Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Blanche Is a Hot Mess as Senate Investigates Whether Trump Judges Have Conspired With Admin

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Starting point is 00:00:22 free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. Welcome to a special edition of Legal A-F. What we've been watching, especially in the last week with less than 30 days to go to the midterms, is the rule of law flexing its muscle. In courthouses, and we're going to talk about a series of things that have happened, and even in Senate hearing rooms, as the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Republicans on it, give Jack Smith a platform to convince the American.

Starting point is 00:00:57 people that Donald Trump, beyond a reasonable doubt, is a criminal. And in the courts, it may have got lost in the shuffle. We had things like the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals empowering Judge Williams in her Jan 6th IRS case to continue to find bad faith litigation and move forward, possibly with contempt in that case after she reopens the case. And at the very same moment, a here, a en banc hearing of 10 out of the 11 members of the D.C. federal appellate court, deciding whether Chief Judge Jeb Bosberg is going to be able to continue with this criminal investigation of the Trump administration and not just of Christy Noem, who was thrown under the bus by the administration, but maybe a sitting Third Circuit Court of Appeals judge, maybe the Attorney General of the United

Starting point is 00:01:47 States. And we also reported on Legal A.F. about the grand, conspiracy case being handled down in Florida presided over by Judge Aline Cannon, taking on some water as the two chief conspiracy theorists in the Trump administration both abandoned ship and decide they don't want to prosecute that case. And I'm going to bring on now, Senator Sheldon White House of Rhode Island to talk about this and so much more with our audience here on Legal AF. Senator Whitehouse, thanks for joining us. Good to be with you. Let's kick it off right where you want. Let's talk about Judge Bozberg. He has been trying since a year ago, April, to get to the bottom of why his orders grounding those airplanes that were sent without due process, those

Starting point is 00:02:35 couple of hundred men to El Salvador to be tortured to Seacot. Why were his orders violated, who violated them? And what can he do about it? And now we've got some developments there. Let's take it from there, Senator. Well, this is a really interesting case because a district judge, a federal trial judge, is usually given quite broad authority to make determinations about whether contempt of court has happened with respect to an order of his. And ordinarily, you wouldn't even challenge that until there was a finding of contempt of court. But in this case, the MAGA Department of Justice stepped in hard to appeal the simple determination by Judge Boasberg to open some fact-finding about what took place, whether there was contempt of court.

Starting point is 00:03:29 And from there, it got weird. First of all, the circuit court of appeals, the D.C. Circuit rendered a very peculiar two-to-one decision, staying him from fact-finding about what actually took place. The two Trump judges that made that decision had different versions. of the case, they were using an unusual doctrine called mandamus, which doesn't seem to apply. If anybody's a law student out there, read the dissent. It's a really good example of clear, smart, accurate legal writing, and then you compare it back to the two Trump judges nonsense. It's really, really weird. So they put in an administrative stay, which is supposed to last,

Starting point is 00:04:13 you know, days, maybe a week. They held it for months and months and months and months. And while they held it. What happened? What happened was that judge you referred to, Emil Bovi, got shoved through the Senate Judiciary Committee and stuffed onto the Third Circuit Court of Appeals without an opportunity for the Senate Judiciary Committee to get the determination from Judge Boasberg whether this guy had committed contempt of court. Very strongly corroborated evidence showed that he told the DOJ lawyers, be ready to say, fuck you. to judges who try to stop this, which is pretty good evidence of contempt of court. So all of that happened.

Starting point is 00:04:59 It was all very weird. And then there were a series of decisions from the D.C. Circuit that said, all right, game over. Bozberg, you can go ahead. One judge actually made it quite clear. This set of decisions clears Judge Bozberg to proceed. What do you know? Boom.

Starting point is 00:05:17 Two to one. Two Trump judges. again over a blistering and much better written dissent, stall the thing again. So that's why it's back in the same circuit that said, you are cleared to proceed after some of their members seemingly violated the court's own order and issued another blockade. So the whole thing is a great mess, but it goes back to contemptive court and lies to the court in the early days of the Trump administration with people like Pam Bondi, Emil Bovi, Christy Noem, and their Confederates all under some degree of examination. So good stuff. Yeah, and to your point, Senator,

Starting point is 00:05:57 and just to bring it home for our audience, of the 11 member, active members, non-senior status of that particular appellate court, only three are Trump-appointed judges. They just seem like they come up like bad pennies over and over again. Naomi Rayo, Justin Walker, and Katzis. And if it's, you know, We tell our audience, I mean, I never had to do this before, but I tell my audience if it's going to be two Trumpers on a three-judge panel, if they're going to side with Donald Trump, about 99.9% of the time, and I'm always right. I don't want to be right, but I am right. And if it's one, they're going to be in dissent. And as you just laid out, here's a question, and you raised this the last time we were talking about this issue, where their audience,

Starting point is 00:06:41 is there some sort of communication or conspiracy between a judge like Naomi Washington? or Naomi Areo or Justin Walker with the White House to try to coordinate these things. And you try to get to the bottom of that. Interestingly, we asked that exact question of Judge Shinovassen, who's the chief judge of the circuit court. And it just seems unusual that with all the MAGA storm about Judge Bosberg and this hearing that got lit up, and the weird duration of the administrative stay, And the weird decision deciding that mandamus applied, you know, the other judges know what good and bad judging looks like.

