Bulwark Takes - GRENADES!? Jan. 6 Rioters PARDONED For INSANE Stuff Not Related To Insurrection

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

Tim Miller and Ryan Goodman talk about the most recent mayhem coming out of the DOJ. A J6'er receiving a pardon for non January 6 related charges, recent DOD firings, and USAID funding being blocked by DOGE.

Hey guys, it's Tim Miller from The Bulwark. The legal news is coming fast and furious thanks to the lawless Donald Trump second administration and their activities. And so I already taped with Ben Wittes on a bunch of stuff this morning, but I wanted to bring back in Ryan Goodman, who is a co-editor over at Just Security,

also a law professor at NYU to talk about a couple of breaking stories and something that they've been reporting on as well. How are you doing? Doing well. Thanks. Thanks for coming back. The two stories that are broken since I last talked about crazy legal stories related to Donald Trump. One was the DOJ issued a, I guess, I don't know what you call this, a certificate regarding the pardon of one Jeremy Brown. Jeremy Brown was a January 6th defendant. When the FBI searched his home, they discovered illegal grenades, a sawed-off shotgun,

and classified information he had retained inappropriately after leaving the Army. Somehow, the Bondi DOJ decided that these charges fell under the rubric of the January 6th pardon, and he and Jeremy Brown gets a clean bill of health on that. And it's pretty just astounding how, for pardons that were broad-based to begin with, that were like shockingly broad-based, they seem to even be expanding the remit. That's right. And it's extraordinary in the sense that Mr. Brown is an alleged member of the Oath Keepers. And when they conduct the search on his property, it's not as though these like collateral crimes are like marijuana, drug use or something like that. It's gun possession. And he's

like a fully armed individual with grenades and the like that. It's gun possession. And he's like a fully armed individual with grenades and the like that it seems to have maybe brought over from when he served in the military. And so it's, you know, it's the strange oddity of the green light that comes with these pardons. That it's not just pardoning the earth keepers, it's not just pardoning people that assaulted law enforcement officers. But lo and behold, it's like, here, here are your grenades back. Really unbelievable situation. And just to be precise about the law on the matter, when they enter their certificate, which I've read, it's just a page and a bit, it says nothing. It basically just quotes the executive order on the pardons, which basically

are about pardoning people for activities related to January 6th. You know, being in possession of grenades. I mean, how could possibly being in possession of classified documents from the Army have to do with the January 6th? I mean, they have nothing to do with it. The only, you know, stretch of imagination is, oh, because they were investigating January 6th, they found that he committed these crimes. But there's no connection between the there's no nexus between the crimes and the activity of January 6th.

So it's really pretty bold what they're doing. And it also, as you mentioned, this is in Florida. It's not in D.C. So it's not necessarily the interim U.S. attorney in D.C. It's Pam Bondi's Justice Department. They say it's the Justice Department's leadership that has decided that the pardons apply. And the message is loud and clear. We've been talking about this.

But Michael Fanone talked about this over at the principal's first event over the weekend where, you know, Enrique Tarrio shows up and menaces people. There's a bomb threat. We don't know the providence of that, but the message when you're saying to people, well, you get a clean bill of health for your grenades at home and, you know, we're not going to, you know, we're going to pardon you if you're doing these actions on behalf of the president, is, you know, to at least implicitly, if not explicitly, send a message to these folks that they can go and cause problems. And we saw that over the weekend at the principal's first conference. Yeah, I think it's a green light to a brown shirt type activity by these paramilitary groups. It's very worrisome. There's

no counter messaging coming out of the White House or the Justice Department. It's only this particular message. And I think they're hearing it. Yeah. Well, well, that's not great. And better, I guess, legal news, at least for the short term. A federal judge who had previously ordered the unfreezing of USAID contract spending was frustrated that the spending had not been unfrozen. And so just about an hour ago now, he granted the motion to enforce his restraining order against the state and USAID spending freeze. And he's ordered the Trump administration to pay all invoices and letter of credit requests for work done prior to February 13th by midnight tomorrow night. So, I mean, I guess we'll see if that happens. And they've been slow walking this,

