Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF Full Episode - 7/16/2025

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Dina Doll and Lisa Graves guest host the top-ranked law and politics podcast Legal AF and break down this week’s most explosive legal and political developments at the intersection of law and democr...acy, including: 1) the latest Epstein chaos, as the DOJ fights a major appeal while internal turmoil erupts with ethics-related firings and resignations; 2) a dramatic update out of Los Angeles, where a judge halts Trump’s ICE operation, triggering an emergency appeal and a sudden move by Trump to pull federal troops; 3) Trump’s escalating effort to purge federal appointees—including a push to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell—as the Supreme Court hands down a shocking ruling on mass federal firings; and 4) new developments in the Abrego Garcia case, where the courts continue to push back against Trump-era abuses of power. All that and more on the podcast that exposes the legal chaos threatening American democracy. Support Our Sponsors: Armra: Head to https://tryarmra.com/legalaf or enter promo code: LEGALAF to receive 15% off your first order! Qualia: Head to https://qualialife.com/LEGALAF and use promo code: LEGALAF at checkout for 15% off your purchase! Soul: Go to https://GetSoul.com and use code LEGALAF to get 30% OFF your order! Delete Me: Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to join https://deleteme.com/LEGALAF and use promo code LEGALAF at checkout. Subscribe to the NEW Legal AF Substack: https://substack.com/@legalaf 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:01:27 Welcome to the midweek edition of Legal AF. It's Dina Dahl and Lisa Graves. We're standing in for Michael Popok and Karen Freeman Agniflo as they are both under the weather. But I am super excited to have Lisa Graves here co-anchoring this with me. Those of you who are subscribers to the Legal AF channel are familiar with her work, but those who aren't, she has a wealth of information about corruption,
Starting point is 00:01:56 which seems to be the defining issue right now under Trump. So I can't wait to hear your perspective on the many legal issues that we are going to get into it. For those of you who are not familiar with court accountability, they are an advocacy group focused on corruption with the courts. Lisa Graves specifically deals with North, True North research, which is the investigative arm of Court of Accountability. This is why she has all the info, all the details. And like I said, unfortunately, we are rife with corporate corruption right now. And that kind of leads me into our first topic, which is the Department of Justice. As we know, we kind of see it blowing up in real time, right?
Starting point is 00:02:40 With Epstein, MAGA trying to get Pam Bondi out, at least a segment of MAGA trying to get Attorney General Pam Bondi out, acting as if it's her fault that the Epstein files aren't being released and not dear leader Trump. But at the same time, we see what she is doing within the Department of Ethics, specifically having to deal with the ethics at the Department of Justice.
Starting point is 00:03:05 And that leads into corruption. If you get rid of the watchdog, if you get rid of the internal ethics leaders, there's nobody at the department who's able to pay attention. Nobody who these attorneys can go to when they get an illegal order, an unethical order, they have nobody to go to and that is the point.
Starting point is 00:03:26 So just to kind of set it up specifically, and then I want to hear what you have to say, Lisa. The director of Department of Ethics, this was the person that Pam Bondi just fired. His name is Joseph Tyrell. He was a career service. He worked for the FBI for 10 years before he started with the Department of Justice. And now with him, because he's the last in several people
Starting point is 00:03:49 at the DOJ dealing with ethics who have left, there is now nobody left who these attorneys can go to. So speak to that specifically with your background. You know, this is no mistake, right, that she's kind of clearing out the people there in charge of making sure the attorneys are ethical. That's right, Dina. And it's always a joy to be on with you and really a wonderful chance to talk about this
Starting point is 00:04:16 issue because I was Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice. I worked under both Janet Reno and John Ashcroft. And I used to be proud to walk into that Department of Justice building, which had engraved above the aluminum doors on Pennsylvania Avenue, it had engraved, the place of justice is a hallowed place.
Starting point is 00:04:38 But it is not a hallowed place right now, because we've seen from the beginning of this administration, this effort by Donald Trump and his agents to just decimate the ethics and oversight of several agencies, including the Justice Department. One of the first things that Donald Trump did was to basically fire all of the inspectors general for these agencies, including the Justice Department.
Starting point is 00:05:00 Other officials like this man who has helmed this ethics department within the Justice Department, these are important roles. They provide an avenue for Justice Department-line attorneys, people who are civil servants, sometimes political appointees, but predominantly civil servants, and other employees of the Justice Department to report ethical issues, raise ethical concerns. ethical issues, raise ethical concerns. This role is also important for getting ethical ethics opinions. And so what you've seen coming from this administration from the beginning, from the Trump administration, is this idea that Donald Trump is the only person,
Starting point is 00:05:36 along with Bonnie, who can issue ruling statements about the law. They made that edict a couple months ago. And now you're seeing, among other things, this crush down within the Department of Justice of the determinations by this president and this presidential administration of just firing people, not for cause, not because they did anything wrong,
Starting point is 00:05:58 not because they weren't doing their job, but I think in some cases because they were doing their job. So I think that that's a pretty good snapshot of what's happening. And there's more. We've seen hundreds of lawyers leave, the Civil Division, the Civil Rights Division, other parts of the department, really hollowing out the lawyers who have served their careers, defending the interests of the United States, including lawyers from federal programs whose role is literally to defend the United States' agencies, the government's agencies.
Starting point is 00:06:27 And so, I really think the Department of Justice has been harmed by Bondi's leadership, and it's been harmed by the Trump administration. Its independence has certainly been collapsed because of Bondi's closeness to Donald Trump. Yeah, and I think just last week, they fired 20 employees of the DOJ who worked on, you know, with Jack Smith on the January 6th prosecution.
