THE SHAWN LEE REPORT · EPISODE 5 It’s a Felony Everywhere Except Family Court Hosts: Meg (Stand With Meg) and Shawn Lee (criminal attorney) This transcript has been edited for reading. Timestamps, pauses, false starts, filler words, and off-camera production talk have been removed. [Break] marks a spot where recording stopped or production talk was cut, and [unclear] marks words the audio doesn’t support. Speaker labels were added by an editor. General legal education, not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is created by this content. Shawn’s fraud framework is his theory, his professional reading of federal statutes. Opinions and allegations are presented as spoken; including them here does not establish a fact or a legal finding. Source note from the supplied editor: Edited from the recording’s transcript and checked line by line against the published video’s captions. The recording’s transcript stops at the mid-episode break, so everything from Shawn’s rundown to the closing “Stand with Meg” comes from the captions. One exchange that’s in the recording but was cut from the published video is left out. MEG: Welcome to the Stand With Meg Show. I’m your host, Meg, and this is Shawn Lee from The Shawn Lee Report. Welcome, Shawn, to the show. How are you today? SHAWN: I’m great. Thank you for having me here today. MEG: We got new microphones. We’re testing these out, so mine’s on my necklace and Shawn’s is right there. Let’s hope this works. We’ve had a lot of technical issues, but, you know, we’re learning. I’m so excited to see what you’re going to teach us today, because you always surprise me. SHAWN: Yes, yes. I have so much research for you, and I’m really excited to teach you and your followers about this. MEG: Awesome. Well, let’s dive in. SHAWN: Okay. Have you ever heard of Martha Mitchell? MEG: No, I haven’t. SHAWN: Okay. I printed this off. There’s a movie out on Netflix right now, from 2022, The Martha Mitchell Effect. This is what a lot of people in family court are facing right now. You know, there’s a fraud, you call attention to the fraud, and the people engaged in the fraud claim you’re crazy. MEG: Yeah. SHAWN: All right. Well, that came out of an old playbook. Martha Mitchell was in the White House, called attention to Watergate, and as a result, the Nixon administration attacked her and her mental health to try and basically… MEG: Shut her up. SHAWN: Yeah. Shut her up. Make it so nobody took her seriously about the Watergate scandal. [Break] MEG: So they’re trying to shut her up so she can’t expose a fraud. SHAWN: Yeah. She was the wife of one of the members of the cabinet. She knew that the Watergate scandal was occurring, and the Nixon administration coordinated in a conspiracy to basically make her sound crazy. She was subsequently vindicated years later, when it was proven that everything she was saying was true. They were involved in a massive fraud and cover-up. So that’s why they call it the Martha Mitchell effect. MEG: The Martha Mitchell effect. SHAWN: The Martha Mitchell effect. Okay. Now, let’s go over a few things here. I want to introduce you to a former client of mine. MEG: Okay. SHAWN: Take a look at this. This is a complaint. Have you ever seen a complaint before? MEG: Yes, I’ve written many complaints. SHAWN: Right. But have you ever seen a complaint from a prosecutor? MEG: No, actually, I haven’t. I didn’t know they could do a complaint. A prosecutor did a complaint? Huh. Okay, go ahead. SHAWN: So this is a good example of a complaint. I cannot tell you what did or did not happen, in terms of attorney-client privilege, but I can tell you what was publicly alleged. MEG: What’s the difference between a complaint and… like, they’re just complaining about the person, right? SHAWN: That’s a good question. So, there’s a difference between a complaint and an indictment. MEG: Okay. SHAWN: In an indictment, a prosecutor puts together an indictment and puts it before a grand jury, and… MEG: An indictment is like they’re charging them with X, Y, Z, right? Okay. And so then they go to trial, and… SHAWN: And a grand jury issues the indictment based on the evidence the prosecutor puts before the grand jury. MEG: The indictment means if they’re guilty or not guilty, right? SHAWN: An indictment charges them with a crime. MEG: With a crime. SHAWN: And then once they’re indicted, they go through the whole process in order to get a jury trial. MEG: Okay. But a complaint is not an indictment, right? SHAWN: A complaint is where a prosecutor just files a complaint based on what they believe the facts are, to support a law violation. MEG: Okay. So a complaint is… it’s a prosecutor. A prosecutor files a complaint against a person he believes is doing a crime. SHAWN: There’s indictments, which involve the grand jury, and complaints, which do not involve the grand jury. MEG: Oh. Who decides, then, if it’s true or not? Just the judge? SHAWN: The prosecutor will either ask to impanel a grand jury based