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- [00:01]
Michael Popak
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- [00:22]
Jeb Boasberg
Well, using an apt analogy from sports, a litigation hearing broke out during a fight last night. That's the only way I can describe what happened happened with the Trump administration escalating its assault and open defiance of federal judge orders, the federal courts themselves during a hearing in front of the Chief Judge of the of the District Court for D.C. jeb Boasberg. The hearing was supposed to be about whether the Trump administration had violated a temporary restraining order issued by the judge to stop the continued deportation of people subject to a last minute secret proclamation of Donald Trump, which he made public only on Saturday, trying to invoke war powers and a phony war to use the Alien Enemies act to deport people as young as 14 years old and purported gang members and send them to a notorious barbaric supermax prison in El Salvador. It appeared to everyone who watched, including the judge, that it violated the judge's orders, which he issued late on Saturday evening in court with the lawyers present. That plane should not take off as of the time of his order that everyone in the Trump administration in the relevant departments and agencies need to know about his order and if planes were in the air, they needed to turn immediately around. That did not happen. And when you hear what the Trump administration's excuse was, you'll understand why the judge was so upset and started to push back hard against the Trump administration. I'm Michael Popak, you're on the Midas Touch Network and Legal af. This is a fast moving story, all breaking since Saturday. This may well be the constitutional crisis that we were expecting to have Donald Trump drawing a line in the sand and deciding that this is the thing he's going to use to test the outer boundaries of his power and beyond. Jeb Boasberg called the hearing together after a series of filings, one by the American Civil Liberties Union, who filed the case in anticipation of Donald Trump trying to use the Alien Enemies act to deport people to turbocharge his deportation plan. They filed a lawsuit. The judge entered a temporary restraining order that initially applied to Civilization six Venezuelans. Then the judge got word through the ACLU that Donald Trump had actually signed. Apparently on Friday, the Alien Enemies act proclamation declaring himself to be the commander in chief during a phony war. The judge then expanded his temporary restraining order during a hearing to include all people, all people affected by the proclamation. So, so he did what we call, he certified temporarily, at least a class of people. He then entered an injunction on top of that class. And he expected, as any federal judge would, that the Trump administration would abide by it. Apparently, there was at least one, if not two planes that took off after the judge entered the oral order and then later followed it up with what we call a minute order, which is an entry on the docket. But let's be clear. I've been doing this for over 35 years. A judge looks you in the eye during a full two hour hearing and at the end of the hearing issues an injunction. That injunction is an injunction, oral, you know, verbal, until it's memorialized. When it's memorialized, when you see the actual written order, which is only a minute order, because we're moving quick here. So the judge just had time to do a slight entry. I'll put the entry up in the video here. From there, you await the judge's written order. But if there's no written order, then you were there. The transcript which gets filed on the docket, which is the actual. What the court reporter takes down as everything that happened during the hearing, that that informs you as the lawyers and the parties, as to what the injunction is. The Trump administration tried three ways not to tried three ways to ignore and defy this federal judge. First, they ran to the Court of Appeals, the D.C. court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit, and made a request by letter that the judge be removed from the case because the Trump administration doesn't like the fact that he's asking hard questions about when planes took off and where they landed and why they violated the judge's order. So Ensign for the Department of Justice filed a two page letter with the clerk in which they asked ultimately for the removal, claiming that Trump had some sort of Core Article 2 authority, not described, that would remove the jurisdiction of the federal judge. In other words, they don't recognize the jurisdiction of the federal judge, even though the federal judge. The job of a judge is to interpret the Constitution and other laws and determine whether the executive branch has violated any of those aspects. That's what a federal judge does. So they ask on page two of the letter, this court should also immediately reassign this case to another district court judge, given the highly unusual and improper procedures used that have been employed by the judge. The district court did not make a move on that. And just so you know, Jeb Boasberg is eminently qualified here as a judge. He was appointed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the FISA court by Chief Justice Roberts, served there valiantly for five years. He was even part of the court about enemy combatants and aliens being deported. So he has experience there. He has a top security clearance he handles in D.C. and as the chief judge, classified documents and information all of the time. And so they, they attack him for his procedure. Right. Which is. And as a person that fails, they then send a letter, a response to the judge, telling the judge, okay, we can't get rid of you, you have no jurisdiction because we have all the Article 2 power