but I wonder what your take is on kind of this ongoing fracas between the administration and the courts over the spending? So a couple of thoughts at the outset are, one, the stakes couldn't be higher. To me, the suspension of USAID contracts to people around the world and the millions who depend on that for their lives is deeply concerning. And when you now have a judge repeatedly issuing restraining orders in order to them to get the USAID to unfreeze the funds, and they're not doing it, raises the other issue, which is like, how close are we to that bullseye where the Trump administration is going to defy court orders? Now, they're in court in a certain sense, trying to say that they are complying or

trying to comply, but it's beyond imagination at a certain point where we are. And the frustration by the judge is not just the lack of compliance, but according to Cal Chaney's social media thread, the judge is also asking the attorney before them, can you tell me that you have unfrozen the funds since we last met? And the attorney's response back is, quote, I'm not in a position to answer that, end quote, which is just extraordinary. They can't even certify that they're complying. So I think he's this particular judge is kind of losing patience and and then, in fact, has accepted the emergency motion that was submitted yesterday from the plaintiffs. Partly that comes with affidavits about all of these grantees that are saying within the week, like we're having to fold up shop and the like.

So stakes couldn't be higher. And we really are approaching that point of noncompliance with judicial orders. Part of the reason the lawyer might not be able to answer the question about whether they've paid is there's the Washington Post story this morning by Matt Bayh. I don't know if you saw this where Rubio in the White House was saying to issue some of these payments, not all these USAID payments underneath this judge's order, but there were select payments in PEPFAR and Ukraine aid,

emergency aid that they wanted them to unfreeze. And random Doge staffers were blocking it. So they might not even, because they've taken control of the payment systems. Yeah, it's a really important piece. I hope people read it. And in fact, that's Matt Byes' like language. He says that it's tightly controlled by these Doge folks. And they, in fact, shut everybody out of the system, which is consistent with the emergency order yesterday, because part of the emergency order says that people have been shut out of the system. There's only one person that they've designated to even make the payments.

And the other piece of this that's really important, I think, for folks to understand is that Matt Bai reporting on this, what he's found, is also consistent with the idea that Doge is controlling USAID that, in fact, as you just said, the Secretary of State, right, by decree, according to Matt Bayh, has ordered the disbursement of the funds. Then they got approval from the leadership of USAID to disperse the funds. And the Doge people are blocking it. That's so important because it actually, I do think, puts booster rockets on one of the most important pieces of litigation, which is to say Doge and Musk are exercising a form of control over these agencies that is totally unconstitutional. And to me, that's one of the most important cases to watch, which is that they should be bounced out completely because they're in violation of the appointments clause. Is that possible? I mean, I guess it'd have to go

to the Supreme Court, but... I think it goes all the way to the Supreme Court, but so far there are three judges that are strongly intimating that they're in favor of that kind of an approach. So Judge Chutkan— Bounced out would mean what kind of approach? Bounced out would mean what? Oh, okay. It means that they do not have authority to exist, that he is exercising authority as the head of an agency that should be an advice and confirmed position. And the test is significant government authority, and you kind of have to show that they're making the decision. So that's why the met by piece is, for example, important. But Judge Chanya Chutkan recently rejected a TRO, but in the rejection, she has this bulky paragraph that basically says she is leaning in favor of the plaintiff's argument that this is a violation of the

Appointments Clause. Yesterday, there was a case and there was a hearing before a judge on Doge's access to the Treasury Department. It wasn't centrally a question before the judge, but the judge said this looks like a violation of the Appointments Clause. Like, how do you have this kind of access to the Treasury Department? So that's another reason why the Matt I piece about the idea that these Doge actors can actually override the Secretary of State might say that, you know, the whole thing is in violation. And the question for us lawyers in a certain sense is, if they were to actually bounce Doge and Musk out by saying that they're not exercising constitutional power, The remedy is

the actual big question, because the remedy might mean you have to actually reverse their decisions, because the decisions that they've made all along the way have been an exercise of unconstitutional authority. One more question back to the USAID case. Just in the process, you know, for those non-lawyers, how does this work? Let's say the payments don't go out tomorrow night by midnight. The grantees are filing affidavits to the court. Do they have lawyers representing them? What's the process right now?

