Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 04-10-25_THURSDAY_7AM-1

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

Former Fed attorney John Oconnor, author of POSTGATE, this big legal mind digs into the Fed judge attacks on the Trump Administration and how it could be fixed.

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Clauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clauserdrilling.com. The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Clauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clauserdrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. John O'Connor joins me.

He's an experienced trial lawyer, practiced in San Francisco for the last 50-something years or so. He's tried cases in state and federal court throughout the country. He served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Northern California. He's also representing the United States in criminal and civil cases. And among the interesting assignments, let's see, you represented the government during the OPEC oil embargo in the 1970s. Boy, you must have been a young pup at that point, eh, John? How you doing? Welcome. Well, I was. That was a long time ago, and I'm reminded of that every day. Yeah. And let's see, you would write Fifth Amendment, state of mind briefs for the prosecution

in U.S. versus Patty Hearst. You represented the FDIC, FSLC, RTC during the savings and loan crises. In other words, when the crises and the people were being prosecuted, you were there, I guess. In fact, weren't you even defending big tobacco at one point? Tell me a little bit about that. When that was going on, I got recruited to do that, so I did that. Okay. It's like wherever it goes, right? That's the good thing about a good attorney. People need defenders and they need prosecutors too. But anyway, your book which I've been reading, I think people would enjoy that, is Postgate, how the Washington Post betrayed Deep Throat, covered up Watergate, and began today's partisan advocacy journalism.

This really was the beginning of it. And now, I don't even know if we have much journalism at this point in time. Even on the right and the left, it seems everybody is just like, here's our opinion with a little bit of news mixed in it. What say you? What do you think? Well, that's exactly what happens. There aren't that many... sober is a bad word, but I think it's exciting to have challenging news discussions about different issues. And, you know, you don't get that much. Now, I'll say this.

On Fox News, you get more discussion of the issues than you do on the other networks, the more leftish ones, because I think for whatever reason, they just don't like to discuss the issues issue by issue they would rather act as though discussing that is obviously it's beneath them it's like they would have to hold their nose. Well there's no discussion about this it is a foregone conclusion what the truth is in this particular issue whatever it might be. Well that's right that's right it's a foregone conclusion. And the only question is, why the heck did this guy do it? And why would anybody vote for him? And that sort of note. That's sort of the whole idea of Hillary Clinton's basket of deplorables. clingers. Of course, people in the Biden administration have said the same thing.

And I think Biden said that, that all the Trump supporters were garbage. I think he said that while Kamala was running. So there is this tendency to just say, whoever is disagreeing with them must be the worst people in the world. And so that's not very good for you. You talked about democracy. Democracy thrives on robust debate and opinion, and that's what John Stuart Mill said. This is what you want. You want argument, because that makes us all better. Well, our worldviews between the various, between the new major, the two major ideologies in this country, the worldviews are so different that I can see why we get to the point where,ologies in this country, the worldviews are so different that I can see why we get to the point where, okay, this person is not just thinking differently than me, they're just a bad person.

You can see how the tribalism will just get you to that point, can't you? You can understand it as part of human nature? Well, that's true. And remember, part of all leftist ideologies, which includes Hitler. Hitler's a Nazi party, who is not right-wing. The communists crave him that way, but he's a socialist. That's the idea of Nazi national socialist belief. But anytime you get into leftist ideology thoughts, ideology covers everything. It's not up for debate once you get into ideology. So it's more likely that on the left you're

going to shut down debate, discussion, dissension. Whereas on the right, if part of your philosophy is that everybody ought to be free to argue, then it's a different thing. Even if you really look down on people who are doing X, Y, or Z, I think you'll find that more on the right will want to debate the issue and talk about the issue. But does everybody have their own particular sock puppetsets as an example? I even look at President Trump and I'm no fan of Hamas as an example, but as a First Amendment guy, I kind of look pause at any, I would look pause at anybody looking to deport people for joining protests on a college campus. I would be concerned. I get a little concerned about that as a First

Amendment guy, but I don't know. Maybe I don't know the whole school. Well, there you are. Well, that's a great example of you're a person that's more conservative, more on the conservative side, and look what you're doing. You are vigorously questioning whether the president's right. You don't just say, oh, this is part of my ideology. I guess I got to go along with it. You don't say that. I don't say that. I mean, I look at some of these tariffs and I say, oh, you ought to take it easy here. And yeah, on the tariffs, you take it. But in other words, you find that people, the Wall Street Journal blows up at Trump when they do something that he doesn't like. They're not afraid to take them on.

Does anybody take on Biden in four years? No. Nope. He was very quiet. From his side. So yeah, I mean, that's the whole idea. And remember, and Trump never has said that he's, you know, a straight down the line conservative. He's a common sense guy that was a Democrat until not too long ago. And that's fine with most conservative people. He certainly is better than the alternative. Yeah, I think 40, 50 years ago he would have been considered kind of a progressive Republican. I think it would have been a way to describe him even when he was a young guy.

He's never changed, really. He was a Democrat back then. And so now he's a Republican and believing many of the same things. And that kind of shows you where the parties I think have been moving over the years too. Conversation for another time, you know. That's right. All right, I wanted to talk to you though about the major problems he's having with the judiciary and especially with the way that we have district court federal judges, which of course you dealt with long time as a prosecutor, that are doing

rulings in which they're in their little district and yet there it is, it covers the entire country and I've still been trying to figure out is this just a power that district judges grabbed or was it granted to them in statute somehow? And I'm wondering if you could speak to this, because this has been a big deal. The judge saying, hey, you turn that plane around and you fly that gangbanger back here to the United States, right? Well, yeah. What I would say is this. This is a legitimate area of dispute and debate.

Number one, the constitutionality of that 1798 set of acts, the Alien and Sedition Act, that's one thing. But there's also, even if you didn't have that statute, you have an issue of what the president's unreviewable powers are under the Constitution. As an Article 2 commander-in-chief, remember Vietnam and Korean Wars were not declared wars. You're right. They were national security actions. I don't think we've had a declared war in a long time, have we?

No, we haven't. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves on the basis of national security. Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave J. Edgar Hoover the power to not follow the Constitution in searches for communists and Nazis. George Washington did not exactly follow the Constitution Bill of Rights when he put down the whiskey rebellion. So there is a power there. So let's talk about that. So the judges, though, are not used to deferring to somebody and saying, oh oh gee, this is an area that I as a judge can't get my hands on. So that's number one. It's normal for somebody in the judiciary to protect the turf and have the judicial

turf go as far as it can be, just the way the legislature wants to see everything's their turf and the executive wants to elbow both of them out of there. And so that's one issue there is that. And so I don't think that a court, one of the things that is a bothersome new development is this national injunction thing. A national injunction in the past was rare. A district court sits in a small part of the world and is one of several judges, several courts in the particular area they're in, the idea that you can presume to apply an

injunction of the entire country should be a very rare thing and should be really thought out as to whether it was really necessary. So some of what has to happen is the Supreme Court has to set down some guidelines. They don't have that opportunity yet, but they may in some of these cases as they get up to them and start making some rules. I think they've thought about that because every time, you know, sort of a judge who may think, boy, this is the best way to do it, and I know I'm right. The whole thing we're talking about, sort of this feeling, this smug feeling that you're superior to people.

So you have that issue. Now, to be fair to these judges, I mean, it's sort of American tradition and the Constitution that you don't take away a right of a person without due process. Now that can be, that due process prong can be satisfied certain ways. I think if somebody comes right across the Rio Grande and is still wet and so forth, I think it's perfectly fine to take that person and bring them back across the river. And if he says he's seeking asylum, okay, here's the number, come back when we call it.

I think you can do that. In other words, I don't think the real question is due process. What kind of due process do you get? Well, the due process that I think these district judges have been wanting is that all of a sudden, okay, you bring them into court, then you them bail and you let them go and then they disappear. You know, isn't that really the way they've been looking at it when it comes to immigration, due process? Well, that's right.

That's right. And what you're doing by having the hearing is you're actually granting them more rights than they should have. In other words, once you say, okay, you can stay here for two years until we call your name, even though we don't know that you really have a good asylum claim, well, wait a second, you're giving somebody an advantage right there. I mean, the citizenry is kind of cheated, as it were, because all of a sudden these people are here that shouldn't be here.

And they haven't really...so that's why Trump had it right during his first term. But what is the problem here is the judge is feeling that, oh, there should be hearing aids to everything. There's a lot of difference between a citizen who's getting his driver's license revoked, he has a right to due process hearing. There's a difference between that and somebody who's here illegally and wants to contest the illegality of it. Yeah, someone who is not supposed to be here at the very start of our conversation here. That's where it seems to be getting lost here, in which you broke the law coming here, you have no documents which back up your right to be here, and then you're saying that you have a right to a hearing before you're tossed out.

It's essentially what's going on here. Isn't it, John O'Connor? Isn't that really what's going on? That's exactly it. And if it takes you a while to have that hearing and then you, or an and or an appeal, what you're doing is the person is getting rights that he didn't have by claiming due process. So, oh gee, for free, I get two years to stay in this country, whereas a visa holder may only get 90 days and the visa's yanked. So

it doesn't make sense, but it is something that's hard for a judge to get out of his mind. Somebody who's a really good, solid, honest judge who's very earnest may legitimately feel that this is the way it has to be done. And so that has to be... So some people say, oh, these judges know that they're just grabbing power. No, they don't. I mean, they're acting in good faith. They think this is the way to do it.

