Andrew Weissmann: Outlandish and Outrageous

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Hello, and welcome to the Board Podcast.

I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Delighted to welcome back, professor of practice at NYU Law School.

He was a lead prosecutor of Bob Miller's investigation of the Russia interference in the 2016 election, which actually did happen.

And chief of the fraud section at the Department of Justice.

He co-hosts the podcast, Maine Justice, with Mary McCord.

He's got a sub stack called Behind the Headlines.

He's on a little bit of a sabbatical, but not too much of one to, you know, take a break from hanging out with me.

It's Andrew Weissman.

Hello.

How are you?

This is kind of like vacation being with me.

You know, is that that's sort of true, right?

Really?

You know, I, you know, that's like a straight line for me to say, you know, many people say it's work.

No, you're absolutely right.

Look, it is always a pleasure.

Back at you, my friend.

We have a lot happening in the news.

Yeah, there is.

And plenty in the legal front.

And I was like going through the outline.

And I don't want to make the entire podcast about immigration law, but we got to do a lot of immigration law, unfortunately.

I think it's the nature of our moment.

But we have today, Governor of California, Gavin Newsome, the Attorney General Robanta, have are filing a lawsuit against the administration.

There's a hearing today.

They are suing to end the, what they call illegal and unnecessary takeover of the California National Guard unit.

They argue the takeover violates the Constitution and exceeds the President's Title 10 authority.

What do you make of that?

Is there anything there?

The Trump Justice Department says that's a political stunt.

There's nothing to it.

So, you know, I've been thinking about this and sort of the best way for people to understand

what is going on.

And I think

I tried to get my blood pressure down in discussing this.

Ujai breath, really quick.

Yeah, exactly.

I think you have to look at this and you have to look at the way that this administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act to deport people to El Salvador in the same context.

And what I mean by that is

in both situations, the administration takes a tiny kernel of a fact

and blows it way out of proportion and says to the courts,

you have to agree with our assessment of those facts, and we are essentially torturing the English language to be able to do things that are absolutely authoritarian and contrary to law.

So, in the Alien Enemies Act, the idea that we're invaded

by the TDA gang is not true.

There are four federal courts that have said no way that is torturing the English language.

What is going on in LA is the same thing.

People who participate in a demonstration where a small fraction of them do something illegal and participate in violence is not an invasion.

It is not a rebellion.

It is not an attempted or risk of rebellion.

It is not a situation where law enforcement cannot do its job anymore.

Just to be clear, the law to send those people in requires there to be an invasion, rebellion, or the law enforcement can't be sent in.

So there take some

kernel of a problem, blow it completely out of proportion in order to have an authoritarian regime where people are denied their rights.

It is so outlandish.

And the courts, unfortunately,

have developed law in the context of thinking about normal administrations where you don't have somebody acting, in my view, in complete bad faith in the way that they're assessing the facts.

I guess my question then in this case is, all right.

So let's say, you know, I'm actually not sure which court, which circuit is hearing the Newsom case today.

I say one of the California ones, but assuming they agree with.

It's San Francisco.

Yep.

Yeah.

So assuming assuming they agree with that assessment from you, like, then what?

Like, is this

like something that you can really get emergency remediation from, from the Supreme Court?

Like, that's kind of hard to imagine for me, but maybe not.

I don't know.

Well, assuming the court agrees

that this is not lawful, they can say that you can't have 4,000 National Guard troops there.

It's a slightly different issue when you're sending in in federal military.

So the Marines is a different legal structure, but it would be relevant to the 4,000 people there.

By the way, one thing, you know, since I'm discussing this as a lawyer, it is important to remember, just as a human being, talk about a complete overreaction to the situation.

I mean, the reason that I think the law point I make, which is this is escalating something and torturing the English language to be authoritarian, is because of the obvious point, which is you do not need to send in 4,700 military people to deal with this situation.

I mean, this is supposed to be de-escalating, not escalating.

So it just tells you exactly what's going on.

Well, they want it.

I mean, the politics of it, I was reading a Real Clear Politics article this morning where they're on the record.

It's not like TDS or MSNBC talk to be like, they want disorder.

They say it.

Trump says it.

Like the MAGA advisors are like, this will be good for us in the midterms.

They're not trying to quell the disorder.

They are reveling in it.

You know, I do think about that.

The other side of this political coin, though, right, is like, okay,

regardless of whether it's true on the law, you get to a pretty concerning place if it's like, okay, some judge in San Francisco says that the president of the United States can't call in National Guard troops.

Like, I do think that that is a very dicey political situation, right?

I mean, it's something that you'd really have to take up to the Supreme Court, right?

Yeah.

No, look, it is the kind of thing that would go up and it would go up very quickly.

But, you know, let me just give you an example of something where the courts, it's from a long time ago, but when

President Truman tried to take over the steel mills and said, I need to do this because we need the steel for our military to fight in Korea, the Supreme Court said, no way.

This is a civilian legal system and legal structure.

And you are the commander-in-chief, but it is Congress's call as to whether they want to do that, not yours.

And so it's so easy to understand that, but we're dealing in a situation where we don't have a Congress that's doing anything.

So the president has just filled that vacuum because nature abhors a vacuum, or in this case, I would say Donald Trump abhors a vacuum.

A couple other things about what we've been seeing in LA, and we talked about this a little bit yesterday with Mark Hurtling, but we had a general talking to somebody that had a B average in undergrad and didn't go to law school.

So I don't know if we gave the most coherent description of posse comitatus for our listeners.

And so that is the kind of other element here, right?

There's this question of can,

you know, the either the Federalized National Guard troops or the Marines that are being sent in do law enforcement.

Like, what are they allowed to do?

What are the limitations?

Of course, when you're at DOJ, it's something you're very familiar with.

So, let's talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, sure.

I mean, you know, this doesn't come up a lot.

I mean, this is kind of thing where you, you know, I was in DOJ for a long time, never came up because we don't have administrations like this.

And I served under normal or, you know, Republican and Democratic administrations.

It's not a political issue.

I don't recall it coming up in Republican politics that there's a big anti-posse comitatus kind of wing of the party.

People who are very excited to, you know, take the military and policify them, but here we we are.

Yeah.

So the Posse Comitatus Act is a statute by Congress that, unless an exception applies, says that the military cannot operate domestically in our country to do law enforcement activities.

When President Nixon called in the National Guard to help deliver mail because there was a postal strike, that was allowed because it had nothing to do with law enforcement.

Here, the argument is that they're not doing anything related to law enforcement.

They're just protecting federal property.

But the problem is it also has to be an invasion or rebellion or there has to be a complete failure of law enforcement to be able to carry out its functions.

I don't see any of that as a prerequisite.

Here's the big sort of, you know, elephant in the room is that at the end of the day, the way that the president would get around this is he would invoke something called the Insurrection Act.

And you've been seeing them throw around the word insurrection a couple of times.

I think Stephen Miller said it.

Absolutely.

This is all a precursor to that.

And to your point, I mean, politically,

you raise it in the immigration context.

So it makes people who are again feel like, you know, if you oppose this, suddenly it means you're for illegal immigration.

And this is one where you can keep two ideas ideas in your head at the same time, which is you can agree that the law

should not be violated and should adhere to the law.

And at the same time, you can think if you're in the country illegally,

you can be deported lawfully.

But it is simply not the case that just because there's some people in the country here illegally, that you just then get to say, you know what, we get to violate the law and extracting them.

This is why you had Judge Wilkinson in the Fourth Circuit, a really conservative but highly respected jurist, saying it doesn't work that way.

You have to comply with the law.

If you want these people to be removed, there is a lawful way to do that that gives them due process where you can respect the process.

And I think this is, to your point, this is so deliberate to do this in a way that you, when you have people, you know, saying, oh, these pesky liberals who are worrying about the niceties of the law and they're doing it for people who are potentially in this country illegally that's what it means to be a rule of law country yeah right there's one element of this la thing that's really well and everywhere now it's happening everywhere that is it's getting under my skin and i saw a legal angle on it on social media that's maybe a little fanciful but i just wanted to toss it by you and uh that is like whether Just, I forget the military side of this, like whether just the way that they're doing the immigration enforcement is also illegal.

This is David Beer from Cato.

He says that the Wall Street Journal is reporting on the conspiracy by the White House and ICE to violate the Constitution and conduct warrantless, suspicionless sweeps of Hispanic areas of the country.

This is referring to that Wall Street Journal story that Stephen Miller is like, just go to Home Depot, just go to 7-Eleven, like stop.

You know, we got to get more people deported.

Beer says this is criminal behavior and that the state police need to start investigating these crimes.

That feels a little bit like a fantasy, but it does, it does feel illegal.

I don't know.

I know that's not a technical law term, but right?

I mean, like, it's one thing if they're saying, hey, we're going to this Home Depot because we have a deportation order for this one person that works there.

And like, while we're there, you know, we're going to do sweeps.

You know, okay, I don't know.

I'm not for that, but that's one thing versus just like willy-nilly going to areas where you think that there are a lot of Hispanic workers.

So the Equal Protection Clause is a potential claim that people have if you are choosing to target people based on what suspect classification, so race and nationality.

The Fourth Amendment is a protection because everyone in this country has a protection about not being seized or searched without there being probable cause.

So that's another protection.

And that's true on immigration, right?

Like is probable cause like somebody doesn't have their ID?

Is that probable cause?

You would have to have a basis for just knowing that they don't have their ID.

I mean, just to be clear, though, you can go up to anybody, assuming you're not targeting them for an improper, unconstitutional purpose.

You can go up to anyone and voluntarily ask them, you know, can I see your papers, et cetera?

But, you know, the person doesn't have to respond.

The law is very liberal, though, in terms of what law enforcement can do.

But here's the real problem: is that in general, what we're seeing is the administration is not giving those people their day in court.

So, all of these things where you're saying, oh, well, they might have a constitutional claim about, or I'm saying they might have a constitutional claim on the Equal Protection Clause, or they may have violated various immigration rules in doing this, or the Fourth Amendment in doing this.

All of that presupposes that they're going to have an opportunity to be heard.

The reason that you have the Supreme Court rule 9 to 0,

not once, but twice

in this area, is because this administration has denied due process to the people who have been summarily extracted from this country without due process of law.

So they don't have the opportunity to raise any of these claims.

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That leads me to a couple other things I wanted to get you on.

Just generally speaking, I'll get back to some of the immigration stuff, but overall, like the Trump Justice Department's failures, and I wonder what you think and when this might come to a head.

I was asking before I had you on, our

very capable lesbian in-house attorney for advice on what we should talk about.

And she pointed me to a breakdown of the federal district court rulings from from may

96 of them went against the administration in april is 76 percent 51 of 67

so i i mean like this is not precedented really like the just how much they're being rebuked but okay like what is what are the implications of that like level of failure

so first you know the administration says about that, see, look how unfair the courts are.

And, you know, the other response to that is: no, when you have an administration that has never done so many things that are illegal, and the reason you know it is the latter and not the administration is you can look at the identity of the judges who are doing this, and the identity of the judges is across the board.

It's not just democratically appointed judges and nominated by Democrats, it's Republican, including judges appointed by Donald Trump.

And so that's a huge issue.

I think there's the other thing that I think gets not enough attention is that there's a lot of things that the Department of Justice is doing that is lawful, but outrageous.

So, you know, we're talking about the things that are outrageous and unlawful.

But as a friend of mine said, who's a Republican and a former white-collar prosecutor, he said, this is the golden age for being a white-collar criminal.

It is just a shutdown of the public integrity section, the fraud section that I used to run at the Department of Justice.

They just announced essentially that Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prosecutions are being destroyed.

For those of us who aren't familiar, like what is in the fraud section?

What are some of the things that you were prosecuting that now we're not going to be looking into?

So, one of the really big cases that we did as I was leaving was the Volkswagen case.

So, Volkswagen had gamed the system and was selling cars as environmentally friendly when, in fact, they were anything but.

They'd sort of figured out a way to turn on the environmentally friendly engine when it was being tested, and then immediately it went off.

I kind of remember that.

Yeah, and just you know, people in Germany are now being prosecuted for it.

People were prosecuted here.

The company paid a fortune here and pled guilty to a felony.

Um, it and it was an unusual corporate crime because it was actually orchestrated from above.

And sort of, and the way it sort of was discovered was that people below were like, you know what,

we're not down with this.

So that's one example.

There are corporations that were like Enron, huge financial institutions engaged in various frauds that affect millions and millions of people across the country.

Theranos, maybe?

Is Theranos in the fraud section?

Theranos was not in the fraud section, but let me give you just another example of crimes that the fraud section prosecuted in the healthcare unit.

This is just one example.

A doctor who falsely told his patients that they had cancer so that he could charge them for chemotherapy and then also wasn't actually even treating them for what was there.

So not only did they go through, you know, chemotherapy is not a benign thing to go through.

So they went through all of that.

They went through the psychic issue of that.

Their family went through it all for grief.

Oh, my God.

And so that's sort of an outrageous crime on a small scale.

And then there were crimes that, you know, huge corporate crimes that affect.

people monetarily can affect the environment like volkswagen all of these are really really important things and you know this administration is saying essentially, if you're a rich white person, you know, we're not really in the business of looking out for, you know, the crimes that you're committing.

You know, I basically spent 20 years of my life, I used to say, I was basically prosecuting sort of like corporate executives.

And it's just hard to see that that's going to go on anymore.

Well, it's because when they talk about law and order, they're not talking about that.

Right.

Exactly.

Like, it's just like they, Donald Trump doesn't see like corporate crime, theft, scams as crimes because he committed them like many times and has been,

you know, whether it be Trump University that, you know, he had a judgment against him on, or all of those, right?

He did a multi-level marketing scheme, an MLM scheme he was involved in.

National Review did a long report on that back in the day.

So, you know, I mean, I think that's like a big part of this.

Yeah, I mean,

let's not forget he is a convicted felon.

I mean,

if you have a white-collar criminal in the White House, I'm not surprised by the fact that he doesn't want to go after white-collar crime.

It's just, you remember on day one that Pam Bondi started as the Attorney General, she issued, it's a lawful thing to do, but she issued a memorandum basically gutting

all of these areas that are so important for holding people to account and also equal justice.

It should not be because you're rich that the or white, which, you know, can correlate, that you suddenly are immune from criminal investigation.

Yeah, I don't know.

I immediately get my political hat on, you know, and I want to think like there has to be a populist angle for the Democrats here, just like listening to you talk about this.

It's like these, you know, like these guys claim that they're for the forgotten man and they're going after the elites and going after the deep state, that it's like the opposite.

You could go through the pardons and talk about the sort of the nature, the number of people who are pardoned who engaged in

grift.

And it's like, why are those people getting pardoned when you have a lot of small fry, if you were going to try and do this in an even-handed way, who don't have the, you know, the wherewithal to have influence with the people deciding who's going to get presented for a pardon to the president.

Yeah.

And I just think that like, I don't know.

I'm trying to cast this person in a movie, but like, the Democrats need like a character who, you know, sounds like a working man with a southern accent to start being like, they're, you know, they're letting all the fucking fat cats get away with everything.

And they need a Huey Long, honestly.

Like, that's not really my kind of politics, but like somebody that can get this through to people, that it is the people that are screwing over regular folks that are being let off scot-free right now, left and right.

And to this point, my buddy texted me yesterday about one of the U.S.

attorney's offices.

And I want to kind of just get your take on this without getting into the details.

It's my understanding this is happening everywhere, but that essentially at one of the U.S.

attorney's offices, it's not in a border state.

They are still redirecting

resources essentially entirely to immigration issues.

And that they have people coming in from D.C.

that are focused on that and the folks that are working on stuff at, you know, out in these various

regional offices.

Maybe not all of them, but a good proportion of them are being pushed to

focus their energies and resources on immigration.

And is that your kind of understanding?

And how does that, and just talk to us about how that works like from being inside DOJ?

Sure.

And this is an example of elections have consequences.

I mean, there's nothing, just to be put it in the context of our broader conversation, there's nothing unlawful about it.

It's just a question of, is it something that as you're listening to this and your viewers are watching, are they sitting there going, hey, this is a good idea?

So a U.S.

Attorney's Office is usually, that's at a federal level.

They're not that big.

Even the largest are not that big.

I worked in the U.S.

Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of New York.

That's sort of Brooklyn and Queens.

It's part of the New York sort of offices.

And that was about 100 or so.

criminal prosecutors.

That's really big for a U.S.

Attorney's Office.

If you suddenly take people and say, okay, 30 of you are now being moved.

So the other things that are being looked at are organized crime, gang prosecutions, gangs that are sort of emerging gangs that prey on lawful immigrant groups that come to New York that are now, I mean, that's sort of traditionally how gangs start.

You have white-collar crime that we've talked about, and suddenly you're pulling resources from that, all sorts of economic crime.

And so, and then you you have terrorism, you know, and that I think this administration is acting as if there is no domestic or foreign terrorism threat.

And

that is just so foolhardy to think that.

And so you are pulling those resources.

And that's why the sort of a rational discussion is about

what is the cost of doing this.

And so that is where it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me that you would be doing that when you have limited federal resources and there's so much that really has to be done at the federal level to prosecute these, the kinds of cases we're talking about.

No, you got to hit your quota of with Stephen Miller.

You don't want Harrison Miller getting mad at you.

Just just like a process, like I'm trying to understand how this works and like how much independence everybody has.

So when you were at the Eastern District of New York, like, do you, you talk to the Deputy Attorney General and are like, here's the kind of cases we're prioritizing?

Are

How would Todd Blanche or whoever would be the point person at DOJ influence this?

You know, that is one where,

as a matter of sort of what can DOJ in fact do, DOJ in fact can instruct and tell the local offices exactly what they have to do and how they're going to allocate, you know, within congressional bounds.

But they actually have that power.

It's just that in most administrations, it is exercised only around the edges.

There's an enormous amount of deference to the U.S.

Attorney for a whole variety of reasons, but usually because the U.S.

Attorney was selected by a sitting senator who gets proposed to the president, and then the U.S.

Attorney is actually nominated by the president.

So they have some independent clout.

And so usually the attorney general and the deputy attorney general sort of are careful before they step on those toes.

But, you know, Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche can just reach in and say, do this and don't do that.

We saw that in the Eric Adams case, where they basically pulled the case eventually from the Southern District of New York and moved it to D.C.

And they directed them as to exactly what they were going to do, including saying that you're going to move to dismiss the case without prejudice.

And you saw what happened, which was people both in the field in the southern district of New York and people in public integrity resigned over it, which is completely abnormal.

It's just, you know, that is something the only time we've seen that in any recent time is in Trump 1.0.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, Andrew, Eric Adams might end up being your best option for mayor for mayor

in your city up there.

We'll see how it shakes out.

You got the beret guy as a Republican, who knows?

The Democratic field is

Mamo leading.

Yeah, I can't really

political things, but I just, I know, I just, there are, in fact, better options.

There are better options than the Beret man and Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo.

Yes.

We'll see.

TBD on that.

I know that's a bold statement.

We'll see how your wise fellow citizens vote here.

Yeah.

What I'm saying, there are better options.

I'm not sure they're polling all that well, but I'm just saying there are better options.

I might as well tease it now.

I have a little interview with Zoron, who is not, who's on the far left for me coming up.

Maybe we might have a bonus pod for people this weekend, so keep an eye out for that.

It's quite the field that you've got there.

It feels welcoming for me now that I've, you know, whatever, left the Republican Party and more aligned on the other side.

My favorite Republican was always the one finishing in last in the primaries and all of these things because I always liked the moderate squish.

And now I just am living the same experience.

My favorite Democratic person in the mayor's primary has 2%.

So, you know, it's just the people and I are not aligned, unfortunately.

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What else do I have for you?

All right.

Comey,

when I come in when I asked you about about this, but I also want your take.

I'm obsessed with this because, again, it's something that having not been in any of these agencies, I don't really understand how it works, like the process works.

But the DHS is just spending way more than they have been allocated.

And Christy Noam.

And they're just, and Chris Murphy really put it to Christine Noam on this the other day.

And I want to play that for you and just kind of.

get your thoughts on it.

I say this with seriousness and respect, but your your Department is out of control.

You are spending like you don't have a budget.

You are on the verge of running out of money for the fiscal year.

You are illegally refusing to spend funds that have been authorized by this Congress and appropriated by this committee.

You are ignoring the immigration laws of this Nation, implementing a brand new immigration system that you have invented that has little relation to the statutes that you are required, that you are commanded to follow as spelled out in your oath of office.

You are routinely violating the rights of immigrants who may not be citizens, but whether you like it or not, they have constitutional and statutory rights when they reside in the United States.

We've covered the second half of that quite a bit, but on the first half, it's really strong there from Chris Murphy.

But on the first half, I guess if Congress doesn't care, they can just spend what they want, but where are they getting the money from?

I just, I don't understand how it's working.

Yeah, so I mean, this is you know, the Supreme Court case that I was sort of alluding to involving Truman, the famous concurrence by Justice Jackson, where they uphold congressional authority, he ends it by saying, you know, we can do this for Congress, but you know, it's yours to implement.

Like if you, Congress, don't sort of have the backbone to do what you need to do, this is all for naught.

And, you know, I think that's what we're seeing.

And so

as much as the senator did a great job, you know, he's not in the majority.

And so

in terms of actually having enough money, I mean,

presumably, they will run out of money, but they could get it in a reoff.

If they were to take it from something that was not allocated to them, again, that can be against the law.

But I think a lot of people sort of watching this are going to be like, yeah, and who's going to do anything about it?

You know, remember, we started with the TikTok ban.

Yeah, who would have standing to even do anything?

Congress.

Right.

Congress.

That's right.

I mean, the TikTok ban was how this started, where the TikTok ban was imposed by Congress.

It went to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court says it is lawful.

And then Donald Trump says, yeah, we're not implementing it.

And Pam Bondi issues a letter to tech companies saying, don't worry about putting them on your platforms because essentially we're not going to prosecute it.

And so when you start that way, this is sending a message of what are you going to do about it?

Has this created any doubts for you in the American Constitutional Republic?

Because I just look at this and it's like,

we never had, like, never had considered really before, and I guess besides treatment of black folks, but like outside of that, never really considered before the notion that maybe Congress would just decide not to do anything and that the administration could just do whatever they want and that there isn't really a remedy for it.

Like that, like that option hadn't really crossed my mind.

Aaron Trevor Bowie, the one thing that Donald Trump has clearly shown is that our checks and balances are

clearly not sufficient.

I mean, that if you have somebody who is pure id working, you know, in homage to my psychologist's mother, you know, somebody who doesn't have this sort of external controls,

that you're counting on Congress, you're counting on the courts.

And, you know, ultimately, though, you have to, we've sort of learned you have to count on the american people caring enough they're going to do something about it because these sort of institutional checks and balances have a lot of flaws and obviously we talked a little bit about the pardon power but that is a way to completely gut the legal system at least at the federal level Psychologist mother, that's just starting to explain things.

I'm starting, the picture is starting to come into,

you know, the full picture is starting to

come into focus for me.

That's pure nerd.

Yeah.

Some of of my colleagues at the Bloorg met my mother at the Denver Live show.

They're like, oh, okay now I get it.

That makes sense now.

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Rapid five through a couple of these other immigration things because we spent too much time on it.

But just really quick, the ice covering faces, not identifying themselves.

Okay, so.

I really try not to curse.

The closest I'm going to get, but it's not really what I'm thinking is what the hell.

I mean, just to be clear,

that

is so

unit is so outrageous.

This is not COVID.

The only reason to do that is to both scare people and to not be able to be held to account so that you have sort of this anonymity.

And I think it also has this effect, again, to channel sort of psychology.

Once you do that, I think it sort of in some ways liberates you to act worse, to act with impunity, because you're sort of covered.

Right.

And so it is unbelievable that there aren't people like bosses.

This is where, you know, this is where you want adults in the room to be like, that's not happening.

And what we've seen in this administration, there are no adults in the room.

Yeah.

And from a prosecutor's perspective, you also have to be like, wait a minute, this is going to create issues, right?

Like as far as

people having rights.

We've seen some of these arrests.

Like these people are not getting their Miranda rights read to them.

They're not even admitting that they're cops half the time.

Yeah, I mean, that's obviously if they're not read your Miranda rights, that's one thing.

But wearing the mask is something that is, you know, there's no constitutional right to be arrested by somebody who's not wearing a mask.

So maybe we should have thought about that.

Yeah, but it's the thing.

Don't worry on that, Madison.

But again, this just goes to the idea that is this what you want?

Is this what you voted for?

That you want these people work for us, not vice versa.

And that's what's just so outrageous about this.

I think sadly it is what people voted for.

Obviously, I can't

not mention the case regarding Andre Hernés-Romero.

Federal Judge Bozberg ruled last Wednesday, this group of Venezuelans must be provided a legal avenue to contest the administration's accusations they're gang members.

I appreciate that Bozberg described the process of these removals as being akin to a scene from the Kafka novel, The Trial,

which is a good read if people haven't checked that out since college.

Again, I don't know what the remediation is for these folks, but it's maybe kind of good.

No?

It is good.

You know, we just had our podcast on this, Justice, and I have to say, I'm a little exasperated.

I mean,

it's a 60-plus-page decision that, yes, it does say they can be a a class action, but the heart of it is something that I think American citizens are like, wait a second.

You said these people have due process rights and they're entitled to,

you have to do something government to facilitate their release and they have a right to be heard and to be heard in court.

That was already said by the Supreme Court, not once, but twice.

I was just like, Judge Bosber, can we move on?

I mean, it just read to me like you need to just get to the point where the government either is going to agree to the court order or not and just have a, and have a fine.

You have to actually just say, we're doing it.

And I think, you know, what he ended up saying is, okay, I'm going to turn to the government and say, what are you proposing?

That could have been done as soon as the Supreme Court said for the first time that their due process rights were violated.

Or maybe it could have been done right after the second time.

And the reason I'm being, you're hearing this exasperation, and I have enormous respect for Judge Bozberg, is these people are still in a God-forsaken foreign prison where they were put in violation of due process.

That is not me saying that.

That's the Supreme Court 920.

So these people's rights are currently being violated.

There should be some sense of urgency about remedying it.

It's not crazy to say their life is in danger.

I mean, talk about urgency.

These seems prison.

We don't have proof of life for Andre and some of these people.

I mean, can you just think about this?

Let's assume that there is one person there who they put there by mistake.

And we know that's already true with respect to Abreco Garcia, that he was not supposed to have been taken in violation of a court order.

So that means that person is denied their day in court.

The reason for the exasperation on my part is

it's hard to imagine if these were

people with clout politically

in a different economic and racial composition, that there would be the tolerance for the amount of delay that has gone on while they're stuck in a prison.

Amen to that.

Okay, last, last.

I lied, one more last immigration one, because we just have to hit it with regards to Makmou Khalil, District Judge Michael Farbiars.

Farbiars.

There we go.

Said he could not be removed or detained based on Rubio's determination.

The government has till tomorrow morning at this time, at the time of our taping right now, to appeal.

I saw some folks saying they expect Khalil out in the next week.

Where are you at on the Khalil saga?

You know, we'll see.

I mean, I could see them just appealing it on that.

I mean, we'll see.

The district judge did sort of give the government time to potentially appeal to the third circuit.

I'm not really sure

why they wouldn't do that.

The only cases I know where they really haven't appealed is in the law firm cases where I think they've gotten everything they want, so there's no reason for them to appeal.

My one piece of good news that I keep trying to bring up when discussing all these immigration cases is with regards to Khalil and so, in both the kind of whatever you want to call the bucket of State Department deciding you're a bad student and we can detain you bucket, and the DHS deciding you're a gang member based on your tattoos and we can send you to a foreign gulag bucket.

And there's no reason to believe that they had planned on stopping where they stopped, right?

Like the Khalil and Oz Turk and this group, including Andre and others that were sent to Venezuela, like that was the plan.

Like they were planning on sending more people to El Salvador and they're planning on taking more student leaders and they haven't yet.

Doesn't mean that they can't start again between now and when this taping comes out, but it does feel like a win for both the legal and political pushback on this that the kind of we're still talking about this that same initial tranche of of cases small green small silver lining there no i'd say small silver lining because it hasn't on those things it hasn't gotten

appreciably worse

but

you know there there's an endless array of outrage to go forward i mean the la piece is just the beginning.

You know, this is a point that I'm not the first to make, which is: I want to make sure everyone understands the president's directive was not targeted to LA.

It applies to any place in the country.

And so, you know, the number one sort of issue that I've been hearing from people about is:

if we participate in a peaceful protest on Saturday or some other time, and

you know, one person is violent or somebody, even somebody foments it to create a ruse.

Are we all going to get locked up?

Is the military going to suddenly be brought in around the country?

And the idea that that's what we're talking about is that kind of

chilling effect on the First Amendment is,

I mean, it's hard for me to do the optimistic ending.

Okay, way to just take my silver lining and just like throw it in the trash compactor and turn on the,

like we're shredding it.

I'm basically drugged him, like, what planet are you on?

Okay, great.

It's fine.

It is in the spirit of the Borg podcast.

A listener and fan gave me a button at the Nashville event that said it gets worse before it gets worse, which I liked.

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You might not have anything on this, but every time I have a lawyer on, I'm like, because I can't follow this.

Is there anything on the Doge cases, like all the firings of federal officials?

Have we had, has there been any progress on any of that, or is that all just jimmying its way to the courts?

It is going its way through the courts, but that is, again, just to give you bad news.

I mean, it's pretty clear the Supreme Court is going to overrule this case called Humphreys Executor.

It sounds really nerdy, but it's not, because what it means is that the executive, the White House, will have more power to get rid of people and to have more political operatives in government and have fewer independent bodies.

And that's like the last thing we need.

