Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Caught in Massive Fraud in Court as Abrego Set Free

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

Breaking: A federal judge has concluded that the Trump DOJ and Administration has not told her the truth, and has defiantly refused to answer her questions, in granting Kilmar Abrego Garcia's release from ICE detention and granting his writ of habeas corpus. Popok explains that Judge Xinis found that 6 different Administration witnesses defiantly failed to answer her questions, and that the Administration did not tell the truth about their removal attempts to 4 different African nations. SmartCredit: Start with your 7-day trial at https://SmartCredit.com/legalaf for just $1 Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Six different government witnesses failed to tell the truth to Judge Zinnis about Kilmer Abrago-Garcia and the government lied about four different countries. They claimed we're willing to take Abrago-Garcia in their attempts to not only detain him, but remove him to third countries in violation of his due process rights and orders of the court. And in breaking news, federal judge Paula Zinnis has granted Abrago-Garcia's motion for writ or petition for rid of habeas corpus to have him removed from iced detention immediately. And she means immediately based on the Kafkaesque torture scenario that he has been subjected to because of the Department of Justice.

And she's not pleased that six different government witnesses didn't tell the truth to her. And she says she's going to take it up at a later time. But for right now, she's unlocking the door and letting Kilmer Obrego-Garcia out of his nightmare at least for now. This is a person who is illegally removed to El Salvador and tortured upon arrival, along with 200 other people from Venezuela, but he had an order of non-removal to El Salvador. In fact, there is no order of removal to remove Abrago Garcia from the United States. And that alone is the main reason the judge ruled, if you don't have a removal order from an immigration judge, then your detention to facilitate a removal is in and of itself a due process

violation. And once the government admitted in her courtroom that there was no removal order, game over. But that doesn't stop the government from sending in a series of lawyers and a series of witnesses who were not prepared on purpose to answer the judge's questions. And when they didn't like that Obrigo Garcia said he would go to Costa Rica, he says he will go to Costa Rica today right now. That's where a lot of people want to go offshore who speak Spanish, who want to remain close to the United States and their family. And to punish him for not pleading guilty to a crime that he says he did not commit. They said, fine, we're going to send you to a series of African countries 3,000 miles away. And every time they, the judge noted,

every time they announced the African country and they kept changing it, Ghana, Uganda, All different ones. Every time they announced one, the countries saw it in the paper and said, we didn't agree. We're not accepting a Brego-Garcia. And then she noted that the Department of Justice and Homeland Security lied to her

and said that Costa Rica no longer was an option that they no longer wanted a Brego-Garcia. Well, when the justice minister in Costa Rica read that, he jumped up and said, we're willing to take him. We are willing to take him. A fact noted by the judge. Let me read to you,

from her order, and then I'll get to the memorandum of law. Both are posted and legal AF Substact for paid members. Petitioner Kilmer Armando Obrigo-Garcia's petition for habeas corpus is granted. He shall be released from ICE custody immediately. He shall respondent to Trump administration shall notify Abrago-Garcia's counsel of the exact time and location of where he will be released with enough notice so they can get there. and update the court in a filing. And the respondents to Trump administration,

Department of Justice, shall transmit this order and my memorandum of opinion to all relevant officers and agents and employees under their control and in the pending criminal case in Tennessee, including Judge Crenshaw, and then come back to me with a briefing schedule because we got more work to do in this case now that I've let them out.

the findings that she made she said it's going through all of the Kafkaesque procedural torture that he was subjected to Donald Trump and

Pam Bondi and the border czar and Kristi Nome all cosplaying tough guys he'll never be in America we'll never bring him back we'll never see him again including having the president of El Salvador, the dictator, fascist dictator of El Salvador,

come and taunt the family and the Americans about the abuse of due process. And that's why we have judges like this one. And then, you know, well, he's going to Eswatini, 3,000 miles away. And then Eswetini hears about it and says, we don't want him. And then they say he's going to Liberia.

and Liberia says, we don't want them. Uganda, we don't want them. And we can't send them to Costa Rica, Judge. She said, why not? They said, oh, Costa Rica doesn't want them. And then Costa Rica leapt up and said, we want them. Lies upon lies, upon lies, all catalogued by the judge in her order. This is where they continue to screw up.

