Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Federal Judges SMACK DOWN Trump DOJ to THEIR FACES

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

Trump DOJ attorneys are acting out in Federal Court, flouting orders, taking positions that are intellectually dishonest, and telling Federal Judges they won’t comply with their injunctions and orders. Michael Popok explains what Federal Judges will do next to ensure compliance with their orders, as the Trump DOJ tips its hand that they don’t even think their positions are supported by the law. Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://TryMiracle.com/LEGALAF and use the code LEGALAF to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download the BetMGM Casino app today! BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. BetMGM.com for Ts and Cs, 19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. Donald Trump's Department of Justice is taking illegal positions in various courts, including threatening that they are not going to comply with federal judge orders. I've got new reporting based on a new filing made by the Department of Justice, and I'm going to put it in the context of several, several unsustainable, untenable, intellectually dishonest positions that the Trump administration, Department of Justice is already taking in front of federal judges and it's not working.

Four separate temporary restraining orders against the Trump administration as of last night say that it's not working. I'm Michael Popak, you're on Legal AF and the Midas Touch Network. There's a new filing that I just got my hands on in the District of Rhode Island filed by Trump's Department of Justice because the judge there, Judge McConnell, issued an injunction, one of two, about the federal funding freeze or the impoundment of funds by Donald Trump. Having found that to be unconstitutional, a violation of Separation of Powers and the Administrative Procedures Act, among other things, Judge McConnell entered an injunction to stop and ordered the Department of Justice and the Trump administration to tell all federal agencies that they are not to stop funding while the case is being

resolved in the court system. But that's not what Donald Trump's lawyers heard. What Donald Trump's lawyers heard was, you haven't stopped the executive order. That wasn't the subject of your injunction when it obviously was. We can still stop the funding, which you can't, and that would violate the court order. And you haven't told, we're not going to tell all federal agencies because all federal agencies are not going to be subject to a federal judge's orders. Are you out of your cotton pick in mind? I mean seriously, what are they smoking at the Department of Justice?

But you see the acting out that the Department of Justice is doing with their filings now, where they're taking on federal judges that they don't like in courthouses like in Rhode Island. Here's exactly what they said in the defendants, that's the Trump administration's notice of compliance with the court's temporary restraining order. It's nothing of the sort.

It's a notice of not complying. It's a notice that they're not going to comply. Here's what they say. And wait till you hear what McConnell's gonna do next. The order contains, according to them, the Trump administration, several ambiguous terms and provisions that could be read to constitute significant intrusions

on the executive branch's lawful authorities in the separation of powers, citing no case law. Given that the plaintiffs only challenge the Office of Management and Budget Memorandum, defendants do not read the order. Trump does not read the order to prevent the president or his advisors from communicating with federal agencies. Listen to this next one. Nor do defendants construe the order as enjoining the president's executive orders at all, which are plainly lawful and unchallenged in this case. I'm sorry, did they walk into a different courtroom?

The very basis of the temporary injunction by Judge McConnell and Judge Ali Khan down in the District of Columbia, who also issued her own, is that the executive order is unconstitutional and illegal. So they're saying they're not going to respect it, they're not going to comply with it, and it goes further. They also go on to say further, do defendants, Trump, do not read the order as imposing compliance obligations on federal agencies that are not defendants in the case. All federal agencies are defendants in the case through the sign through Donald Trump. That's how that should be read. Now that's been signed by Brett Schumate,

who's the same acting assistant attorney general that appeared in Seattle in a losing argument that got a TRO there as well. So Schumate's already over to about birthright citizenship with his ridiculous arguments that he took there. You think these arguments are ridiculous? Wait till you hear what Shimate argued to Judge Kofenor in Seattle. Judge Kofenor said in the first five seconds of the hearing, a few days after the inauguration,

let me stop you right here. You think the executive order that the president signed that takes away the constitutionally given right of birthright citizenship for somebody born in the United States, he's trying to do that by executive order to deny their citizenship? You think that's constitutional? I do. Absolutely constitutional. And the judge says, well, then I don't know how any member of the bar could ever come into my courtroom and make that particular argument. I'm going to tell you it's unconstitutional and the most blatantly unconstitutional thing I've ever seen in 40 years on the bench.

That's Judge Kofenor to the same Brett Schumate, who's quickly entering the hall of infamy for the positions that he's taking in the courtroom. But what does this new compliance or non-compliance order suggests to me is that the Department of Justice is going to be taking untethered to reality, intellectually dishonest, legally insufficient, unsupported by the law arguments in all the courts in which they're gonna enter. And that's a gift to fair-minded and rule of law-minded people like us

because it'll be easily dispatched by federal judges in the friendly places we're filing when they take these kinds of positions. And wait till you hear, we haven't even heard from, because he hasn't even been confirmed yet, the Solicitor General for Donald Trump, which was his main criminal appellate lawyer, John Sauer. Wait till you see the crazy arguments he's gonna make to the United

States Supreme Court to try to defend these executive orders. It's gonna blow blow the top off of most of the Supreme Court. Even this crazy MAGA right-wing 63 majority isn't gonna go along with most of his craziest arguments. That's not the only crazy arguments being made in courts by the Department of Justice. In a case in front of Judge Anne Ana Reyes, who was the first openly lesbian judge and immigrated from another country, who's a federal judge in the District of Columbia, they had a case about the banning of transgender soldiers. This is part of Donald Trump's attack on the transgender community. What is he, like Trump's attack on the transgender community.