Two other random items just for you that are just kind of in what I would call the Andrew Wassman remit.

The FBI director Cash Patel filed a lawsuit in Texas, if you saw this, against an MSNBC colleague of ours, Frank Flagluzzi.

Patel is suing him for, quote, fabricating fabricating a specific lie about him in response to Flagluzzi saying that he's been more visible at nightclubs than on the seventh floor of the Hoover building.

I guess Patel is saying he's not been to a nightclub.

So

that's the basis of the lawsuit.

I don't know.

The free speech absolutists, pretty alarming that the FBI director lied on his plate, would be suing a pundit.

So I don't know.

On the other hand, sorry to Frank, but I guess I'd probably rather him be spending his time on stupid shit like this and going to hockey games than the most nefarious things he could be doing.

But I don't know.

Do you have any thoughts on that, this lawsuit?

So, yeah, I had not seen that, but this is what I would say, having been in government.

You know, you go into government, you develop a thick skin.

You're going to be criticized by people.

Were you criticized at all at the Mueller, during the Mueller investigation?

Yeah.

Weren't you?

Yeah.

Any non-factual critiques of you from anyone across the entire

punditocracy?

I guess it might let's see who can I think of who might have done that well yeah wait the president

so you know like I've been called scum a really bad guy Steve Miller called me a degenerate and a moron and

here's the thing when you're in government you develop a thick skin and you know you're gonna get batted around on all sorts of different sides and that's why the mantra is just sort of like you keep your head down and you you have to just be trying to do the right thing all the time.

And if you get called on it, that's your defense.

It's like that's what you're trying to do.

So it's just such poor form.

And

I think the biggest concern I have is the chilling effect of bringing things like that.

Again, there's no adult in the room.

I won't ask you about that, but it seems like what you're saying is that Cash Patel is a thin-skinned beta cuck.

I think that would be the technical term for it, but I'm not going to put that into your mouth.

You're going to be like a, what is it, a co-defendant of Frank's.

Now, I don't think that there's any factual statement

that can be objected to there.

I guess he could, maybe he could, maybe he's taking a test.

I wouldn't put it past somebody like Cash, a little guy like that, to have taken a test that proves that he's an alpha.

Maybe he's taken like a testosterone test and that he can bring to the court and say, this is not true.

That I was, I was defamed by a podcaster who said I was low T, but I had a doctor show that I'm high T.

That's possible.

Yeah.

Are you thinking about that at all when you're popping off these days?

Are you are you feeling chilled?

I'm not because

my view is, I mean, I think it is more important than ever to be speaking out.

And, you know, this is going to sound a little, you know, soapboxy and Pollyannish,

but you and I are privileged.

to be able to do this.

And I think the reason that like a lot of people come up to me to thank me, but I think what they're really thinking is like somebody, we're allowed to voice something that they're thinking and thinking they're alone and so

you know i just think that is incumbent and obviously we have to be you should be careful about what you say but that's that was that's always true so i agree with this no i don't they're trying to and everybody's just more sensitive now like there's just stuff i hear about stuff that i hadn't heard about you know we're like well is this thing exactly right you know like when you're using figures of speech or i'm not going to be bullied by these little guys if he wants to go to to the Texas, I'm in Louisiana.

I don't know if the Louisiana district will be as favorable to him.

You'd think there's some free speech judges out there that are like, you know, I think that we can have a little bit

still in this country as of right now, as of June 12th, you can call the FBI director low-tee without worry that you're going to be jailed.

So that's something that I can do and will do.

Let's just remember when you're a public.

you know, a public figure, and obviously the FBI director is, I mean, really, he thinks that Frank or anybody, you have to be willing to show actual malice.

And there are all sorts of things.

He knew for a fact he'd never been to a nightclub.

He'd seen his whole calendar.

He knew that he'd never been there.

And then he met right like that.

And it would have to be like that level of knowledge.

But we've seen the other guys fold.

I mean, that was true in some of these other cases with the media folks, which I don't want to get into.

Okay.

Fun, final topic.

which is in the Andrew Wisen remit.

I assume you're a musical person.

I know you're opera.

Do you do musicals as well?

You know, I'm more, I'm more concerts than opera.

And, But I do, since I'm a New Yorker, I go to the theater a lot.

And that's like

straight plays, musicals, everything.

Oh, okay.

Longtime listeners of the pod would know that I'm not a musical gay.

It's the one part of gay culture I just am a total zero on.

Yesterday,

the president and vice president went to see a musical at the Kennedy Center.

Wait.

They went to see, as I understood it, lame as a robber.

Yeah.

Right.

I don't know what that is about.

Do you know what that's about?

I don't.

Do you know what that's about?

I don't, which is the point of where I'm going.

So stick with it.

Hold on for one second.

I don't know what it's about.

And here's why.

And I want to demonstrate to you.

J.D.

Vance sent a tweet about his attendance.

And he wrote this.

About to see Les Miserable is how you pronounce it, according to Andrew.

About to see Les Miserable with POTUS at the Kennedy Center.

Me to Usha.

So what's this about?

A barber who kills people, question mark.

Usha, hysterical laughter.