on an indictment, or file a complaint. Those are two routes prosecutors can take to charge somebody with a crime. MEG: Okay. SHAWN: That is a complaint. MEG: And who decides the complaint? SHAWN: The prosecutor decides. So this prosecutor… MEG: I’m confused. Wait a second. So this prosecutor did a complaint about this person and filed it with a district court? SHAWN: Yeah. MEG: And then after that, you said there’s no grand trial. There’s no jury. SHAWN: Sure. Why don’t I show you our cast of characters? MEG: Okay, yeah, that might help, because if I’m confused, everyone else will be confused. SHAWN: So, remember our law enforcement agents? I need to get a more diverse cast. I realized that I picked, like, all Caucasian males for law enforcement agents. There are women, there are minorities… MEG: Oh, yeah. There’s no women. SHAWN: But not many. MEG: Well, there are. Yeah, you probably need to change… SHAWN: Yeah, I need to diversify this up a little bit. MEG: Okay. Jeez. SHAWN: I’m sorry. I should have done that. Even Tom Cruise. Like, seriously. Anyway, all these law enforcement agents, whenever they conduct an investigation, will basically submit their investigation, at the conclusion of their investigation, to the prosecutor. MEG: Okay. Right. SHAWN: And the reason they do that is because, you know, separation of powers. MEG: Right. SHAWN: They can investigate it. It’s up to the prosecutor to charge it and prosecute it. MEG: Correct. SHAWN: Okay. The prosecutor takes the information they get, and they prepare either an indictment or a complaint. This is a complaint. MEG: And that’s a complaint. And then where does the complaint go? That’s why I’m confused. SHAWN: Okay. So, the complaint you see at the top there… MEG: Yeah. They filed it within the court. SHAWN: Yep. So they filed it in a district court, right? All right. Once it’s filed in a district court, the process starts. MEG: Okay. SHAWN: Now, this was a case that I worked. Now, I can’t tell you the attorney-client privileged information, but what I can tell you is what was publicly alleged. What was publicly alleged was that Stephen Moreiko allegedly forged a document and got his lawyer to file that document in a district court. MEG: Okay. Family court? SHAWN: Family court. Right. But this was a criminal case. Stephen Moreiko, if you look at his record at the time, had several different felony cases already pending. And so when law enforcement conducted their investigation and found that a false… what they believed to be a false piece of information was filed, they filed a felony charge for making false information. It’s a crime to do some of the things that people get away with in family court. MEG: So, let me get this straight. Your client had his attorney file, within the family court, let’s say, a file that he signed saying it was true. It was really him signing it, but it really wasn’t him. SHAWN: Let’s take a look at the allegations on this. Okay, this is a publicly available document. The allegation is that he created a false written instrument and that his lawyer filed that false written instrument. So, in other words, the allegation is he gave the lawyer something to file, and the thing that his lawyer filed was false. MEG: That happens all the time in family court. SHAWN: Exactly. So why is it that in criminal law, we charge things like that with the felony crime of making false information, but in family court, law enforcement throws their hands up in the air and says that’s a civil issue? MEG: Wow. SHAWN: Yeah. Right. MEG: So, okay. This prosecutor… this guy’s in criminal court already. This prosecutor is still looking at the case and still finding fraud, still finding violations, right? Basically, the investigation was ongoing. SHAWN: Yes. And so he found another thing to charge him with. And so, because law enforcement located evidence of an additional crime, law enforcement submitted a package. You can see the statute here: making false information. MEG: Yeah, I see it: 21-5824. It’s a level 8 nonperson felony. SHAWN: Yeah. And so in family court, people create false information and file it, and the lawyers just take it at face value. MEG: Yeah. And nobody gets charged, right? And it’s a felony. So, for instance, if a GAL writes up a bad report or a therapist writes up a false report, that’s a felony, a level 8. SHAWN: In this case, that’s exactly what happened… well, what was alleged to have happened. Mr. Moreiko was alleged to have provided false information to his lawyer, which his lawyer relied on and filed, and Mr. Moreiko got charged with a felony over it. And so the question I have to ask is: why the disparity? Why is it that in criminal law, if you file false information, even if your lawyer believed it, they’ll charge you with a felony, but in family court, law enforcement says that’s a civil issue? How come? MEG: Well… I know. They do whatever they want. SHAWN: Yeah. Maybe there are people who have decided that they’re not going to investigate