The MeidasTouch Podcast - New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin on Lawsuit Against Trump Scheme

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Donald Trump trying to avoid legal obligations by entering into secret collusive settlement agreements that undercut American official policy and Meiselas interviews the New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin to discuss the lawsuit he filed on behalf of New Jersey and multiple other states to expose Trump’s scheme. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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tries to use executive order as end run around Congress and like the lawmaking process. But one of the other things that he's doing is he's basically having the agencies, a lot of which he's trying to gut and destroy. But the one function why he's kind of keeping some of these agencies on life support is he's having them enter into settlement agreements on behalf of the agency that basically undermines the entire agency's purpose.

I'll tell you what I mean about that in a minute. Also, he has, like, the DOJ entering into settlement agreements with January 6th insurrectionists. You all know that the family of Ashley Babbitt received millions of dollars. That then invited a hundred million dollar lawsuit by the leaders of the Proud Boys. And they're all out there saying, look, Trump's settling these cases with other insurrectionists. He's saying that we're political prisoners and hostages. Hey, Judge, just take judicial notice.

The President of the United States is saying that we're hostages, so clearly we should get $100 million. And even if the $100 million payment is not made to the leaders of the Proud Boys, and we'll see what ends up happening with that lawsuit, the taxpayers now have to deal with all of this. And this is as Trump's disastrous budget is sure to increase our debt by tens of trillions of dollars. I want to talk about this other settlement that I think is not getting enough

attention, but the attorney generals are making sure, the democratic attorney generals are making sure that we focus on this because it's very important. So one of the things that the Trump regime is trying to do is distribute back into communities, into cities and towns, thousands of machine gun conversion devices across the country. So here's what happened under the Biden administration, the alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives agency, the ATF entered into action, administrative action, where it basically confiscated a lot of these forced reset trigger devices

and basically said people can't use them. The Trump regime reversed that. They just entered into a settlement agreement where they said on behalf of the ATF, not only can these machine gun conversion devices be used once again, but to the extent the ATF has confiscated these devices, send them right back into the communities, send them right back into the communities,

push them right back into the cities. And these are turning these semi-automatic weapons into machine guns. And this is a major issue. You add that with the fact that the MAGA Republicans in Congress want to remove the regulations for silencers as part of their disastrous budget bill. And you just have to ask, what the hell are they doing? Let me just show you this clip. This is from, you can just see how it's impacting Michigan, but we'll talk about how it's impacting all of the states. But here, play this clip.

The Attorney General is one of 16 AGs suing to block a federal settlement, and that would actually allow the sale of devices that can turn regular guns into machine guns, and that is what's getting so much attention. Jay Scott Smith is live in Southfield with more on this controversial case, Jay. Yes, indeed.

Now this is actually seen as an about faced by the federal government. And the suit is meant to make sure that a dangerous weapon doesn't get scarier. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Maryland on Monday. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nestle was one of 15 state Attorneys General along with the DC Attorney General to sign on to the suit. Now the states are suing to stop a settlement that would allow

for the sale of forced reset triggers which are illegal in the state of Michigan and they allow a semi-automatic weapon typically an an AR-15, to fire at a faster rate, effectively turning it into a machine gun. It causes the weapon to fire more rapidly. And a weapon that fires that rapidly, it allows you to hit multiple targets. The settlement was reached on May 16th and would require the ATF to return the triggers

that had been previously seized during the Biden administration or voluntarily surrendered to the government. And while this is seen as a victory for Second Amendment advocates, this could be bad news for law enforcement agencies across the country, including here in Southeast Michigan. Let's bring in Matt Plattkin, New Jersey attorney general. You know, when I watch this attorney general Plkin, and I see just even what the weapon is capable of doing when it has this device and it's converted into a machine gun, and I think the Trump regime is entering into these settlement agreements to get these into cities. Look, I'm all

for the Second Amendment. I'm all for people owning guns and protecting their families. I look at that, though, and I go, who wants that? What is going on? Yeah, look, first, thanks for having me. And I think it's fair to say that this is a totally insane thing that the administration is doing, not through any form of legal process, not through a rulemaking or a new law,

but through a collusive settlement with a friendly party in the gun industry. And, you know, I've been involved in the gun violence prevention efforts and movement for over two decades now. And I never thought I'd have to sue the federal government to keep them from putting machine guns, machine guns into the hands of 12000 people across the country at a time when what we're doing is saving lives. So all this talk about law and order, look, machine guns have been illegal in this country for decades. And the ATF

has treated machine gun conversion devices like the devices we're talking about here that you just showed as machine guns for decades. And so this is an unprecedented, reckless and incredibly dangerous action that they're taking. I want to flag the point you made there though, is that look, if Congress thinks this is so massively popular machine guns for everybody, walk down your schools, see, you know, people with machine guns in front, like if, if y'all want that and you think that's what your constituents want, okay, go and pass legislation or, or go through the rulemaking process in an agency and make it public, explain what you're doing. But just like with the executive orders,

what the Trump regime is doing is they go, oh, here's how we get around it. We're in a lawsuit with the gun lobby. So let's just have a private mediation as though we're adversaries with the gun lobby and then we'll enter into a settlement agreement and a settlement agreement will now be the government's position because you sued us, oopsies, we lose, you win and then they're delivering what they want, what the gun lobby wants but where there should have been legislation.