in this unitary president model. And you don't have any power. You're just a single federal judge. This is their mantra now. Single federal judge in a single city. And you can't conduct a power, a war power or executive power. You know, that's not what the judge is doing. What the judge is doing is doing their job in the co. Equal branches and checks and balance system of our constitutional republic. That's what's going on. And so they filed this motion to vacate the hearing. We, you can't even hear any of this, Judge. It's, it's, it's, it's above your pay grade effectively. And the judge have said, denied, we'll see you in court. Which led us to this hearing that I'm now reporting out. During the hearing, the judge put all of the lawyers for the Department of Justice their feet to the fire, but particularly the lawyer they chose to argue this. His name is Abhesik Kambli. Abhesik Combi used to work as a lawyer for the Air Force. I'm sure he knows a thing or two about flights and planes and then worked his way up. Apparently it is now deputy Attorney General in the Department of Justice, having worked in Indianapolis. Let me just put. He took on some fire from the judge. Judge says, apparently my oral rulings don't seem to carry much weight with you because they had this whole argument, which is ridiculous, that until it was memorialized in the minute order, which is a two line order, they didn't have to comply with the judge's order orally given and they could ignore it. And then they pointed to the fact, well, Judge, your written order doesn't turn. Talk about turning around planes. To which the judge said in the transcript, apparently the transcript of what happened and you were there, sir, demonstrates what my ruling was and the basis for it and the parameters and contours of it. So if you had any question, you pull the transcript and you read it. I can't tell you how many times in my career we've ordered the transcript from a hearing so that we fully understood the judge's rulings. You can't rely on a placeholder minute order placed for two lines on the docket as your injunction. If you're the party being enjoined right, that is, that is beyond, beyond a ridiculous and nonsensical position to be taken by the Trump administration. But that's what they do.
- [09:13]
Midas Touch Network
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- [09:15]
Jeb Boasberg
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- [09:16]
Midas Touch Network
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- [11:12]
Jeb Boasberg
So the judge says no. You get the transcript. You read the transcript. I ordered you to inform all relevant departments, turn those planes around. And apparently you didn't. Now tell me why you didn't and give me the timeline. They refused, right? The same guy, Deputy Attorney General Cambly refused to respond to these questions. I'm not at liberty, your honor. I'm not at liberty to anything more than we wrote in our two page paper. And effectively telling the judge, you're not, you're not worthy of this information. It's classified. And the judge says, I have top secret security clearance. We can't tell you. That's not the showing that you need to make in my courtroom under federal law about why you can't tell me. First of all, it's not about whether they can tell him. It's about whether it ultimately goes on the public docket for you and me to see. The judge can look at it with a clout, with a, with a level of classification as a federal judge. And all the time they do it, what's called in camera, which means they look at documents secretly off the docket, they turn off the microphone so the press can't report on it. They look at the documents, they have discussions in chambers, which is where the judge hangs out when he's not on the court, on the bench, and they have that discussion. And then he decides how much, if any of that ends up on the public docket after a round of briefing. That's all he's trying to do. But they refused to answer even his questions. This is the open defiance of the federal judiciary and the rule of law that we've now seen. Right. This is about the third example of the, of at least of federal judges calling out the Trump administration for refusing to testify in court, refusing to provide an affidavit, deporting somebody when they were ordered not to be deported. That just happened up in Boston, Massachusetts. Right. Not stopping Elon Musk from going through servers and financial information, medical information, and the rest, not rehiring people that have been ordered. This is where we are with this administration and the Supreme Court. It's ultimately going to have to deal with it. Now, what has the judge done? There's two parallel tracks on this case that we're going to be following closely here on Midas Touch and on Legal af. First, on the what is effectively a contempt hearing about whether the Trump administration willfully violated the court's order, oral order, and what was discussed during the hearing as reflected in the transcript. Yes or no? The judge is going to have to get the timeline on that. So he's ordered the Trump administration, noon today, Tuesday, to supply a declaration under oath, sworn statement under oath, providing two things. One, what are the logistics of the planes? And demonstrate for me with my oral order. Don't rely on my written two line order. How explain to me how you didn't violate the oral order. Secondly, tell me how the planes logistically took off. And if you're not going to tell me that because you're going to claim some sort of executive privilege, then you need to make a better showing. Make a showing as required by the law in your briefing. I expect that by noon as well. Separately from that, because there was a couple of clocks running here at the same time. The Trump administration just filed their motion to vacate the original