Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump gets Major Loss from SCOTUS and Can't Handle It

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

There are 5 shocking parts of the new Supreme Court decision affirming that a “leftist” “radical” trial judge was right on the money, and affirming her order that the Trump Administration “facilitate” the return of an illegally deported and removed Armando Abrego Garcia. Michael Popok takes a close look at the 9-0 decision, explains why it doesn’t “order” his return, and how the Trump Administration is bragging that they won a case they clearly lost in a big Constitutional Due Process way. Head to https://www.fast-growing-trees.com/collections/sale?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=legalaf right now to get 15% off your entire order with code 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 Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Okay, Martin, let's try one. Remember, big. You got it. The Ford It's a Big Deal event is on. How's that? A little bigger. The Ford It's a Big Deal event. Nice. Now the offer? Lease a 2025 Escape Active all-wheel drive from 198 bi-weekly at 1.99% APR for 36 months with $27.55 down. Wow, that's like $99 a week.

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19 plus and physically located in Ontario. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please go to connectsontario.ca. So many different things are going on in a three quarter page opinion by the United States Supreme Court that looks on its surface to be about Kilmer, Armando, Abrego, Garcia, and whether he's going to continue to rot in El Salvador, or if the Trump administration is going to be required by some judge somewhere

to facilitate his return or not. But when you go into the nitty-gritty molecular level DNA of these three quarters of a page and you distill it all There are some shockers in there and I'm gonna describe them to you right here Only way I know how telling the truth I might as touch. All right, let's get into it First of all, let's do that. Let's do it by the numbers This looks to be a nine0 decision in favor of Armando Arbrego Garcia, who was illegally, as admitted by the Trump administration, as admitted by the Trump administration, as confessed by them, illegally deported over in order of an immigration judge of protection that required that he stay in

the country and not be sent back to certain death or violent attack in El Salvador. Everybody admits that. One shocker of the decision is that there is, as recited by the majority, by the nine-zero, a confession by the Trump administration that they knew about Armando Abrego's order of protection and they deported him anyway And as we said before and I said it in my prior analysis So a couple of weeks ago that could end up being the death knell for the Trump administration I think it is it's in the first three lines of the decision. I'm going to read to you in a minute

that's one another shocker. They affirm and empower a lower court judge who's been mercilessly attacked by the Trump administration and say that on balance she was right. Judge Paula Zinnis, who has been attacked by the Trump administration for issuing her original order back on April 4th, that the Trump administration committed an illegal act and must facilitate and effectuate the return of Abrego Garcia by last Monday at midnight.

Now that didn't happen because of an administrative stay, but in this shocker of an order, all nine, and that means the MAGA right, have reaffirmed the power and the jurisdiction of this judge, a judge who is called a leftist, a Marxist, an out-of-control, rogue, you know, left-wing judge that should be ignored with the Trump administration thumbing their nose at her. No, the Supreme Court says she was right. There was one odd choice of words. They didn't like, they loved the word facilitate his return that they wrote. They didn't like the word effectuate the return, facilitate effectuate. I'm gonna go over the differences in a moment.

Here's another shocker, not one judge, not one justice, and certainly not the nine, not the majority, not who wrote the opinion, is ordering the return of Armando Garcia into the United States. They're not ordering the return of Armando Garcia into the United States. They're not ordering the return. They're empowering the federal judge, who ordered that the US facilitate and effectuate,

or in this case, facilitate his return. So I wanna make sure we get the headline straight, because sometimes they're typed out very quickly. No order of immediate return, but an order requiring the Trump administration to use all of its powers to facilitate his return. Now here's another shocker. At the end when I got to the part where Sotomayor, Jackson and Kagan issued a statement not a dissent another shocker there's no dissent. That's how I know it's nine zero.