Starting point is 00:06:51 So they are definitely clearing people out. And when they remade the Civil Rights Division to instead attack people's civil rights, we saw an exodus there as well. So Joseph Turrell, the director of ethics, who just was pushed out by Bondi, his responsibility was to advise Bondi and Todd Blanche, both obvious, huge Trump loyalists, Todd Blanche, a former attorney for Trump, on ethics, right? So they pushed him out and was also in charge
Starting point is 00:07:21 of like the day-to-day ethics. He did not go quietly. He posted a statement that said, I took the oath at 18 as a midshipman to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. I have taken that oath at least five more times since then. That oath did not come with the caveat that I need only support the constitution when it is easy or convenient. work to try to keep this Trump regime in check because we've seen quite a bit of people who have been pushed out go on
Starting point is 00:08:11 to kind of nonprofit advocacy works, perhaps doing the same kind of work outside, right, government that before they were doing inside government. And then this is all kind of, of course, happening with the backdrop of Epstein. And interestingly enough, as we know, Jelaine Maxwell just filed a request to the Supreme Court that the Supreme Court set aside her conviction because she says the non-prosecution agreement
Starting point is 00:08:38 that the DOJ entered into with Jeffrey Epstein in 2008. And if you remember in terms of the many connections around Trump and Epstein, the US attorney for the Southern District of Florida at the time of that non-prosecution was later appointed by Trump to be Labor Secretary, Alexander Acosta. So that non-prosecution agreement clearly covered
Starting point is 00:09:02 Jeffrey Epstein, right? You know, that's how he avoided any kind of significant consequence. non-prosecution agreement clearly covered Jeffrey Epstein, right? You know, that's how he avoided any kind of significant consequence. She's now arguing that that also covered her, and she's asking the Supreme Court to set it aside, her conviction based on that. The DOJ putting themselves in it at the timing of this, Lisa, I mean, let's talk about the timing of this, how it's right in the moment when we see Trump trying
Starting point is 00:09:29 to say nothing to see here, nothing to see here, of the MAGA base getting more and more upset, the fact that he's not releasing it, he sounds guiltier every time he tries to dismiss it. We see now his Department of Justice who he really controls completely, right? You know, I guess you could say that's one detriment. He can't separate and say the DOJ is doing something
Starting point is 00:09:53 on their own because it's been so clearly run by Trump, unlike other administrations where there really is the separation that they're supposed to be. So the DOJ going to the Supreme Court, asking the Supreme Court not to take the case. So what are you thinking on this? I know, cause you cover the courts. I mean, it seems like her argument's a little bit farfetched
Starting point is 00:10:17 whether or not the Supreme Court is actually gonna take this case or not. What are you thinking in terms of, I mean, the Supreme Court keeps surprising us, however, in ways that we don't like? Well, right, we don't know what this court is going to do. In this instance, the Sister General, Mr. Sauer, has said that the department does not support this appeal. Of course, I think we all remember that when she was convicted, or when she was facing charges and then ultimately convicted, Donald Trump actually publicly said he wished her well.
Starting point is 00:10:48 That's not the type of sentiment you expect someone to give to someone who was accused and convicted of basically trafficking, human trafficking of young girls for prostitution, for basically pandering and putting them into sexual service to Epstein's clients. But the story now is, or the big story now, is how much Trump is trying to get away from all of the accusations that he put out there
Starting point is 00:11:16 about the Epstein client list and also Bondi as well. And so they've really been spinning and spinning these past several days about how no one should be concerned about the fact that they're not releasing the client list. There's this assertion that there was never a client list. There have even been claims by Donald Trump that he never flew on Epstein's plane even though there's a photo of him on the plane, that,
Starting point is 00:11:38 you know, this is long distant in the past and, you know, just move along, move along, even though within the right-wing infrastructure, this has been a story that they've peddled and tried to basically smear Democrats, even though in fact, you know, this idea of this list was affirmed even just a few months ago by Pam Bonney, along with video evidence. There's no indication that they're actually
Starting point is 00:12:01 gonna be prosecuting the men who are seen in the videos that she says she'll now never release. No one wanted to see, you know, pornography, obviously. But this idea really does lend to the notion that there's a real coverup going on by this administration. You even had Dan Bongino, who's a right-wing talk show host who's now in a leadership position at the FBI arguing with Pam Bondi about how to handle the Epstein case. But let me just add one thing to the equation
Starting point is 00:12:27 that I think most people don't realize. This Alex Acosta, who was someone who Donald Trump personally tapped for a cabinet position in his first administration, he is the person who, as you point out, Dina, and as people know, signed off on that rotten plea agreement with Epstein back in the early 2000s, mid 2000s. That was in the George W. Bush administration.
Starting point is 00:12:52 I remember Alex Acosta because I first encountered him back in the 1990s when he was working on efforts to block Bill Clinton from putting judges on the US federal courts. Then after I went to go to work for the Senate Judiciary Committee, Alex Acosta gets named to the Civil Rights Division. This is a guy who never handled a civil rights case
Starting point is 00:13:13 in his life before then. Then he was rewarded for his efforts back then to, in my view, weaken the Civil Rights Division. He got the job as the head of the Civil Rights Division. Again, a person you wouldn't actually hire as your lawyer in a civil rights case. And then he fell upward from there. He was rewarded with the job of being the US attorney
Starting point is 00:13:30 for the Southern District of Florida, one of the most significant jurisdictions of the country in terms of prosecuting serious crimes, drug trafficking, human trafficking and more. He got that job and then he cut that sweetheart deal to basically let Epstein off the hook. And it was only when he was nominated a few years ago by Donald Trump for another position,
Starting point is 00:13:51 and I think it was the Labor Department, in the Trump administration, did his role in that dirty deal come out. And so, you know, what kind of vetting was the Trump administration doing when it tapped this guy to reward him with yet another post after that Epstein deal, it was only because of the public rejection, reaction to Epstein's role that his nomination to that post finally failed.
Starting point is 00:14:15 But the fact is, is that this administration, I think has been really misleading, not just its base, but the American voters about what's at stake here, what happened in the Epstein case, Epstein case, what those files are about. And I honestly, I just cannot believe that they're going to get away with, and maybe they won't get away with this effort to just say, move along after all of the effort they put into trying to hype this really terrible person and his terrible schemes and his, you know, his effort to basically procure young women for really wealthy men in New York City and in Florida and people coming from around the world to his island,
Starting point is 00:14:54 a state where young girls were trafficked into prostitution either directly or the equivalent. And Michael Wolf just in a recent interview speaks about that Trump contemplated pardoning Jelaine Maxwell. And so it will be interesting. This filing to the Supreme Court comes at, I would say, like an opportune time for Trump, because perhaps he's concerned again about what she might say, or especially with his DOJ
Starting point is 00:15:21 kind of trying to argue the non-prosecution agreement does not work. And just going back to the Department of Justice and kind of the chaos there, because here we have a Department of Justice whose whole point, right, is supposed to enforce our laws, enforce our federal laws, and instead they have remade it into their own, Trump's own bidding, MAGA's own bidding,
Starting point is 00:15:48 taking away like the corruption units. And now we have like the ethics unit being gutted. At the same time as the DOJ is suing, where we see them suing Los Angeles for their sanctuary city policies and kind of using frankly frankly, at this point, very limited resources. And when I say resources, I mean attorneys,
Starting point is 00:16:11 because so many attorneys have gone, right? And let's talk about that. So here at this ethics department, with it being gone, the attorneys there won't have somebody to go to, to be able to speak about, for instance, what happened with Mayor Eric Adams, right? And being forced to dismiss his case. And the attorneys there, a few of them resigned rather than do that because they felt like that was unethical.
Starting point is 00:16:35 They felt like it wasn't based on the law and fact and didn't comply with the oath that they took. Now these attorneys, some of them, honestly, just maybe nonpolitical, they're there because they believe in the job, they took. Now these attorneys, some of them honestly, just maybe non-political, because they believe in the job, they're there for perhaps most of the criminal cases that they take, their career prosecutors, and now they're being forced
Starting point is 00:16:55 to go after denaturalizing somebody, right? The DOJ just sent a memo to the entire civil division not that long ago saying, basically use your discretion if you want to denaturalize somebody, completely opening up Pandora's box. So let's say you have an attorney in that division or one of the many others, they no longer have somebody to talk over
Starting point is 00:17:16 whether or not this order is ethical or not. Lawyers are governed, right? We have a professional licensing organization. We have a bar association. We are limited on what we can say or do. And so these lawyers who stay now in the DOJ don't have an internal person to be able to talk over. Hey, am I, how close to this professional line am I,
Starting point is 00:17:45 right, with this order are at risk of losing their license. And we have seen in the first Trump administration, of course, so many of Trump's close allies lose their bar license, right? Rudy Giuliani, perhaps like the most popular, let's say, person in his thing that lost their bar license, which is very shocking. He was this federal prosecutor for so many years.
