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Legal AF is live and I mean live.
Look, I just joked that I flew into New York a few minutes, literally a few minutes ago. I had to put a do not disturb sign up on it because once in the past, Karen, if you remember, I had like the housekeeper come in, right? Right while I was recording, but we're here. Oh my God, there's so much to talk about.
You can see we're using a new lower third now, which I joked with our production team about. Trump presidency breaking legal updates. I mean, that is where we live because we have no choice. We have an out of control, lawless, rogue president. And if we don't call him out on our
on a regular basis. I mean, my fear is that the ultimate judge, the voters at midterm and beyond, just won't get it. And so we have to continue unrelentlessly in opposition to Donald Trump. I mean, just before we came on the air, there's a couple of new cases. There's one right now, I mean, real time. This International Court of Trade, which nobody except nerds like you and me ever heard of, sits in New York.
Donald Trump's preferred venue for a case that was brought by a bunch of states to argue that he doesn't have tariff power. We all looked at what he was when he was in the Rose Garden with that chart. So you can put it back up.
You know, it was big, dumb chart was big, dumb commerce secretary. And we're all like, it's not alphabetical. It's not. Why are there islands that have penguins on it getting tariffs? We couldn't figure it out. And then, of course, he got rid of trillions of dollars of of tariffs.
wealth and stock market value in that moment. And then it's just been lurching from one tariff issue to another, roiling the economy. And he said, oh, I better take this case. We're all like, how does he even have that power? Why isn't that a congressional power under their core congressional function? And how did they ever delegate it to him? And why is this a wartime power?
And he didn't like where the case was originally filed, Karen. So he filed, he had it transferred to the International Court of Trade. They ruled today and it's not good for Trump. We'll get to it during the show today. And then talk about cosmic strange bedfellows. Yes.
Judge Chutkin is still a federal judge, a very good one. And she sits in D.C. And she had a case that we talked about a couple of months ago that was brought by 14 different states to argue that Elon Musk and Doge are like animals.
out of control, a complete abuse of power and a violation of the appointments clause of our Constitution. Because once again, Congress only has the power to tariff not the president. In the other matter we just talked about or we will talk about, Congress alone has the power to create federal agencies that the president appoints and the Senate confirms.
But Donald Trump got that all upside down and backwards. And they try to argue that Elon Musk is just a special temporary employee, like, you know, your Uber delivery guy. And he doesn't really wield any power. And that's not what Judge Shutkin thinks. So we had a very interesting ruling.
where she's keeping alive a case that she thinks is important and she thinks addresses a potential tyranny by Donald Trump, while at the same time giving Donald Trump a small little gift that won't really matter. We'll dive into that as well.
South Sudan, which I defy, except for you geo lovers out there, geography lovers out there, I defy anybody to have pointed that out on a map on the African continent and tell me where it was. It is a very unstable part of the world. Let's put it that way. We used to call countries like that third world countries.
Okay, well, that's where Donald Trump is offloading and delegating people that he wants to make disappear from the United States who aren't even from South Sudan. They're from Mexico and Vietnam and Cuba. And he's like, well, those countries won't take them. Where can we put them in the world?
And so they found South Sudan, this poor country, unstable, dangerous place. They didn't do any vetting in due process to determine whether these people can survive there. They don't care. Just get them out. Make them disappear. Judge Murphy in Massachusetts didn't like that. Wrote a lot of exclamation points. And people don't know this, but we're going to talk about it on the show with you and me, Karen, that we've had basically a federal –
Court system operating in Djibouti because that's where they've been sitting and they convinced the Trump administration convinced the Judge to let them hold hearings in Djibouti But now they're arguing that's unstable and they don't want to hold those hearings anymore and then they've skipped completely the Trump administration going to the First Circuit and
Court of Appeals sitting over Massachusetts. And they just said, F this. We're just going to file directly with the United States Supreme Court. Another, I think this is the 16th emergency application. What is going on with Donald Trump's unconstitutional deportation plan? Then we've got the last of the four shoes have sort of dropped
Donald Trump went after a lot of law firms, big law. A number of them just said, they threw in the towel and raised the white flag almost immediately, very transactionally. We'll just pay you a billion dollars in tribute to make you stop attacking us.
But three or four firms said, yeah, we're not doing that. And we're law firms. And we took an oath. And not just for us, but for the legal profession, we're going to fight back. And so firms like Jenner & Block and WilmerHale and Perkins Coie, and there's another firm too, all filed in separate courts.
And we got a couple of rulings now about four or five days apart, one with Jenner and Block, one with WilmerHale. These are some of the most preeminent law firms in the country. I know many people. I've hired WilmerHale to handle cases when I was an in-house counsel. They are the creme de la creme.
And I would have been shocked if they didn't fight back. General Block in particular, they had the honor in the same week, the same day to get a order from a court blocking them being put on the red list by Donald Trump, having all their national security clearances taken away, their ability to represent clients before the federal government. They got a judge to block that.
The same day, they were able to convince a judge to block the attacks on Harvard and its admittance of international students. So shout out to Jenner and Block related to that. And then we'll touch on a couple of other things, including...
Well, Emil, sorry, Emil Bove didn't last very long as the number three in the Department of Justice. He's the Grim Reaper looking guy that was one of Donald Trump's criminal defense lawyers in the conviction in front of Judge Mershon and a number of other cases. He is now going to be handpicked and placed onto the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, yes,
There's going to be this whole wave now of federal court openings that need to be filled. There's many of them. Biden tried hard to get his places filled, but there was that deal that
That deal that was cut about appellate courts with Chuck Schumer, we criticized it at the time. There's all these appellate court openings. One of them's on the Third Circuit, which covers New Jersey and Pennsylvania, a little bit of the Virgin Islands. And now Emil Bove apparently is going to be heading there. And what does that mean for Alina Haba? Because if you think acting interim New Jersey U.S. attorney is her final stop, it's not going to be. We'll cover it all. Let's bring in Karen. How are you doing, Karen?