What's the shocker? When I read it, I was like, oh, here we go. They're gonna do, we should have done an order. I disagree with the majority. We should have done an order for his return. Doesn't say that. All it is is a recitation of the bad facts against the government, which of course,

I appreciate that she put it in there, but then saying, and kind of empowering Judge Zinnis again and Marilyn saying, you better hold the government to its proof and hold their feet to the fire. That's it. It was more of a finger wagging than it was any real kind of substance, but I appreciate anything. Sotomayor writes, and I want to cover that as well. What does it mean? And then I'll read to you from it. It means that the case has been returned to the trial judge where it sits. Her jurisdiction has not been taken away.

She gets to conduct further proceedings with the instructions given by the United States Supreme Court. They're okay with facilitate, and they have told the Trump administration, you better be ready to stand and deliver in a court of law before Judge Zinnis and tell her what you've done to facilitate and other steps that could be taken.

And if you haven't taken steps to facilitate, you better tell her why and how to the extent that you can. Cause you know they're going to argue, oh, you know, foreign affairs and executive privilege and state secrets and whatever else. The only thing that's foreign about this, just to touch on that for a minute, there's no foreign affairs angle to this,

except Donald Trump decided to offload and delegate and ship off prisoners and people that were in our immigration process and send them to El Salvador. That was his choice. They make it sound like, oh, he's busy negotiating a major war peace treaty with the El Salvadorans, like Jefferson with the French. What are you talking about? It's just the location of the prison that you're using.

Temporarily, you're renting space in El Salvador. That doesn't make it major foreign relations. But there is a line in there that got the Trump administration all excited. And they tried to argue that they won. These two concepts both can't be true. The lawyers for Abrego Garcia rightly read the three quarters of a paragraph, three quarters of a page I'm going to read you. And they said the rule of law prevailed. Bring it back now. I agree with all that. The Trump administration read it, saw the one line about, oh, Judge Zinnis,

when you get it back, you may not be able to go as far as you thought on the word effectuate. Careful there, you may cross over into foreign relations that are the province of the executive branch. Oh yes, the Supreme Court has affirmed that we have foreign relations powers that a federal judge can't interfere with and rogue. They didn't say any of that.

That's twisting completely out of all recognizable shape. One line in this majority opinion. I've already given you the shockers. Let me read to you from it now. This is the Supreme Court of the United States decision issued last actually issued on Thursday night. On March 15, 2025, the United States removed Kilmer Armando Abrego Garcia from the United States to El Salvador. And then here's the three lines that drive the whole decision. The United States acknowledged that Abrego Garcia was subject to a withholding order, that's from an immigration judge,

forbidding his removal to El Salvador and that the removal to El Salvador was therefore illegal. The United States represents that the removal to El Salvador was the result of an administrative error. Done. Dead. Stick a fork in it. It's what we said was going to happen. Did you know Fast-Growing Trees is the biggest online nursery in the US? With thousands of different plants

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using the code LegalAF at checkout. Fastgrowingtrees.com, code LegalAF. Now's the perfect time to plant. Use LegalAF to save today. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. Mr. Rouveni, who worked for the Department of Justice past tense, admitted as he had to to tell the truth in his filings before Judge Zinnis that

the government knew about the order preventing his removal and put him on that plane to El Salvador anyway. Or as the lawyers for Abrego Garcia declared in their brief, this is a case of one of one. There's nobody with these Kafkaesque facts like Abrego Garcia. And that you can see first three lines, four lines of the Supreme Court decision. That's driving it. But they continue.

They talk about Judge Zinnis' order on April the 4th, directing the government to facilitate and effectuate the return of a brego garceta to the United States by last April. What's the difference? Popak? What time difference? Let me use an example. effectuate and facilitate. Okay. facilitate means using all of your efforts, all your lawful means to try to encourage an event to happen. Somebody to do something, something to happen on the other end that you don't control but you can promote and facilitate, grease the skids so that the other counterparty does the thing you want them to do or doesn't

do the thing you want them to do. Let's use a library as an example. If somebody needed to facilitate taking out a book from the library, okay, you would facilitate it. You'd show up with your library card, you call on the librarian, you'd show up at the right time and place. You'd ask for the right book, you'd show them the card of where it's located. If you owed any money or fines that suspended your library privileges, you'd pay them. And now you've facilitated checking out a book.