crimes committed in family court. MEG: So, could we contact a prosecutor and say this person put false information in family court? SHAWN: So, yes. There’s two ways to draw attention to shortcomings in law enforcement and a prosecutor’s office, and you always want to keep insurance in mind, okay? Because if their insurance rates go up because they’re not enforcing the law and people are getting hurt, they’ll pay attention to that. That’s money. First, you address it with the law enforcement agency. If the patrol officer is not doing their job, get the sheriff involved. MEG: So if somebody files something false within the family court, like that, that violates this. Okay, let’s say… who’s our girl? Who’s the mom? SHAWN: Cersei. MEG: Okay, so let’s say Cersei. Next time, let me pick the characters, okay? Ones that people would really connect with, because you’re just the nerd one. SHAWN: We can make… there could be more than one divorce. MEG: Oh, that’s true. SHAWN: And I did read the entire Game of Thrones series. MEG: I know you did. I know, I know. It’s just that not many people know this. We’ve got to do ones everyone knows. SHAWN: Oh, yeah. No, I read the books. MEG: Oh, yeah, I know. I love the movie. Okay, so Cersei: her court-appointed therapist, let’s say, files all these things about the husband and says he’s done this, he’s this, he’s this. And it’s a mixture of true things and blatant lies, because that’s who Cersei Lannister is. So then Cersei Lannister can call the police and make a report about the fraud, about the document that’s already filed in court that’s false. SHAWN: Yes. If it’s a crime, it’s a crime, and it’s not the judge’s job to prosecute the crime. MEG: Okay. And like Shawn said, if they don’t listen and they’re like, “It’s a civil case,” you go to the sheriff. You get a bad order at McDonald’s, take it up with the manager. So then what? The sheriff or the police will then investigate that therapist, Cersei’s court-appointed therapist for that family? SHAWN: Yeah, and see if it was a lie or not. Look, let’s look at our lawyers. MEG: Okay. Oh my goodness. SHAWN: Will you hold up Billy Flynn and Cersei? Okay. So, if Cersei sends a raven to Billy Flynn, and that… MEG: A raven. He means Game of Thrones. SHAWN: Be nerds with me. MEG: Okay, we’ll be nerds. Okay. A raven, a raven. This is trending right now. Is that what ravens sound like? SHAWN: No. Ravens are incredibly intelligent. MEG: Oh, I know. I’ve heard. SHAWN: Yeah. MEG: Okay, but I thought they had a cool sound. SHAWN: They can call. They can do a variety of things. MEG: Okay. SHAWN: Okay. If Cersei sends a raven to Billy Flynn with false information… MEG: Raven lands on his window, and he grabs… sorry. SHAWN: And Billy Flynn gets the raven… MEG: And the little… where do the ravens keep their little thing? On their leg? SHAWN: Yeah. He gets the raven, right? And he files… MEG: This is called fun law, people. SHAWN: Yes, it is. All right. This is 100% legitimate. Billy Flynn files it. MEG: So then he files the raven to the court. SHAWN: Yeah. Then, under the Moreiko precedent… MEG: What’s the Moreiko precedent? Is that what it’s called? SHAWN: Precedent. MEG: Precedent. Okay. SHAWN: Okay. Under this precedent, Cersei can be charged with making false information, a felony, level 8 in Kansas. Billy Flynn can be the world’s dumbest, blindest, most corrupt lawyer, willing to take money to file anything. That does not change the fact that if Cersei Lannister gives him false information to file, and he files it, that’s a crime. Right? MEG: Wow. How come no one knows this? Does every state have this level? SHAWN: Okay. I have not studied all 50 states, but every state I have studied has a similar law to this. You can’t file intentionally false instruments, and you can’t commit perjury. MEG: Well, I know, that’s the thing. I was like, how is this legal, if somebody can just completely lie on the stand? That’s the point I’m trying to make: what if someone lies on the stand? SHAWN: That’s perjury. MEG: Yeah. So then you could technically say they also lied on the stand. SHAWN: So you can file a complaint with law enforcement that a person committed perjury. You can ask the judge to find they committed perjury. MEG: But let’s say the judge didn’t. Let’s say I was in court and they didn’t. I said, “He’s lying right here,” and the judge didn’t do anything. SHAWN: Let’s look at our cast of characters again. Okay, I threw some. Sorry. Actually, they landed all right there. It’s pretty cool. Let’s look at our judge. MEG: Okay. SHAWN: The great Michael Conahan, the Kids for Cash judge. Michael Conahan is not going to find that his drinking buddy Billy Flynn did anything wrong, right? Because that’s part of the crime. MEG: But if he was on the stand and lied, that’s under oath. That’s perjury. Wouldn’t that be a felony, too? SHAWN: Remember, we’re talking about schemes and artifices to defraud. MEG: Okay. So you mean it has to be on paper? SHAWN: What has to