So you're not thinking that Judge Boasberg, as an example, is a bad actor per se? Because, you know, what I see written about him is very bad stuff. Everything is just horrible, horrible names being called. No, he's actually a pretty good guy. I know some people that know him and so forth. He's a good guy. He's a good friend of Brett Kavanaugh's. I mean... So he'd be a good guy, but he's wrong, is what you're saying, right? Yeah, yeah. It's a big difference between being a bad guy and being wrong. And even him being wrong is a close question. I think if he had a different Supreme Court, he'd be right. But you have another Supreme Court and he's wrong. So it's right on that cusp.

We're dealing with some issues that are very, very tough. And, you know, it's not really...I'm against the idea of saying impeach the guy. Now, if the Supreme Court speaks to the issue and it's clear what the limits of his power are on particular issues and he doesn't follow it, now that's another thing. In that case, you can say, okay, this judge is willfully violating his oath of office, we can impeach him. But right now, you got to say, I hate to say it for those people who don't like these rulings, he's a pretty good guy who's ruling as he thinks he should, and is upset that this guy shouldn't be deported until there's a hearing. These guys, I should say, should not be deported without a hearing.

And I mean, I disagree with that. I think there is a remedy there, and I think the court may have really hinted at that by saying, hey, you have your lawyers bring a habeas corpus action. That's what a habeas corpus action is about. I mean all kinds of people in prisons today are filing habeas corpus petitions which are saying I was jailed wrongly and there's no reason that they can't do that. You just don't get free while you're doing it. That's all. And so I think that's the remedy for these guys. File their habeas corpus. John O'Connor is with me once again, author of Postgate, How the Washington

Post Betrayed Deep Throat, covered up Watergate and began today's partisan advocacy journalism. I was reading something today in The Daily Signal, which is a part of the Heritage Foundation, and it had to do about the rogue judges here, especially when the ACLU or some other activist organization files against the Trump administration and they get a temporary restraining order. And it had to do with federal rule of civil procedure 65C. Are you familiar with that, that particular rule?

Well, I'm sure I've read it. I just, I'd love to... Okay, I'll just remind you what it says. It says the court may issue a preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining order only if the movement, that is the petitioner, gives security in an amount that the court considers proper to pay the cost and damages sustained by any party found to have been wrongfully enjoined or restrained. Okay?

Okay, yes. Yeah, I'm familiar with that. And I didn't know which one that was. That's the posting of a bond, an injunction bond. Do you think that's something that should be enforced because it's supposed to be that the ACLU says, okay, you're not going to do this and then the Supreme Court just says, no, you're wrong ACLU later at some point, but yet damages have been sustained in the meantime. Would you agree with something like that being enforced? Well, I read a very persuasive article on this in the journal, the Wall Street Journal,

in which a pretty bright guy argued about how it's just not right for a judge to give a perfunctory one, like saying, okay, you put a dollar down, that's all I'm going to require. No, you have to have the judges required to issue a bond that estimates in a reasonable way the harm done. So that way that there is real skin in the game for the person suing for the injunction, right? They have skin in the game. Absolutely. Absolutely it. That's it. And so, and the writer of the article said this would really help out a lot. And I tend to agree with that. I was persuaded by the article. I know that many times in an injunction today, the court sort of throws up its hands and says, I'm not going to issue a fine. I'll have them put $500 or $1,000 or whatever it is,

even though the damage might be really severe. Well, as it is right now, as it is, it's cost free for a Southern Poverty Law Center or a radical ACLU or whatever it is. It's pretty much cost free for them to do whatever they want, other than the cost of the attorneys. They go in there, they raise money for attorneys, boom, off they go. And there's no downside for them, I guess is what I'm saying. Well, that's right. And to be fair, it is hard to estimate what damage is caused by a person being here. I suppose one estimate would be, well, if they stay here and they're getting any kind of services from our social welfare network, that's something that they should pay for. Because technically they aren't legal, they don't have work permits, they don't have

a green card, you know, as they... That's right. Right? That kind of thing. Yeah. So all sorts of ways to look at it. That's right. That's right.

So, but we don't do that. We've gotten to this point here where, if you remember not too long ago, it was considered oh terrible if somebody had an undocumented worker in their household and you know I think a couple people nominated to be judges had to withdraw because they had hired an undocumented alien. Nobody looks at that today. Everybody goes, oh no big deal. No one's looking at your roofing crew as an example.

Exactly, exactly. We've become very at home with the idea of illegals being around and I don't think that's a good thing. And so Trump is changing the conversation a bit here. All right. John O'Connor, I really appreciate you taking on it. We'll have you back and thank you for the Legal Eagle Brain Analysis. Always appreciate it and thank you. Great book, by the way. I'll put all the information up about that on your websites too. Thank you so much. All right, take care buddy. Take care. John O'Connor, it's a 732 at KMED.