Starting point is 00:18:09 But you have now more career level people who are frankly at risk of losing their bar license, no longer having somebody that they can go to. And I think that that in itself, sometimes we talk about the bigger issues, of course, right? Pam Bondi herself being unethical. But it's the day to day people who frankly help carry out our laws or will carry out Trump's bidding. And those day to day people are going to be faced with so many choices. And now not having an advocate, they're going to be in a much more difficult position of whether or not
Starting point is 00:18:51 to take on a certain action, whether or not to just go ahead and quit. You know, and I imagine we will see a lot more lawyers doing things that are going to make their bar license at risk. And we saw the American Bar Association sue Trump over his executive orders attacking law firms. And perhaps we're going to need those kind of nonprofit associations step up and watch what these kind of lower level, career level DOJ attorneys do and report them to the Bar Association. I mean, perhaps Lisa, that is our last avenue.
Starting point is 00:19:30 If they're gutting the ethics department, is these outside licensing organizations? Well, you know, it is true that from an internal basis, having those offices, the Office of Government Ethics and other offices like the Inspector General's Office, those are important for the internal functioning of the department in terms of people being able to blow the whistle or seek ethical opinions, seek guidance. But it's also about how government functions for the rest of us.
Starting point is 00:20:01 By having attorneys who are bound by ethical codes, who are led by people who have ethics, who have that responsibility. This helps serve the American people. And I just want to touch on a couple of things you mentioned. One was, you know, that this is also happening in the context where the Trump administration has also decimated the offices that handle investigation of corrupt corporations and CEOs. So there's been this wholesale effort
Starting point is 00:20:27 to basically weaken, undermine, mothball the experts within the justice department who have talent and skill at investigating corruption in the private sector. So that's really a gift to Trump's cronies, to people that are under know, are under investigation, have faced investigation or would face investigation. Then you have this effort by Trump agents
Starting point is 00:20:51 and actions by Trump agents to fire people who were doing their job investigating and prosecuting the people who attacked our Capitol, who tried to stop the counting of the Electoral College votes, our votes in that 2020 election, to fire prosecutors who were doing their job, not, you know, in a political way at all, actually just trying to protect our rights and our democracy to have our votes counted
Starting point is 00:21:13 through that Electoral College process. People who... investigating and prosecuting people who were engaged in violent acts of destruction, attacking police officers, attacking Capitol Police, and putting the members of Congress at risk while they were doing their job. Then you have the Trump administration trying to cut this sweetheart deal with Eric Adams,
Starting point is 00:21:34 the mayor of New York City, who was facing a very detailed criminal complaint, an indictment by a grand jury that had very serious charges of corruption by him with a foreign government, foreign agents. And the Trump administration with the assistance of Emil Bove, who I'll talk about in just a second, but with the assistance of Emil Bove was trying
Starting point is 00:21:54 to direct those federal prosecutors in New York to drop the case, to drop it and basically not with prejudice, but leave it hanging over him. And the talk on the street was that this dismissal of charges against Eric Adams was in order to get his compliance with the administration's efforts to assail New Yorkers through its, you know, immigration policies. The federal judge presiding over that case rejected
Starting point is 00:22:17 that outlandish effort by, orchestrated by Emil Beauvais and the Bondi Justice Department to try to basically be able to keep squeezing Eric Adams whenever they wanted to do, take action in New York City. And so he, so that judge required that those charges that they were going to be dismissed be dismissed with prejudice. So Eric Adams is off the hook, which I don't think he should be, but, you know, he's no longer under this sort of damocles basically of, or this threat of the administration
Starting point is 00:22:45 if he would not comply with their demands. But in that instance, you had again, federal prosecutors leaving their jobs, denying us of the expertise of these experienced federal prosecutors in prosecuting future cases just because they wanted to, in my view, seal the deal on this really corrupt deal that they were, this plea agreement that they were trying to make, not plea agreement, seal the deal on this really corrupt deal that they were, this plea agreement that they were trying to make, not plea agreement, pardon me, this dismissal they were trying to make with Eric Adams. And that was executed by another Trump attorney in Mill Bow Bay, who then Trump turned around
Starting point is 00:23:14 and nominated to the third circuit court of appeals, the US Court of Appeals for the third circuit, which has jurisdiction over New Jersey, which includes some Trump properties, some pretty famous Trump properties. And in Mill Bow Bay, there's a whistleblower who came out, and there's internal text messages that confirm this, saying that Immobove was basically telling Justice Department lawyers to F the courts, to not follow the court orders involving these immigration cases. And this is someone who Trump now has chosen
Starting point is 00:23:43 to get a lifetime position on the federal bench. At his hearing for that Third Circuit position, Imobobe basically said, he didn't recall ever saying that, the whistleblower's testimony and statements I think are quite strong. The text evidence is quite strong. There's a recent statement, a letter just written, just I think today by Senator Cory Booker talking about why this is important,
Starting point is 00:24:06 why this man should never be, pardon me, confirmed to a federal judgeship. But this is the type of corruption. Now that's not necessarily legal corruption to nominate Emil Boves to this position. In my view, it's moral corruption for this president to reward his personal attorneys with these positions of power that could last decades,
Starting point is 00:24:26 especially someone who has played such a central role in this administration's assault on the rule of law. I don't know what your thoughts are on that, Dana, but I wanted to pass it back to you. Well, I think you coined a new phrase, moral corruption definitely fits the bill here, moral corruption and financial corruption. And we are going to go to an ad break.
Starting point is 00:24:45 If you have not yet joined Legal AF YouTube channel, be sure to follow us there. Lisa Graves and I do a bunch of content court accountability. Popak has curated so many new podcasts and playlists. We are deep diving into all these many legal issues that are coming out of this Trump administration. So be sure to check that out as well as the legal AF sub stack.
Starting point is 00:25:13 For me, I don't know about you Lisa but it's always kind of hard to find all these filings. Sometimes it takes me forever just to actually find the filings. They have put it all on the sub stack. So when we are speaking about a filing, as we will after the ad break, because Trump is trying to appeal the Los Angeles judge trying to stop ICE there, that's going to be on the substack. All the many legal filings is so easy in one place,
Starting point is 00:25:41 so be sure to check that out. But we are gonna go to the outbreak, our sponsors. We're so grateful for our sponsors because in this day and age, right? I mean, you're brave to be a sponsor on this channel when we get to talk about facts and law without fear or favor. So we will move on to like a really important LA ice judge and the Trump appeal as well as an update on Obrego Garcia.