be paper? If the judge and the lawyer are deliberately disregarding or willfully ignorant… those are key terms: deliberately disregarding, willfully ignorant to the fact that false information and perjury is going on… that’s evidence of a crime. MEG: Okay. But not on the stand? I’m sorry, I’m just saying, if he got on the stand and lied about Cersei, and said, let’s say, she ran the car into this, and it’s all a lie. Is that a way we could do it? SHAWN: That could potentially be perjury. MEG: Okay. SHAWN: Now, it has to be something that you can prove is wrong. MEG: Right. SHAWN: So, for instance, if you’ve got an alibi, right? Let’s say that Robert Baratheon makes this testimony, says Cersei ran the car into the garage, right? And Cersei produces an eyewitness and a receipt showing that Cersei wasn’t even at the property at that time. Well, that is independent evidence. Whereas if Cersei says, “Well, I didn’t hit the car,” or “I didn’t hit the garage,” well, that’s subjective evidence. Okay? So you need hard evidence to prove perjury. MEG: Yeah. All right. Which is not hard in family court. SHAWN: So I wanted to introduce you to that because I wanted to draw attention to the double standard: that in criminal law, this is incredibly highly regulated, and it’s subject to a microscope, because people go to prison. And what do you think they do from prison whenever they’ve been wrongfully convicted? They write. They have family who write, and they file lengthy appeals. So in criminal law, we don’t tolerate the filing of false information and the solicitation of perjury. But in family law, this happens, and it does not get charged. MEG: So, question. Let’s bring this around to the Lindsay Clancy case, the trial that’s going on right now. SHAWN: Yeah. MEG: And let’s say there was a nurse on there, a doctor, a therapist, who got on the stand and lied. SHAWN: Okay. MEG: Could they then get in trouble for that? SHAWN: If a witness comes into court and commits perjury, that witness can face contempt allegations and can face an independent perjury charge. MEG: So let’s say after the trial is over, we have proof that that didn’t happen. Who would then be the one to tell? You would then, like you said, call the cops or the sheriff, report it, and then press the prosecutor to look into it? SHAWN: It’s almost universally the victims of whoever’s committing the perjury who file the complaint. And it’s almost always after the trial is over that this information, calling attention to the false information, comes out. Because when you’re in a trial, you’re in a trial, right? And it’s days, months, years later that you get to look back at that transcript with hindsight, 20/20, and say, “That person forged a document, made false information, committed perjury.” MEG: Okay. It reminds me of the Karen Read case. It’s actually in the same court. Did you ever follow the Karen Read case? So good. But in that one, the cops said that she killed her boyfriend. SHAWN: Yeah. MEG: But she didn’t. She got free. SHAWN: Yeah. MEG: But now she’s suing the cops for lying on the stand. But why didn’t they get charged? SHAWN: I don’t know. MEG: Okay. Well, and maybe they don’t have solid proof. Even though she came out not guilty by a jury, that’s not solid proof they lied. SHAWN: True. People get found not guilty all the time, and it’s also not a crime to be wrong. Okay? So if you believe something, and you have a good reason to believe it, and you’re not… MEG: That’s why people on the stand say “to the best of my knowledge” or “what I think,” you know, what they think happened, because it’s not factual stuff. SHAWN: To be held accountable for a crime, you have to have the proper mens rea. Do you know what that is? It’s Latin for mentality. MEG: Okay. SHAWN: All right. You have to have the intention to commit a crime. And a lot of people who are in family court, they have that intention. They have that mens rea. They’re actively trying to lie about the other person, make up documentation, you know, do all these terrible things to destroy their life. And that’s not the same as a law enforcement officer or a witness going in there and saying, “Look, here’s what I believe. Here’s what I’m basing my belief on.” MEG: Right, right. That’s different. SHAWN: Absolutely. And then a jury just saying, “Look, we just don’t agree with you.” MEG: Okay. So, what if an attorney writes up everything? So you’re saying this guy’s attorney wrote it all up based off of what this guy said, but the guy got charged even though the attorney didn’t know? SHAWN: This is publicly available information, so I’m not revealing any attorney-client secrets. But the allegation was that the attorney filed something without independently verifying that the information they were filing was true and accurate. MEG: And then the attorney’s not going to get in trouble? SHAWN: The attorney did wind up getting in a little trouble. MEG: Did he? SHAWN: But again, that’s the difference between criminal law