service against you · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Public integrity project, just a set of baseline, is a new public interest law firm that we're running to raise the legal and reputational cost of corruption in the United States. So in a world where the Department of Justice is not interested in pursuing corruption cases and in some cases may be facilitating corruption, we want to go after the folks inside of government that are being bribed and the folks outside of government that are trying to bribe them. So we've brought a number of cases already. We sued the president for approving the illegal sale of TikToks U.S. assets to various administration allies. We sued the Attorney General for failing to disclose fully the Epstein files in violation of the law. And now we are laying the foundation for bringing a suit against Paramount for potentially, at least based on public reporting, the Ellison family discussing with the President administration officials potentially firing CNN anchors in exchange for”
2026-05-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How companies weaponize the terms of service against you · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT