The David Pakman Show - BONUS SHOW: SCOTUS immigration ruling, Capitol rioter ordered to pay $500K

Episode Date: June 28, 2025

-- On the Bonus Show: Supreme Court allows deportations to third countries, Republican lawmaker with ectopic pregnancy blames Democrats, Capitol rioter ordered to pay $500K, and much more... -- Become a Member: https://www.davidpakman.com/membership  Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow Buy David's book: https://davidpakman.com/book  Book David Pakman: https://www.cameo.com/davidpakman   

Hey, everybody, David here. What you're about to hear is an episode of The Bonus Show. We do a bonus show every day for our members and for a limited time. We will release one of the week's bonus shows on Saturdays exclusively for our audio podcast listeners. If you'd like to get access to all of the bonus shows, simply sign up at join Pacman dot com. Here is that bonus show episode. shows. migrants to third countries by third countries. We mean countries that are not the United States, not the country of origin for the

migrants, just third countries where the individuals have no citizenship, no family, no connection of any kind without first letting them prove that they would face torture or harm there. Now, this particular case was about eight men all convicted of violent crimes that the Trump administration tried to deport to South Sudan. Now, most of the men had never been to South Sudan. The flight ultimately landed at an American military base in Djibouti, where the men have since been detained. And this ruling temporarily overrides a lower court order from Judge Brian Murphy, who said,

no, they need due process, not a particularly controversial determination by the lower court. And that there are elements here related to the convention against torture and that the destination does matter. But the Supreme Court has decided to override that. So we now have a situation that has significant implications. Number one, expansion of executive power over immigration, right, rather than immigration being done by the immigration related jurisprudence system that we have in place. It's done by the executive branch.

It's done by the president. And I know that you might be saying, well, I thought that this was the party of small government and this was the party of taking power away from elected officials. Yes, but except when it's convenient for Trump or it's what Donald Trump wants to do. That's number one. Number two, if we think about what distinguishes functioning democracies from authoritarian dystopias. One of the things is due process protections. And that is another aspect of this debate. Even noncitizens convicted of violent crimes deserve basic rights of due process.

That doesn't mean they don't get punished. This doesn't mean you get out scot free after committing a crime, as we've pointed out many times. But it just means that you go through the full due process that people are entitled to. And then there are, of course, just like broader legal and political implications here because there are many similar cases. This particular case is just about eight men.

How does this apply to similar but not exactly the same scenarios? There's endless problems with what's going on here. Pat, very scary stuff. Absolutely. And we're trying to send the message that you can't be undocumented in the United States. If you are here in the U.S., you need to have legal residents, be a citizen, be here with a visa, be going through the legal mechanisms to enter this country. But now this country is turning around and saying that we can send people to any country we want and we're not going to have any regards for whether

they have a right to be in that country. So with these men going to Djibouti, I understand it's an American military base. So at least on the base, they have some rights to be there, but outside of the base, they're going to be subject to whatever the laws of Djibouti are. And they very well could be considered undocumented there. So what lessons are we trying to teach here by doing a practice like this? It doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. It's kind of like the arguments against the death penalty, which is that we shouldn't kill people to show that killing people is wrong. There's an apparent contradiction there. Yeah. On the one hand, we are demanding and I think reasonably so that people that come to the United States go through a process.

There's a number of processes. You can come in as a student. You can come in as a tourist. You can request political asylum. You can get a green card. You can ultimately get citizenship depending on your situation. You know, there's all these different things. We are requiring people when they get a court date with an immigration judge that they show up, that they don't just disappear into the

country. All reasonable requests. And the question is, how do we enforce them doing for some fairly totally reasonable requests? And then we go, yeah, but also we're just kind of kind of like not give due process to people depending on the situation they're in, depending on the country they're from, depending on anything that Donald Trump or Tom Homan or whoever decides it. I was thinking exactly of the analogy of the death penalty to tell people that killing is bad. And unfortunately, you know, I'm going to D.C. and I'm going to interview some senators and it's a question for them. Is there any remaining mechanism through which we can demand that people be provided

basic due process? These are not luxuries. It's just due process. I don't know what Democrats can do, Pat. I just don't. Yes, especially once they send people overseas. That was the exact problem with the Kilmar Abrego Garcia matter that we wanted to provide due process to him. We wanted to be able to help in some way. But once he was in El Salvador, there really wasn't much that congressional Democrats or anyone else who wasn't the president, anyone else who wasn't operating under the executive branch to do in that circumstance. They could go and try to use their words to convince leaders in foreign countries to change their minds.

