DOGE Is Defying Court Orders. Will the Supreme Court Care?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:00 Clip: You must never, ever give up or give in. You must keep the faith and keep your eyes on the prize. That is your calling. That is you mission. That is moral obligation. That is mandate. Get out there and do it. Get in the way. Change happens because people care. The people have the power to make this life free and beautiful. To make this live a wonderful adventure.

0:00:38 Clip: I still believe with all my heart, America can be a place where no child is left hungry, no community is left behind, and no one gets told they don't belong. Country is always worth it.

0:00:59 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1132. I'm Thomas Smith. That over there is real life attorney Matt Cameron. How are you doing?

0:01:06 Matt: Having a rapid response Monday, I guess. We're changing it up.

0:01:09 Thomas: It's like a delayed rapid, delayed onset, rapid response. I don't know, something.

0:01:15 Matt: The one where you get the weekend to think about it, so that helps.

0:01:18 Thomas: There's just a little bit of a delay, but then it's rapid right Cause yeah, we, pushed or I also, I won't blame you. I pushed the rapid response try to get Gavel Gavel out. And thank you so much, everyone, for checking that out. Seriously, that means a lot, especially when we're, you launching it publicly, trying to get it noticed. Please, if you don't mind, on that, subscribe and write a review, you know. Hit the five stars and all that. And hopefully folks will notice it. But seriously, thank you to everyone checking that up. Worked so hard on it and there's a lot more to go. So we're excited.

0:01:47 Matt: Haven't finished binging it yet, but I'm having a good time learning things from Gavel Gavel. It's fun to actually listen and learn to a show that I'm usually on. But you guys are great. I never even thought I'd be that interested in the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni trial, but I'm getting pretty into it.

0:02:01 Thomas: It's so I honestly like I know I've already said I won't go too much into it but it really is just a microcosm not even very micro it's a a macro microcosm of the the information problem we have everywhere you know and it's just like so many implications for that and to see it actually litigated I know the courts have been in a way way, where we have gone for actual truth in this post -truth era.

0:02:23 Thomas: They enough, as courts have been where, actually oh, the facts do matter in one more place. It's Alex Jones or whether it'S Trump Who got convicted? And we did a whole thing on it. Like it's it's very interesting and it's cool to have that play out in another way. We're going to get to actually have truth matter on this thing, I think.

0:02:23 Matt: It's very true.

0:02:40 Thomas: All right. Well, that all said, let's get to rapid response Monday because we promised it and we're excited to get you some stories and answer a requests. We always put that thread up on patreon .com slash law so people can tell us what they want to hear. It's always very helpful. So do you want to preview tease what we're going to be talking about? Wow.

0:02:40 Matt: Yeah yeah. True. We got a couple of Supreme Court updates including one with a patron request on what is going on with the USAID funding freeze in front of the Supreme Court and we're going to talk a little bit about the alien registration requirement the Trump administration announced and what that's all about. Yeah it's it's extreme and it's arguably not really based on existing law. Then I got a great footnote for you and sorry I've been obsessed with recently involving the single most criminal person to appear as counsel in front of the Supreme Court that we know of. Quite a story, and it's a very unexpected person, so on that soon.

0:03:28 Thomas: Looking forward to it. Yeah. I, our, uh, heads have been down so hard on this gavel gal thing. I normally am the lay person. I'm gonna be even more lay. I put the so much lay into this lay person cause I didn't get to follow these stories from last week. So, uh to find out what fresh hell awaits us on the other side of the break so we'll take that break and uh you can avoid the ads of patreon .com slash law and we'll get right to it Today's episodes brought to by first leave. A huge fan of wine and wine I is delicious. It's classy, goes great with dinner. Love it for so many many reasons. But one of the things that's tricky about wine is knowing what wine to get. donT need to feel intimidated because First Leaf will take care of all of that for you. They're a wine club that delivers your favorite types of wine right to your door. In this cold weather, I think that's when the deeper reds to me are nice and comforting. For whatever your preferences are, First Leaf will you covered. So get to know what you like, whether it's red, white, sweet, or dry. So then in every shipment, you get to unbox a new selection of bottles that you're guaranteed to love. Get started, all you have to do is answer a few quick questions about what you'd like to drink. Take that test, you give them feedback and they'll dial it in for you. On our, I think third shipment at least of First Leaf and it's all been great. Haven't Haven't had a single bottle that we didn't like. Side note, if we did, it's not even a problem because First Leaf has a 100 % satisfaction guarantee. So if you get a bottle that you're like, ooh, no way, they'll make it right for you. Hasn't happened to me, I want to note. Has been great. You do have that peace of mind. Go ahead and treat yourself with wines from First Leaf. To tryfirstleaf .com slash opening to sign up and you'll get your first six handpicked bottles for just $44 .95. That's T -R -Y -F -I -R S -T -L -E -A -F dot com slash opening tryfirstleaf .com slash opening This

0:05:20 Thomas: Says we're starting with good news Matt what's the good news oh

0:05:23 Matt: This is a great follow-up from an episode a couple of months ago about Glossip v. Oklahoma. You might remember Richard Glossip on death row for a for hire in which he was not actually the person who killed the motel manager. Yes. So that has come down with a 6-2, with the Supreme Court agreeing that he should get a new trial.

0:05:39 Matt: So yeah, this is not necessarily how we should assume the Supreme Court is going to proceed on death penalty cases in the future necessarily. This is an extreme one. As you might remember, there was a pretty key piece of evidence about the person who actually committed the murder. His name is Justin Sneed. And his testimony that he was taking lithium or why he was taking lithium, which was very important for his mental state at the time of the murder. And that, among other things, Justice Sotomayor found to be a violation of a 1957 Supreme Court case called Napue, which requires that, I this is no surprise, but you can get a new trial if you can prove the prosecutors knew that there was false testimony in your trial. Pretty straightforward. And it's the only way they really could have come down. We talked about this at the time, that even if it sounds incidental, when you break it down, it's pretty important, but it doesn't matter. It's still material false testimony in a capital case where somebody's on death row. It's not even that it gets remanded for further evidentiary proceedings or they try to work out some other side issue, it's going back for a full new trial.

0:06:25 Thomas: Hold

0:06:36 Matt: Never guess who the two dissenters were. Biggest Catholics on the court.

0:06:36 Thomas: Oh boy um is it the The classic. Oh, OK. So I was going to I mean, the classic and Alito is the classic duo of assholes dissenting. But now that you say that, it is it. Oh.

0:06:48 Matt: No, that's it. The biggest Catholics.

0:06:50 Thomas: OK. OK, I don't think of Thomas as like the biggest Catholic on the court, but one of one of. Yeah.

0:06:55 Matt: He's pretty Catholic. Yeah, Yeah,

0:06:57 Thomas: Okay. Alito though.

0:06:57 Matt: But yeah. So, yeah, it's pretty straightforward, and it's good to see that they do have limits, and Gorsuch. Some reason, I think he was...

0:07:04 Thomas: What was the recusal? He involved in like some other phase of the... I'm

0:07:09 Matt: Gorsuch actually wrote one of the lower court decisions in the course of these proceedings. So he's out.

0:07:11 Thomas: That's right. It could have been 6 -3. No. Who knows? That's good news though. And it's so rare that the Supreme Court gives a crap about people on death row in any real way oh

0:07:19 Matt: Who knows, but Yeah yeah. And there was talk at the time that the recusal might actually have doomed Richard Glossop, but looks like it went went the other way. So Barrett, this is one of those very complicated decisions where there's multiple parts and different people join different parts, but there's enough here to be able to send it back for new trial. Barrett wasn't an important vote here, but kind of split it down the middle, but with the part of the decision that grants the new trial. So that's all that really matters.

0:07:44 Thomas: So we got a series of like like concurrences and crap that

0:07:46 Matt: It's this thing they've been doing where they've got like parts one through five and Barrett joins parts two and three of the majority and like one and four of the dissent. It's really strange. There's no concurrences.

0:07:56 Thomas: Like a sudoku you gotta put it like geez okay

0:07:58 Matt: Yeah, exactly. I hate that. I hated having to go through and figure out which one she's actually in support of. I think they shouldn't be allowed to do it that way, but they're the Supreme Court. We can't really tell them what they're allowed to. So yes, that's

0:08:05 Thomas: Or those old oh it's those old logic puzzles where there's a seriesof statements and you have to fill out the matrix like that yeah coney

0:08:12 Matt: Amy Coney Barrett can't sit it next to Justice Kamas, yeah, at dinner.

0:08:14 Thomas: Barrett agrees with statement three but doesn't agree with the even numbered state or something

0:08:20 Matt: Right. And she only wears blue on Tuesdays, and yeah, right, right. Yeah. So, that's a good fallout for a previous OA episode, now we have less good Supreme Court news, of course.

0:08:29 Thomas: The end of the good news, everyone.

