Bloomberg LawEric Goldman, Co-Director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law, discusses TikTok challenging the US ban. Patricia Hurtado, Bloomberg legal reporter, discusses Stormy Daniels’ testimony against Donald Trump. June Grasso hosts.
This is Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio. Hi, everyone, the show here. As you may have heard, Congress passed the bill that the presidents signed in the law that is designed to ban TikTok in the United States. That will take TikTok away from you and one hundred and seventy million Americans who find community and connection on all platform TikTok.
Ceo show too, wasted no time in telling the app's users that the company was going to fight in the courts to challenge a new law requiring it to sell the popular video sharing app or face a band rest assured.
We aren't going anywhere. We are confident and we will keep fighting for your rights in the courts. The facts and the Constitution are on our side, and we expect to prevail again.
Again because TikTok has been successful in block attempts to ban it. But this legal battle pitting free speech rights against national security interests will be prolonged and will likely end up at the Supreme Court. Joining me is Professor Eric Golman, co director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law. So TikTok ensuing said, for the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single name speech platform to a permanent national ban and bars every American from participating. That's true, is and it this is unprecedented to my knowledge.
It is. And it's really important for your listeners to understand that the legislation specifically names TikTok as a company and says this company cannot exist in its current format, and that's a pretty rare thing for a legislature to do.
Tell us about the complaint, you know, the main causes of action, the main reasons why TikTok says this is on constitution.
TikTok claims that the divestiture requirement parallel being banned violates the Constitution, violates its First Amendment rights, is an unconstitutional bill of a tainder, and it violates its equal protection rights. But the real payload is about the First Amendment. That's where everyone expects the action to be that Congress is shutting down TikTok speech.
As far as Congress shutting down TikTok speech, which seems pretty obvious, what are the defenses that the government can use to defend against that?
The primary rebuttal will be that Congress active based on national security concerns, that there are serious concerns about the ways of which TikTok operates that jeopardize national interests here in the United States. The problem with that argument is that we as the public haven't seen that data. To extent that the data has been made available to Congress, it was done so in large part under Seal, which means that Congress sencing information in the public hasn't It's possible that we would agree that the evidence is significant and troubling. It's also possible that it's completely fictional, and so we don't know how to evaluate this national security justification for the band I mean part because we don't have the evidence that Congress has been relied upon.
That's something that the complaint alleges that the government has yet to provide evidence of the Chinese government misusing TikTok, and they also say that the concern is just about a hypothetical possibility that TikTok could be misused in the future. I mean, has there been any evidence at all in the public that TikTok has been misused or that the Chinese government is using it.
There have been some whistleblower type complaints that have provided some evidence suggesting that those complaints have been subject to their own critical scrutiny, so a little hard to know how reliable they are. But I think that it's important to reinforce the hypothetical nature of this that the evidence showing that the Chinese government is actually undermining our national security using TikTok is vanishingly thin, if not non existent, And so it's uncomfortable and perhaps in permission one to the First Amendment for Congress to ban an app on the potential that it might cause some future harm. If that's the grounds for banning speech, then of course legislators can always manufacture those types of hypothetical concerns.
So if this goes to trial, what a court, or even before trial, would a court ask the government to provide evidence that their concerns are real and not just speculation.
Yeah, there will be no doubt that in order for the government to prevail, they're going to have to show some of the evidence that was shown to Congress, and they'll likely do that under steal and I believe in fact that's why this case is being litigated in the particular venue is being litigated in because I think that court regularly deals with national security concerns, so they may have the clearance of necessary in order for the government to even.
Share the evidence the DC Circuit correct.
That's an unusual thing, is you know, normally litigation starts at a district court with a single judge, but instead this is going to an appellate court, which is likely to have multiple judges on the panel. And that's a weird place for a case like this to start because the appellate court's not in the business normally of doing evidence gathering in review, and they're going to have to do that in this case.
Content based restrictions have to meet a higher level of scrutiny, So will the government have to explain why it didn't pursue less speech restrictive alternatives to address its concerns.
One of the ways that the government can justify the interventions that made this the best or ban is by saying that there were no better other options that would have preserved speech and still accomplish the government's goals. So we used the phraseology were there less restrictive alternatives to the government. If so, then the method that they chose impacted speech too greatly. There was a way of doing it without impacting speech quite as much, and the constitution would require that lesser alternative.
