Trump’s Illegalist War Gets Illegaler

Trump’s Illegalist War Gets Illegaler

LegalEagle

0:00 On Easter morning, as billions of Christians

0:02 celebrated the resurrection of the Prince of Peace,

0:04 Lord Jesus Christ, President Trump had a special holiday message for Iran.

0:08 Open the straight, you crazy bastards.

0:11 You'll be living hell.

0:12 Just watch.

0:13 Praise be to Allah.

0:14 And if they refuse, he'll do a bunch of war crimes on Tuesday.

0:17 On Tuesday morning, he then threatened

0:19 to genocide the entire Iranian civilization.

0:22 But with less than an hour to go before the 8:00 p.m.

0:24 deadline, Trump's Holocaust Tuesday fizzled

0:26 as Pakistan brokered a temporary ceasefire.

0:28 So, you know, more of a casual Taco Tuesday at the office kind of thing.

0:32 The president's comments constitute one of the most outrageous violations

0:36 of the laws of war ever uttered by an American president.

0:39 And as of recording,

0:40 the US and Iran are maybe negotiating a deal that would open the straight

0:44 and earn Iran $2 million in Bitcoin for every ship that passes through.

0:48 The US would get something, maybe.

0:51 The details are murky.

0:52 But the terms being proposed in the ceasefire deal are,

0:54 just like Trump's comments, stupid, dangerous, and very, very illegal.

0:59 Now, all of this is about oil.

1:00 Iran's got a lot of it, gas prices are skyrocketing,

1:03 and Trump has a funny way of being clear about his intentions.

1:06 But Iran's greatest asset is its peak geography.

1:09 About 20 to 25% of the world's oil supply,

1:11 not to mention a tremendous amount of the natural gas supply,

1:14 is transported through the shallow waters of the Strait of Hormuz.

1:17 A passage so thin that only two tankers can go through at a time.

1:21 Surrounding the straight is mountainous terrain with more tunnels, bunkers,

1:24 and Shahed drones on standby than the US military could ever

1:27 feasibly secure without taking over the entire country at tremendous cost.

1:31 So, a ceasefire here is probably the best option.

1:34 As of recording, this deal isn't a formal signed agreement,

1:37 it's a last-second conditional pause brokered through Pakistan.

1:40 The core exchange was supposed to be straightforward.

1:42 Iran agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and scale back attacks,

1:45 while the United States agreed to halt

1:47 imminent strikes against Iranian infrastructure for 2 weeks.

1:50 President Trump said he had received a 10-point proposal from Iran,

1:53 and the two parties would work together on a plan to end the war.

1:56 So, this agreement is either a mutual off-ramp or yet another Taco moment.

2:01 You decide.

2:02 But it soon became clear that the parties

2:03 to the deal had very different understanding of its terms.

2:06 This showed up almost immediately when Iran claimed it would

2:09 charge tolls for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

2:11 Iranian officials have floated fees as high as $2 million per vessel,

2:15 with some reports suggesting payments would be

2:17 made in Bitcoin to avoid sanctions enforcement.

2:19 Before the war, around 138 ships a day passed through the straight.

2:23 If the toll system was in place,

2:25 Iran would be raking in roughly hundreds of millions of dollars per day.

2:28 That's not only an incredible windfall for Iran's new regime,

2:32 the arrangement is almost certainly illegal under international law.

2:35 The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,

2:37 which governs global ocean rules, establishes what's called transit passage

2:41 through straits used for international navigation.

2:44 That means ships have a right to pass through

2:45 places like the Strait of Hormuz freely and without interruption.

2:48 Coastal states can't require permission,

2:50 and they can't charge tolls just for letting ships pass.

2:54 They can charge for specific services like pilotage or tug assistance.

2:58 But those fees have to be limited,

2:59 non-discriminatory, and tied to an actual service.

3:02 A general transit fee of the kind Iran has

3:04 floated would run directly against widely accepted international norms.

3:08 Now, Iran, like the United States,

3:10 has not formally ratified the Convention on the Law of the Sea.

3:12 However, Iran was not charging tolls before the war began,

3:15 and the US views most of the convention as customary international law,

3:19 only objecting to the portions of the convention

3:21 that dealt with the deep seabed and mining.

3:23 The US views free navigation through international straits

3:25 as a bedrock principle of customary international law.

3:28 The US Navy does freedom of navigation operations all the time,

3:31 even in the hotly contested waters of the South China Sea.

3:34 So, given these facts, you'd think that Iran's intent to charge tolls

3:38 would be a total non-starter for the US.

3:40 But you'd be wrong.

3:41 When asked about the tolls, President Trump didn't reject the idea.

3:44 Instead, he described a potential US-Iran toll joint venture,

3:48 which would be a beautiful thing.

3:51 I Would it?

3:52 We don't actually know if the joint venture was

3:54 an actual plan the parties are considering or the fever

3:57 dream of a 79-year-old man who never passes up

3:59 the chance to make the founding fathers look like fools.

4:01 Well, actually, probably a fever dream, since days later he posted,

4:05 "There are reports that Iran is charging

4:07 fees to tankers going through the Hormuz Strait.

4:09 They better not be, and if they are,

4:11 they better stop now." I I don't know, maybe he just wants his cut.

4:14 But it does reinforce the broader issue with the ceasefire.

4:17 All of the parties seem to have

4:18 a completely different understanding of what the ceasefire entails.

4:22 Iran and Pakistan said the ceasefire extends to Israel,

4:24 and that Israel promised to stop bombing Lebanon.

4:27 Israel denied being part of any agreement

4:29 and continued operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

4:31 Meanwhile, Iran sent drone strikes to Kuwait,

4:33 Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.

4:35 But don't worry, guys,

4:36 the Trump administration announced that it'd be sending Larry, Curly, and Moe.

4:39 I I mean, J.D.

4:40 Vance, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner to negotiate further.

4:43 I'm sure they'll close the deal

4:45 as quickly as they've resolved the Russia-Ukraine war.

4:47 As I record this, the ceasefire is still technically on, but it's tenuous.

4:51 And even if the deal is incoherent, the law of armed conflict is not.

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6:26 In the days leading up to the deadline,

6:27 Trump said all hell will rain down on Iran.

6:30 He added, "Glory be to God." Spoken like a true Ayatollah.

6:34 Trump then warned Iran that Tuesday will be the power

6:36 plant day and bridge day all wrapped up in one.

6:39 But international law doesn't allow an aggressor to destroy

6:42 every bridge and power plant in another country.

6:44 As I recently explained,

6:45 the law of armed conflict, or international humanitarian law,

6:48 rests on three foundational principles:

6:50 distinction, proportionality, and military necessity.

6:53 Let's look at these obligations one by one.

6:55 Distinction requires parties to distinguish between people and objects

6:58 that are part of the military and those that are civilian.

7:01 Military objectives are limited to things that, by their nature,

7:04 location, purpose, or use, make an effective contribution to military action,

7:08 and whose destruction offers a definite military advantage.

7:11 Civilian objects, such as power grids, water systems,

7:14 bridges used primarily by the civilian population, are presumptively protected.

7:19 Of course, the line between civilian

7:20 objects and military objectives isn't always simple.

7:23 Power plants can supply electricity to both homes and military facilities.

7:27 Bridges can carry civilian traffic, but also support troop movements.

7:30 These are the kind of questions

7:31 that international law has grappled with for decades.

7:34 But that complexity doesn't erase the rule.

7:37 The law still requires commanders

7:38 to make a case-by-case determination about whether

7:40 a particular object is contributing to military

7:43 action in the circumstances at hand.

7:45 You don't get to skip over the analysis.

7:47 So, when someone says they're going to destroy

7:49 every power plant and every bridge in a country,

7:52 that's not a difficult judgment call,

7:54 that's a declaration that the individualized targeting analysis

7:57 required by distinction isn't being done at all.

8:00 Next up is proportionality, which prohibits attacks which may be expected

8:03 to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians,

8:06 damage to civilian objects, or a combination,

8:09 which would be excessive in relation

8:11 to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.

8:14 In simple terms, the punishment you're planning to inflict has

8:17 to be proportional to the threat posed by the other side.

8:20 And here, President Trump's position is legally incoherent.

8:23 Before he threatened to end Iranian civilization,

8:26 he said that the US had already won the war.

8:28 And according to Pete Hegseth,

8:30 the war was an overwhelming victory that destroyed Iran's military.

8:33 Given this overwhelming victory,

8:35 what exactly would justify destroying every bridge

8:38 in the country and bombing every power plant?

8:40 Well, the continued blockage of the Strait of Hormuz.

8:43 But knocking out a national power grid is grossly

8:46 disproportionate to the strait being closed to some commercial traffic.

8:49 Under the law of armed conflict,

8:50 attackers have to consider the downstream impacts of their action.

8:54 The International Committee of the Red Cross says

8:55 this includes reverberating effects of losing essential services.

8:59 So, the question isn't just what does this bomb hit,

9:01 it's also what happens after the lights go out.

9:04 If the US destroyed the whole power grid, hospitals would stop functioning,

9:07 water treatment plants would shut down, food supply chains would collapse.

9:11 These are the predictable consequences of targeting energy infrastructure.

9:15 These acts would destroy an entire society.

9:18 The third consideration is military necessity,

9:20 which requires planners to assess targets individually,

9:23 choose methods that meet the military need but minimize harm,

9:26 and cancel attacks if the risk to civilians becomes excessive.

9:29 President Trump threatened to eliminate Iran's civilization,

9:32 which implies hundreds of thousands or even millions of casualties.

9:36 That's the opposite of military necessity.

9:39 But the Trump administration contends that we're seeing this the wrong way.

9:42 In their opinion, Trump can blow up every bridge and power plant if

9:45 he wants to, because any object with military utility is a lawful target.

9:49 Fox News host Jesse Watters put it this way.

9:51 Bill Clinton destroyed Serbia's entire energy infrastructure.

9:56 Both Bushes took out Iraq's electricity grid.

10:01 Rolling Thunder, North Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson took out the power plants.

10:05 You do it under the laws of warfare, proportionality, dual-use systems.

10:10 It can be done humanely.

10:11 So, what happens when infrastructure serves both civilians and the military?

10:15 The analysis doesn't really change.

10:18 Dual-use is not a standalone legal category in international humanitarian law.

10:23 The law does recognize that some

10:24 objects serve both civilian and military functions,

10:27 but it doesn't create a separate category of targets that become

10:30 lawful simply because they serve both civilians and the military.

10:34 A commander must establish for each specific target that it makes

10:37 an effective contribution to military action in the circumstances at hand,

10:41 and that its destruction offers a definite military

10:44 advantage that is not outweighed by expected civilian harm.

10:47 Obviously, President Trump didn't do any of that in his Truth Social posts.

10:51 He didn't mention military necessity.

10:53 Instead, he made blanket threats to destroy every bridge and every

10:56 power plant because he wanted Iran to reopen a commercial shipping route.

10:59 And the threat was directed at the civilian population's ability to survive.

11:03 We don't know what orders commanders were mulling over

11:05 when Trump decided not to go through with it.

11:07 If he really did order them to destroy Iran's infrastructure,

11:10 war crimes could be on the table, but some members of Congress and a few

11:14 legal scholars went further than war crimes.

11:16 They used the G word.

11:18 Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called Trump's statements a threat

11:22 of genocide that merits removal from office.

11:24 Senator Bernie Sanders called it the ravings

11:26 of a dangerous and mentally unbalanced individual,

11:28 which yes, but alas, that's not a legal standard.

11:33 Even Pope Leo the 14th got in on it saying the threats were truly unacceptable,

11:37 which again, accurate, but His Holiness is not filing a brief in court.

11:41 So, is this actually a threat of genocide,

11:43 or is genocide just the word you reach

11:45 for when regular atrocity vocabulary isn't strong enough?

11:48 Under 18 U.S.C.

11:49 section 1091, genocide is a federal crime,

11:51 whether committed in time of peace or war.

11:54 Congress passed it to implement the U.S.'s

11:55 obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention.

11:58 The statute covers anyone who with specific

12:00 intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial,

12:03 or religious group in whole or in substantial part kills members of that group,

12:07 causes serious bodily injury, or subjects the group to conditions

12:10 of life intended to cause its physical destruction.

12:12 It applies to U.S.

12:13 nationals regardless of where the offense occurs.

12:16 According to the Department of Justice,

12:17 the mens rea requirement is that the person had the specific

12:20 intent to destroy in whole or in part a national,

12:23 ethnic, racial, or religious group.

12:25 This standard, which is called dolus specialis in international law,

12:28 is genuinely high, and is what separates genocide from other violent crimes.