Yeah, and I think what's crazy about, particularly crazy about this settlement is they won't even tell us who the parties of the settlement are. They're gonna give back these machine gun conversion devices, and notwithstanding what anybody tries to tell you, that's what they turn firearms into,

something capable of firing 900 rounds a minute, the equivalent of even faster, frankly, than an M16 military-grade machine gun. And so they're gonna give back through this policy, these machine gun conversion devices, to people across the country, as well as to sellers and resellers who would sell them into states like New Jersey,

where machine guns are illegal. Even if Congress changed the law, New Jersey has a law banning machine guns because who needs a machine gun? It's consistent with the second amendment. Even the folks challenging the regulations around bump stocks, when they got up to the Supreme Court, they said, no, no, no, FRTs,

these machine gun conversion devices are different. We're not talking about those, we're talking about bump stocks. So even they recognize that these are something that the federal government can regulate. And yet here we are at a time when supposedly we care about public safety and law and order. We're putting machine guns which have one purpose and one purpose only, which is to kill as many people as fast as possible into the hands of potentially violent individuals across this country. It's so it's said that, because when I was preparing to do this interview, I was trying to read the articles and say, who are they settling with? Like who are the signatories? And I couldn't find it, so I was wondering, did I not do the research with?

That's why even in my opening, I try to hedge around, as a settlement agreement, so I mean, you even in my opening, I try to hedge around as a settlement agreement. So, I mean, you bring the lawsuit, you don't really even know who the settlement agreement with, who the signatories are. And as a lawyer, as an attorney general, what are the most basic things you need to know when parties enter into a settlement agreement? I don't know who are the parties to it. Well, there's two issues here. One is there was a lawsuit that they're purporting to settle, which has a bunch of organizations that are supposedly a part of it, including third parties,

and they won't tell us who they are. And then there's a bigger issue, which is that they're not just settling the lawsuit, they're implementing this policy that's gonna put these machine gun conversion devices into the hands of anyone, regardless of whether they were party to the settlement, 12,000 that the ATF has collected

over the years, and it takes about a day or two to identify and dismantle one of these and make sure that that's what we're dealing with. They're putting those into hands across the country, and they're not telling us who they're going to give it to. So it very well could be domestic violence offenders or other violent individuals. And that is a really scary thing for the public.

And as the chief law enforcement officer whose job is to keep our residents safe at a time when we have historic low levels of gun violence in New Jersey, yeah, we're going to court to make sure the federal government cannot be a machine gun distributor to violent felons. I can't believe I have to say that,

but that's what we're doing. You know, and that is kind of the final point that, you know, the way the federal government is operating now, you know, reminds me of when I was in private practice as a lawyer, and you would deal with a corporation that would claim everything is a trade secret, and they wouldn't give you any information during discovery and they would just try to obstruct and shut everything down just through those types of

games. It's just so odd seeing odds of perhaps not the right word, seeing the federal government say we don't need to tell you who the people are, who's involved, who the parties are. We're not sharing any of that information with you. And I'm like, this is you work for us. It's all right. You are. You're the you're the public. You know, and you see that with Doge, you know, at every step

of the way, we're the most transparent. OK, well, you want to sit for a deposition or go testify in Congress and tell us what the hell you're doing? Nope, nope. Executive privilege. We're not doing that. So it must be not just in this case, us what the hell you're doing. Nope, nope. Executive privilege. We're not doing that. So it must be not just in this case though, but for you kind of frustrating as you're trying to get access to info and they're playing the kind of corporate

shell game you probably see in private litigation and which Trump played when he was a private litigate, when he would bring cases, drag the cases out as long as possible, you know, delay, delay, delay, maybe it'll last four years if you use all of the tricks and never give anybody any information. Yeah, look, there's one party that is happy about this and it's the gun lobby and the gun industry who paid, let's be honest, they paid blood money to the Trump administration and to President Trump and they're getting their repayment because the only people that serves are people who profit off bloodshed. I can tell you who's not happy about it because I've spoken to a lot of them, law enforcement officers.

These forced reset triggers, these machine guns that they create have killed law enforcement officers. They're incredibly deadly and lethal weapons, as you showed. And so it just makes no sense to me at a time when we're supposedly trying to combat crime, particularly violent crime, when what we've done in New Jersey has worked, when no one can make a really colorable argument that these are protected by the Second Amendment, when for decades we've treated machine guns as something we can regulate under the Second Amendment

for good reason, that this is in any way enhancing public safety. It pads the pockets of gun manufacturers that produce these things, but doesn't make any Americans safe, doesn't make our cops safe, doesn't make our communities safe. And I think that should alarm every American. New Jersey attorney general, Matt Plotkin. Thanks for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. Everybody hit subscribe.

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