Starting point is 00:07:28 So they've got to be looking at this going, okay, that's a little weird. With all of that going on, the notion that no MAGA type at the White House, no MAGA type at the MAGA Department of Justice, no MAGA person on working on behalf of Trump got in touch with either of the Trump judges. and said, stay this, help us out here. We need to get Bovi onto the court. We need to stop this investigation into our mischief. If it's going to blow up badly for the Department of Justice that we're running, if he's allowed to proceed and find out the facts of what we did, the notion that there's no chance that there was communication between those judges and the MAGA folks, particularly the DOJ, a party to the matter, seems like a stress. And what did we get by way of an answer? Radio silence. So there's more to be found here.

Starting point is 00:08:27 Yeah. And to your point, should the Senate return to the Democrats and the gavel goes to the Democrats, you let's say in the Senate Judiciary Committee, the things that we're just talking about academically now become real investigations, right? I'll do you one better. Jamie Raskin is likely to be the chief. chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and unlike Senate subpoenas, his can't be filibustered. So we have multiple ways of getting into the information of what exactly took place. If some MAGA official communicated to Judge Ray or her chambers, and that resulted in the administrative stay that held the door open and kept the facts from the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation, and stole investigation into misconduct by the DOJ. Ask any judge how big a deal that is.

Starting point is 00:09:26 I'll say people are going to jail. I mean, I've always thought, even though they tried to throw Christy Dome before they fired her, and she resigned under the bus by saying it was Christy Nome that made the decision to send those men to certain torture at Seacott. And it came up in the hearing. I just interviewed League Alert, the lead lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, that collaborates with us on legal AF, who argued the case about how that, how did that, how was that handled in the courtroom? What was his interpretation? He said, yeah, they're led by Judge Childs and others. They're like, why do we have to take the scapegoat provided by the Trump

Starting point is 00:10:06 administration? Why can't the judge go into everybody that may have been involved with that? Now, look, we know that list. It's Emil Bowie of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, then of the Department of Justice and Donald Trump's criminal defense team. It's Todd Blanche, who submitted. Who was a gag at the time, yeah. Right, who submitted a two-line affidavit at the time. So, you know, I know why you want to put out and now able to testify truthfully. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:10:34 So I know why you want to focus on that as a perfect example of the corruption within the Trump administration and its Department of Justice. They would love to sweep this under the rug, but of course, you and I both know, That just leads to a lumpy rug. Right? Very lumpy rug in the case of the administration. Yeah, and if you, and we had it up, we had the audio. We had about 200,000 people that listened to it on legal AF of the oral argument.

Starting point is 00:11:00 And if you just listen to Judge Millard and Pillard and Childs. Who wrote this by the way? Oh, if Millett or Pillar, Pallard write the majority, they are dead. I'm talking about the Trump administration. and Judge Bozberg, who gets mercilessly attacked by the Trump administration at its Department of Justice as a Marxist, leftist, radicalist, unelected judge, he's nothing of the kind. He's a country club Republican moderate down the middle guy. Yeah, we have actually done some work on the multiple avenues of attack on Judge Bozberg from all across MAGA,

Starting point is 00:11:39 from House Republicans, from Senate Republicans, from the White House. been like eight different vectors of attack on the guy and they clearly, clearly, clearly want to discredit him as much as they can. And when they want to do that so badly, it probably means that they think that he can get the goods on their corrupt activities. Absolutely. So let's turn to a judge they never attack, which is alien cannon down in Florida. She happens to be the one judge and a one judge courthouse at Fort Pierce, Florida, where I practice

Starting point is 00:12:14 law in the Southern District of Florida. And there is a grand conspiracy investigation with a grand jury that's been up and running for months led by the Southern District of Florida, U.S. Attorney Jason Redding Cignonas, but a whole bunch of other characters like Kurt Olson, formerly of the Election Integrity Office, whatever that's supposed to be in the White House. Air quotes. Air quotes. Right. He replaced the cybersecurity guy like Chris Krebs with a guy who got sanctioned by multiple courts for bringing election denying BS into their courtrooms. Kurt Olson was on the team. Joe DeGeneva, this 82-year-old guy was in the Reagan administration and had spent his entire

Starting point is 00:13:00 last decade attacking people that he was now prosecuting. But they both dropped off of the investigation. And there hasn't been an indictment yet. And one last thing, Senator White House, you've got alien cannons sticking her big fat thumb again into this by blocking FBI agents who went to her and said, all we want to do is testify to the grand jury about everything in Mar-a-Lago. We're happy to do it. We're happy to tell the grand jury, and they listed it about how this was a good faith investigation of a president and the espionage and obstruction of justice. Won't you let us? And she said, no, you didn't confer with the criminal

Starting point is 00:13:39 defendants in the case, right? You didn't defer with Walt Nassau. and Carlos de Olviera, like, how do they have veto power over the FBI testifying truthfully to a grand jury? What do you make of it all? Well, DeGeneva and Olson are pretty darn Trumpy. Olson is as Trumpy as you actually get. And so when those rats are leaving the sinking ship of the grand conspiracy prosecution, you know it's got to stink pretty badly in the hold of that ship. And Eileen Cannon is also the author of the silencing, the muscling of the volume two report by Jack Smith.