They have lawyers representing them. Each time the lawyers present the argument about the irreparable harm that their clients will suffer and the fact that their clients are not seeing the funds come through. They have affidavits, so it's all very well supported. And that's what's being presented to the judge. It's also another piece of this that I think is important for folks to understand. It's not just about does the judge issue that order, but the judges in these cases are also forcing the government to have to answer certain kinds of questions. So, for example, part of the order from today is that the judge said to the government, you have to also show me tomorrow all of the internal directives you give from now till tomorrow, showing how you're directing your employees to comply with my order, trying to just trying to

get around whatever the heck is going on inside the agency that's stopping the order from going through. So I think that's another piece of it. Yeah. One other topic I wanted to get to with you, because we haven't covered it to the level that it merits, is the firings over at the Department of Defense. You, at Just Security, your colleague wrote under the headline, how the Pentagon personnel firings threaten our apolitical military. Front of mind concern is the removal of the JAGs and their legal advice on the domestic deployment of U.S. military. And it's a lengthy piece, goes into this stuff in detail. So I'm wondering what the big takeaways are for you.

The biggest takeaways for me are that the senior lawyers in the Army, Navy and U.S. Air Force that Pete Hexeth is saying that he's going to remove, those are individuals that are supposed to be politically insulated. They're supposed to serve three year terms and not be kicked out by any stretch of the imagination beforehand. So for Pete Hegseth then to go into Sunday News on Fox and say, you know, we want an apolitical military, this is the politicization of the military. That's number one. Number two, Hegseth is now being approached both by that journalist and then also by other journalists yesterday, in which he has said part of the reason he wants to remove these people is because he does want them to be roadblocks, which is like roadblocks to what? To President Trump's agenda. But these are people who are supposed to abide by just their legal analysis. And I think what's deeply concerning is that why would he want to remove the top lawyers? Best idea I have is, and concern,

it's about, as you just mentioned, it's about the domestic use of the military. So maybe against protests or the like, because these are the people who would be the bulwark against the abuse of power. So that's the deep concern. And another one is, I'd like a journalist to follow up and say to him, so you say that these are the wrong people for the job. Tell me why. What's a legal order that they have ever analyzed that you think was wrong? And I think the point is that what he wants in there instead of loyalists. You know, another thing that he also said on Fox News Sunday, Sunday, Fox News, is he said that he wants to change the way in which these people are promoted in the future. That's dictated by statute.

And the only way I can think of him wanting to change it is for him to get involved. And he's the political appointee. So to very much politicize the promotion of these kinds of individuals, which is supposed to happen through a promotion board of their peers, that's another concern. So it really is this deepening concern of not just like the weaponization that we've been discussing in the Justice Department, but lo and behold, the weaponization of the military. And if we're thinking about the backsliding from democracy, that's got to be one of the deepest concerns for Americans. Do the JAGs themselves have legal remedy, do we think? Yeah, they can very well, they might be able to sue.

There's also statutory rules that say that there should be no interference from any Department of Defense official with the legal advice of the Jags um and I think they could sue on that basis too in part because they're these three Jags are still in place they haven't actually been um fired yet but he has said he's looking for their replacements so I think that there's a lot for them to hold on to in that regard and that's a healthy work environment exactly the direct secretary defense calling you a jag off telling you you're about to That's a healthy work environment. The Secretary of Defense calling you a jagoff, telling you you're about to get fired, you're standing in the way of everything. And meanwhile Defense Department. In December of 2024, the New York Times had a really good report. And in it, they said that the Trump transition team in vetting people for senior positions in the Pentagon

were asking the applicants, do you think Trump won the 2020 election? And what are your views on January 6th? And the applicants that failed to answer in the MAGA way didn't get the job. And they had the deep sense that there was a right answer and the right answer was the MAGA answer. That's what I worry most about. Like, that's exactly who I would imagine Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump would want to fill the ranks with, which are people that have satisfied some kind of loyalty test like that.

Alarming stuff. Thanks for popping on, Ryan, and getting us up to speed. And we will be talking to you again soon. Everybody go check out Just Security for deeper dives on this and much more.