For those of you who don’t spend inordinate amounts of time crocheting and watching various unsolved mysteries on YouTube, the name LegalEagle might be new. Congratulations, you’re one of today’s lucky ten thousand!
LegalEagle is a YouTube channel run by lawyer Devin James Stone that focuses on making legal terminology and cases understandable and digestible to a layperson audience. His videos tend to be relatively objective, focusing on the legal aspect of whatever he’s discussing rather than pontificating; while occasionally his own views enter the question in terms of “so how does this apply?”, he tends to be pretty nonpartisan in his approach. (Although as you can see from the thumbnail, he’s also long since run out of patience with Trump.) He’s also deeply informative and entertaining, and has accompanied many a stitchfest of mine.
Anyway, about a week ago he posted a video that just now got to the top of my queue because I’ve been on The Extended Shift From Hell (for those who haven’t seen me talking about it elsewhere in comments: nine twelve-hour shifts in twelve days). It’s about Trump’s testimony in the New York fraud trial, and without meaning any disrespect to the DailyKos staff writers, this was so much easier for me to understand. Part of that is because Stone breaks down a lot of terms in realtime; part is that ADHD makes reading long dense news stories hard no matter who wrote them. But either way, if you want a truly choice summary of where we stood as of Trump taking the stand:
In addition, LegalEagle has video sponsors, and this particular video is sponsored by a company that basically gives you tools to realtime fact-check the news for bias without having to spend six hours of your day across multiple websites reading and making checklists. I know nothing about said company except what Stone’s shared in this video, but I’ve purchased from one of his sponsors before and have no regrets (he’s also done some amazing takedown videos on shady sponsors—he does actually do the research into the products he promotes), so if you’re looking for a good Christmas gift for the newshawk in your life, this might be one to check out.
And finally just in case anybody wonders: no, I’m not associated in any way with LegalEagle or Devin Stone, although once in awhile I pop up in the comments section. I just find his commentary and breakdowns to be incredibly useful, especially as someone with a processing disorder and no legal background, and at the end of this video I was like “I have to wonder how many folks on DKos are like me and basically know ‘fraud bad, Trump fraud, Judge Engoron penalizing for fraud, Trump’s lawyers circus clowns’ and could really benefit from this.” So here it is. And if you like this one, he’s done some other videos on Trump’s legal woes, too—and if you want a break from that, he also once figured out exactly how many felonies Kevin commits in Home Alone.