temporary restraining order because that was due on Monday as well. So that just came in. I'll do a separate hot take about that. But their fundamental argument there is the court doesn't have jurisdiction to hear this matter. The executive branch lords supreme over the, over the Article three branches and that the judge was wrong. And this one you've heard before, the judge was wrong to enter a quote unquote universal injunction because he doesn't have the power to do that. That's that single federal judge in a single district argument. You keep hearing from the influencers hired by the Trump administration, the MAGA senators and congresspeople, Carolyn Levette, the press secretary and the rest. Right on cue, they push a button and this echo chamber starts. Now, one little side note before I get to my hot take on that a little bit later today, this isn't a universal injunction. This is a class action which was certified for now by a judge joining together everyone adversely affected by the phony proclamation on the Alien Enemies act and then a injunction related to that class. That's different than a universal injunction. I'll explain more a little bit later. Now, look, let me just end the hot take this way. We're going to get a filing at noon. They're going to continue to try to bang away at the circuit court, the Federal Circuit Court for appeal about getting the judge removed, about, you know, trying to, trying to stay this injunction while they move to dissolve it. That's the term in the trial court level while they try eventually the Hail Mary pass, the United States Supreme Court, which I think is all going to happen. The United States Supreme Court involvement as early as the end of this week or beginning of next week. That's as early as that could happen. Keep that on your calendar, on your radar and we'll follow it here. The Alien Enemies act is not a war power. It is not something that a commander in chief necessarily using his powers implements and there's no war been declared, which is the fundamental basis of using The Alien Enemies act, sure, if there's an imminent threat of an invasion or an incursion until Congress can get its act together, that the courts have seen, and the Constitution says that the, the President has certain responsibilities and duties. But where's the war? This slow creeping 10 year thing where drug gangs have been invading America, that's the imminent threat. I mean, even the Supreme Court should see through that. So we're not at war. We're not at war with Venezuela, we're not at war with the Maduro regime in Venezuela and sending people without due process to horrible supermax prisons in El Salvador to satisfy the desires of the quote, unquote philosopher king, President Bukele in El Salvador is beyond corrupt and beyond unconstitutional. And we have to ask ourselves, what is the country that we are living in that we woke up? Is this who it is to be an American? I'm sure many of the people who were deported, these 250 people that were put on the flights in violation of the court order, I'm sure many of them may ultimately prove to be just as terrible and just as violent and just as criminal as the Trump administration makes out. And if that's the case, then they should have no problem going through the proper constitutional method to try them, deport them and send them where they like. I just don't think it's El Salvador and I don't, certainly don't think it's doing it with some jokey social media all apparently approved by lawyers. You know, where they're doing closing time videos, you know, with them getting off the plane and Border Patrol taking them home. Look it up. You know, you have that BS going on. You got Bukele going boo hoo in his social media post. Apparently this is all approved by lawyers in the Trump administration who coordinated their messaging. And the, the brains of this operation, and I use that term lightly, is apparently Stephen Miller, as I predicted, who is the deputy White House Chief of staff, used to be in the first Trump administration. He's the non lawyer that came up with all the legal strategies about separating families and putting kids in cages. Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem, you know, the puppy killer who's our head of Homeland Security, apparently they came up with this idea to use the Alien Enemies act and these planes violate the court order, you know, and then try to fix it on appeal. If you don't like the federal judges trial judge order, then you appeal. You don't defy, you appeal, you don't defy. That's the society in the world the constitutional republic that we live in. And just to wrap it this way, every major constitutional issue that's ever been litigated up to the United States Supreme Court came out of a one single judge, single district ruling on a constitutional manner about the president's powers or about the Constitution that ultimately went up to a three judge panel of a federal district court, federal appellate court, and then up to the United States Supreme Court. That is our method. That is our logistics, period. And Donald Trump trying to break all these norms and argue that federal judges don't have the power they have, that only he possesses all of the unitary powers he tries to divide and conquer needs to get shot down immediately by the United States Supreme Court. It certainly will at the intermediary appellate court level. And we'll continue to follow it right here. Until then. I'm Michael Popak reporting in collaboration with.
- [20:29]
Midas Touch Network
The Midas Touch Network.
- [20:30]
Jeb Boasberg
We just launched the Legal AF YouTube channel.
- [20:34]
Midas Touch Network
Help us build this pro democracy channel.
- [20:36]
Jeb Boasberg
Where I'll be curating the top stories, the intersection of law and Politics. Go to YouTube now and free subscribe at LegalAFMTN. That's @legal AFMTN.