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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Is full of incompetent lawyers that do not know what they're doing and they keep getting their asses handed, handed to them. In federal court. Lindsay Halligan, the beauty queen that Trump rounded up to go charge James Comey, just got slammed by a federal judge and charges thrown out. Midas touches reporting the following. A federal judge's three thrown out the criminal indictment of James Comey, ruling that Trump installed prosecutor Lindsay Halligan was illegally appointed and had no lawful authority to bring the case. The court found her actions violated federal law and the Constitution's Appointments Clause. Here filling in for pumps while she's on vacation is my criminal defense attorney, Josh Welch.
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B
Josh, in a nutshell, what the court is saying is that Pam Bondi violated the appointments Clause when she appointed Lindsey Halligan to serve as interim U.S. attorney. And that's because Eric Seibert had previously been appointed by Pam Bondi, typically as a U.S. attorney, that position, there's an appointment made by the president, and the Senate has to confirm that. But they do allow exceptions on an interim basis. And you get one appointment up to 120 days. Mr. Seibert served in excess of 120 days. The court simply said her appointment's unlawful and therefore we have to dismiss this indictment. And Ms. James indictment.
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A
Oh, Letitia James was dismissed as well.
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B
That's correct. Because the indictment fares the same as to her in the sense that Ms. Halligan is the appointed, alleged, appointed U.S. attorney.
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A
Okay, share with us because you were sharing with me over the weekend because you've been following this case so closely, because this is your area of expertise, you were telling me that Lindsay Haligan, like, basically violated some rules and ethics pertaining to the grand jury and could potentially be looking at bar violations.
- [02:04]
B
So we, all those of us who practice in, in the federal courts are aware that the grand jury process is somewhat safeguarded and it's very particularized. And the US Attorneys that conduct grand jury proceedings are very skilled, very educated, very experienced. And I remember when we saw Ms. Halligan being appointed, literally the next day she flies to Virginia like she puts a superman cape on and appears in front of the grand jury having no expertise in prosecuting federal criminal cases or working in that particular district. And so she's put in that situation, has no idea what she's doing. And I think the record has, has bore that out that she stepped into that proceeding, had no idea what she was doing. There's been a plethora of motions filed by James Comey's lawyers. It's no surprise that the court granted this motion, but there are multiple other motions that had merit that would have caused this case to be dismissed.
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A
So are all of those other things that, the unethical things that she did, are those just moot now?
- [03:11]
B
No, because what I think will happen is that there will be complaints filed to various bar associations about her conduct, her ethical conduct. I know that federal judges have certain obligations. If they see violations committed in their presence or they become aware of them, they then have to report those violations to the local bar association. So I think you'll see an aftermath of fallout from Ms. Halligan based on her conduct in the grand jury. It's clear that she didn't know how to conduct a grand jury proceeding. She had never presented a prosecution or a case in front of a grand jury. She just simply stepped in, made a plethora of errors. It was somewhat comical for those of us on the sideline watching this happen, I know it wasn't comical for Mr. Comey, but he, he has more than experienced lawyers that are representing him. Patrick Fitzgerald is his main lawyer, and he was one of the prosecutors of Scooter Libby and Carl Row back in the early 2000s. So just a extremely experience attorney that used to work for the Department of Justice for many, many years. So Ms. Halligan just simply stepped in sort of the wrong pasture at the wrong time with the wrong people.
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A
Does any of her action, the actions that you've read, rise to, like criminal misconduct on her part, or is this just ethical?
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B
It appears in some of the arguments that she admitted that she didn't present the full or revised grand jury indictment to the full grand jury. Instead just had a four person sign it, think that in the course of that you make certain attestations under oath. And, and so I don't know exactly if her conduct would rise to a level of criminal conduct versus ethical conduct, but it's clear she's going to have a number of problems on her hands after she's been dismissed from that U.S. attorney's office.