Hey, just had to find the unmute button really quick. Hi. How are you, Popak? Good to see you. We're at least in the same area coat. Yes, we are in the same area coat, although you look much tanner than I. So you come from a much sunnier place than I do. And thank you. I watched the show that you did for me on
Wednesday, that's your normal day, but Dean Adal was there and you had some very kind words to say about the passing of my mom. And I really did. I watched it. I really did appreciate it. And all the comments and things that people said in response to that in the commentary. It's been a tough time for my family, but I know my mom better than anybody and she would want me to be doing exactly what I'm doing right now in this time and place and with our legal AF and Midas Dutch community. So
But thank you for doing that. Yeah, no, it was, it's of course my pleasure, but I was really heartened to see how people came out in support in the comments, in the YouTube comments, just resoundingly sending you love and support and condolences and to you and your family. And it just goes to show what an amazing community this is. Yes.
Always just really an amazing supportive community. So glad you're back. Glad you're doing okay. Thank you. I appreciate that very much. So let's turn to Judge Chutkan. Let's start off with Judge Chutkan. You know, this is the judge that Donald Trump attacked as being leftist, Marxist, radical. I mean, that's his kitchen magnet poetry that he uses for all judges. It's almost identical to what he did with Judge Zinnes.
in Maryland, but Judge Shetkin had a very interesting case in front of her that you and I reported on a few months ago when it was first filed. 14 states went after Donald Trump saying that, who is Doge? What is Doge? Congress has to create it, not the president. There was a Doge website service thing, but that's not what this is. And Elon Musk seems to be wielding a lot of power, including putting whole agencies and departments, in his words, into a wood chipper.
and getting rid of their, defunding them and depersonaling them and the rest. And why isn't that a violation of the appointment clause of the Constitution and the separation of powers? And so Donald Trump said, well, I'm going to file a motion to dismiss. We can have a little teachable moment here about motions to dismiss, which tests
the validity of the pleading, the first filing, the complaint, if you will. It's not, we're not going to be talking in this segment about injunctions, not about injunctions. It's about whether the complaint itself, the first filing in a case is
it states a claim. And you have to stay within, the judge stays within the four corners of the allegations. You know, she has her own personal knowledge of things about Donald Trump, but she stays and she looks at the allegations that were made about Elon Musk, about Donald Trump, their own words and all of that. And then the only issue for her
is whether the case is going to continue or she's going to dismiss it, give them the right to re-plead and fix maybe a pleading deficiency that she found, and whether she's going to grant a motion to dismiss about any individual party. And Donald Trump was sued in his official capacity, along with Doge and Elon Musk and the Trump administration. And she had something to say about that as well. Karen, why don't you take it from there?
Yeah, it was really interesting. I think it was like 40-something page order that she issued here in this lawsuit that these states brought against Elon Musk, Doge, and President Trump. And essentially the lawsuit alleged that they were illegally wielding power over the federal government. And this was a suit, as you said, brought by multiple state attorneys general. And in this motion to dismiss, she basically, because, you know, she had already,
she had originally denied their request for a temporary restraining order, which I thought was kind of interesting, right? That she would deny that. She said, but look, you know, this can proceed. Essentially, there's no emergency here, right? It's not going to be irreparable harm. And so you would think that she, you know, when you read a motion to dismiss, normally they're quite simple and, you know,
I should say they're about the case. But in a lot of these cases, it's like the judges are speaking to not just parties, but speaking to a broader audience and really giving a history lesson and a lesson on the separation of powers, et cetera. And her first line here, I think, was kind of,
I think really emblematic of that concept because she really felt the need to remind us of basic things like there's three branches of government, there's checks and balances. She used the word tyranny. Her first line was the Constitution divides and balances power across the three branches, the executive, legislature, and government.
judiciary as a vital check against tyranny and to promote effective governance. Like that's the first line of an order. You kind of know her point of view, right? Because she's really basically saying that's at stake here, right? And then she talks about something called the appointments clause because the issue here is Donald Trump just created Doge and appointed Elon Musk to be the head of Doge
who then went in and took a literal and figurative chainsaw to every agency that he wanted to go into. He fired people. He closed a few agencies. He...
He stopped funding being sent out to various people. He took private information that some of it is supposed to be guarded in secret, et cetera. And he just went in there and did all kinds of things that he wasn't supposed to do. And so she talks about something in the Constitution called the Appointments Clause.
And in the Appointments Clause, it's specifically in various statutes, but it says, look, Congress creates the agencies, right? They pass the laws authorizing certain agencies. And then the president is the one who appoints the heads of the agencies. And those are subject to Senate confirmation. And then the judiciary decides whether they both acted within their constitutional roles. And what the Constitution does not permit is the president to
quote, commandeer the entire appointments power by unilaterally creating a federal agency pursuant to executive order and insulating its principal officer from the constitution as a quote, advisor in name only. And so she goes through the whole history of Doge and it was created on January 20th. And then, you know, several agencies have been dismantled. People, thousands of people have lost their jobs. Sensitive data has been accessed in this haphazard crazy way.
And and the and this that's what this lawsuit goes to the heart of. And she basically the punchline of all of this is is you can't go after the president because he was acting in his official capacity. But I am but I am not granting the motion to dismiss as to Musk and Doge being.
the case can proceed to discovery essentially. So that's kind of the ultimate ruling here, but I thought it was a really thoughtful and interesting
motion or order where she's like, look, you know, she cited to and this was all in, I assume, in the complaint as well. But she cited to the posts on X by Musk saying, quote, we spent the weekend feeding, you know, U.S. A.I.D. into the wood chipper, you know, and then another tweet Doge team rapidly shutting down illegal payments and
She also quotes Carolyn Leavitt, the press secretary. You know, President Trump tasked Mr. Musk with starting up Doge.
And, you know, he already and he's already done that. And then another one where Musk posts on X, quote, CFBP RIP, which has to do with the Consumer Protection Board, you know, RIP, like it's dead. And so she kind of lists out all the stuff that Musk did. She goes through the standard of emotion to dismiss. And she essentially says, look, looking at everything.
You know, I'm not going to I'm going to basically say that this acted outside the scope of their authority and violated statutory and constitutional provisions and therefore that they're not empowered to do. And so the case can go on. And now we move on to the discovery phase. So it was it was a great, interesting decision. Another win, frankly, and showing that that Doge and Musk are
kind of lawless and can't do what they're doing. Um,
But, you know, frankly, it's, you know, now what, right? The case is going to proceed. It's going to proceed slowly. And a lot of damage has already been done and will continue to be done. So although it's a victory and it's another affirmation of the, frankly, the lawlessness of the Trump administration, it's still this, a lot of damage has still been done. I have a question for you, Popak, about this, which is why is the case not moot against Musk since he no longer,
works for Doge, the federal government, or is part of it at all? Like, why is it that it still goes on regarding him?
Because if she's right, if the case is right, that he was improperly appointed and she's not buying the whole special employee. You know, Musk is running around today on his social media posts. Thank you. My time as special employee is over. My 120 days is over. I'm going. No, F that. If he was never properly appointed, then everything he did at the time is invalid now.
Ultra varies and should be. So all of the actions that he took, all the funding that he cut, you know, the punishment for improperly appointing somebody to a position is not just a wrap on the knuckles. Like, well, you didn't do it right. It's everything that person did.
It's undone. It's undone. Could be should be undone. We had the same thing when he was trying to appoint in his first term people to the Homeland Security office. And he had acting this and acting that improperly appointed everything that that they did was was illegal. And and we'll take it from there. Look, the reality is she's she's saying based on the allegations of the complaint, Judge Chutkin.
And she's not buying that he's just temporary and special. That his powers, they may try to shoehorn him into that.
in order to avoid the appointment issue. But she said, it basically arose by any other name, I'm looking at the actions. I'm looking at, you know, and that she quoted, because she has to stay in the complaint that was filed. She's not making findings yet. But she quoted all the ways from defunding to the Woodchipper comment, comments by Donald Trump and the rest.
You know, Donald Trump, I'm putting Elon onto the Department of Defense. I'm putting him onto the Department of Education. That goes beyond us. He therefore does not qualify. Now, right now, who is running Doge? It's not Amy Gleeson, I'll tell you that. It's likely, and most people in the insider world think it's...
It's Russ Fott, who's your head of the Office of Management and Budget, who's the architect of Project 2025 and holds the nation's checkbook in his hands.
that he's basically effectively running Doge behind the scenes. That hasn't yet been challenged that way. But the case will now continue. She did trump a solid. Nobody knows immunity law better than Judge Chutkins, and she was on the wrong end of the Supreme Court decision in 2023 about what falls into what bucket for immunity. And so she cited not that case, but she cited a case that's going back to the 1800s in which
A president's official conduct cannot be enjoined. You may not agree with it. We may not like it. But so she dropped him from the case, which I think ultimately was the right thing to do, right? And now you can tell Elon Musk is probably fully out of the government because he's criticizing Donald Trump's big, beautiful budget.
And says, what about all the work I just did cutting all these departments and look at your increased spending bill and your tax problem? So there will be entire college and law school courses taught about the relationship between Elon Musk and the government and Donald Trump.
because we can't really even figure it out in real time this way, right? Yeah, it's fascinating. It's fascinating. Yeah. Yeah, and he better get back to his company because sales dropped 71% in the quarter.
Yeah, well, unfortunately, the people who really cared, who would buy his cars were the left-wing liberals because they were electric cars and they wanted to save the environment. And now because of the team he picked, they're all protesting his cars and they're not buying them. I mean, I don't know how he recovers from that.
Yeah, agreed. Now, let me do a plug for Legal AF, the Substack. We got Legal AF, the Substack. We are posting all like when you and I today talk about the filings like or the orders of the judge.
We and the Supreme Court, I post it. So it'll be up by tomorrow morning. Judge Chutkin's order, this order by the International Trade Court under filings AF. If it comes out of the Supreme Court, we put it under SCOTUS AF. I do a morning briefing there as well, which we do have videos. We have ad-free versions of things. We've got all the commentators on Legal AF who are doing work on Legal AF, the sub stack. So there's a little plug for that. Why don't we move in, Karen, to tariffs?
You know, when this first happened and Donald Trump, we knew it was coming because he said he was going to do it during the campaign. You know, to paraphrase something that just came out with a ruling, you know, sometimes the wolf doesn't come in sheep's clothing. Sometimes the wolf comes as a wolf, as Antonin Scalia once famously wrote. And he told us he was going to do this. And he brought into his administration all of these tariff hawks.
that wanted to tariff our way out of the deficit, which never works, from the Commerce Secretary to the Treasury Secretary to Peter Navarro fresh out of a prison stint to be his trade representatives. And there are things that a president can do and that are properly delegated by Congress in and around commerce and trade. I mean, the Commerce Department is one of them. But there are limits.
that you can't do that are constitutional core functions of the other branch, of the legislative branch. And what we're watching a lot, Karen, is a lot of, because there's multiple audiences, the public, the president, you know, the courts of appeal. When these judges are writing,
It's like they have to give like a civics intro to America lesson about the separation of powers every time that they write. And it's because we have a toddler in chief who doesn't understand, doesn't care how the government works. What is the core functions of Congress? What are the core functions of the president? What are the core functions of Congress?
the judiciary branch. And so we had another example of that with a case that got filed in another court. Donald Trump didn't like the judge. He moved to change venue when 14 states or so decided to challenge his setting tariff policy. And not only setting it, imposing tariff
you know, worldwide 25% tariffs and more against certain countries. And then we're watching this gyration where, you know, because he watches something on CNBC or he watches something on some other cable news show or somebody phones him or somebody visits him in the Oval Office from Walmart or from BlackRock or from private equity firms or Jamie Dimon calls him from Citigroup.
You know, J.P. Morgan, I'm sorry, J.P. Morgan Chase, you know, and then, oh, oh, I got to cut it. I got to stop it. I got to put a moratorium on it. I mean, and the economy is just roiling. You know, the everyday economy for people, their kitchen table politics and economics are the ones that are suffering. While Donald Trump doubled, I'll just put this before we get to the case. Donald Trump has doubled his net worth since January.
Put in the comments. We're watching them tonight. Put in comments if your bank account or any kind of your financial holdings have doubled since January because this president's has almost tripled.
In terms of the money that he's brought in. By the way, that doesn't even include what his family is making, right? Right. If you add that, that ecosystem, triple it, quadruple it. That's since he's been president of the United States. And people have to remember these types of things when they come to vote at the midterms. So he moves the case about whether he has tariff power or not.
because he claims he has it under the International Emergency, Economic Emergency Act, IPA, sorry. And he moves it to the International Court of Trade in Manhattan.
But you and I had a scramble to look up. I practiced for a long time, but I've never had a case there. And I'm like, what is that court? It's a specialty court. That's funny. I looked it up, too. I looked it up, too. You have to. We didn't learn that. Did I take a trade course in law school? I might have. I took an international course, but I don't think it was about trade. And so we look it up, and we realize it's a specialty Article III court. Pardon me.
That is devoted to all things tariffs and trade and has exclusive jurisdiction to handle those issues. And the reason I think he tried to move it there is he knew he had a judge he didn't like that where it was filed.
And there were a couple of Trump appointees over there. He thought, well, if I get the right panel, maybe this will go in my favor. No. So we talked earlier about Judge Chutkan not issuing a temporary restraining order and not giving us pause about whether how she was going to rule about Musk and Doge. And similarly, this international trade court did not grant the temporary restraining order to block Donald Trump's continued use of his tariffs. We were like, oh, that's not a good sign.
But we now have the final decision by the trade court that came out. You and I were scrambling. It came out like at 7 p.m. right before we got on the air to try to read it all. Oh, okay. This is good. See? Salty. Good producer. We got an Obama, a Reagan, and a Trump. Those are the panel.
But they all agreed. There was no I don't think there was a dissent in there. I didn't see one in the 52 pages. I breezed through before we got on the air and we'll do more hot takes about it. But, Karen, why don't you why don't you give sort of, you know, the big picture of what this court rules? And then I'll preface it by saying he's already appealed. And we'll talk about the appellate process that happens next.
It basically said that he exceeded his power as president to do these tariffs. That's the bottom line. And again, just like Judge Shutkin, the judges here decided to give an explanation for people reading this. It's kind of a...
education on the Constitution. And I feel like we're at schoolhouse rock again, you know, back where they're explaining, you know, I'm just a bill and explaining kind of how things work. So, you know, it says the Constitution assigns Congress the exclusive powers to, quote, lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, and to regulate commerce with foreign nations. That's Article 1, Section 8,
of clauses one and three of the Constitution. And then it says the question in the two cases before this court is whether the IEPA, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, delegates these powers to the president in the form of authority to impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world. The court does not read IEPA to confer such unbounded authority and sets aside the challenged tariffs imposed there under.
It's a 49-page decision that then goes on to talk about what the Constitution says, about the tariffs, about IEPA, the history of all of the presidential authority to regulate imports during national emergencies. And it just goes on and on. It's fascinating for anybody who wants to learn about this and read about it. And I'm sure you're going to put it in the legal AF sub stack where you put all the decisions, Popak, which is so helpful.
And people can read about it in much more detail. But it just goes to show, once again, this is what's happening over and over and over again, is courts are basically saying presidents are not kings. You really can't just do whatever you want. You either have to do either...
it's in the constitution or it's a statute has been passed. And then that's what you can do. There are certain things that they can do that are discretionary. That's policy, but not things that are specifically given to another branch. So he does not have this authority and they don't read the, any of the statutes or the constitution to give him this authority. So it's just, once again,
Really, everything he's doing gets struck down. Or the other thing that's happening is the market is waking up to Trump and to what he's doing. And I'm sure everybody knows about this and has seen this, but on Wall Street, I guess they're calling him a taco or calling the situation a taco, that Trump always chickens out.
And that's what you see over and over again, whether it's with the law firms, whether it's with the tariffs, whatever it is, you fight him at the end of the day, either he chickens out or he loses and gets struck down by the courts. You just have to really have the strength and the fortitude to go after him. And typically, I mean, I know he's,
a little Teflon Donnie in the sense that, you know, he gets, he gets like the whole presidential immunity thing and he got prosecuted and convicted and still president. So I'm not saying that, you know, that he doesn't sometimes win and win really big.
But it's, you know, this Trump always chickens out. And apparently that seemed to really get under his skin because he, you know, he goes crazy. So, you know, let's see. I know he's been, I know he's, you can tell it's gotten under his skin because, you know, he yelled at a reporter who mentioned it. And, you know, he's, he's, he's,
whatever you could just tell Bob I'm sure Jordy is working on taco t-shirts for the Midas Touch store as we speak if that hasn't already I know Jordy watches our show taco taco t-shirts so we're going to the producer just wrote something back we're going to cover a lot more we're going to talk about the South Sudan ruling and why it matters including the fact that it will come up first through Ketanji Brown Jackson and
Got some rulings about Jenner and Block and WilmerHale, which also matter to as we are. We are all the foot soldiers to protect our constitutional republic in one way or the other. And there's a lot of different ways to continue to what we're doing here, which is to grow our community and our fellowships.
- My stepmother who's watching this live just texted me. She wants a taco t-shirt. - There we go. - So I have to say hi to grandma Tony and my dad who I'm sure are watching it together. - Shout out to Karen's lovely family. So there's a lot of different ways that we have to support what we're doing here. Look, Legal AF has been on the air for five years.
We are now, you know, we bounce around between top 12 and top 20 in the world, and that's all because of our audience. I mean, we're doing our part to bring you the content that you enjoy and take it seriously in that regard. But without you, we're nothing. Let's be frank. You know, you are the oxygen. You are the atmosphere that we breathe. And so if you want to be a part of it, which you're already here making that commitment to an hour-long podcast, and you want to help us continue to kind of rock it up
the other charts, there's a number of ways to do it. Here, you're watching, that's great. Tell your friends about it, watch it again, go over to the audio podcast platforms where we do well, but not as well as on the video. We could use more audio downloads to be fair.
And so go over to wherever, you know, Apple Pod in different places and download it there as well. And then we've got the other sort of parts of the ecosystem that make Legal AF, Legal AF to be one-stop shopping for all things at the intersection of law and politics. Legal AF Substack we talked about. We've got Legal AF, the YouTube channel that I curate. We now have a dozen contributors there on a regular basis. We have...
One that just joined us in the last week, we've got Renato and Asha who do a show called It's Complicated. They're both former FBI agents.
Asha is a Yale lecturer on national security issues. Renato is a former federal prosecutor as well and a defense lawyer or a corporate litigator. And they do this great show called It's Complicated, breaking all this down. Asha also does, going to be doing a new segment on Legally F called Ask Asha. So we have them. And then Cindy Blue, I was just talking to Cindy Blumenthal today.
Never thought I'd make that sentence come out of my mouth. I was just talking to Cindy Blumenthal today, along with Sean Wilentz, and there are resident, you know, historians. Every legal show needs one. And they take it seriously. They bring on such amazing guests.
They're doing a new one that's coming up, comparing Donald Trump to Richard Nixon, bringing in a lot of Nixonian people, a lot of people that were in or around the administration at the same time, Sidney Blumenthal and Sean Wilentz with the Court of History. And, you know, we take sort of the programming really, really seriously. I'm going to be interviewing on Saturday. We'll post it on Monday. And I think, Karen, you may know this person, Jonah Bromwich with the New York Times has a new book out,
as of today, called Dragon on Center Street. And he's doing a complete overview of everything related to the criminal conviction and trial of Donald Trump in front of Judge Rashad, including a lot of people that Karen at one time had worked with.
And I'm going to be bringing them on the show on Saturday for Legal AF, the YouTube channel. So you'll tune in hopefully for that as well. And then we've got our pro-democracy sponsors that Jordi Maisalis does an amazing job curating that. We test out the products. We like them. And then they're here. And it's not just random. They want to be on Legal AF, Midas Touch. They want to support us.
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Thank you.
That's T-R-Y-A-R-M-R-A dot com slash legal AF.
And we are back. You're such a great salesperson, I have to say. I really think you're great at these ads. That one went a little long and I didn't like my haircut in the first one. But other than that, I do. I like your enthusiasm. Thank you.
So I'm going to say something out loud, Popak, because this way people will hold me accountable and I want to be held accountable. So I'm saying it out loud. I have a little resolution that I'm doing. Number one is I'm starting exercising. So that's number one, which is important. I need to be held accountable.
But really also number two is I'm starting to do the hot takes every day. So I'm going to be on Legal AF, the YouTube channel, much more regularly. I know I used to do it more and then life got in the way. I got really busy, but now I can do it. I'm going to do it. And so I'm going to try to do it every day. So I'm saying it out loud so that
this way hopefully people you know now now i have to actually do it yeah and i'm now thank you for doing that and i am now going to hold you to that because i've had a playlist with your name on it kind of you know hovering waiting for your return so i'm i've done three i've done three so where are they
They will get to you. So I'm free. They will get to you. And Salty will get them to you. All right. Well, offline, you and I will talk about the most efficient way to make it easy on you and also get these things up. Yeah? Yes, of course. You made my heart sing. Thank you very much. Well, part of it, too, is, you know, the whole –
Like Legal AF being in the top 100 podcasts in the world is like unbelievable to me. And so the more we do, the higher the number goes. So, you know, part of it is a little bit of my competitive spirit. Part of it too is there's so much to talk about. Every single day, there's so many things. I joked with Salty that Legal AF, it's like the little engine that could. You know, the Midas brothers, right?
We have an entire network that's devoted to the Midas Brothers podcast. You know, it's got an ecosystem around it. We do pretty good at Legal AF. But, you know, the fact that we even get into these charts is just fascinating. But you're right. We can use more jet fuel. I agree. Well, that's all I needed to hear. Yeah, you certainly bring it. Speaking of bringing it, let's –
Let's talk about South Sudan. Again, these are words I never thought I'd have to form in my mouth about this administration. So let me frame it. Trump's got a bunch of people he thinks are criminals or have violated immigration law in some way. He wants to deport them. In order to deport them, you have to deport them to somewhere. You can't just leave them at the airport like that old Tom Hanks movie.
And so, you know, many countries don't want to take these people back. And unless he's going to just violate airspace, international airspace and sovereignty and just drop people off in Cuba and Mexico, Vietnam, Laos and different places where these people came from, he's sort of stuck. Now, what normally would happen is when you try to deport people and there's no place to deport them to.
And no other country will take them. That's a little dirty secret of deportation. You got to have a country to take them.
They just really I mean, it's hard to believe they just released them into the into the into the wild, into the United States. Trump didn't want to do that. So he wants to he negotiated with these third world countries dangling money in front of them. Who will give you money like El Salvador and and not no, not Panama, maybe Panama and South Sudan will give you millions of dollars. You know, you have no GDP in these countries. If you'll take these bad people, people that we think are bad people.
And there has to still be due process around it, even though John Sauer in his filing with the United States Supreme Court said they don't they're not even citizens. They they're here, but we don't really need to give them due process. We gave them enough. It's always their argument. They got enough due process. The due process is overrated. And Murphy, Judge Murphy.
a judge up in Massachusetts has sort of been at wit's end dealing with the Trump administration because he feels like he's bent over backwards to help, you know, he's let them do all sorts of crazy things like, well, we don't want to bring them all the way back to the United States. Can't we hold these hearings in Djibouti? You
He's like, "Okay, as long as there's due process and it's sort of a US soil type thing at a base somewhere, I guess you could do that." And then they came back, "Oh no, it's too hard to do that." His main problem is that there hasn't been a proper vetting to determine whether these people are going to die in South Sudan or not. And it's an unstable country. I mean, that's who's willing to take these kind of people, I guess.
So you got the ruling by Murphy I want you to dive into, Karen. And then you have an appeal that didn't go right where we thought it was going to go, sort of skipped a step. And why don't you pick up from there?
Well, nothing says happy Memorial Day like a crazy rant from Donald Trump. And it's related to this topic because I couldn't believe waking up on Memorial Day and seeing this crazy rant that is I had to then figure out what's he talking about. He says in all caps, of course, happy Memorial Day to all. This is from Donald Trump.
Happy Memorial Day to all, including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country through warped radical left minds who allowed 21 million people to illegally enter our country, many of them being criminals and the mentally insane, through an open border that
Only an incompetent president would approve, and through judges who are on a mission to keep murderers, drug dealers, rapists, gang members, and released prisoners from all over the world in our country so they can rob, murder, and rape again, all protected by these USA-hating judges who suffer from an ideology that is sick and very dangerous for our country.