and family law, right? In criminal law, we hold each other to a high standard, because lives hang in the balance. There’s the victims to take into account, there’s the accused to take into account, and there’s… MEG: Which is funny, though, because… yeah, you guys hold these people’s lives. They can go to jail or death row, you know? But family court holds children’s lives. SHAWN: Right. MEG: And our lives. SHAWN: It constitutes a… MEG: It’s almost the same. SHAWN: Well, I think that you’re making a valid point, though you may not necessarily understand it: that this constitutes a sort of detention. You’re detaining somebody with some of these, you know, court actions, without them ever having been accused of or convicted of a crime. MEG: Right, right. SHAWN: So that’s an important constitutional consideration. MEG: Yep. SHAWN: So anyway, I wanted to introduce you to Stephen Moreiko. Now, let’s talk about dirty judges and dirty lawyers. MEG: Okay, I love this. SHAWN: So, the trouble we have is that judges and lawyers are basically all humans, which means they screw up. And what tends to happen is they make a mistake, and rather than own up to the mistake and say, “Look, I made a terrible mistake, and I need to rectify that,” what they do is they engage in a cover-up that’s far worse than the mistake they made. MEG: Right. SHAWN: Okay. So, let me introduce you to Hannah C. Dugan. Take a look at this indictment. This is an indictment. MEG: (reading) “The grand jury charges that on April 18, 2025, in the State and Eastern District of Wisconsin, Hannah Dugan knowingly concealed E.F.R., a person for whose arrest a warrant…” Wait. “…a person for whose arrest a warrant and process had been issued under the provisions of a law of the United States, so as to prevent the discovery and arrest…” Is that a child? E.F.R.? SHAWN: That’s an adult. MEG: Adult. Okay. How come they didn’t put their name in there? SHAWN: I don’t know. MEG: Okay. (reading) “…of E.F.R., after notice and knowledge of the fact that a warrant and process had been issued for the…” Okay. “…violation.” What does this mean? SHAWN: So basically, what Hannah Dugan did was she used her courtroom, her robe, her gavel, her status as a judge, in order to commit a federal crime. She pled not guilty. She took the case all the way through trial. MEG: But what’d she do? I don’t understand. What’d she do? It says, “so as to prevent the discovery.” SHAWN: So there was a warrant out for an individual who had a case in her court. MEG: Okay. SHAWN: It was an immigration warrant. MEG: Okay. SHAWN: And the individual had domestic violence charges pending in Dugan’s court. And so Dugan led him out the back door so that he would not get arrested by federal agents in the lobby. That is a crime. MEG: Okay. And this is a judge. SHAWN: That’s a judge. MEG: Wow. SHAWN: Hannah Dugan. Not just any judge. She was the president of the Milwaukee Bar Association. MEG: Wow. SHAWN: Right. And guess what? Some of the reforms she championed were virtual court. MEG: Oh. And it’s funny: United States of America charged her. So that’s a prosecutor with the DOJ, right? The Department of Justice? SHAWN: Charged her, and convicted her in a trial that was held in Wisconsin. MEG: Huh. SHAWN: She pled not guilty. Now, here’s what I want you to understand: the mentality of these people. Okay? When they’re caught, and when you accuse them of these things, they’re most likely going to fight tooth and nail. MEG: Of course. SHAWN: She did not come in and say, “Look, I made a terrible mistake here. I’m sorry,” and, you know, throw herself on the mercy of the court. No, she fought tooth and nail until she was convicted. Still fighting to this day. MEG: Really? Can she still practice and work while she’s fighting it? SHAWN: So, that is a separate issue. But I do believe she resigned from the bench over this, rather than face judicial removal proceedings. MEG: (reading) “…upon learning that they had an administrative warrant for E.F.R.’s arrest, directing all identified members of the ICE Task Force to leave the location of the planned arrest…” SHAWN: Yep. So that’s what a recent case looks like. 2025: that judge got charged by indictment from the grand jury and got convicted of a federal crime. So this does happen. MEG: Wow, that’s cool. Okay, that’s really cool. So how would… since that really happened, now take that into the Cersei and the family court. So, what are some things that judges can do that would get charged by the DOJ? SHAWN: Here, let’s look at our cast of characters again. Okay, let’s look at our judge. Judge Conahan was tried, or what I believe was convicted, of the Kids for Cash scandal, right? He was… MEG: That was on one of our episodes, if you want. SHAWN: There was proof that money was being routed to him for his orders relating to the detention of children. MEG: Okay. Kids for Cash. He owns that. SHAWN: All right. Well, fast-forward to today. People like this are still on the bench, right? This is