- [05:07]
A
So do you remember when Biden beat Trump in 2020 and he called Georgia Secretary of State and governor and said, I need for you to find me 11,000 votes. I feel like with this gal, he said, look, I need for you to go charge James Comey. And he had tried these other U.S. attorneys who, a lot of these people, you know, and you have had cases with, and these are serious people that are not partisan, that care about the rule of law, and they refuse to charge James Comey. So I think what we're dealing with this president is just this whim. I want James Comey charge because he can't stand James Comey. And she was the only person in the Justice Department that was willing to do this.
- [05:49]
B
Well, number one, she wasn't an employee of the Justice Department up until she flew down to the Eastern District of Virginia to prosecute this matter. But it would go something like this. Pam Bondi would be in a room of of Trump loyalist and say, hey, who is willing to hop on a flight, go down to Virginia and try to present this case to a grand jury and make sure that James Comey gets indicted. And as you look around the room, you see that there's not a whole lot of hands that are being lifted. But somewhere at some point in time, Ms. Halligan thought that, hey, I'm going to raise my hand, I'll do it. I'm a Trump loyalist. I'll go down, I'll go indict that son of a bitch. That's pretty much what happened here. She had zero experience being a federal prosecutor. She's being thrust into situation where she's being asked to indict the former director of the FBI in a highly volatile environment with other federal judges that have been there for years. And these federal judges, they take their job very seriously, and they take a lawyer's competence and ethical standards and rise those to the highest level. And you can't just sneak in under the radar and say, hey, I'll do this job, let me do it. You know, this isn't the playground where you can sign up for stuff. It's serious. And so there are also other basis for Mr. Comey's motions to dismiss his case. One of them was that it was clearly a selective and vindictive prosecution. This doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that when Trump puts on social media that, hey, you need to.
- [07:27]
A
Go charge this, which was supposed to be a DM to Pam Bondi.
- [07:31]
B
Correct.
- [07:32]
A
And then he accidentally put it on his public feed, which. Okay, just before we get to our next story, just share with our listeners exactly what's happening with the courts. Because I think this is really important is all of us are like, oh, my God, are we going to make it to the midterms? We all wake up every day with this barrage of authoritarianism and fascism and kinks being a complete nut with incompetent people. The federal courts are doing their job, correct?
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B
For the most part, yes. The district courts and the appellate courts. And when I say the appellate courts, I mean the appeals Courts, the different circuits, all of those courts are holding the line for the rule of law, following the Constitution, following the law, whichever side it falls upon, where the cracks are, or when you see these cases that get appealed to the Supreme Court on this so called emergency docket or shadow docket, there's a reason why they call it the shadow docket. There's not a lot of good things that happen in the shadows of day to day life, therefore, hence the nickname shadow docket. They're going in in the evening, basically at night, and basically issuing these orders that are, that are overturning a lot of well established rules of law that have become important to our society, the norms of our society as it relates to discrimination, racism, deployment of troops and state voting rights. Voting rights. You, you, we saw that in the Texas case on Friday where Alito again issued an order overturning the appellate court. And the appellate court was holding the line, but Justice Alito overturned that. So you're when we say the courts are failing us, it's not really the district courts or the appellate courts, it's the Supreme Court that's failing us.