What is he, like Dave Chappelle? Except Dave Chappelle became president, and now he's going after the transgender community. So now he banned them or tried to ban them from the army and from the military. And so there was a case that was brought in front of Judge Reyes. And during that case, a lawyer for the Department of Justice,

Jean Lynn, told Judge Reyes in response to a colloquy back and forth that it would be okay for the Trump administration to be passing this policy based on animus because they hate transgender people. That wouldn't be a constitutional violation. And Judge Reyes said, I'm sorry? Your argument is that an animus driven policy, a policy driven by hate and prejudice is going to survive our United States Constitution and then she cited a series of cases that say exactly the opposite. Your nighttime bedroom temperature has a huge

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Just to continue this theme, same week in front of Judge Royce Lamberth, who's a Reagan appointee, senior judge, and another transgender case about housing transgender women in male prisons, which Judge Lamberth found already at a temporary restraining order was an eighth amendment violation as a cruel and unusual punishment. He already, the Trump administration came in to lose. They conceded all of the facts that were necessary for Judge Lampert to enter the TRO against the administration, knowing that they were gonna lose.

The judge says the Trump administration concedes that these people are going to be killed or maimed or injured or worse, conceded by the Trump administration, conceded that their body dysphoria about who they are as people is gonna be exacerbated and psychological trauma if they're housed with them. Conceded by the Trump administration.

So you've got, so he said TRO granted, temporary restraining order granted. All the facts were conceded by the Trump administration. So you've got the Trump administration conceding key facts that are against them. You've got lawyers taking arguments that are on their face, don't even pass the straight face test. You can't even get them out without laughing

if you weren't about to cry. And you have the other parts of the Department of Justice saying we're not gonna comply with federal orders. What to do about it? I addressed it last night on PO-POC live, a new podcast I'm doing on the Midas Touch Network Tuesdays at 8 PM. And I said, cause a couple, some questions came in from the audience in that said, well, what do you do?

What do you do if a federal judge's orders, who enforces the orders? The, isn't it the executive branch? Isn't it parts of the department of justice, the FBI, who enforces a judge's orders? A judge enforces a judge's order. So here's how it's gonna work and here's what we're gonna see next from Judge McConnell and all the other judges. They're gonna issue their temporary restraining orders, they're gonna issue their preliminary injunctions, and if Donald Trump's

Department of Justice, agencies, departments, DOJ, Bureau of Prisons, the Treasury Department, Financial Services Bureau, Commerce Secretaries, Commerce Department, the Military Defense Department, whoever's gonna be the head of the Health Department, the Health and Human Services, Medicare, Medicaid, all those departments, right? Education Department.

If they don't comply, and if they file another one of these notice of non-compliance compliance, they're going to end up in contempt, ultimately. It'll start with a warning. It'll start with a hearing. It'll start with a fine. It'll start with a finding of civil contempt. It'll call the administrator,

the head of that department, that cabinet level department on the carpet in a courtroom in front of a federal judge where a federal judge sits up on a bench on high for a reason underneath a justice is blind and all those who seek justice do adhere, signs, right? And they're in charge, not these cabinet level positions. And they're gonna order, watch it,

and we'll cover it here in minus thatch illegal layup. They're gonna order these cabinet level people, these heads of departments to comply. And if they don't comply, they're gonna put them in jail. They're gonna put them in jail. So who puts them in jail? You got the federal marshals program. You got the bailiffs who all work for the judge.

And Donald Trump can try to countermand them and say, oh no, I'm going to cut your budget. I'm going to do this. But then there's going to be lawsuits filed on writs of mandamus and unconstitutional separation of powers violation by Donald Trump, who's trying to order around the security detail and the security personnel at the heart of the case. Federal marshals will do their job at the demand of a federal judge or they will be jailed. Right, and if she has to go deputize,

Metro police, if you're in DC, Metro police or Capitol police, she'll do that too. Yeah, she'll deputize whoever she needs to deputize in order to execute on their contempt orders because they can't allow the federal court's orders to be flouted, to be people to be contumacious and be found in contempt because otherwise this whole thing crumbles. So I'm not that concerned at the moment

about the ability of judges to execute on their inherent authority, which every judge has inherent authority as a federal judge to administer justice in their courtroom and to find people in contempt all the way up to criminal contempt. And if people don't like it they can take appeals to the DC Appellate Court in this example or other appellate courts and ultimately the United States Supreme Court. But they will spend the night in jail in the meantime. If that's what

Donald Trump wants, if he wants his cabinet level people, he wants Pete Hegseth, he wants Pam Bondi. He wants the head of the Bureau of Prisons, the head of the Commerce Department, Secretary of State jailed and keep screwing around with federal judges. We've had enough with Donald Trump, having watched what he did to the rule of law, having watched him disrespect the court process and pardoning the Jan 6 defendants. These same DC judges who are handling the bulk of the cases, 15 out of the 32 cases already filed against the Trump administration, already successful, are in the District of Columbia. The same judges who were shocked and horrified by Donald Trump's

actions concerning Jan 6, including all the way through the pardons and beyond. I'm going to continue to follow it all right here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. I'm Michael Popock. On Tuesdays, Popock Live, 8 p.m. Eastern Time, right here on this YouTube channel. And then the audio podcast for Legal AF and the video podcast for Legal AF on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern Time,

right here on this YouTube channel. Then come on over to Legal AF, the YouTube channel, Legal AF MTN and help us continue to grow that pro-democracy channel at the intersection of law and politics, bringing you commentary analysis like no other on YouTube, I assure you. Till my next Legal AF contribution, I'm Michael Popock. In collaboration with the Midas Touch Network,

we just launched the Legal AF YouTube channel. Help us build this pro-democracy channel where I'll be curating the top stories, the intersection of law and politics. Go to YouTube now and free subscribe at Legal AF MTN. That's at Legal AF MTN.