"Hopefully the United States Supreme Court and other good and compassionate judges throughout the land will save us from the decisions of the monsters who want our country to go to hell. But fear not, we've made great progress over the last four months and America will soon be safe and great again. Again, happy Memorial Day and God bless America." Like WTF, okay? That's the Memorial Day, congratulations.
But after that unhinged Memorial Day, all caps, rant, this is about this airplane full of convicted criminals, the worst of the worst, rapists, murderers, all of that.
There's no question about that, that these are not our finest individuals, and none of them are U.S. citizens, and their countries won't take them back. And so what are you supposed to do when you've got somebody who is in this country illegally, and we don't want them, and their country won't take them back, or they can't go back because there's an issue, you know, maybe they come from a lawless country, whatever, or they fear persecution, that sort of thing.
And there's a process for that. There is a third party. You can go somewhere else, you know, third party that will accept you. But you get process. You have to be given notice. And they call it shorthand a reasonable fear interview.
give you a chance to say whether or not you have any reasonable fear of persecution or torture if you're sent to this third party country. And basically in this particular instance, they were given these eight individuals. Again, I'm not saying we want these individuals in our country, but we believe in due process in this country and we believe in the rule of law. You can't just whisk someone away in the middle
of the night you are entitled to process and and here these individuals were given 16 hours notice and it was most of that time was during nighttime sleeping hours so
They literally, the plane takes off and they got stuck in Djibouti because they're sort of stuck there and in this legal limbo. And essentially what's happening is they've been going back and forth in court with the government who was like, well, we don't want to bring the plane back.
to give them this reasonable fear interview. We want to do it where they are. Let's like have a little mini hearing in Djibouti where they can interview and we can do it there. And so the judge is like, okay, I'll give you what you asked for. I won't order you to turn the plane around and bring them back. You can do it there. But it turns out that
the order. So then he, that's what brings us to this order. And again, the opening, the opening line of this order, you can tell where it's going. The judge says the defendants have mischaracterized this court's order while at the same time, manufacturing the very chaos that they decry. So,
You know, they basically, he says, look, they raced to get six class members onto a plane to unstable South Sudan, clearly in breach of the law and this court's order. And defendants gave this court no choice but to find that they were in violation of the preliminary injunction, essentially holding them in contempt or about to hold them in contempt because.
He basically said, I told you to give them a reasonable opportunity to have this hearing. You asked for it to be done there. And not only did you take them away, 16 hours is not reasonable. Now you suddenly can't do this hearing that you asked for, that you can't do this interview that you asked for.
And the defendants are saying, oh, it's too cumbersome. It's logistically, we can't do it on another continent. But the judge is like, you asked for that. This is what you wanted. And so the court basically says, look, the court recognizes the class members at issue here have criminal histories, but that doesn't change due process. The history of American freedom is in no small measure the history of procedure, besides to a case from 1945.
It is a procedure that spells much of the difference between rule of law and rule of whim or caprice. Steadfast adherence to strict procedural safeguards is our main assurance that there will be equal justice under the law. And the court treats its obligation to these principles with the seriousness that anyone committed to the rule of law should understand. And look, just as a lawyer, as a human, I mean, the reason I love this country, Popak, so much is because we have things like due process. We have rights.
Even the worst of the worst have rights. We're not a country that takes people in the middle of the night and throws them away and locks away the key. I mean, why do you think people are coming from all over the world trying to get to this country? Because we have rights, right? And I think it's, you know, my favorite line in this was, it's a procedure that spells much the difference between rule by law and rule by whim or caprice, right?
And we are a country of laws, not of whim and caprice. And Donald Trump is chaos, whim and caprice. And that's what's happening. And that's what this this basically what the courts are starting to do and starting to hold him accountable. And and essentially, you know, he said, look, he basically said, I'm holding you twice in noncompliance that is leading to where we are now. So and now he's appealing the ruling.
to the supreme court yeah he skipped the first circuit court of appeals which i'm not sure you know listen he he's batting about 500 at the united states supreme court from a procedural standpoint i don't see how this is an emergency but you know they've been willing to allow him
to exploit the shadow docket and the emergency applications, which, just to remind everybody, means, or as Justice Kagan put most recently in a decision, it puts the court on a very short fuse, which they don't like. They have to make rulings on an incomplete record with skeletal briefing and oral argument in a rapid amount of time. And they're just not built for that.
you know we you and i have had a report on and on dina doll with me as well on legal af youtube channel i've had a report on so many emergency applications and their rulings and they go on like one or two pages
And they leave much to desire. They give improper guidance to trial judges about how to apply them. They are temporary in nature, but sometimes they are the final ruling because, you know, by the time the case comes up a year later, effectively the damage has been done. It can't be undone.
in that amount of time. So they're allowing him to exploit this docket. At least, you know, you need four votes and we know he has almost an automatic four.
Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas. And that's enough to get these emergency applications granted or brought up, not the full appeal, but on this basis. So is it technically correct at all to have skipped the first circuit to develop the appeal to let it percolate and marinate appropriately at the appellate level? No.
But has the Supreme Court bent over backwards to let him skip these steps? Yes. Now, it is, we'll see what happens. I mean, he did take the appeal. It's been a couple of days. This one in particular sits with Katonji Brown-Jackson because even though he skipped the First Circuit, it is coming out of Massachusetts. And Katonji Brown-Jackson is responsible for that region. She can make this decision on her own.
which I would implore her to deny it, the appeal, or she can turn it over to the big nine. And we haven't learned yet what she's going to do. There's been no briefing schedule set. And so they are effectively blocked by the ruling by Judge Murphy.
But, you know, you got to stay tuned to Legal AF because there are these stories. I mean, you and I cut our teeth in the four or so criminal cases against Donald Trump and how fast those were moving. Now multiply that by almost 200 cases and 65 injunctions and 16 emergency applications. And you can see why, you know, we started Legal AF, the YouTube channel, just before the election for this break the glass moment.
and why I'm so thrilled to have you come over, back over to one of your homes, Legal AF, the YouTube channel, because I could use your contributions, right? We're trying to expand our coverage there. We're doing about eight to 10 videos a day, but we really could be doing 12 to 15 videos a day. And I think with your help, we'll be able to do that. Other ways to support Legal AF, Legal AF the podcast. It needs more audio content.