Starting point is 00:26:07 He had a hearing today after this ad break. You know, we live in an environment our biology was never designed for. EMFs, artificial light, seed oils, microplastics, endocrine disruptors, chronic stress. These modern assaults disrupt cellular signaling, negatively impacting gut health and accelerating aging. That's why I've been using Armra colostrum.
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Starting point is 00:28:57 That's getsoul.com, promo code LegalAF for 30% off. We're back and we're diving into Los Angeles, which is the central focus, it seems for sure, with Trump and ICE. He's targeting Los Angeles. I mean, we had DeSantis and Abbott, their whole Biden term act as if they're having some sort of emergency on the border. They're flying people via planes to Martha's Vineyard.
Starting point is 00:29:23 All of a sudden, Trump decides to help Los Angeles? I don't know, maybe he doesn't care about his friends, Abbott and DeSantis that much, but regardless, here in Los Angeles, that's where I'm based. This is affecting our community, and of course there's some legal actions. Quick update, we have a Trump appeal as well. So, and you and I actually did a duet on this
Starting point is 00:29:44 for the legal AF channel. So perhaps some people already kind of got up to speed on that, but we had the ACLU public council, United Farm Workers, Sue Ice saying among other things, you are basically racially profiling when you are stopping people. And they just cited a ton of evidence, as well as the fact that you're not allowing people
Starting point is 00:30:05 to have attorneys, despite the fact that ACLU and public counsel went to these detention centers saying, hey, we're here, we're available, we want to speak to these detainees, and they were denied it. And then the overcrowded conditions that they are being held in. And so they argued that this was a violation
Starting point is 00:30:23 of the Fourth and Fifth Amendment. Mayor Karen Bass, as well as some other cities, including West Hollywood, Pasadena, Clover City, joined in that lawsuit after that whole, you know, theater, let's say, but really awful theater in MacArthur Park, where they kind of showed their force and detained absolutely nobody. So we had a hearing on Friday
Starting point is 00:30:46 and the judge issued an order in favor of the city of Los Angeles and as well as the ACLU, saying that there was, quote, a mountain of evidence to support the claim that agents are arresting people solely based on their race accents or the work they are engaged in in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protection
Starting point is 00:31:12 against unreasonable government seizure, which those of us with eyes are seeing this, right? I mean, you don't go to a Home Depot parking lot, you know, unless you are targeting it based on the fact that the people there tend to be Hispanic, right, or the fact of the type of job they have, right? They're not going in and raiding a law firm, right, or something like that.
Starting point is 00:31:36 So they are doing, we have seen this, and the judge saw it with this evidence and issued an order that only applied to the central district of California, although it's Los Angeles County, as well as I believe six other counties. So it's quite a bit of area, but this is not a nationwide injunction.
Starting point is 00:31:56 This applied there and said that ICE, you have to stop this indiscriminate detaining of people and you have to allow them an attorney, because otherwise what you're doing right now is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, issuing this temporary restraining order. We saw Trump go into court and argue a few things. They argued they didn't get enough notice.
Starting point is 00:32:22 They argued that this judge, the typical arguments, this judge is trying to dictate our policy and stepping into our executive power. And also interestingly, they brought up nationwide injunctions. The Supreme Court just stopped nationwide injunctions. We don't want the judge being this powerful. Of course here, this was not a nationwide injunction.
Starting point is 00:32:42 This was an injunction overseeing that the district that this judge governed as well as the people that were interestingly this was also a class action. They argued this on behalf of the class of people who were being detained. There's three different groups in that class action. It was really interesting. It was like one who didn't have a warrant, one group who didn't get identified, the federal agent didn't identify, and one where there was no suspicious activity. And so, because you have to have reasonable suspicion in order to detain somebody. It is less than probable cause, but you still need reasonable suspicion. We have been here before. This is what that Arizona sheriff tried to do years ago.
Starting point is 00:33:28 This is clearly within the realm of what a judge can do. But of course, Trump going in there, trying to reverse the TRO, trying to get an administrative stay. Los Angeles continuing to be the focus of how they are treating our neighbors, people of our community, just because they happen to have an accent or speak Spanish or work in construction. So Lisa, tell me your thoughts on the kind of legal developments here. Well, it is really important that this judge issued that ruling. I think it's the right
Starting point is 00:34:03 ruling on the merits. The case that the ACLU pleaded, that the city of Los Angeles and their cities joined, I think was well pleaded. It really articulated very clearly why the actions of the Trump administration were in violation of longstanding law. As you mentioned, Dina, there, you know, there is an ability for law enforcement officers
Starting point is 00:34:24 for agents to stop someone based on reasonable suspicion. But in this instance, there's no reasonable suspicion. And instead what we've seen coming from Tom Homan, who is the person that Donald Trump has tapped to really spearhead these efforts, he has admitted publicly that they are detaining people in part based on physical appearance, as well as their occupation. That doesn't make it into reasonable suspicion.
Starting point is 00:34:50 You just can't assume that anyone who is working in landscaping or in a restaurant or, you know, at a farm is somehow reasonably suspicious of not being lawfully president of the United States. That's not reasonable suspicion at all. That's racial profiling. There's a word for it. There's a phrase for it. And it's something that has been barred by many governments,
Starting point is 00:35:13 federal and state government agencies, to try to prevent the type of discrimination, stereotyping that racial profiling involves. And that's what's happening, or what's been happening in Los Angeles, among other things, including this sort of assertive use of force or show of force to really try to intimidate people and there's another component to this that I think is really important to underscore which is this playbook is right out of the project 2025 playbook. Donald Trump during the presidential campaign
Starting point is 00:35:41 tried to distance himself from the heritage foundation's Project 2025 agenda. He claimed he had no idea, even though there were photos of him at a Heritage Foundation event talking about how the Heritage Foundation was going to fill in the details, even though the man he chose as vice president, you know, was involved in writing the forward to the book by the president of the Heritage Foundation, putting forward this agenda. And this agenda included many of these types of immigration actions that we're seeing this Trump administration implement. And so basically, you have Trump and his people following the playbook that was written out for them in this Project 2025 agenda,
Starting point is 00:36:21 which is super extreme. And an undercurrent of that agenda is that they were going to use these policies, particularly to target blue cities, to target cities, to target not just sanctuary cities, but cities led by Democrats and states led by Democrats. This is a political maneuver to try to discredit the political leaders of large democratic states, large democratic cities, and try to like go there. They're not going, as you pointed out, Deena, at the outset of this, they're not going down to Texas.
Starting point is 00:36:52 They're not going down there. I mean, they are in terms of the other parts of the border, but they're not using these tactics in Texas. They're not using this, you know, bringing the Marines into Dallas or something, or Austin. And I'm not suggesting that they do to be equal or fair. I'm just saying this is a political agenda, trying to target California.