12:33 Genocide prosecutions are rare,

12:35 even in the most egregious cases internationally,

12:37 and applying this statute to a sitting

12:39 president raises extraordinary legal and political obstacles.

12:43 But President Trump's own words were,

12:44 quote, "A whole civilization will die tonight,

12:47 never to be brought back again." His described methods,

12:50 destroying all power plants and all bridges in the entire country,

12:53 do in fact track closely with the statutory definition of subjecting

12:56 a group to conditions of life intended to cause its physical destruction.

13:00 Now, I want to be careful here, because this is the part where you have to be

13:04 a lawyer and not just a person who's mad online.

13:07 That standard is high.

13:08 The International Court of Justice has said that in the absence of a confession,

13:12 you have to show that genocidal intent is

13:14 the only reasonable inference from the pattern of conduct.

13:17 The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda,

13:19 after the actual Rwandan genocide,

13:21 still spent years working through intent questions case by case.

13:25 This is not a charge you throw around lightly,

13:27 and courts have consistently resisted lowering the bar

13:30 even when the underlying facts are horrifying.

13:33 So, when Trump said, "A whole civilization will die tonight," was

13:36 he signaling his intent to cause a genocide?

13:39 Maybe.

13:39 Maybe he meant it metaphorically.

13:41 We don't know for sure if this was apocalyptic

13:43 bluster intended to pressure Iran to open the strait,

13:46 or if Trump was preparing to launch a nuclear weapon.

13:48 Thankfully, we didn't find out.

13:50 But the basic offense isn't the only charge available.

13:53 As we've discussed before, the U.S.

13:55 has its own laws prohibiting war crimes.

13:57 The Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs U.S.

13:59 military conduct, requires personnel to refuse patently illegal orders.

14:03 If they commit crimes, they could be prosecuted under federal law in the future.

14:06 Notably, the chain of command faces legal

14:08 exposure even if the president does not.

14:10 Trump's threats to kill civilians would have

14:12 to be carried out by members of the U.S.

14:14 military.

14:14 Senator Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst and a member

14:17 of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said this directly.

14:20 Targeting civilians en masse would be a clear violation of the law

14:22 of armed conflict as laid out in the Geneva Conventions,

14:25 as well as the Pentagon's Law of War Manual.

14:27 This kind of focus on civilians is

14:28 exactly what we accuse our adversaries of doing,

14:31 and what our military trains to avoid.

14:33 Can confirm.

14:34 She went further, warning that service members ordered to carry

14:37 out such strikes are put in very real legal jeopardy,

14:40 and urging those up and down the chain of command to refuse illegal orders.

14:44 This is just the kind of thing that got Senator Slotkin in trouble before.

14:47 The Department of Justice opened

14:48 an investigation into Slotkin, Senator Mark Kelly,

14:50 and other lawmakers because they filmed a video

14:52 reminding troops not to follow illegal orders.

14:54 A grand jury declined to indict them, effectively ending the case,

14:57 but their warning about obeying the laws of armed conflict was prescient.

15:00 So, nothing the president posts to Truth

15:02 Social immunizes military personnel for their own actions.

15:05 But will anyone be prosecuted under 18 U.S.C.

15:07 section 1091?

15:08 Definitely not under the current Justice Department.

15:11 After threatening to end Iranian civilization,

15:13 Donald Trump announced a ceasefire.

15:15 And then he floated the idea of the U.S.-Iran

15:16 toll joint venture on the Strait of Hormuz.

15:19 "Give us a cut of your geographic resources,

15:21 or we'll do a genocide" is a sentence that has never

15:24 before appeared in a policy document produced by the United States government.

15:27 Although, as I say that, I realize

15:29 some American Indians may object to that statement.

15:32 Let's set aside for a moment whether this joint venture is real,

15:34 and ask the more interesting question,

15:36 what does international law have to say about agreements extracted at gunpoint,

15:39 or in this case at civilization point?

15:42 The answer starts with the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties,

15:44 which is basically the rulebook for how

15:46 countries make binding agreements with each other.

15:48 Article 52 is the relevant provision.

15:50 It reads in its entirety,

15:52 "A treaty is void if its conclusion has been procured by the threat

15:56 or use of force in violation of the principles of international

15:58 law embodied in the Charter of the United Nations." Agreements procured

16:02 by the threat of force are void and have no legal effect.

16:05 The rationale was specifically designed for situations like this one.

16:09 Before the modern era, international law actually accepted coerced treaties.

16:12 If you won the war, you got to dictate the terms, and those terms were binding.

16:16 The League of Nations and then the U.N.

16:18 Charter changed that.

16:19 Article 2 sub 4 of the U.N.

16:20 Charter prohibits the threat or use of force against

16:23 the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

16:26 The Vienna Convention then followed the logic to its conclusion.

16:29 If you can't threaten force to get what you want,

16:31 you certainly can't enforce a deal you got by doing exactly that.

16:35 The Yale Law Journal,

16:36 analyzing this exact question in the context of Ukraine, put it this way,

16:40 "A treaty procured by the threat or use of unlawful force is as invalid

16:44 as the original threat or use of unlawful

16:45 force itself." That sounds cut and dry, but there's some big complications.

16:51 Almost every peace agreement in the history of warfare is,

16:54 in some sense, concluded under duress.

16:56 The losing side doesn't sit down to negotiate because they feel like it.

16:59 They negotiate because their alternative is continued devastation.

17:03 By that logic, Article 52 would void most of the peace treaties ever signed.

17:07 And that's not what it does.

17:08 International legal scholars and courts have developed a rough,

17:11 but important, distinction.

17:12 If what you're negotiating is a cessation of hostilities,

17:15 like an end to a declared war, or a mutual agreement to stop shooting,

17:18 or exchange prisoners, or open a humanitarian corridor,

17:21 that's not the kind of coercion Article 52 was designed to void.

17:24 The logic is pragmatic, right?

17:26 You can't end wars if a legal rule prevents you from ending wars.

17:30 The mere fact that one side is losing doesn't make the armistice itself illegal.

17:34 But this exception has limits.

17:36 What Article 52 was specifically designed to prohibit

17:38 is an aggressor using force to extract territorial concessions,

17:42 economic concessions,

17:43 or political capitulation beyond the cessation of hostilities itself.

17:47 The classic case is, "Stop fighting, and also give us your resources,

17:50 and also acknowledge our right to take a cut

17:52 out of your shipping lanes." That's not a peace treaty, that's mafia extortion.

17:56 The condition for stopping the bombing wasn't just stop fighting,

17:59 it was open the Strait of Hormuz.

18:01 And that's a demand about navigation rights and commercial traffic.

18:04 That could be a forced economic concession

18:06 extracted under the threat of civilizational destruction.

18:09 Which means that if the ceasefire was a binding international agreement,

18:12 it would have a serious Article 52 problem.

18:14 But there's yet another twist here,

18:16 because Trump didn't just threaten Iran into a ceasefire,

18:19 he then apparently spontaneously proposed that the U.S.

18:21 and Iran go into business together running

18:23 toll operations on the Strait of Hormuz.

18:25 Let's think about what this actually describes.

18:27 The Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway,

18:29 and under customary international law, all ships have a right of free

18:33 transit passage through straits used for international navigation.

18:36 Iran, by floating fees up to $2 million per vessel,

18:38 was already pushing against that rule.

18:40 Iran's entire annual GDP is around $400 billion.

18:44 They were proposing to collect that in less

18:46 than 2 years just from ships going past.

18:49 Trump's proposal doesn't fix the legal problem,

18:51 because what he was describing was the United States,

18:53 after threatening to destroy Iranian civilization,

18:55 agreeing to share in the proceeds

18:57 of an illegal toll regime on an international waterway.

19:00 That is, to use a technical legal term, a shakedown.

19:03 The fact that one party is offering the other

19:05 a cut of its illegal tolls doesn't launder the coercion,

19:08 it just makes the aggressor a business

19:10 partner in the arrangement that they extorted.

19:12 Yeah, I know.

19:13 Everything I just described makes international law seem like a farce.

19:16 And a predictable response to this is cynicism.

19:18 These rules are not enforced, great powers do whatever they want,

19:21 and international humanitarian law is nothing more than a legal

19:23 fiction that powerful states enforce

19:25 against smaller states while exempting themselves.

19:28 This cynicism is understandable, and it's not entirely wrong.

19:31 The U.S.

19:31 has never ratified Additional Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions

19:34 in part to avoid restrictions on its own military operations.

19:38 The U.S.

19:38 has even on occasion violated international humanitarian law.

19:41 The Abu Ghraib torture scandal, for example,

19:43 drew widespread international condemnation as a clear

19:45 violation of the Geneva Conventions.

19:47 We have to own that.

19:48 But here's the problem with simply dismissing

19:50 international humanitarian law as When the United States

19:53 commits or is credibly accused of international humanitarian

19:56 law violations and fails to hold itself accountable,

19:59 it hands bad actors ammunition.

20:01 Slobodan Milošević used NATO's conduct in Kosovo to muddy

20:04 the waters at his own war crimes trial.

20:06 Putin invoked the 2003 Iraq War to justify his invasion of Ukraine.

20:11 These are cynical deflections, but they become harder to dismiss when

20:14 the United States continues to provide fresh examples.

20:17 And that is precisely why Trump's threats are so damaging,

20:20 even beyond the immediate legal violations they may represent.

20:23 Every time the United States signals that civilian

20:25 infrastructure is a legitimate target or the laws

20:27 of war are stupid rules to be discarded

20:29 as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth put it,

20:32 it gives every authoritarian and every war criminal more power.

20:35 It gives them precedent.

20:37 The argument "America did it in Iran" will

20:39 be used against us in conflicts for decades.

20:41 This is how norms disappear.

20:44 And that leads us to the most concrete

20:45 practical argument for observing international humanitarian law, reciprocity.

20:50 The laws of war on US power, they're safeguards for US troops.

20:55 And they apply to both sides, regardless of who started the fight.

20:57 That's the whole point.

20:59 The law separates why you go to war from how you fight it.

21:02 In real terms, that means a US airman shot

21:04 down over Iran is entitled to prisoner of war protections.

21:07 But those protections depend on reciprocity.

21:10 If the United States signals it won't follow the rules,

21:12 it makes it that much harder for captured Americans to claim them.

21:15 The laws of war exist not because states are trustworthy,

21:18 but because the alternative is unlimited warfare against which we

21:22 already know from two world wars is catastrophic for everyone,

21:25 and powerful nations are not exempt from that.

21:28 But the laws only work when they are taken

21:30 seriously by states that have the capability to violate them.

21:32 The United States has long positioned itself

21:34 as the anchor of the rules-based international order.

21:37 That position is difficult to maintain while

21:39 threatening to extinguish civilizations on social media.

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22:26 I decided to start my own personal injury law firm.

22:28 And honestly, it wasn't an easy choice.

22:30 But I realized I was in this unique position.

22:32 I had this platform, this community, and the experience.

22:35 Not to get rich, trust me,

22:36 there are easier ways to make money than starting a law practice.

22:39 But we did it because access to justice shouldn't be a luxury.

22:42 Because finding the right legal representation shouldn't

22:44 feel like playing Russian roulette with your future.

22:46 And when you work with my firm, you're not just getting a lawyer.

22:48 You're getting a team that understands that behind

22:50 every case is real person with real stakes.

22:52 If we can't represent you or you're in a state where we don't practice,

22:54 we'll take the time to try to match you

22:56 with an attorney in my personal network of lawyers.

22:58 A national network of some of the best lawyers

22:59 in the country who actually specialize in what you're going through,

23:02 located right where you are, not just whoever happens to be available.

23:06 So, if you're dealing with a personal injury,

23:07 a car crash, a data breach, sexual harassment,

23:09 a social security or workers' comp issue,

23:11 give us a call at the number on screen or click on the link below.

23:14 Now, I can't represent everyone that watches this channel.

23:16 I wish I could.

23:17 But what I can do is make sure that when you need legal help,

23:20 you have somewhere to turn to that you can trust.

23:22 So, whether it's me handling your case

23:23 or the incredible attorneys we partnered with, you'll

23:25 get the same principles of honesty and education that we bring to every video.

23:28 And if you're dealing with a legal issue and you're not sure where to start,

23:31 check out the link in the description.

23:32 Let's have a conversation about how we can help you find not just a lawyer,

23:35 but the right lawyer for your situation.

23:37 Because at the end of the day, that's what this is all about.

23:39 Making sure that when life gets complicated, you don't have to face it alone.

23:42 Which is why when you need a lawyer,

23:43 you don't just need a legal team, you need the Eagle team.

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