There are a couple of issues with this tweet for me because I don't understand what's funny about it, because I don't know what happens in Les Miserables.

And I assume maybe there was a Barbara.

I don't know.

I don't know what's in the movie.

And my colleague Sonny Bunch points out that this is the kind of thing that you put out.

If you do know what happened in Les Miserable, actually, but you are too embarrassed to admit that you're into Fancy Boy plays.

And it seems like J.D.

Vance is doing that.

He's pretending that he doesn't know because

I literally don't understand the joke.

So I'm hoping you can explain it to me.

I can.

And it is true that

I agree with your colleague who says that he's doing this because he does know, but it's not for the reason that you're suggesting.

So one that is that about a barber who kills people, that's based on the Stevens Sondheim musical.

Sweeney Todd, which was about Sweeney Todd was a barber who killed people and then they got chopped up and put into.

So J.D.

Vance wanted to prove that he didn't know about musicals by referencing an even lesser lesser-known niche musical that I'd never heard of.

Okay, right.

Can I just say never repeat that again?

Because it is an incredibly good Steven Sondheim.

Do you know who Steven Sondheim is?

I've heard the name Stephen Sondheim.

I know that he's a person that exists.

If you said the category in Jeopardy was Stephen Sondheim plays, and then the first question was name one, I would have been unable to do that.

As right now, I could do Steve Sweeney Todd, I guess.

So, okay, for all of the people who are watching this who are shocked beyond belief.

The OG is now already.

Okay,

we're going to have to do a little remedial help.

Okay.

So that's he was referencing Stephen Santam's Sweeney Todd, which, by the way, they got chopped up and they got put into meat pies and then people ate them.

So it was a cannibalism musical.

Okay.

That's kind of hot.

But the reason he was doing this is Les Miserable

is about the French Revolution.

And it's about the people rising up against a king who is an authoritarian.

So the idea that you have him, you have tanks going through Washington, D.C.

in a military parade on Saturday.

He has 4,700 military people being called in, you know, let's take a bazooka to go after a fly in LA.

And he's issuing all these orders and he's going off to see Les Miserable Is,

I mean,

you know, this, what do you say?

Irony is now, or satire is now dead.

I mean, Trump is a theater queen, so he knows.

Like, does he not understand?

Does he think that the, again, I don't know the plot, so maybe I'm missing it.

Does he not?

Does he think maybe the people that get overthrown are the heroes?

Does he think the king is a hero?

The king doesn't come off well in Leh Miserable because you know what happens?

But could he be confused?

Could Trump be confused?

You know what happens in the French Revolution to the king?

Let's just say

his head and the rest of him are separated.

So maybe Trump doesn't, maybe doesn't identify with the king and thinks he's a nicer person.

I don't know.

What do you think is going through his little head?

What are the little flies buzzing around up there?

Where does this make America have the guillotine again?

I'm not going to say what I would have thought about that because I don't want Cash Patel coming after me.

The guillotine.

That's something to look into, I would say.

I don't know.

I'm open.

It's kind of similar to my thoughts about Sikkot and El Salvador.

It's something that I'm against until I start thinking about sending Marco there.

And then all of a sudden I'm like, huh.

You have a future in this administration.

No, Andrew Weissman, that's the meanest thing.

I kept you too long.

You're on holiday.

But it was enjoyable.

It was kind of like a vacation.

Circling on to the beginning.

You had fun.

I did.

I loved you.

All right.

Well, thanks, brother.

Enjoy the vacation.

There'll be a lot of legal issues upcoming.

So I'm sure we'll be having you back soon.

Okay.

Take care.

Everybody else, we'll be back here for another edition of the Bulwark podcast tomorrow with one one of your faves.

We'll see you all then.

Peace.

The river's all wet.

You're all cool.

Drippin' with alchemy.

Shouldn't stop, but shoot and ring.

The blender's all wet.

You're all chrome.

The man cried out, the girls cried out, the man cried out, the girls cried out, the man cried out.

Oh no.

The man cried out, the girls cried out, the man cried out, the girls cried out, the man cried out.

Oh no.

I'm off with you.

Dance, dance to the dead.

Heaven,

heavy roll,

heavy road, I'm bored.

in the

place

of the world,

I'm a little bit more of a dream.

The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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This is Larry Flick, owner of the Floor Store.

Labor Day is the last sale of the summer, but this one is our biggest sale of the year.

Now through September 2nd, get up to 50% off store-wide on carpet, hardwood, laminate, waterproof flooring, and much more.

Plus two years interest-free financing, and we pay your sales tax.

The Floor Stores Labor Day sale.

Don't let the sun set on this one.

Go to floorstores.com to find the nearest of our 10 showrooms from Santa Rosa to San Jose.

The Floor Store, your area flooring authority.

Hey parents, have you been thinking about homeschooling?

Choosing the right curriculum can feel overwhelming, but it doesn't have to.

At the Good and the Beautiful, we offer complete, high-quality homeschool courses.

And the best part, our K-8 math and language arts programs are completely free to download.

Homeschooling can transform your family, allowing more flexibility, deeper learning, and quality time together.

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