Starting point is 00:37:11 They were doing the same in Chicago. And then it's also sort of beyond a political agenda because it's also about targeting, new targeting that this administration has unleashed to target kids in schools, going to actual schools to try to seize children or their parents, invading the sanctuary of churches, of religious sanctuaries to seize immigrants.
Starting point is 00:37:35 These are very aggressive actions, and they're happening in the face of really the lie that this administration is told and that the Trump team was telling during the political campaign for the election, which was this notion that there's millions of murderers who are immigrants who've been unleashed in the United States. That's not true. People who have been convicted of murder are in jail and awaiting deportation at the end of their sentence.
Starting point is 00:38:02 People who are working on job sites, who are helping our communities, who are part of our communities, who may be married to US citizens, have US citizen children. These are people just trying to get by in this world and this economy. And what we need is immigration reform that actually protects the work processes
Starting point is 00:38:22 in the United States, and that doesn't try to criminalize people for being here in the United States. But instead, just today, Dina, the Trump administration is talking about basically deploying detention policies to sweep up anyone who doesn't have papers, deny them bond, and hold them indefinitely
Starting point is 00:38:39 for months in detention. And we've already seen, as ACLU and others have raised, the problems with these detention facilities, not just, you know, alligator alcatraz, but in general. And I would say to you, one of the things that I'm watching is the following, that we've got to follow the money because this scheme to engage in mass detention is really about giving money, sending huge contracts, billion dollars, billion dollar contracts to buddies of Trump like Eric Prince, perhaps,
Starting point is 00:39:04 who's proposed building his own detention facilities and more. This is about, also, it's about corruption, and it's about the denial of human rights. It's about trying to rewrite the rules that have long governed our country in terms of immigration processes, as well as the processes for people to be united with their families,
Starting point is 00:39:22 to adjust their status, to continue to contribute to the American community. I completely agree about the for-profit detention centers. I think that is why the ICE budget is so big in his recent bill is because they are budgeting for these sort of detention centers, which we saw with the for-profit, it becomes a whole lobbying campaign and it helps benefit, as you said, his billionaire oligarch friends, unfortunately, profiting off the fear of people and people who just came here to have a better life,
Starting point is 00:39:58 because that is what this lawsuit showed, like their use of quotas. Their use of quotas is what is causing the racial profiling because to actually do the work you need to do to find the criminals, that takes time and you can't use that amount of time if you're a fitting profiling. And here in Los Angeles, I've talked to so many people
Starting point is 00:40:18 and it is affecting families, mixed status families. People are afraid, as you said, people are getting detained at churches, at schools, affecting families, mixed status families. People are afraid, as you said, people are getting detained at churches, at schools, at their workplace. Construction is slowing down because people, you know, are afraid to go to work. And this is during, after the Palisades fire,
Starting point is 00:40:38 before the Olympics. Mayor Karen Bass just announced that they plan on giving cash cards to people who are affected by these ICE raids. The fact is California was fourth largest economy in the world, the city of Los Angeles, as much as Fox wants to degrade it, is also has always been doing great. And this attack on California is solely because they don't like we're a blue state and they want to instill that fear that fear is part of it and this is kind of coming around also they just talked about maybe giving as little six hours notice right before they send people to third world countries which is horrifying and scary
Starting point is 00:41:17 and also about fear but to their point of you know the reason why racial profiling like if is so bad not only because you're racially profiling somebody and violating their constitutional rights, but it's because you're not actually getting the criminal who nobody really wants this criminal to stay here, right? And the White House just put out a post recently saying that 70% of those arrested under TRIPES ICE program had criminal convictions or pending charges, right? This was the post on the official White House account. And NBC News was able to easily fact check that.
Starting point is 00:41:53 And instead, only 752 people, or 0.4% were convicted of murder. And 1.8% were convicted of or facing pending sexual charges. Instead, they're talking, you know, so the White House account is saying 70% and we're talking murderers, rapists and child predators, and that's not even close to the facts. You know, so why don't you spend less time targeting people who are trying to just do their job and contributing to society
Starting point is 00:42:21 because they have brown skin and they have an accent. And instead, actually go after the people that you said, say actually in current time you're going after. This isn't just even about lying on a campaign trail. This is lying from a White House post. And I do think that his lying is getting, you know, they've always lied, but they're doing it so much more brazenly
Starting point is 00:42:43 by doing it on these kind of official posts. And it is so important to fact check it for us to get the word out here on Legal AF to have the facts, to rebut the facts when we talk to people. But, you know, so thank goodness ACLU and Public Council and City of Los Angeles have gone in there and gotten this temporary stay. We'll see what happens
Starting point is 00:43:05 with his appeal. As we know, there's more going on with Los Angeles and California. Newsom, you know, sued Trump because of the federalizing of the National Guards. Trump has just announced that they are, or Hegseth has just announced that they are drawing down those troops instead of 4,000 federalized National Guards in Los Angeles. It's now going to be 2,000 because they don't need anybody. It's very quiet here in Los Angeles in terms of, I mean, they didn't need anybody to even begin with because they were the ones that created the atmosphere. But certainly it has been so quiet.
Starting point is 00:43:41 The fact that they even are using 2000 National Guards when they could be doing it. I know Newsom said that before they were at the border actually trying to stop fentanyl from coming into this country, there's certainly more important and useful things they could be doing than being at a city where it's quiet and people aren't even,
Starting point is 00:44:02 there's no reason to have them here. But at the same time, you know, just recently, just to update on that Newsom case, as we know, Justice Breyer in the district court ruled in favor of Newsom and said that Trump could not nationalize the California National Guard. It was a violation of the 10th Amendment as well as a statutory violation.
Starting point is 00:44:24 He was then a return. He was then overturned by the three judge panel at the Ninth Circuit. Well, interestingly, an anonymous judge at the Ninth Circle has requested an unbank review, which means that a majority of the, well, actually it means that 11 judges of the Ninth Circuit could review the case and make a different decision than that three judge panel.
Starting point is 00:44:54 We don't know yet how that is gonna go because they have asked for briefing from the two parties, from Newsom and Trump as to whether or not the entire panel should review it. In the Ninth Circuit to whether or not the entire panel should review it. In the Ninth Circuit, it's not the entire panel. Most other circuits is the entire panel. Because the Ninth Circuit is so large, it is just the chief judge plus 10 others.
Starting point is 00:45:14 So it's 11. So they're going to receive that briefing in the next few days. They're going to then vote. The judges vote. We don't see the vote. That's an anonymous vote. But the judge, and it's not anonymous to the other judges
Starting point is 00:45:28 who requested this. It's just anonymous to us who requested it. But it's very interesting because the Ninth Circuit, as I know you know, Lisa, is very liberal. For it, for him to have drawn two of his own appointees on the, on the, on the panel, on the three judge panels, highly unusual. Of course, Trump and other Republican judges have appointed more to the Ninth Circuit.