But they don't have the power of law behind them. So that's exactly what the Trump administration is trying to use to their advantage. They feel as though the courts can't affect them once people are outside the U.S. They know that lawmakers can't do it. And so that's how they're exercising their power. Listen to this absolutely outrageous situation. There's a Florida Republican congresswoman named Kat Kamak, and she revealed that in May of last year, 2024, she nearly died because of complications from something called an

ectopic pregnancy. And part of the reason that she nearly died is that hospital staff were hesitant to treat her because they were worried under Florida's newly enacted six week abortion ban. Could they end up getting prosecuted? Now, the ectopic pregnancy was, of course, non viable as a pregnancy that might lead to the live birth of a baby. It was life threatening. It required immediate medical intervention, But medical personnel who would normally administer the drug methotrexate, which is used to treat ectopic pregnancies, were hesitant to do so because of ambiguity in the law. Could we lose our licenses if we administer the drug?

Could we face jail time if we administer the drug? Could we face jail time if we administer the drug? Now, understand that Kamek was only five weeks pregnant and was suffering a real medical emergency. She had to argue her case using her phone, pulling up legal text, trying to reach Governor Ron DeSanctimonious from her hospital bed, who she was not able to get a hold of. She ultimately did receive treatment. Now here's what's really crazy. She blames Democrats and pro-choice activists for what happened to her for causing the confusion. She said so. Let me kind of break it down. The reason the doctors and medical professionals were hesitant to it, to give her the treatment

that would be appropriate was because of the six week abortion ban. She says that only because of fear mongering by the left about the abortion ban were the doctors hesitant. So you wonder this is like a subtle difference, Pat. But she has found a way to say the abortion ban's not the problem. It's the lies being told about it that tricked hospital employees into saying we might get in trouble for doing this, even though they really wouldn't, which, of course, is not the case at all. Medical experts and legal experts have already weighed in and they said there is ambiguity here.

It is a legitimate concern as to what will happen if you administer the appropriate treatment in this situation. It sounds to me like Kamek was put in this no win situation, right, because she doesn't want to agree with Democrats on this topic, but also she needed that lifesaving care. So she had to really think about it for a little while. And she decided to blame the political atmosphere. She decided to blame fear mongering by the left. Even though there should be fear mongering, her life was at risk. If they didn't undergo this procedure, she very well could have died.

And there are so many other women just like her in positions like that one. So fear mongering, I guess, maybe this has this negative connotation, but that is the appropriate response. There should be sounding the alarms when you have a situation like this, and this should be a no brainer type of procedure that doctors should be allowed to do in these circumstances. So it sounds to me like she really had to think over how she was going to twist this to her benefit politically. And it sounds like this was the best road for her to take when it comes to it. But it really doesn't add up.

Doesn't make any sense. There is a you know, she was hurt by the law, but she still defends the law. And it's really emblematic of this modern MAGA movement, which is they are so ideologically entrenched that they will always deflect blame to someone else and support the ban because political loyalty is just overriding personal experience. She now has. It used to be the case that you had, you know, these homophobic Republicans and then all of a sudden they've got a gay niece or a lesbian daughter and they go, you know what, now that

I've been personally faced with this, now I get it. I've changed my mind. This is the next. And that's bad enough. Right. Which is can't we empathize even without being in the situation personally? She's now in the situation personally. The law has created a problem. She nearly died because of the law. And she goes, well, rather than being against the law, I'm just going to attack Democrats. It just shows the deep ideological entrenchment here. Absolutely. And this would be different if, let's say, you had a drunk driving case, for example,

and some politician got caught and they said, oh, well, you know, like I did something wrong here. I shouldn't have been driving. I did break the law. I agree with the law, however, because I don't want to see a society in which drunk driving is allowed. Some people could think, okay, well, that doesn't seem to add up, but it makes sense because you're admitting to a mistake. There was no mistake here. She didn't do anything wrong. This is just a freak thing that happens from time to time with pregnancies.

And so you can't even take that approach of admitting fault because she really had no fault to admit. So this is the exact position that Republicans have found themselves in. I think a lot of them just hope that they don't have one of these scenarios that require emergency medical intervention. But we know that this is happening not just to Kamek, but as I said before, countless women across the country. And many of these people don't have prominent positions, maybe aren't as aware of the laws as she was pulling up the information on her phone. And who knows what's going on in so many of those cases? Hey, listen to this story. A federal jury has ordered David Walls Kauffman, who's a

69 year old chiropractor and January 6th rioter, to pay five hundred thousand dollars in damages to the widow and estate of Officer Jeffrey Smith. Now, Jeffrey Smith is the D.C. officer who died by suicide nine days after defending the capital from the insurrection. Why did this jury find this? Well, the jury found that Walls Kauffman was liable for assault, although the judge had previously dismissed a wrongful death claim ruling that no reasonable juror could link Walls Kauffman's actions to the suicide of the officer.