- [09:21]
A
It's devastating. Okay, I want to shift gears because this ties into what just happened to Lindsay Halligan's first federal case getting embarrassingly thrown out because she's such a rookie. It'd be like me rolling up trying to do this. The Pete Hagseth is also equally unqualified to be the secretary of Defense, which they have now renamed the secretary of War. And as you know, the Trump administration is giving troops illegal orders to kill people without evidence, without information in the Caribbean. These are war crimes. And so a lot of senators have made public statements to the people in the military. And Admiral has already quit because he doesn't want any part of this. Because Hegseth we know Kings has immunity because the Supreme Court gave it to him. But somebody's going to be left holding the bag and a lot of it's going to be these people that need a paycheck, that need health insurance, that are patriots, that are actual service members. And so Mark Kelly, retired Navy and NASA now as a US Senator and some other Congress people said do not follow illegal orders. Well, these authoritarians are throwing feces all over the Internet. And now Pete Hegseth, the man who had to have his mother go on to Fox News to make the case for him to be the secretary of defense because she had written him scathing letters about his infidelities, his lack of being a leader, all of these things. He is now calling a secret tribunal at the Pentagon to investigate a sitting senator. Put this up. Pentagon says it's investigating Senator Mark Kelly for video urging troops to defy illegal orders. You would think that this would be a foregone conclusion, that the Pentagon would be like, yes, Mark Kelly, we agree with you. We do not want our troops following illegal orders. But here's the, here's the problem with this administration. Trump 1.0 people were fired and fired and fired and fired because they kept trying to hold up the guardrails. He learned that he didn't want that. So now he's surrounded by sycophantic dipshits that are only loyal to him and are getting decent Americans to commit crimes. And now they are investigating Mark Kelly and then put this up. The Department of War, which is really the Department of Defense, Hegseth is now threatening to recall Senator Mark Kelly to active duty in order to court martial him. So what you have here is they want to send a message, no, no, no, you can't be loyal to the Constitution. You have to be loyal to this man that gave somebody named Bubba a blow job. And Vladimir Putin has the evidence for it. And some. Now, the Republican Party always does this. They act like they're so pro military. And then here you have a draft dodger kanks who is now wanting to court martial a real military person who cares about the troops so much. And the Republicans feign this patriotism and the support of the troops. And it is such they want active members to commit crimes.
- [12:50]
B
And what I would say to that in addition, is that, and we discussed this earlier today, they're playing by a different set of rules. They're going for things that they weren't going for in the first term for Trump. And they're, and they're very unabashed about it, very unapologetic about it. The only line of defense for Senator Warner or any of the other individuals is going to be the court system the court has to uphold. They've not violated any law. They have no right to and bring him into active duty and court martial him. Those are things that they have every right to make a video like that. It's protected speech and it's truthful. It's honorable. And so to hold that line, though, the courts are going to have to make that decision.
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A
Okay, let me ask you this for us laymen that aren't lawyers. So this goes. The Trump administration appeals to the shadow docket. The court immediately agrees to hear it and makes is that a temporary ruling until they have time to review it in full?
- [13:53]
B
No. In many cases on the shadow docket, they simply issue an order and send it back. And they never agree to accept the case on its merits, to have both sides brief it. On the Texas gerrymandering case, they did accept that case. But many of the other cases that are on the shadow docket, they do not. That's the criticism of it is, number one, the court doesn't hear a full briefing on both sides. The lawyers don't get to argue it. But number two, the court doesn't keep it. So it sort of creates a new ruling on the shadow docket that is or isn't applicable to all the existing years of precedent that the court may have on that particular topic. So it creates this confusion and uncertainty about what is the rule of law and what law should lower court judges follow when hearing similar cases. As it relates to Senator Kelly, I think one of the differences we see with this Trump administration that any sort of opposition, whether it's speech, whether it's whatever it is, it's not protected that you're at risk of being prosecuted, you're at risk of being court martialed, you're at risk of any sort of consequence if you oppose their wishes. And that's a little bit different than the first term.
- [15:06]
A
And let me just remind you as we wrap here that in Trump 1.0, he asked his secretary of defense, I believe his last name was esp, Secretary Esper, if he could shoot protesters in front of the White House in the legs. And that secretary of defense said, no, you cannot do that. That is illegal. And so now you have that guardrail is gone. And the people that he picked in Trump 1.0, these are hawks, these are conservatives, these are right wingers, but they believe in the Constitution. What you have right now, these aren't right wingers, these aren't left wingers. These are people with no principles at, at all, at all. If Trump tomorrow woke up and said, Pam Bondi, I want to rev up the civil rights division and I want to go woke, she would say, sir, yes, sir. These people believe in nothing except for propping up this man with this horribly horrible, horribly fragile, demented, sick ego. All right, that's all we have. Josh, thank you for subbing in this week. Pumps will be back next week. She's on vacation with her family. Make your make sure you subscribe, like buy our book. And we'll be back later with more news.