Starting point is 00:45:52 So perhaps it's a little bit more conservative than it used to be 20 years ago. But you would think that if they do do this en banc panel, most likely they will side with Governor Newsom. So it's very interesting. That court case is still proceeding at the same time as Trump is drawing down the troops.
Starting point is 00:46:12 Well, that's right. And, you know, as you point out, there was a long set of rhetoric by the right attacking the Ninth Circuit in the 90s, early 2000s. But there have been more Republican appointees, not majority, but substantial number of Republican appointees over the years, including appointees who were handpicked by Leonard Leo advising Donald Trump
Starting point is 00:46:33 on his judicial nominations. And it was really, I think, a bad draw for the country and for the Constitution to have a three-judge panel that included two Trump appointees. That, you know, that's just drawn basically, they have, you know, the equivalent of the wheel they used to have in the old days of choosing which judges get to hear a case. In this instance, as you point out,
Starting point is 00:46:53 if this case is heard by a wider set of judges than judges who may be very loyal to Donald Trump, it's highly likely that the lower court would be affirmed. Because what Trump did here in trying to deploy these troops over the objections of the governor, over the objections of the city, was really irregular, really in violation of not just in my view the letter, but the spirit of the law governing when U.S. troops can be deployed within the United States, in particular deployed at the American people. And typically, the National Guard, you know,
Starting point is 00:47:32 they're deployed with the consent of the governor or with the order of the governor kind of in cooperation and collaboration between the federal government and the states. And that's often in cases of national emergency where there's a disaster like the fires or floods. But this was just, again, a show of force by Trump, an effort to, you know, kind of test in Los Angeles and perhaps for use in other places whether
Starting point is 00:47:56 and how he can try to use federal troops against the American people. There was, you know, some rules of engagement that were deployed in theory to try to prevent those troops from having sort of direct violent encounters so that we didn't have another Kent State disaster like from the 1970s in Ohio. But the fact is that those troops are trained predominantly for fields of war, for zones of war where the conditions are very different than the United States. They are, you know, have, you know, equipment that is, you know, very deadly and dangerous because they're trained for war.
Starting point is 00:48:34 They're not trained for responding to ordinary dissent by the American people, by people who are concerned about what's happening to their communities. And so the drawdown is an important step forward, a complete reversal of that policy is what's actually in order, but I am hopeful, even though en banc grants are rare by the Ninth Circuit and other courts of appeals, I'm hopeful that they will grant en banc in this case and have a full argument so people can understand why this matters so much,
Starting point is 00:49:05 why the idea that Donald Trump can just send in the troops over the objections of the people you elected to represent you in your city and in your state, why that is such an anathema so contrary to not just our statutes, but to the structure of our federal and state governments. We have had troops deployed, for example, to help effectuate the Brown versus Board
Starting point is 00:49:28 of Education decision to integrate schools in the United States after schools have been racially segregated and there were violent mobs trying to prevent school children from going to school. And so in that instance, President Eisenhower did order the federal guard to come protect those students so that they could exercise their fundamental rights as Americans to go to public schools that were, you know, under the equal protection of law that were not racially segregated.
Starting point is 00:49:57 This what's happened in Los Angeles is nothing like that. Nothing like that in terms of trying to actually have a very limited constrained use of the National Guard in order to protect people's civil rights. In this instance, it's been designed to basically effectuate Trump's terrorizing policies, his policies to invoke fear in the populace, and to do so over the objections of the elected officials in our democracy is really outrageous.
Starting point is 00:50:26 Yeah, to your point of him doing so, over the objections of Newsom, the governor, I cannot think of any case more important for them to take on Bonk. This is certainly, this executive authority of a governor versus the executive authority of a president. And I can't think of a more important issue for them to take a look at.
Starting point is 00:50:45 Before we go to Adbrek, I just want to jump right into Jerome Powell, Federal Reserve Chair, because as we have seen, Trump and not just Trump, JD Vance, a lot of the allies really want Jerome Powell to step down, nevermind the fact that Trump actually appointed him years ago, but he's not doing their bidding. He's not lowering interest rates. And so there's a lot of talk, right? A lot of bullying, actually,
Starting point is 00:51:09 let's just be frank, a lot of bullying, a lot of talk trying to get him to step down. But I think the reason why we haven't seen him step down, and just want to get your quick thought on this also, Lisa, is because the Supreme Court basically already told him not to do this. We know there was a case that came before the Supreme Court because Trump fired one of the members of the National Relations Board, Wilcox, and she went to the Supreme Court and said this was an illegal firing, which under the existing Supreme Court precedent,
Starting point is 00:51:40 it was an illegal firing because Chief Justice Roberts had said you cannot fire a member of a multi-member board without cause. But they decided to, of course, let Trump go ahead and do it. But in that order allowing Trump to do it, they specifically said that this situation was different than the Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell, making, telegraphing this to Trump well before Trump actually fired it, well before they got the case, telling Trump, we're not going to back that firing.
Starting point is 00:52:16 Of course, you know, you can be very cynical and say they don't care as much about labor as they do about the stock market. But regardless of what their personal motivations were for that, I don't know if I've ever seen the Supreme Court take such like an activist position, you could say, because it wasn't even in front of them. But they're real people.
Starting point is 00:52:40 They saw the news. They heard the chatter. They knew Trump wanted to do it, and they kind of told him in advance, don't do it. And I think that's why Trump hasn't done it yet and probably won't. Well, that's interesting. I really appreciate how you set that forth, Dina.
Starting point is 00:52:53 The fact is, as you pointed out, longstanding precedent was against the Trump administration in these other firings. It's outrageous that this Supreme Court has basically abrogated almost 100 years of legal precedent about the circumstances under which a president can fire a member of these boards. But as you point out, John Roberts, because in my view, he's such a political animal,
Starting point is 00:53:17 he basically said, sure, go ahead, fire these board members. But in essence, you can't do this in this one instance with the Fed. And so I guess we take solace in the fact that Roberts was trying to protect the Fed from having a total meltdown of just being an absolute instrument of this, in my view, very erratic, irrational president whose policies on trade have already had
Starting point is 00:53:43 significant adverse consequences for our economy, consequences that we're going to see more and more in these coming weeks and months as we get the effect of some of the effects on trade on shipping containers in Los Angeles and on the west coast and more. But today we've just seen Trump just you know blathering on trying to smear Powell for office renovations for the Fed as a way to kind of construct, in my view, pretext for firing him based on cause. So in essence, Trump is trying to articulate, in my view, a smear campaign in order to justify firing Powell so he can install some lackey who will do whatever he wants on interest rate.
Starting point is 00:54:26 Now, you know, people have views about the Fed and, you know, it's longstanding independence of the President. I think most people favor the independence of the Fed from the White House. I certainly don't think that Trump should be setting interest rates for anyone anywhere after we saw his, you know, seemingly AI, you know, AI concocted trade tariffs where he was, you know,
Starting point is 00:54:50 putting tariffs on Penguin Islands but not Russia. So, you know, I think that there are people in the Republican Party, including Republican operatives who do not want Powell removed. And it seems like the Supreme Court is, you know, in that camp. But Trump is making his, taking his efforts to try to get rid of Powell so he can install yet another loyalist to him, not to the American people, not to the Constitution, not to the mission of the Fed, but someone loyal to him, which is his only test really for anything.