Starting point is 00:14:24 And one of the weird things that just happened in the Jack Smith hearing is that they made no effort to get his volume two. And I think there's a case to be made that when the United States Senate issues a subpoena and has oversight authority, that the Constitution gives us directly, that's worth, like, maybe a judge has to yield to that. Maybe you worry about, you know, how you can contain it and do things, the equivalent of in-camera. But they didn't even try. They are complicit in continuing the cover-up of Jack Smith's volume two, which he's under orders not to talk about while they make him testify. And then the Olson link is into that weird Missouri crowd.

Starting point is 00:15:10 You know, the Missouri U.S. attorney is the one who did the Fulton County, Georgia, seizure investigation, even though he's up in Missouri. And Schmidt from Missouri was the guy who got himself so badly burned in the hearing with Jack Smith. So this whole thing is just rich with a lot of nonsense that you traditionally associate with MAGA. And the other inside baseball thing, Senator White House, I know you know, but for our audience, there's a reason why Walt Nauta and Carlos de Olviera have never been given partons is because Donald Trump needs to keep them as live criminal defendants so they can do things like run interference for him and say, oh, no, I don't want them going to the grand jury. If they had been pardoned,

Starting point is 00:15:56 there'd be no ability to block it because they could never be indicted again. Yeah. Yeah. So we have that one. I was going to ask you one quick question. And then you've got the other Florida case in which Todd Blanche remains under investigation, not for contempt of court, for something that if you can believe it is actually worse, fraud upon the court. It's something that is so bad and so rare that in the entire history of the Department of Justice dating back into the 19th century, there has never, ever been any senior or confirmed official to the Department of Justice, even accused, even accused of it. And now you've got a federal court down there saying, I'm going to keep this

Starting point is 00:16:40 fraud upon the court thing open while we look into this more. And the 11th Circuit just opened the door for her to continue against some frantic pleadings written on behalf of Donald Trump, the plaintiff and Donald Trump, the defendant in that case that they're trying to pretend wasn't collusive. That's a great point, too. Even Nixon's attorney general didn't go to jail for fraud on the court. Yeah. Unbelievable. It's a really unusual thing, fraud upon the court.

Starting point is 00:17:10 In fact, I don't think anybody in the judiciary committee who hasn't really practiced law for a long time, even knew that that thing existed. Oh, yeah. Well, I'm a practitioner. I do. We know, right? Yeah, yeah, we know.

Starting point is 00:17:24 It's extremely, extremely, extremely rare. Let me, let me, you've been so generous with your time. Let me, let me ask this question, because the Mar-a-Lago report does come up. frequently with our audience. Do you feel you'll be able to try to get that report through the Senate or the House, through subpoenas or otherwise? Yeah, I think so. I mean, to say that the Constitution allows Congress to oversee mischief by the executive branch, and now there's a report that one judge has said, no, you can't, nobody can see that. I think if you put those two things

Starting point is 00:17:58 into balance the Constitution and the weight of the importance of congressional oversight justifies making an exception to that court's order in some fashion. At a minimum, it's something the court should consider. And easily, it should be something that we see, at least in camera, under orders not to disclose it further. Yeah, that's great. That's a great relief. And again, you're pointing out why it's so important for everyone to vote. Voting is election. The election has already started. People have already voted. Mail and Bound. ballots have been returned. We've got, you know, my early voting. I'm in a purpley state in Florida. Early voting starts on the 19th of October, runs until November 1st. So even there, there's a

Starting point is 00:18:43 substantial amount of early voting going on. And these are the issues that are important to our audience. The one I would love to have you come back and talk to our audience about after the midterms is going to be Supreme Court reform, because that is the other thing that is keeping my audience up at night. I can't tell you how many times this comes up. What do we do? And you see, they're already campaigning against it. We've got Sam Alito doing a, I don't know if he's doing a victory lap or some sort of swan song. I don't know what he's doing right now. Because they know they're in trouble. They have made their own bed and they have ceded this so that Supreme Court reform seems appropriate at this particular moment in time. Both real ethics with actual

Starting point is 00:19:27 fact finding and term limits with replacements for some of the judges who've served out the term that we would establish. Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. Thank you for always being with us and briefing our audience. And thank you for all that you do to protect democracy and the rule of law. Can't get your fill of legal AF. Me neither. That's why we form the legal AF substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral Come over to the substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, morning A.F. What else? All the other contributors from LegalAF are there as well. We got some new reporting. We got interviews. We got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes. Where legal A-F on substack. Come over now to free subscribe.

Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Blanche Is a Hot Mess as Senate Investigates Whether Trump Judges Have Conspired With Admin

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