The complaint argues that a sale from ByteDance is impossible and that the law would force a shutdown. Is that because of the Chinese government's restrictions on the sale of certain technologies like algorithms.
The complaint makes a number of arguments about why it would be impossible to divest. There are some concerns about transferring the algorithm, and there may be limits from the Chinese government on the transference of the algorithm. And also the complaint describes how the overall platform has this massive code base that can't easily be carved off or segregated to a new buyer, that the buyer could then just stay in and start running, that it needs a lot of attention from developers who understand the code in order to keep it running and to keep improving on it, and so there are arguments that it would take a long time for a buyer to get up to speed sufficient enough to be able to take on the codebase, and so the codebase is a practical limitation on the sale. In addition to whatever technical or legal restrictions are Steve.
Amminution, the former US Treasury Secretary, told Bloomberg that he's still interested in buying TikTok's US operations.
I've actually started through a lot of tech companies.
I'm working about rebuilding this.
I do believe the algorithms could be rebuilt.
I mean, is that doable to replicate their algorithm?
I guess the theory is possible that US ingenuity could catch up to and maybe even surpass the existing technology. The reality is that the US competitors to TikTok have not been able to crack that nut, despite the fact that they are extremely well financed and highly motivated. It turns out that TikTok's secret sauce has worked really, really well and isn't easily replicated. So any buyer who thinks that they can step in and with a snap of a finger keep doing what TikTok is doing is not reading the lessons from the existing competitors, and is.
That secret sauce. It's sort of uncanny ability to learn about your interests based on how long you stay on a video and then deliver items of interest you. I mean, is that the secret Sauce.
I think that's the main secret, Sauce. I'm sure there are others, but it's the four you options on TikTok where they're able to deliver videos that are customized for each user, that the users really respond to and then it actually speaks to them. And it turns out that's a really hard thing to do. Lots and lots of people who tried that over the years, and TikTok has found to being able to do that for its users.
TikTok said any divestiture would disconnect Americans from the rest of the global community on a platform devoted to shared content, so TikTok would go on in the rest of the world, but America would be shut off from it.
I didn't really understand exactly what that meant. There certainly could be ways of sharing videos across services. There could be some kind of technological connection with proper licensing that allows the videos to show up. DAME still might not be the same if the algorithms delivering them are different. So even if the contents the same, if the algorithms lead to different results, it's still not quite a seamless integrated global solution. So I'm not exactly sure how that would work, and I wasn't quite following exactly what TikTok was saying.
There could Americans if they wanted to flout the law? Could they even if kikchok is banned here? Could they just go on TikTok anyway in Siory?
If they could find a way to get the app installed, then the ban would not prevent them from doing so. However, there are other laws that have been acted to the United States that have banned users from installing TikTok, especially those who are in, for example, government positions, and to date those laws have been upheld, so it's possible that there would be other reasons why users would not be legally permitted to do so. Having said that, as a practical matter, if everyone is trying to get on TikTok by getting around some relatively effective ban, over time, TikTok's just not going to have the same kind of investment and enthusiasm that it has today. So it might be technically possible to do it, but it wouldn't be the same TikTok. It would lose a lot of its creative force.
Coming up next on The Bloomberg Lawn Show, I'll continue this conversation with Professor Eric Goleman of Santa Clara University Law School. We'll talk about the chances that TikTok's lawsuit will succeed. Jim Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg. China based Byedance has made clear it won't comply with a new US law requiring it to sell its popular TikTok video sharing app. The company has filed a legal challenge to the law. I've been talking to Professor Eric Goldman of a Santa Clara University School of Law. TikTok also argues that a band would devastate seven million businesses and shutter a platform that contributes twenty four billion annually to the US economy. Do you think those figures are accurate?
They're obviously self interested calculation, so I don't know if they're right, but they don't have to be right to still be helpful. The bottom line is that there's a lot of economic activity taking place here in the United States that's been driven by TikTok, and in theory, Congress has said, we want all of that to shut down. Now, some of them might migrate to other services, so it's not like it would be completely lost, but in a time time when we're concerned about employment and we're concerned about the economy, the idea that we would take a major step back it's a huge opportunity cost, and it really makes me wonder if the people who voted for the band really understood who they might be benefiting and who they might be hurting. Chances are that people who voted for the band are going to be hurting their own constituents.