Starting point is 00:55:19 Absolutely. Well, thank goodness, at least in this instance, Supreme Court seems to probably not be willing to go down that road for him because that would be awful for all of us if he starts playing around with the economy. So if you are watching us on YouTube, be sure to also listen to us on the podcast version of Legal AF. And if you have not yet subscribed to the Legal AF YouTube channel, be sure to follow it, hit subscribe. PO-POK has done an amazing job curating so many new commentators and podcasts. And if you want to stay informed,
Starting point is 00:55:54 speak about everything Trump is doing with the facts and all the issues laid out. That is definitely the place to go. I love it when it gets bigger because it makes me feel like we are in the majority, because otherwise hearing a lot of these things can get overwhelming, quite frankly,
Starting point is 00:56:12 and really depressing, but we are the majority. As those numbers grow, it helps show that. And also, if you haven't yet subscribed to the Legal AF Substack, There are articles, Popak says, a morning, wake up in the morning and you get to hear his thoughts on the legal news of the day. There's all the filings all in one spot.
Starting point is 00:56:33 I think he's getting more and more contributors writing things. So if you like to read your news instead of only just listening, be sure to check out the Legal AF Substack. And now we'll hear from some sponsors who we're grateful for. It allows us to speak the truth, speak democracy,
Starting point is 00:56:49 not be so worried about whether or not we're going to get canceled, not controlled by the oligarchs. It gives us a freedom here, and we are grateful for our sponsors. And then when we come back, we're going to just tackle our last issue, which is the hearing today and the Abrego Garcia case, the new criminal defendant, Abrego Garcia,
Starting point is 00:57:09 which ironically I think is giving him a lot more rights. So we'll discuss that after the break. Right now, the headlines are chock full of data breaches and regulatory rollbacks making us all vulnerable, but you can do something about it. Delete Me is here to make it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online. As someone who spends a lot of time online for Legal AF,
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Starting point is 01:00:30 That's qualyalife.com slash LegalAF for an extra 15% off your purchase. Your older self will thank you. And thanks to Qualya for sponsoring this episode. Deena Dahl, I'm here with Lisa Graves and we're gonna break down our last topic regarding today's hearing, Abrego Garcia, who has been through quite a bit
Starting point is 01:00:51 and has really become, I would say, kind of a flash point for both sides. You know, those of us who really believe in the rule of law and the fact that the US admitted that they had mistakenly deported him to this El Salvadoran president, and now he was brought back only to be charged criminally. And then of course, for Trump,
Starting point is 01:01:10 really becoming, I think, a symbol of him believing he can do whatever he wants to anybody at any time. So what happened was in June, there was a bail hearing of whether or not he was going to be released pending trial. And because the government could not state that they would not deport him while he was out on bail, the judge there, the magistrate Judge Holmes said
Starting point is 01:01:35 that although he was not a threat to society, which is usually something that would keep somebody in jail, pending their criminal trial, she was going to keep him because she did not have an assurance as that he was going to be deported. So this hearing today was with the judge, Judge Crenshaw, who's actually going to oversee the trial. Judge Holmes previously is going to be dealing with the pretrial type issue.
Starting point is 01:01:59 So Judge, it's this irony here situation, Lisa, because we have the DOJ, the prosecution, asking that Abrego Garcia be released pending his criminal trial. This is like a complete flip from what we normally see. All of this happening at the same time, actually, is the civil case in Maryland is proceeding. And they are asking there, the attorneys,
Starting point is 01:02:27 asking the judge to issue an order that he has to remain in the US in that case. So there's multiple cases going on with him, and perhaps whether or not that judge issues an order may affect also whether or not he's released. Judge Crenshaw has said that he's not issuing an order today, maybe sometime this week or next. But interestingly, some of the defense attorney,
Starting point is 01:02:54 his attorney got a chance to poke some holes, let's say, at the evidence, I'll say evidence, that the prosecution is putting forward to indict him. And kind of what I said before the break, you know, he now has a whole set of rights. As a defendant in this country, we have, or that person has quite a bit of rights that weren't maybe afforded to him, right?
Starting point is 01:03:21 As somebody who was a non-citizen immigration courts, although there is due process there. He now has this all on top of it. His attorneys were already able to get a gag order, right, against Pam Bondi and the other DOJ attorneys. They stopped lying about me. They're calling him a criminal left and right. He's never had a conviction.
Starting point is 01:03:40 He's just an alleged criminal. They're talking about his character, irrelevant information to it. He wasn't able to get that kind of gag order, right, with his immigration case. But now, as a criminal defendant, he has a right to a fair and impartial jury. And if they go out talking about him, they are prejudicing or potentially prejudicing a jury. So he's got these rights that he didn't have before. So it's interesting because yes, you could argue that the DOJ made this move to get the upper hand,
Starting point is 01:04:10 but in a lot of ways they have put themselves into a system where he has quite a bit of rights. As Donald Trump knows, as he afforded himself, every single one of those rights when he was convicted during his trial. Anyway, so we have the today some of the interesting, let's say polls that they poked through. One of them was the fact that they are asking,
Starting point is 01:04:36 that prosecutors have alleged that Abrego Garcia solicited nudes from a minor on Snapchat, right? That's one of their allegations. There's so many kind of allegations that they're alleging here. And the defense attorney pointed out the fact that the birth date on that Snapchat account that the prosecution is using, saying that this is Abrego Garcia's, doesn't even match his birth date, right?
Starting point is 01:05:05 So they, and then, and it came out in the hearing that the investigator who's working for the prosecution didn't even know Obrego Garcia's birth date. Now I have filed true crime cases quite a bit. This is messy. You do not get a conviction with this kind of testimony. I mean, I know we're way far from a trial, but it doesn't even seem like they,
Starting point is 01:05:35 like that's the bare minimum, okay, right? Lisa is like knowing the birth date, so that way you can confirm the Snapchat account can actually be linked to the defendant and not just words to a court. So that came out as well as the fact that one of the other pieces was, was they, oh, yeah, this was another, one of the lead witnesses that the prosecution plans on putting forward if this goes to trial, was calling other witnesses from the jail.
Starting point is 01:06:08 And when the defense was asking them whether or not they could have coordinated the testimony, it was brought out that three of the witnesses are actually related. So this kind of hearing, what came out of this kind of hearing today shows, you know, I haven't seen all the evidence. I can't say for certain, you know, what evidence there is or isn't.
Starting point is 01:06:33 But when you have a hearing like this and they can so easily point out this kind of holes, I mean, having witnesses speaking to each other, possibly coordinating testimony, you can just get that whole thrown out, right? You may not even be able to introduce that kind of testimony in court. You have to be able to only introduce testimony to it in a jury trial if it's reliable, if it's credible. This is like a gold minefield for the defense attorneys, it seems like today. Yeah, that's right.