What you didn't do is if all of that failed, while the library was closed, you didn't break into the library and take the book off the shelf. That's effectuating the checking out of the library book. That's the difference. So the judge was right and the Supreme Court supported her that the Trump administration needs to tell the judge and to do it. All those things necessary to facilitate his return. Make the phone calls, fill out the paperwork, push the buttons, cut off the funding, whatever you need to do to facilitate and get from the other party the conduct that you're looking for. Make the phone call Trump, call Bukele. And if you're not going to do it or you can't do it,

they're going to need to catalog it to Judge Zinnis. But what they don't have to do is effectuate his return. They don't have to go break into the jail go get him. That's the difference. That would cross over into the world of foreign affairs. So here's what they say on the top of page two. To the extent that the government's emergency application, okay, the rest of the district court's order remains in effect. Right? Here's what she wrote in her order so you know what they are affirming. She says when she granted that relief that's been affirmed now by the Supreme Court, this preliminary relief is issued to restore the status quo and to preserve

Abrego Garcia's access to due process in accordance with the Constitution and governing immigration law. That is what the Supreme Court has adopted, that he has constitutional rights that need to be complied with and honored and they are embracing that. The rest of the district courts remains in effect, order remains in effect but requires clarification on remand. We're sending it back to you on remand with instructions. The order properly requires the government to facilitate his release and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had it not been improperly sent

to El Salvador. That's the in accordance with the constitution part of her order. The intended scope of the term effectuate in the order is unclear and may exceed the district court's authority. The district court should clarify its directive with regard with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs. For its part, the government should be prepared to share, meaning with the trial judge, what it can, a little weasel word there, concerning the steps that it's taken and the prospects of further steps.

What have you done to get them back to facilitate? What are you planning to do? If you're not doing it, why aren't you doing it? And that's going to be for the judge as the fact finder to go and figure out. I don't think it's going to work for Donald Trump to say, state secrets privilege or executive privilege or we're not telling you. Because she's now been supercharged by this United States Supreme Court ruling

in the way that they've written it. Now, let me just end it this way with Sotomayor. Sotomayor, I was like, oh, here we go. With the other two, they're going to go dissent, no dissent. Just the statement. And here's the statement. The most powerful part of it is her comment that the Trump administration could have been getting him back, but instead of an arguing ridiculous points of law

in the courtroom. Here's what she says on page three. Instead of hastening to correct its egregious error, the government dismissed it as an oversight. The government's argument implies that it could, this is the scary part, could deport and incarcerate any person, including US citizens without legal consequences, so long as it does so before a court can intervene in the middle of the night. Citing back to the JGG case that they just decided on the Alien Enemies Act. But then she sort of punts. She says, Nevertheless, I agree with the court's order that the proper remedy is to provide a Brego Garcia with all the process to which he would have been entitled to had he not been

unlawfully removed to El Salvador, including due process of law. And at the end, she wags her finger. In the proceeding on remand, the district court, Judge Zinnis, should continue to ensure that the government lives up to its obligations to follow the law. Wow, good luck. Good luck. Come back here and follow how Judge Zinnis takes this on remand.

What type of hearing she holds? What are the requirements that the Trump administration now has based on this ruling? You'll now know why I said at the top of that take. There's no way this is a win for the Trump administration only by contorting that one sentence about foreign relations. We're going to have a lot of explaining to do in front of Judge Zinnis, and we're going to do it right here on the Midas Touch Network. So until my next Legal AF podcast, my next Legal AF, the YouTube channel, my next hot take, I'm Michael Popock and I'm reporting. 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 LegalAFMTN. That's at LegalAFMTN.