still a viable way to make money. So if a judge is providing orders in an improper manner or a criminal manner, they can be subject to violation of the judicial canons, or an indictment. So let’s say our friendly neighborhood tele-guardian ad litem, remotely working from their hostel in Costa Rica, where they very diligently bill $400 an hour to look at six different portal systems in three different circuits for 150 children. Then they refer, and they make referral-fee payments to 70 lawyers, right? If you can trace that money from that remote-working GAL, who’s never met anybody in person, never come to court in person, back to one of this guy’s orders, you potentially have a conspiracy to commit wire fraud case. MEG: Wow. Okay. SHAWN: Okay. And remember, they’re not going to report on themselves, right? The GAL’s not going to come forward and say, “Here’s the system I’ve set up for myself.” The judge certainly isn’t going to do it. It’s always going to be the victims. Same goes for the esteemed Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Great references, graduated top of his class from a prestigious university, years of clinical experience. If Dr. Hannibal Lecter is getting thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars every day based on tele-psychiatric evaluations from the tele-guardian ad litem and the tele-lawyers, and Judge Conahan has any financial relationship whatsoever, where you can show that orders are coming from something other than the facts of the case: conspiracy to commit wire fraud. MEG: So what if he got contacted by the GAL, saying you need to run Cersei… Let’s say here’s an email that was sent to the doctor, and it said, “You need to run a psych evaluation on Cersei,” another one. SHAWN: That’s a shadow docket. MEG: What’s a shadow docket? SHAWN: Okay, so let me take you back to something. Do you see this right up here? That’s a file stamp, right? Do you know what a file stamp is? MEG: It’s to show that it’s documented in the courts. SHAWN: So read it out loud, top to bottom. MEG: (reading) “Electronically filed,” the date, “Clerk of the Geary County District Court, case number,” blah, blah, blah, “PII compliant.” SHAWN: Okay. This is a document that was filed into the case, right? Which means it is something that the appellate courts can look at, if this individual wants to raise an appeal. MEG: Right. SHAWN: That email, that wire between the tele-guardian ad litem and the judge and the tele-doctor, does not have a file stamp. MEG: Right. SHAWN: It’s a shadow docket. MEG: Okay. Is that still wire fraud, though? SHAWN: Well, I’m going to give you the classic lawyer answer: depends. MEG: Right, right, right. Okay. But I’m saying the GAL emailed, saying, “Hey, the judge wants Cersei to get another one.” Just said that, but it didn’t happen. SHAWN: Okay. The way to get an order from a judge is to file a motion, right, that’s electronically filed, and to get an order from the judge. MEG: But there wasn’t an order. The GAL lied, through an email to the doctor, saying the judge said that. SHAWN: And so that’s what we’re trying to point out here: so much of what happens in family court does not happen in family court. MEG: Right. But wouldn’t… couldn’t that be charged as conspiracy? SHAWN: Potentially. MEG: Okay. SHAWN: Potentially. I can tell you this much: judges are not allowed to be willfully ignorant and deliberately indifferent to fraud. If this judge knows that the tele-guardian ad litem and Dr. Hannibal Lecter are in cahoots, the judge is not allowed to be blind to that fact, okay? Because it’s their courtroom, and they’re not stupid people. And especially if kids and families get hurt. SHAWN: So, Hannah Dugan: one example of a dirty judge. Now, let’s talk about William Webster. You ever heard of William Webster? MEG: It sounds familiar, but I could be associating the Webster with something else. Webster dictionary. SHAWN: All right. I’m going to test your knowledge, whether you’re paying attention or not. Okay? Is this charged by the prosecutor by way of complaint, or indictment by grand jury? MEG: (reading) “Information… charges… Count One.” This would be… not an indictment. A complaint, right? SHAWN: Yes. MEG: Okay. Yeah. SHAWN: Nice job. High five. MEG: Thanks. (reading) “The State of Missouri was a State that received federal assistance and benefits in excess of… calendar year… William Webster was an agent, as defined by 18 U.S.C. § 666…” That’s interesting. “…of the State of Missouri, that is, William Webster was the Attorney General of the State of Missouri from January 1985 [unclear] 1993.” “The Conspiracy.” SHAWN: Yeah. The attorney general of the state of Missouri was charged and convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. MEG: Wow. And this was in 1985 to ’92? There wasn’t much wire fraud. SHAWN: There sure was. Banks. MEG: What? SHAWN: We had wires then. MEG: We did? SHAWN: Yeah. MEG: Oh, a telephone would be a wire. We had email? We had phones? SHAWN: We did. MEG: No, we didn’t. In ’85? Well, we didn’t have email and stuff until, gosh, at least 5 to 10 years later. So I would say wire fraud was by phone, then. SHAWN: They had a bunch of… they had computers. MEG: Yeah, but they didn’t have email. There was no internet. SHAWN: Okay. MEG: Chat rooms didn’t come until I was 10. SHAWN: All right, let me walk you through something. MEG: Okay. But he got in trouble for wire fraud? SHAWN: Okay, here’s how the conspiracy worked. The conspiracy for William Webster worked like this. There were two sides of it. MEG: Two sides of it. SHAWN: There were two sides of the conspiracy. Okay? William Webster was a big deal in politics down in the Bootheel of Missouri. Big-time Republican. He became attorney general. If you donated to his campaign, you got favors. What was happening was lawyers were filing false information, artificially inflated complaints, against Missouri’s Second Injury Fund. Okay? Somebody would trip over a briefcase, over and over and over again. And each time they tripped over a briefcase, they needed a million dollars to compensate them for their injuries. And they had doctors on their payroll. They’d take their fake injured client to that doctor, who would corruptly say, “This person needs a million dollars because of their severe injuries from tripping over their briefcase.” The case would get in front of a judge. Now, William Webster, as the top law enforcement official of Missouri, was supposed to be indicting this sort of thing. Okay? And instead, for a campaign donation, he would look the other way. But not just that. For a campaign donation… this is where the second tier of the conspiracy comes in. There were the attorneys who were filing false information… MEG: Family court. SHAWN: William Webster set it up so that his office, the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, hired private firms to defend the fake cases and bill exorbitant amounts of money, to not call attention to the fact that it was a giant fraud. So the plaintiff’s attorneys would make a mountain of money for fake injury cases, and the privately retained insurance firms would make a mountain of money getting paid by the people of the state of Missouri to defend fake injury cases. MEG: Jeez. SHAWN: Now, what does that sound like? MEG: Conspiracy. SHAWN: Okay. Where have you heard that kind of conspiracy before, though? MEG: Family court. So give us an example of family court now, with the same scenario. SHAWN: So, family court. The family law bar is small, right? Today, you know, let’s say you’re a family court attorney today. You’ve got the villain, and I’m representing the hero, right? Well, I’m not going to file a sanctions motion against you for filing the crazy nonsense if I’m a member of a conspiracy. I’m not going to try and sanction you as a lawyer for filing crazy stuff on behalf of your villain client. And do you know why? Because I’m making a mountain of money defending it. And next week, I’m going to get a new case where my client’s the villain and your client’s the hero, and I’m going to do the same thing back to you. MEG: Wow. That’s why the attorneys don’t… Do they do that in criminal court? SHAWN: No, we don’t do that in criminal court. MEG: So if you are in criminal court and you find the other attorneys doing this, you would… SHAWN: If I find a prosecutor doing anything outside of what a prosecutor is allowed to do, I have an ethical and legal obligation to raise it with the trial court, so that I can, you know, do my job on behalf of my client. And that keeps everybody honest. And that’s why I say there’s less criminals in criminal law: because we’re so tightly regulated. There’s so many eyes on us, the stakes are so high, and it’s publicly available information, that we don’t get away with much. MEG: So let’s go back to the Lindsay Clancy case, because everyone’s watching this: the prosecutor, and then her attorney. SHAWN: Yeah. MEG: Okay. So think about it: her prosecutor was this guy, let’s just say. SHAWN: Right. MEG: Okay. And so they found that… let’s say the prosecutor was… so the other attorney had the villain, and the prosecutor has the state, saying that she killed the kids. SHAWN: Yeah. MEG: So you’re saying that they… like you just showed, they can make money? Wow. SHAWN: So in criminal law, it’s not as easy. The William Webster cases were civil cases. MEG: Okay, okay. SHAWN: Okay. William Webster: there was something called the Second Injury Fund. These personal injury attorneys were filing. MEG: So they’re two attorneys, regular, not a prosecutor? SHAWN: Yeah. They weren’t prosecutors. MEG: Okay. SHAWN: So, here’s what you’re going to really like about this. Okay? Nobody wanted to indict the attorney general of Missouri. No one. The sheriff’s department, the police department… just because, for the obvious political reasons. Who in the Jefferson City Police Department and the Cole County Sheriff’s Department and the Missouri Highway Patrol is going