The jury still found him culpable for the assault itself, which was captured on body cam footage. Now, Walls Kauffman previously pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and did serve 60 days in prison before being pardoned by Trump. He says, I didn't assault the officer. He says the verdict is ridiculous. He says Smith's injuries were caused by a different incident later in the day. And what we know is that Jeffrey Smith died by suicide while driving to work.

He had been cleared for duty. It was later ruled that his injuries sustained on January 6th were the sole and direct cause of his death. And we now have an admittedly complicated legal situation where we have people who have been pardoned criminally by Trump but still potentially and in this case actually civilly liable, we have civil court becoming a last resort for justice when Trump just comes in and goes, everybody gets a pardon. You get a pardon, you get a pardon, you get a pardon. We end up bringing a lot of these matters into civil court. And there's this kind of moral gap, right, Pat, where on the one hand you can go, listen,

I got a pardon. The president of the United States has effectively adjudicated that I did nothing wrong. And yet a jury goes, yeah, we don't agree. You owe five hundred thousand dollars. It's an extraordinary situation. Absolutely is an extraordinary situation. And I'm sure for the jury, it was a very difficult one to settle because, of course, we know that this individual did assault the officer based on the court proceedings. I don't think we can argue that even though he was ultimately pardoned. We know that Trump just blanket pardoned everyone. It doesn't mean that he

didn't commit the crime. So we can take that as a given. And then we know also, of course, about the officer taking his own life nine days later. So if the jury had all the information in front of them and saw a clear link, they're saw some responsibility, saw that this was the only direct assault against the officer and they decided to award the family this amount of money, certainly a lot of money, nearly half a million dollars. Well, I think it makes sense. I think that the right course of action was taken here. And yes, it does go to show that Trump was wrong to do these pardons, because as we can

see, there were plenty of examples of officers being attacked. And especially in those extreme circumstances, the idea that Trump was willing to pardon those people, not only is it anti-law enforcement, it's just baffling to the mind that this would happen in our politics today. And what we have is a building environment where the consequences of political extremism are becoming extraordinarily real. Right. I mean, we had the situation with the assassin in Minnesota and we spoke to Greg Landsman

about being on that target list. We have all of these different ways in which real world, the January six riots, of course, and then so many other different examples. There is a message coming down from on high when all of these actions are sort of dismissed or even after the Minnesota assassination situation, Republicans don't really go, yeah, he was radicalized by pro Trump beliefs like that. That's just what it is. We've got to be more careful. We have there's no real reckoning right now from the Maga right about the toll of their

political extremism in the real world. And it's significant as we are finding out. And I'm sure they very much feel emboldened. They know when the left wants to protest, not riot, but just protest, Trump is going to be there with the National Guard within 48 hours ready to break things up. But when they as Trump supporters decide to protest and actually riot, as we saw on January 6th and assault officers, well, everyone's going to get pardons ultimately. So they feel as though they have the rights to do whatever they want, take to the streets, maybe commit violence.

But they know that if the shoe was on the other foot, if it was someone on the left doing the exact same thing, then they would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. So that's obviously going to embolden them. Now, I don't know if they if they have to be like out in the streets protesting right now as conservatives, because they do hold power. But when it comes to these individual acts of violence, maybe they feel as though they can get away with it, that they'll ultimately be pardoned because that's the precedent that Trump has set.

That's absolutely correct. Now, I want to tell you something. I am about to go to D.C. in theory to interview a bunch of senators and some members of the House. I hope that this happens. I hope, Pat, that I don't end up coming to you with tears in my eyes and my tail between my legs tomorrow or the next day to say it didn't happen for whatever reason. But that's the plan.

I'm off to D.C. and I'm looking forward to getting some direct answers from Democrats about what are we doing? What what is the plan here? Because Trump is completely out of control. Yeah, I think it'll be a success. We have some prominent names on the list of potential people we're going to interview, but you never know with these trips. Maybe you'll show up there and the best that you can get is a 10 minute interview with

an unpaid intern on Capitol Hill. And then we'll have to run that on the show tomorrow, which would be hugely embarrassing for me. But I'll give I'll keep people updated and you'll be able to see from my social media if these things are happening and if it's all going, we're going to have pictures up. And I'm teaming up with Jesse Dala more for these interviews. So it should be a really interesting thing. We'll see if it's a success.

You know, I'm we it may all happen, Pat, but the audience goes, this is kind of lame. We don't really care about this. And then that'll be interesting feedback as well. So we'll have some interesting conversations hopefully. And you can follow my social media to stay updated. I will see you tomorrow. New show, new bonus show.