Starting point is 01:07:04 I mean, the rules for witnesses coordinating their statements are pretty, it seems like today. Yeah, that's right. I mean, the rules for witnesses according to their statements are pretty, it's pretty clear. I confess that I actually declined to take a detail to go work as an assistant US attorney on state at Maine justice, but I did work on criminal justice policy and I've watched a lot of your work, Dina, and other work covering trials. And I don't think I've ever seen anything like what we're seeing here, including, as you point out, the idea that the situation is so reversed where you have the prosecutors trying to get him out of jail. This basically almost never happens. Prosecutors are usually calling for bail or no bail under some of the rules that we
Starting point is 01:07:44 operate under in the federal system, not calling for him or no bail under some of the rules that we operate under in the federal system, not calling for them to be released. And then the defendant usually wants to be released to go be with their family as they prepare for their defense. But in this instance, this is acting almost like the denial of, or at least so far, it may happen next week or in the next hearing. But in this instance, the defendant doesn't appear to want to be released until there are guarantees that he won't then be deported
Starting point is 01:08:15 because that's what the Trump administration has said, that if the judge grants bail, they will remove him from the country mid-trial. If that's not an indication that your criminal prosecution is weak, I'm not sure what is. But on top of that, as you point out, Dina, in civil court in Maryland,
Starting point is 01:08:34 Abrego Garcia's lawyers are also trying to protect his ability to stay in the United States, not be just surreptitiously removed against the United States. And so everything is sort of upside down and topsy-turvy. And this question of witness, I wouldn't say like, I'm not gonna call it witness tampering per se, but witness coordination is something that is usually
Starting point is 01:08:55 very tightly restricted in grand jury proceedings and beyond. And in this instance, when you look at this case from the beginning to now, what you see, as you pointed out, was that the head of the Office of Immigration and Immigration in the Justice Department, I think he was fired because he was in court and conceded that there was not evidence that basically justified a Brie Garcia's removal from the United States. But in essence, the Department of Justice was taking the position that they could just remove people, in essence, without evidence,
Starting point is 01:09:28 if they, you know, if they asserted this power, this extraordinary executive power. And that's another part of the Justice Department that has been, you know, has had a spate of firings of people retiring and people taking early retirement or buyouts, the Civil Division, which is the defense part of the Justice Department, you know, has been under extraordinary pressure from Pam Bondi, from the Attorney General, Trump's loyalist,
Starting point is 01:09:56 and from her henchmen, in essence, to basically, you know, do whatever they can to buck up Trump's claims and Trump's case. And that's why, you know, after weeks of saying, you know, basically that innuendo about a Brigadier Garcia, the photoshopping, claiming that he was an MS-13 gang member, et cetera, after all that innuendo, finally the Department of Justice issued an indictment. And he's now back, you know, facing this criminal trial,
Starting point is 01:10:26 these criminal accusations, but that indictment was immediately upon its filing was criticized by legal observers for inaccuracies, inaccuracies from the get-go. And so I think when I look at this case as an outsider, it certainly looks like the government's case may be very, very weak. Perhaps he might get it dismissed, right? I mean, that is, you know, you do again, you know, as a criminal defendant, you know, the government has to meet burdens and have actual
Starting point is 01:10:58 evidence that is reliable in court for a judge to rely upon. So we'll kind of see where this goes, but that is unfortunately, you know, Abrego Garcia targeted by the government, you know, frankly, that's what's happening here, targeted by the government, despite the fact that they admitted he was mistakenly deported. And now going through this, you know, you just feel because this man never asked
Starting point is 01:11:21 to be a symbol, right? Even for us, never asked to be a symbol for, you know, the rule of law, right, and due process. And, but that is what he has become. His wife certainly stepping up to the plate as well, filing her own lawsuit, you know, and, but really, you know, just, they were just trying to live their lives
Starting point is 01:11:43 and being caught up in this is really just a further example of the lack of humanity and really where we're at as a country, how disturbing it is. But I'm so glad, Lisa, that you and I got a chance to talk about all these topics. Thank you so much for helping me co-anchor this in the absence of Popok and Karen, who do it so wonderfully every week. But I had a great time with this and certainly wanna keep watching your court accountability
Starting point is 01:12:14 and just how can people find you? Oh, sure, sure. Well, I was gonna say, Deana, it's a joy to talk with you, to be on this with you and be part of this network and to defend due process, because at the with you, and be part of this network, and to defend due process. Because at the end of the day, people can be convicted, they could be removed if there's evidence, but that lack of evidence,
Starting point is 01:12:32 the lack of any independent oversight, that's what risks all of our freedoms. And so I'm really happy to engage in this ongoing dialogue, conversation with you about how we protect the rights of all the people in the United States by ensuring that we have due process. And there are ways you can find me here on the Court of Accountability channel here on legal AF, but also my research website is true north research dot org. We also have
Starting point is 01:12:58 legal materials over at court accountability dot org and my new book is coming out soon about John Roberts. And you can find more information at withoutprecedent.info. And, sorry, one less thing. I also have a Substack newsletter that I do with Courier News. It's called Grave Injustice. And so there's lots of places to find me. I'm at the Lisa Graves.
Starting point is 01:13:23 Where can people find you, Dina? How can people follow you? They can find me, Ask Dina Dahl, on all the platforms as well as Midas and of course, Legal AF. And I'm trying to do more on Substack as well. And it's great that your book is coming out basically right before the next term starts. We will definitely have to dive more into
Starting point is 01:13:42 all of your knowledge with Chief Justice Roberts and how he's remaking the court. And, you know, the Supreme Court used to be kind of a sleepy institution that very few people talked about. Now, you know, the Republicans, after Roe v. Wade, have played the long game with the Federal Society of remaking the court. And Democrats really didn't
Starting point is 01:14:02 because the Supreme Court was upholding our rights. The Supreme Court course has never always upheld our rights right with a dress work Dreadscot decision, but it had for a while and so I think that we You know turned our heads so to speak to our detriment is not happening anymore You're all becoming Supreme Court experts now Well, so great to find you. And of course, for everybody who has not yet subscribed to the Legal AF channel, that's where Lisa and I are doing duets. I'm doing some solos. Lisa Graves does some solos as well as duets with her Court Accountability colleagues. So be sure to free subscribe and listen wherever you are listening to podcasts and subscribe to
Starting point is 01:14:46 those sub stacks, get you informed. It was a pleasure being able to co-host this with you today. I hope everyone is trying to enjoy their summer despite, you know, the news, it's like whiplash, there's always something bad that's happening. But we are in this together. We're growing both the Midas and the legal AF communities together. So we're ready, we're ready. But we have to keep growing because it's so bad. But hopefully everyone is enjoying their summer day,
Starting point is 01:15:19 taking some time out to be among friends or family or just on their own, having a good walk, while we can before we get to the next whiplash moment. Thanks, Dina. Thanks everyone.

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