to say, “Hey, you know what we ought to do? Let’s open a criminal investigation on the Missouri attorney general”? MEG: Right. SHAWN: Right. Nobody’s doing that. So what happened was the media did it. MEG: The media. SHAWN: Right. When you’re attacking a large-scale criminal enterprise, okay, you don’t want to attack from just one angle, right? You want to attack on multiple fronts. You want to attack legislatively. You want to attack in criminal court. You want to attack in civil court. But people forget about the media. What happened? What brought down William Webster was the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. MEG: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. SHAWN: Yes. MEG: The media. SHAWN: Yes. There were lawyers who were looking at what some of these lawyers were doing, St. Louis lawyers, Missouri lawyers, who were looking at what this small section of the bar was doing and were saying, “Look, this is a crime. You’re not hurt. You’re getting crazy judgments. This has got to be a conspiracy.” They couldn’t get law enforcement to take any action, so they went to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an article calling attention to how disparate some law offices were from others, in terms of the amount of money they were making. MEG: So you’re telling me… okay, so wait. So you’re telling me the St. Louis Post did an article that said “Attorney General to Plead Guilty”? So they pretty much published it in the newspaper. SHAWN: They published the conspiracy, right? And the people of the state of Missouri were outraged. MEG: Oh, okay. SHAWN: No one wanted to file an indictment against this guy. He was too popular, too politically powerful, too connected. He was the attorney general, until investigative journalists published what he was doing to the United States of America and to the world. MEG: Wow. So then the prosecutors came in? Then who charged him? SHAWN: And so then the Department of Justice… then it was a political issue. And then the DOJ came in, and then there were prosecutors, and they filed it. Nothing gets politicians to take action on corruption like the risk of losing the next election. And so if you’ve got investigative journalists saying, “Hey, you’ve got a crooked attorney general over here who’s engaging in this crime,” or a judge, or a lawyer, “and you’re not prosecuting it,” let the people at the next election throw them out. MEG: Right. Okay. SHAWN: So that’s how William Webster got indicted. People were complaining to law enforcement. People were complaining in the courts. And it was investigative journalists who took down the Missouri attorney general. MEG: That’s awesome. That’s exactly what we’re trying to do. SHAWN: Okay, that’s a little history lesson. MEG: That’s cool. [Break] MEG: Give us a rundown, a timeline of what we went over. SHAWN: We talked about the Martha Mitchell effect: how a known attack that conspiracies engage in is to say you’re crazy, it’s your mental health. We went over how law enforcement charges a crime through complaints, grand juries, and indictments. And then we discussed some real-world examples of corrupt judges and corrupt lawyers. We talked about Hannah Dugan, a judge who’s now been convicted of a federal crime. She used her gavel, her robe, and her courtroom to actively commit crimes. And then we discussed the case of William Webster, the attorney general of the state of Missouri, who was convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud based on civil courts. And then we discussed a former client of mine named Stephen Moreiko, and what we can call the Moreiko precedent. He was charged with a crime based on the allegation that he had provided his lawyer with false information, and that his lawyer filed that false information in a district court: a level 8 felony in the state of Kansas. MEG: What are we going to talk about on the next episode, Shawn? SHAWN: So, on the next episode, we’re going to talk about willful ignorance and self-deception. We’re going to talk about another dirty judge, Leslie Ann Celebrezze. And we’re going to talk about what a Department of Justice Civil Rights Division investigation looks like, and I have a report illustrating that. MEG: Very cool. Very exciting. Well, please like and share and follow. And if you want to see behind the scenes and more documents that only subscribers get, please go subscribe to Stand With Meg on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. I’ve also been trying to go live on there first, so you can see the footage early, and you’ll be the first to know when the episode goes on YouTube for you to watch it. I’m Meg with Stand With Meg. I’m an investigative journalist. We are here defending parents, protecting children, and we’re a voice for the voiceless. And Shawn, what’s your slogan? Let’s see if we can get better at this. SHAWN: There’s less criminals in criminal law than family law. MEG: Good job, buddy. Good job. All right. (singing) Stand with Meg.