Two Taps & Friends Podcast Puts Defense Lawyers on the Criminal Cases Prosecutors Frame First

Two Taps & Friends is a weekly podcast on which criminal defense lawyers take apart the cases in the news. It is not a courtroom, and that is its use: it can say aloud what lawyers inside one cannot.

Most of what the public learns about a big case comes from the side bringing it. The show, which streams on its YouTube channel, comes at the same cases from the other side. Defense lawyers in a live case usually say little. On Two Taps & Friends, working defense lawyers read the government’s paperwork in public and ask what it does, and does not, prove.

The show calls itself “a long-form conversation” with “friends and guests from all walks of life,” under the line “Everyday people talking everyday issues.” It started in 2025, according to its About page. Its host, Daniel Rosenberg, runs a criminal defense practice in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and has been a member of the Florida Bar since 2006, according to his firm. The recurring Legal Panel seats him with two attorneys: Michael Dye, described as “Daniel’s trial partner” and “the show’s most frequent voice on the legal panel,” whom Mr Rosenberg introduces on air as “my esteemed colleague and pretty much co-host,” and Lloyd Golburgh, an attorney “with more than three decades of legal experience.”

What does the show actually cover?

Mostly criminal cases that are already in the headlines. This publication sorted by subject the 26 episodes catalogued on the show’s site from Episode 69, released on 6 May 2026, to Episode 94, released on 21 October. Half are breakdowns of a specific prosecution, trial or investigation; newer episodes have been added since.

Mr Dye appears in 18 of the 26 and Mr Golburgh in 13, by the show’s guest listings. The median episode runs about 48 minutes, roughly 21 hours of audio across the run, on this publication’s arithmetic from the running times the show publishes. “New full episodes usually arrive on Wednesdays,” the show says, “with clips and Shorts posted through the week.” Some cases get more than one pass: the panel took up Lindsay Clancy’s postpartum psychosis defense in August and returned in September after her murder trial ended with a jury deadlocked 11 to 1 after 40 hours of deliberation, according to the episode notes.

How does a defense lawyer read a prosecution differently?

By asking first what the government had to show, and to whom. On 12 October federal agents searched the Washington home of Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota in an investigation into her immigration history, and relatives received grand jury subpoenas, the show’s newsroom reported, citing the Associated Press, CBS News and the Washington Post. She has not been charged and denies wrongdoing.

On Episode 94 (watch on YouTube), Mr Rosenberg put the defense lawyer’s question plainly. “[T]he question is what did prosecutors show a judge to make him sign a search warrant?” he asked, according to the episode transcript. A warrant, he said, has limits: “There really has to be a reason for if you got to go into drawers, there’s got to be a reason to go into drawers. So you have to understand. So it’s not a here’s a warrant, go kick her door down, right?” And, on the question listeners most want answered: “So we’re not saying she’s guilty. You can’t say she’s guilty of this stuff. We don’t know yet, right?”

That last point is the one most coverage of an investigation skips. A grand jury subpoena means prosecutors are gathering evidence; it is not a charge. A federal grand jury “must have 16 to 23 members” and “may indict only if at least 12 jurors concur,” under Rule 6 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and the defense has no one in the room. This publication has explained why the grand jury is a screening device, not a trial, and why, as a Washington grand jury showed this week, a refusal to indict ends nothing in law. Two Taps News, the show’s written desk, covers the same ground in explainers, including one on what happens at an arraignment that opens with James Comey’s not-guilty plea in Alexandria, Virginia, in October 2025.

What does the panel say that lawyers in court cannot?

It explains the parts of the system that trial lawyers are barred from raising with a jury. On Episode 84, on the case against Luigi Mangione, charged in New York with the killing of the UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, Mr Rosenberg and Mr Dye walked through a plea strategy built on New York’s double jeopardy rules, the dismissed federal murder count and the search of Mr Mangione’s backpack. Then Mr Rosenberg turned to jury nullification, the power of a jury to acquit against the evidence. “The juries don’t have to give a reason why they’re acquitted, they can just say not guilty,” he said. “Now, as lawyers, we’re not allowed to tell you that in trial. It’s a big no-no.”

That is the show’s practical value to a listener: the defense lawyer’s working knowledge, said aloud. Episode 70, with the trial attorney Larry Schweiker and Mr Dye, took Florida’s Stand Your Ground law back to the castle doctrine, explained how an affirmative defense shifts who must prove what, and explained how a group chat can end up in front of a jury. Episode 69 gave a whole episode to Fred Haddad, a South Florida defense attorney of roughly 50 years, on picking juries and cross-examination. This publication has argued that plea bargaining is the criminal justice system, and a defense panel is one of the few places that negotiation is described from the inside.

Who is listening to lawyers on video?

A growing share of the public gets its news this way. “About one-in-five U.S. adults (21%) say they regularly get news from news influencers on social media,” the Pew Research Center reported in November 2024, and 37% of adults aged 18 to 29 do. In that market a panel of practising lawyers is a different product from a commentator reading the same filings for the first time.

How is the show built?

As long-form video first, then cut down. Full episodes of about 48 minutes go out on YouTube and as audio on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and iHeartRadio, with “clips and Shorts posted through the week,” the show says. Each episode page on its site carries a chapter list: Episode 94 runs from “Federal raid and the DHS investigation into Ilhan Omar” through “Grand jury subpoenas and financial scrutiny” to “Rule 11 sanctions and legal penalties.” Full transcripts sit on the show’s podcast host, which is where the quotations in this article come from, and a written desk, Two Taps News, turns the panel’s subjects into short explainers. The format leaves room for the host’s questions: Mr Rosenberg lays out the public account of a case, then asks the panel where a defense lawyer would push.

“Prosecutors get the podium and the press release. We want the audience to hear the questions a defense lawyer asks before anyone decides what a case means,” Mr Rosenberg said.

The show is careful about what it is not. Its discussions, it says, “are for educational and informational purposes only and are not legal advice.” The episodes mix legal analysis with the panel’s own views on politics and on Israel, and the Legal Panel episodes are where the law does the talking.

“Nobody on the panel is telling you who is guilty. We’re telling you what the government has to prove, and whether it has,” he said.

In a big case the public hears the charge first and the defense last, if at all. Once a week, Two Taps & Friends reverses the order.

New full episodes usually arrive on Wednesdays on YouTube, the show says.

This feature was prepared in cooperation with Two Taps & Friends.