I believe the last time we spoke, you said you thought the reason for the ban was because lawmakers have a target on China.
It's impossible to talk about the TikTok band without talking about the fact that China is one of the regulatory bogey men. It's a constant target for politicians to keep going back and saying we're being tough on China, so you should continue to support our efforts. So from that perspective, if TikTok was in the hands of some other government or in the hands of a coming base in some other country, almost certainly we wouldn't see the kind of regulatory blowback we're seeing here. This is part of a long term, broad based anti China effort in the United States.
So the lawsuit indicates that Biteedance doesn't have any intention of trying to find a buyer for TikTok. The deadline is January. Do you think that the DC Court will speed up the case or does January seem like too soon to settle this.
I think one of the reasons why the Congress specified that the Challenges law would go through this DC Circuit review was to accelerate the answers to try and speed up getting a resolution to whether or not the band was permissible. So there's no guarantee that the DC Circuit will respond that pass, but I'm sure they get the point. They know the deadline, and I would expect them to do everything they could to try and get an answer before then.
But this might end up at the Supreme Court.
Seems inevitable that it will end up with the Supreme Court. But if we get the initial court ruling in favor of TikTok, there will be a staying of the law until there's appellate review, and even if the government wins, there might it will be a statement law where the DC Circuit request to preserve the status quo until the Supreme court can wigin. But there's no question that this ban, whichever way it is ruled on, is going to go to the Supreme Court. Now they have the discrestion whether or not to take it. They might not take the case, but it seems likely that this band's going to end up at the Supreme Court and get a ruling non end.
Bloomberg Intelligence an analyst gives TikTok a thirty percent chance to win. Do you give TikTok a more than thirty percent chance to win?
I would assigned TikTok's probability of success in the cases much greater than thirty percent, And I do that in part because this is not a new question. This question has been litigated several times in the last few years, and the course is universally held in favor of TikTok. So it's possible that this ban is better than all the other ones have been challenged, But more likely the same problem that doom those other bands are going to also doom this one as well. So yeah, if I were betting man, I would be putting my money on tik Talk, not on the government.
And remind us what happened when former President Trump used an executive order to try to force the sale of TikTok to an American company or face a ban.
So there were several attempts to ban TikTok and in some cases a similar app we chat that came out of the Trump era, and those failed onto a variety of grounds. Some of them failed on the presence authority to ban an app, and some of them failed on First Amendment grounds. So it was like a panoply of problems. It wasn't like there was just one problem with the prior effort. And then there have also been state efforts to ban TikTok, and so there was a state effort in Montana that was also subject to a con social review with the court said there was a panopley of problems with that law as well, including the First Amendment. So the fact that executive orders by the president and state bans by state legislators is different from a congressional law. There's a reason why could be distinguished. But the core concerns about the First Amendment have shown up in all of the challenges, and that's the thing that Congress can't get around.
And are there other governments that are taking action or have taken action against TikTok.
Yes, and in particular the most noteworthy one is India, where TikTok was also banned. And that might give some comfort to people who say that we're not the first to do it. And it might also give some concern to people because India has routinely shut down conversations that the government feels our threat to its power, and so we shouldn't be taking playbooks out of India's efforts to regulate speech. They approach it very differently than we do.
And you know when the Trump administration press for TikTok sale, China's foreign ministry said the president of acquiring a company under the pre chance of protecting national security could lead to foreign countries targeting US companies, calling it the opening of a Pandora's box. Do you think that's just a threat or as possible, No.
That's a bonafide concern. I would view Congress's ban on TikTok as the latest salvo in the ongoing digital trade war that basically Country A blocks Country b's companies from having access to markets. A country be retaliates against Country a's technology, and then they just keep going. And China has already played that game multiple ways. For example, China has banned multiple services from having access to Chinese market, including I can't even keep them all straight, so in Google and LinkedIn, and then most recently, just while Congress is contemplating, has banned China banned WhatsApp, a US based asset, from having access to Chinese market. So we retally against China bypassing TikTok band, China retaliate against us with some further bands, and we get locked in the digital trade ward. And the number one thing that everyone should know by this point is that no one wins trade wars. Everyone loses an equations. So the fact that we're playing it the trade wark game is actually to our detriment.
Eric, we haven't talked about TikTok's complaint that it's being treated differently from certain other platforms. It's a little complicated, so take us through it.
Satch expressly says that review websites are not governed by the divest or be banned law, so it sets up a weird game that potentially regulable companies could play where they could have an app that is worse than TikTok in whatever way people want to imagine, but they would still be categorically immune from this law if that same company offered a review website that took the company out of the scope of the law. Now TikTok doesn't even have a chance to play that game, because TikTok is expressly named in the bill. They're not given the option of being included whatsoever. And so they say that it's unfair that you could have a review website and avoid the law, but TikTok doesn't given that choice. But it also raises the logic, why would we say that social media services under a government operation are danger to our country but review websites aren't. And it's really hard to justify that distinction. And the reason, of course, is because review websites are fluted based on specific lobbying by companies who would benefit from that, and so it's not really a defensible distinction. But it creates a constitutional problem by making that distinction.
And what about the TikTok users. Are we going to see a lawsuit from them as well?
It's likely that there will be a separate lawsua viobe by TikTok users, who will independently advance their free speech claims. Because their ability to talk to each other is being affected by this ban, and so they ought to have standing to complain about the censorship of their content and to make the case that in fact, any of the other justifications like national security are not sufficient to override their free speech.
Another interesting aspect of this is that TikTok also complained that Congress ignored its work to protect US data from foreign government influence.
TikTok has undertaken extensive efforts to try to please the US government, and they were negotiating a very lengthy document that would allow the government to have oversight into the ability of the Chinese government to influence TikTok's operation and to base all the content here in the United States. TikTok has said that it's going to implement the number of those pieces irrespective of the law and whatever the court holdings are. But the bottom line is TikTok is saying that they're comfortable with having the government monitor their behavior and oversee their behavior. They just don't want to be regulated in this other way. And it's weird for me, as someone who's interested in the free speech rights that TikTok and its users for TikTok to say it's not like we are opposed to regulation, just do it in a way that we can live with, as opposed to saying there really should be no reason why the government gets this oversight at all. The First Amendment prohibits it. So it's really an interesting position by TikTok to be a pro regulation but only if it meets a standards, not free speech and oppose all regulation.
Well, I'm sure we'll have many, many opportunities to talk about this lawsuit as it winds its way, probably after the Supreme Court. Thanks so much, Eric, that's Professor Eric Goleman, co director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law. Coming up next on the Bloomberg Law Show, we'll get a first hand account of what happened when Stormy Daniels took the stand to testify against Donald Trump. I'm June Grosso and this is Bloomberg. The testimony was by far the most awaited spectacle in a trial that has moved between tabloid esque elements and dry record keeping details. A courtroom appearance by a porn star who says she had an intimate encounter with a former American President, with Donald Trump sitting just feet away. Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at his hush money trial about a sexual encounter she says they had in two thousand and six that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race ten years later. Joining me is Bloomberg Legal reporter Patricia Hurtado, who was in the courtroom for the testimony. Pat tell us a little about her appearance.
What was extraordinary is I know I have heard and seen Stormy Daniels describe her interlude with Donald Trump, but to actually walk into that courtroom was a moment where it made everything seem like, you know, this is really the moment for this case, because you know her story is at the center of the hush money payment. She walt one of my colleagues that sash shaded into the courtroom. She was wearing black coalosso pants, a long black tunic, a black hoodie, and she had her hair, you know, pinned up like when you go to the gym and you tied it in the loose tonytail with pieces falling out, and she had glasses pops on the top of her head.
Didn't go for the business suit thing.
Right, no business suit, And I was joking that she was kind of the antithesis of Hope Hicks, who is a former model and beautifully dressed in a business black pants suit. But these are two in and Donald Trump's life. You want to believe what the prosecutors alleged, this is the woman he had an encounter with, a sexual encounter that Theda says is at the heart of their hush money case. She spoke so quickly, she was basically rattling off, spinning out her story and just with filling out into the courtroom. It's very hard to keep up with her testimony. She was speaking so quickly.
From the transcripts, it seemed like she really seemed to be putting Trump down in both the encounter she had with him and in describing the encounter well.
She describes the encounter as something she didn't expect. She was invited by Trumps. She meets Trump at a celebrity golf tournament and Lake Tahoe in Nevada, and Trump is there as one of the celebrities. He's on a celebrity apprentice, and she says she gets approached by Trump's bodyguard. She gets takes a photo with Trump and he chaps her up. Other women from her company that make pornographic adult films called Wicked Incorporated, we're there, and she was introduced as one of the people that not only was an actor in the adult films, but also a director and producer. So he said, oh, you're the smart one. And then later on she was invited to Trump's room for which he thought was dinner, and she described meeting Trump there. So she says that when she meets Trump, he says he reminds her of his daughter, blonde, beautiful and taken for granted, that people underestimate how smart they are. And they started talking about the industry, and Trump expressed a lot of business interest in the inner workings of the adult film industry and how movies are made and what kind of precautions are taken for sexually transmitted diseases and whether there's testing. So there was a lot of detail about that, and she said that whenever she talked to Trump, he was won upping her. And she said when she met him, he greeted her at the hotel room dressed in silk pajamas, and she said, does he haspener know he's taken his pajamas, which was a joke reference to Hugh Hefner, who'll always liked to wear silk pajamas twenty four to seven, The Playboy Publisher.
She added some graphic and salacious details when talking about the alleged one night stand. Did the prosecution bring that out or did it just come out as she was talking?
It seemed the prosecutor, Susan Hoffinger, was trying to control her, but and the judge had to take a couple of breaks and try to get Hopfinger to bring the stormy in because she was talking so fast and filling out with all these details. So we heard about the black and white Kyle floor and Donald's From's hotel room, and he heard about the bed being unmade in his bedroom and lots of details. It seemed extraineous, But at some point it seemed that the prosecutor was trying to provide some details to show that she remains loyal to her recounting of this incident, there are elements that are She's always maintained are the same, including the details of going into the bathroom. At one point, she said they had the long discussion that when Trump showed her a copy of I guess it was Fordes magazine that he was on the cover of, and she basically said to him something about, you know, you're constantly interrupting me and one upping me. And he said, oh, like you think I need a banking and she said. He gave her the magazine and she rolled it up and patted him on the behind with it, which caused mister Trumps to get angry. Yesterday and some of my colleagues I was sitting too far away, but they could have warned. They saw him now the word of BS, the full word for BS. The judge heard something and basically remonstrated his lawyer, Todd Blance to speak to his clients, and he later in the bar. We could see that. The judge said that, you know, it was contemptible what Trump was doing. He could hear him muttering, and he knows his client is not happy with her testimony, but he could have to control him because it could be seen as intimidating the witness, and the jury was catching it.
When she talked about, you know, the act itself, she didn't say it was involuntary, but she did say that, you know, she she didn't know how she ended up on the bed. Has she claimed that before.
She basically also said that she had blacked out, which is the first time she's said this version of it, which prompted the defense to ask for missus trial. Right after the lunch break, the judge pointed out that the defense had been sitting down and not objecting throughout her testimony, so he sort of tied at them for not being more aggressive and standing up, and the judge pointed out, which was rightly. So many times the judge interrupted and said, we're not going to hear any more of this, you know. So when there was discussions whether or not Trump used a condom during the interload, judge, that's enough, you know, he stopped it. So the judge's pointing out many times I objected without you asking me to, So you know, it's your job to object on behalf to spend it, not my job. But he also said that he wanted the prosecutor to try to control Daniels more. I don't know whether it was nervousness or what, but she did bill out.
Her story, so the jury was paying attention.
I take it, yes, And in fact, in the middle of her testimony, during a break. At least two jurors asked the court officer for more notebook, which I thought of something interesting to know.
There's a point at which this is sort of cringe worthy testimony. Did she come across as believable?