It's like that fast food chain. Eat more chicken or whatever it is. We need more audio downloads. Some people don't even know we're on audio. Some people think we're all on YouTube. Some people on audio don't know we're on YouTube.
Do both. Go back and forth in front of both. Send these things off to your friends and family because we're organically growing completely by word of mouth. We have no marketing department. We're not getting all the press
that our brothers are getting. You know, we're starting a little bit, we're a little bit of a hidden secret, but you guys know about us and our audience knows about us and millions and millions of people a month know about the work we're doing on Legal AF. So audio, you got video, you got Legal AF, the YouTube channel, Legal AF, the Substack,
You really wanna geek out on everything related to law and politics. We wanna be one stop shopping, a clearing house for everything law and politics all in one place.
and that's what we're able to do in those places. And then of course, we still have Patreon. We're still doing a lot of work on Patreon, a lot of interesting work on Patreon for people that wanna support there as well. All different ways to support. And then of course we got our sponsors and they're oh so important to us. You said earlier that you complimented me sort of about the enthusiasm, but I'm enthusiastic because I'm so thrilled we have them. I mean, when we started Legal AF,
There were times we had no sponsors whatsoever. And it was just like me and Ben. I was like selling my law firm. He was selling whatever he was selling. You know, that was it because we just weren't big enough. We weren't renowned enough to attract sponsors that wanted to talk to our audience. Our audience wasn't big enough. But now we are. And that's a reflection of, again, the fellowship and community that we've built here. So now we have our last word from our sponsors.
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And I got a new sponsor, overpriced jumbo cashews in my hotel room. They're at every hotel room, I assure you. But I was hungry. Welcome back to Legal AF, Karen Freeman-Ignifilo, Michael Popak. Let's see, we're in the homestretch. Let's get down to law firms duking it out with Donald Trump and winning.
Jenner and Block, WilmerHale, two fine firms. I'm sure, Karen, you know a lot of people there, work there. I've hired a couple of these firms in the past. And unlike
more than a dozen other law firms, some of which I'm embarrassed to say I used to work at, who decided, nah, we'll just give them $100 million of free legal service. These firms fought back and did exactly what Beryl Howell, a judge we reported on about two weeks ago, told them they should do, which is, you got a problem? You got a problem where you're being abused by a president?
and a tremendous abuse of power, you're being put on a blacklist, you're having your careers taken away, you're having a chilling effect on your obligations to use zealous advocacy on behalf of clients, then you come to a federal judge. A president is out of control and rogue and blacklists you through an executive order, then come to us.
And she wrote a very, which has, I think, been the template for other judges like Judge Bates and the rest, because these three or four law firms that filed their complaints and temporary restraining orders and other things against Donald Trump's administration for all getting executive orders against them, they all got assigned to different judges, which is what happens in our world. Now,
before we turn to Jenner and Block and WilmerHale, there is already resistance and pushback within law firms that settled. Remember, there are about 14 law firms. It started with Paul Weiss, 45, 40, I think it was $40 million of free pro bono legal services, Donald Trump, to make him stop beating them because they're transactional lawyers and the litigators got gagged within their company, in their firm, I'm sure. And then, but that set, that got Donald Trump a tingling
And Emile Bove, soon to be a Third Circuit judge who was running this program, along with Stephen Miller, decided to go for more. So then they upped the ante. And then we had $100 million by Skadden Arps, and then $150 million by Wilkie Farr and Gallagher. And then we're off and running.
But you total it all up. It's over a billion dollars worth of free legal service. Now, in order to have that mean anything, they've got to actually do the work. The problem is younger associates don't want to do that work. And some of them are quitting, like Rachel Cohen and others. Some of them are staying and just saying, we're not doing the work. You're going to fire us over it? So now they're scrambling to see how they're going to get the work. And then when work comes to them, they're refusing it.
Like Greta Van Susteren is all upset. I didn't realize, I know she was famous for the OJ trial. I didn't realize she was so MAGA, but she's MAGA MAGA. And she tried to bring a case to one of the major firms, Skadden Arps, where I worked and said, you need to represent this veteran who's to sue a judge. They're big on suing judges, putting judges in jail, putting members in Congress in jail.
And the scouting was like, no, we're not doing that. So it's one thing to announce all of these pro bono things. It's another thing to get the people to do it or these firms to actually do it.
And then Beryl Howell reminded us, why would you ever want to go to a firm like that? Because why would you ever want them representing you against the federal government? Because you got to think that they're not loyal to you. They're not going to use their zealous advocacy because they're worried about the Trump administration. And that's sort of where we end up with these two cases, Jenner and Block and Wilbur Hale. Karen, why don't you take it from there? It's just unbelievable to me how...
And essentially what the judges are doing is they're striking down these executive orders saying you can't do that. You can't target an individual for no reason. First of all, you're violating the First Amendment rights, right? The right to free speech and assembly. And you can't just go after somebody because you don't like that Robert Mueller worked there or Jack Smith worked.
there or and these are the reasons that they're going after them and so these basically these are getting struck down completely these executive orders
So what I don't really understand is why more law firms didn't fight back. I mean, because Trump is losing completely. So now what, right? Now what happens? I mean, really, why aren't they fighting back? Why are some of them settling? Can you tell us why? But why? It has to do with the world, as you know, and I certainly know from leaving law school, the world divides in the law into two worlds.
You're either a transactional lawyer, and you can subsume within that regulatory public interest and all that, or you're a litigator. And if you're a litigator and you're a trial lawyer, you're pugilistic. You want to fight. You see how this is a violation of our code of ethics and to have a chilling effect on the entirety of our profession.
You're a transactional lawyer, you're a dealmaker. And I worked with them when I worked at a Wall Street firm. Those lawyers, sure, they get sworn in. They're members of a bar because they have to be. But they haven't thought about the rules of professional responsibility in decades. They don't consider themselves to be officers of the court, even though they are. They consider themselves to be dealmakers and business –
They might as well have gone to MBA school, except you need a lawyer who knows how to run a deal, knows how to put documents together, knows how to put agreements together. And that's the only reason they're lawyers. But they really just want to be MBA people, hedge fund people. They'd rather be on the other side making more money anyway. And so most of these firms that we've discussed, Paul Weiss, Wilkie Farr, and Skadden, my old firm, they're all run by lawyers.