The court held evidentiary hearings. The first witness she chastises is John Schultz, the Deputy Assistant Director of Ice Enforcement and Removal Operations on page 9 of the order. He says, contrary to the court's order, Schultz was not prepared at all to discuss Costa Rica's offer to accept Abrago Garcia as a refugee. He candidly admitted that he had not even seen Costa Rica's own correspondence on the issue. He said he'd been told nothing about why the respondents had not yet processed the Brago-Garcia and his removal to Costa Rica. Counsel for a Brago-Garcia in turn emphasized his client's continued willingness to go to Costa Rica. It's called the holiday credit dip, and it hits millions of people every year and most don't see it coming.

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This is where they lost the case, page 11. Indeed, an oral argument, respondents council, Trump administration, acknowledged that the only legitimate ground to hold Abrago-Garcia was to effectuate a removal, a removal with an order, and yet there was no order of removal to anywhere. In the, here's where the judge really gets upset, talking about yet another witness, if you think that guy was bad, how do you like Jonathan Cantu, who is the acting assistant, Director of the Removal Division.

Here's what he says there. She first says, suddenly, with Cantu's testimony, the government wants to seal the proceedings to keep the prying eyes of the public out, which, of course, she denied. At the hearing on November 20 that she held, she says on page 13, it became evident that once again,

respondents, the Trump administration, defied this court's order. We have another name for that. It's called contempt of court. They simply refused to prepare and produce a witness with knowledge to testify in any meaningful way. Cantu candidly admitted he had no prior involvement in Abrago-Garcia's case and spent five minutes preparing to testify.

Cantu also shared that none of the respondent's attorneys had discussed this court's order with him so they didn't even prepare him by letting them know what this court had ruled or showed him its contents. Nor did he understand the purpose of his testimony. I've been doing this a long time. It's a bad start for a witness in front of a judge. The judge notes in paragraph in footnote 12 on page 13

that Cantu is the sixth witness whom the court directed the respondents to prepare for either deposition or in-court testimony concerning this case. Each witness, Judge Zinnis observed, ruled, found, was either unprepared or defiant and their refusal to answer questions. The court will consider the entire course of conduct when it reaches the motions pending in Abrago 1.

That is a nice way of saying she is going to be starting contempt proceedings against the Trump administration following in the footsteps of Judge Bozberg in District of Columbia, who's already started criminal contempt proceedings against the Trump administration. She's going to do it too. Here was the back and forth between Brigo Garcia's lawyers and Mr. Cantu. You'll see why the judge is upset. they're just going through his sworn declaration prepared and he swore under penalty of perjury was true and correct just asking simple follow-up questions based on words and phrases used in his own affidavit counsel so let's go to paragraph four of his affidavit final sentence do you see where it says the words certain understandings i found it yes i do i see it what are the certain understandings reference in that sentence? I don't know.

What are the contingencies referenced in the last sentence? I don't know. What are the, quote, interim developments referenced in paragraph five of your declaration that you signed? I don't know. And after a long sidebar, the judge didn't like the fact that the Department of Justice lawyer told the judge, see, we told you he wouldn't know anything. conceding that they put on a dummy witness in defiance of the court's order. She says in her page 14 of her order that Jonathan Goyne, who was questioning Cantu, said, but for the Trump, said at sidebar, I'll just say, I told you this was exactly what was

going to happen regarding the witness's ignorance on Costa Rica as a viable country of removal. and and so on so what's going to happen trump administration's going to have to take an emergency appeal i'll cover it if that happens i'll do that on legal a f substack live up to the fourth circuit court of appeals now let me give you a little bit of a cheat sheet here for judge zinnis she's very smart and she's already been affirmed twice by the fourth circuit court of appeals concerning her actions in this particular case, twice. One scared the crap out of the Trump administration in the way that it was written. She was also affirmed 9-0 by the United States Supreme Court in ordering that, confirming her order that the Trump administration had to facilitate the return of Abrango Garcia from the Sikot

prison in El Salvador. And yet they still waited three more months and only did that. after they indicted him in Tennessee, as if the judge wouldn't notice all of that. So do you want to take on Judge Zinnis? You want to see if she's wrong? She's already 3 and O in appellate courts, including up to the United States Supreme Court, in this case. We'll follow it all.

You're here on the Midas Touch Network. I'm Michael Popock. There's ways to watch my work if you enjoy it. I do about 30 to 40 videos a week. I do a big batch here on the Midas Touch Network. I do illegal AF the podcast. on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern Time here on this YouTube channel. I do a podcast called The Intersection on Tuesday nights, 8 p.m. Eastern Time on the Midas Touch Network.

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