And there's a debate. Some reporter say the jury has to believe that this happened or else Trump won't get convicted. We have heard other testimony corroborating this this happened and what Trump did about it, So you could argue that the prosecution case rests whether or not he paid the hush money payment because of this embarrassing episode. And we do see evidence. I mean, David Pecker talked about it happening, and none of these people had first hand knowledge of it. But they put into evidence two photos, including one of Trump at the same golf tournament and then another photo of him with Stormy wear the exact same polo shirt and pants and baseball cap, smiling and hugging her, and she said that was taken the same day of this interlude. Whether or not the jury believes that the hush money payments were paid to keep this tawdry story quiet, I think is going to be the fundamental question for this jury, and I guess we now see. I mean, this is this young woman's version of growing up poor in Louisiana, working loving horses, shoveling manure out of stables, and in her spare time to put herself through college, and then finally finding out that as an adult film actress and dancer, a stripper, she could make more money to put herself through school. And she said she wanted to go to Vent Mary's School, and she was going to Texas A and M. So she had a story to be told about how this woman ended up being a stripper slash porn star, ended up being with Donald Trump, would end up being part of this hush money case.
A female defense attorney cross examined her. Hasn't a male defense attorney been doing the cross examinations up to this point?
Yeah, you could argue your debt. Susan Nichols, Donald Trump's one of the members of his team, is probably the most experienced lawyer of the group. She's got decades of experience as a criminal defense lawyer, and I've seen her in action in federal court. She's very smart, but they have kept her on the sidelines, and I wonder if they just kept her for being able to cross examine a woman, because it looks less like a woman is beating up another woman as opposed to a man. Susan was tough with her at some point, basically suggesting that Daniels had concocted this story and basically embroidered her version of events, and initially it didn't tell anybody that she'd had sex with Trump, and only added that later to help embellish her story and maybe get her some money. Stormy sometimes she kind of heard herself and sometimes she helped herself. A couple of times she gave back retorts to a knchles like you hate President Trump, don't you? And then Stormy said, yes, I hate him. You know. So this is the kind of thing where the jury could say she has animus against Trump and this is why she's just doing it to make up the story.
Wait till Michael Cohene takes this in. So now, one thing she said that seems hard to believe. She denied that this was for money, that she was asking for this hush money payment for monetary reasons.
Yeah, I mean, she said she was doing very well. But then basically she was reached out to by these people, and Donald Trump was now in the front burner because he was doing very well politically. This is in twenty sixteen, so earlier in twenty sixteen, there wasn't that much interest in it. She had said that originally her life was going really, really well, and then she decided that for money she could do and she could sell the story and it would be private. She had told her story too, in some iterations to like in Touch magazine, which is a gossip magazine, and it was just about Donald Trump's reality start, and that never went anywhere. It seems like in twenty sixteen, when Trump is running, she decides that she's going to sell her story, but to keep it quiet, which is why she takes the hush money payment to keep the story from coming out. And then she says, when Trump starts doing well, they were not paying her. If we can remember rollback the tape to testimony from Keith Davidson, her lawyer Michael Cohen was playing them along and basically stringing him out of not paying the money and not wiring the money, and they would ask and they would ask, and they would ask, and he wasn't paying it. And then basically Stormy was like, okay, I'll just go ahead. The deal's off, and I'll tell my story and then Michael Cohen and the way the story goes. According to prosecutors, they said, the Trump campaign is in such a digger over the acts of Hollywood tape. They basically just want to put this fire out of Stormy and let's get this off the front burner. So that's when Michael Cohen is willing to pay, but then the money he doesn't get the money from Trump, and they start streaming Stormy and her lawyer along, so then she starts talking to other people, and then she gets paid off, and then she's quiet, and then she sees that Donald Trump is doing well. And there was an interesting quote she said yesterday which was, you saw the opportunity to make money, getn't you to try to sell your story? And she said, I saw my opportunity to get the story out. I didn't put a price tag on it. That's why I did every interview for free. And then she said basically that the status changes because suddenly Trump is a presidential candidate. She said, I had to do a check in my strategies. Originally I was dealing with a reality TV start that it's a whole different game when it's a candidate for office. The defense is built cross examining her. And I think that Susan Nichols has at least several more hours on cross tomorrow when courts and.
We'll see how tough the cross examination gets when it resumes tomorrow. Thanks so much, Pat. That's Bloomberg Legal reporter Patricia Hurtado, And that's it for this edition of the Bloomberg Law Podcast. Remember you've can always get the latest legal news by subscribing and listening to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at Bloomberg dot com podcast Slash Law. I'm June Grosso and this is Bloomberg