The rainmakers who bring in 10, 20, 30, 50 million dollars a year or more, they run the firms and they didn't want it. They did not want to challenge Donald Trump. They thought it would put them out of business, that they didn't want to play the odds with the judges. They know that Donald Trump has had a lot of success with judges. Look, everybody thought this guy was going to be in. You and I are going to be doing podcasts right now. He was going to be in jail and that didn't happen. And that scared the crap out of everybody.
That he has this ability to just navigate and walk through a minefield and not blow off any of his limbs. So he's a scary cat.
And I know why they did it. I just don't agree with it. Now, the firms that have all filed and have been successful are firms that we consider to be like the creme de la creme of litigation practices. And they had really no choice because they were never going to submit. And 50, 80, 90 percent of their revenue comes from representing clients before the federal government.
And in cases in which there's federal prosecutors on the other side. So they were like, fuck it. You know, we, pardon me, legally F it. We have to, we're live folks. My father's listening. Am I not cursing enough? Is that the problem? Exactly. More, do it more. And that's, but that's the reason. But, but they're wrong. As you pointed out, they're wrong. They should have,
they should have honored our profession and understood the chilling effect it would have. And the one nice thing about this though, Karen, is how many law firms are being formed
Now, to oppose Donald Trump and their entire reason for being is because of Donald Trump going after lawyers and law firms and them losing their balls to fight back. There's a handful of law firms now that have broken away from major firms like Abby Lowell's firm and others that their entire reason for being is to represent people who have been retaliated against by the Trump administration. And that makes me proud to be a lawyer.
Yeah, look, me too. But I, you know, just from a, you could even be pro-Trump, anti-Trump. It has nothing to do with Trump. This is retaliatory, targeted, just lawless executive orders. And just for the principle of it, how do you not fight back to be singularly just targeted like that?
Again, it's First Amendment and freedom of association. There's all sorts of constitutional grounds why these don't work. I don't even know if there's a bill of attainder possibility that could be brought against, a claim could be brought where you essentially can't
convict someone without due process. And that's essentially what they're doing, what Trump is doing in these executive orders. He's basically saying, you know, convicting them without any due process, essentially saying, you know, we're taking away your security clearances. We're, you know, we're going to not allow you to represent people, you know, who, like if you have a government contract and you're representing that person in that transaction, you know, you're not allowed to do that. You know, all that kind of stuff. Like,
I just, every single law firm that's fighting back is winning. And same thing with the universities, right? Who have fought back like Harvard instead of caving essentially, right? They will win on the merits. And I just don't understand why more people don't fight back and why they cave. Because if you cave, what you're essentially doing is you're allowing the bully to win.
and you're emboldening the bully. And that's the problem I have. Again, you could even be Republican or conservative or pro-Trump, but you still can't allow lawlessness to happen. And that's the problem I have mostly with Donald Trump. If he was doing all the things that he's doing, like the tariffs, right? The tariffs were just resoundingly struck down as we discussed.
He controls Congress, right? He controls, the MAGA controls both houses. Why not just have Congress pass the laws for the tariffs? And then guess what happens? Then they're legal. It's like so much of what he's trying to do and he's losing, he could do legally.
because he controls Congress. And I don't understand why he's not doing things legally. Instead, he's just doing things that he feels like doing. He's losing them all. And he looks like, you know, people are saying he looks like a chicken and he looks like he's just scattered. Yeah. Like a taco. He looks like a taco. He's pink. Pink. He's orange. Okay.
True. I know, but the problem is I love tacos. So that's the one thing I really don't want the taco to be associated with him because-
and all of that. But listen, I love doing the show with you. Oh, there you go. See, he's all right. I'm sure that's AI generated, but I love it.
But I love it. But we've reached the end of another Legal AF, some breaking news. Karen is going to be doing regular hot takes on Legal AF, the YouTube channel, on a playlist that we have already for her. And I'm really looking forward to that, working with her on that. We covered a lot on this particular episode. We started with Judge Chutkin giving Donald Trump a break, but not really.
in allowing a major lawsuit to go forward related to doge and elon musk as we got on the air we had a we had a cover because it's fascinating a case by the international court of trade in new york
which basically says Donald Trump has unconstitutionally imposed tariffs, which if it's successful, after it gets through the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, which has now been appealed to in the U.S. Supreme Court, which has completely wrecked Donald Trump's whole economic plan,
We talked about South Sudan and the fact that Katonji Brown Jackson has a very hard decision to make about whether people without due process are going to be deported there. And then lastly, we talked about Jenner and Block and WilmerHale and all the other firms, why some firms didn't fight back, but we have a mad love for those that have in our particular profession. And of course, how do you support what we're doing here? Legal AF, the sub stack. That's where you're going to get all the
detailed reporting, morning briefing by me. I do something called morning AF and then all the filings that we talk about and videos and things like that. We got almost 60,000 Substack people in about a month, which is great.
Legal AF, the YouTube channel. Karen's rejoining us there. We've got Asha and Renato on It's Complicated. Sean Wilentz and Sidney Blumenthal on Court of History. We have Court Accountability Action with Lisa Graves, Alex Aronson, and Mike Sachs. We've got Dean Adal. We've got Shan Wu, Melba Pearson, and Dave Arenberg, all on Legal AF, the YouTube channel.
And those are the ways that you can support us, continue to grow and help us with our audio downloads, audio listens on this particular podcast. So Karen, last word as always.
Of course, I have to say goodnight to my dad. Goodnight, Grandma Toni. And goodnight to my sister, Jen, who's also watching. So I love my family. I love how they support this show. And I love doing this live because I love reading the comments as we sit here. And people are hilarious. And they're just so engaged. So thank you, everyone, for joining us live and for being so engaged and active in the comments tonight.
Until our next episode, which will be Saturday with me and Ben Mysalas, it's Karen Freeman at Nipolo, Michael Popak, Legal AF. Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal AFers.