0:08:31 Matt: That's pretty much it. It's a great start. You know, I got to take what we get these days.

0:08:34 Thomas: Really good news. It's nice to see.

0:08:37 Matt: Patron Matthew Williams says, I hope you have a chance to talk about the Roberts' decision to allow the Trump admin to freeze USAID funds. SCOTUS is an effing disgrace. Even if you don't have time to properly cover it, would appreciate a rant of whatever the appropriate length is to vent. Well, we don't have that kind of time, Matthew. Want to note that Carol the warlock responds, this is straight up bonkers procedurally as TROs are generally not appealable, but this is a stay of an order enforcing a TRO. My brain hurts. Me too, Carol. Me too.

0:09:03 Thomas: And Matt, I know, I'm sorry if this is revealing something about you that you don't want known. Known this procedural nonsense of this is not your favorite thing I do I remember that one weird case where we had to record like four different times trying to figure out like it was a stay of a temporary lift of a lift of the stay of whatever and uh talk about logic puzzles so

0:09:12 Matt: Not my forte. Yeah. I can keep up with. I think you'll be able to keep up with. There aren't that many courts involved, fortunately. Is one of the strangest dockets I've ever seen. It's a very bizarre series of events, but that's just what we're looking at these days. That's how things work. Been a lot of agita around what Roberts did in this case, and I understand it. I think that what he did was unnecessary. It was also somewhat routine, maybe and we can debate how weird this is, but let's start at the beginning. January 20th, in his executive order, Donald Trump said, it is the policy of the United States that no further United States foreign assistance shall be dispersed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the president of the united states not the United states but the president's foreign policy so obviously unconstitutional uh obviously uh an impoundment act issue right that the president is just going to say this isn't consistent with my policy you can't spend this money so uh we all know USAID the U.S. agency for international development was essentially dissolved during the Doge tear through the government. The new administrator is somebody who doesn't believe in it and it's not doing anything. I think at this point, 90 % of all funding, I think I've heard, is not going out. Obviously a bunch of groups, including an AIDS organization, brought this as an emergency to Judge Amir Ali in DC and asked them to not do this, turn to the taps back on and to lift this freeze, because they stopped all foreign aid, just not paying for anything. And that's including a lot of life -saving stuff, not just food going out, which is certainly important, but medications and people

0:10:49 Matt: In the middle of treatments, and we talked about some of this, and HIV treatments as well. So these groups came in and very reasonably said, you can't do this. And maybe they can reconsider their priorities or whatever, but they have to keep paying the money. So on February 13th, Judge Amir Ali ordered USAID to resume spending on all foreign aid. Now, he did leave sort exception in which the government could review some contracts or decide that maybe there are still some things that it could cut, but it was not much of an exception. I think they're trying to make it into everything. Weeks go by and nothing happens. Happens. I'll explain the procedural thing in a minute, but I just want to give you the facts so you can understand what it is that is coming up to the Supreme Court. This is from the opposition filed by the AIDS organization and other groups that were intervening here to try to get the funding back. Because some of them are saying that they're going to lose their organizations. They're going completely run out of money if they don't get this promise funding. In their filing, they say the government comes to this court with an emergency of its own making. It goes on to explain that more than two weeks ago, on February 13th, and this was filed, I believe, on Friday, just a couple of days ago, the district court agreed that the foreign assistance freeze was likely unlawful and found that respondents would suffer irreparable harm if the freeze were not immediately suspended. Court therefore entered a temporary restraining order requiring the government to preserve the status quo that had prevailed prior to the executive order. In other words, paying out as promised. Entry of the TRO, however, the government took no steps toward compliance. On February 20th, responding to a motion to enforce the TRL, again, they had to bring a motion, which was going to guarantee the money goes out. The district court entered an order directing the government to comply. Should not be necessary, right? But

0:12:20 Matt: It issued an order telling them, no, I meant it.

0:12:22 Thomas: Yeah the first thing is the thing that you think would do that. Like, yeah

0:12:25 Matt: Right. Exactly. That's supposed to be how it works. That is a court order. Government tookno steps toward compliance. The next day, the district court denied another motion to enforce the TRO as moot, reasoning that it had already directed the government to comply. Government took no steps toward compliance. The day after that, in response to the government's motion for quote -unquote clarification, the district court again made clear that the government was to suspend the foreign aid freeze. The department took no step toward compliance." So yeah, I think they are. And exactly. And they're pretending that they're conducting some sort of individualized review view of these 5 ,800 contracts, and they're terminating some of them. But the judge specifically said in his order that you can't just sort of make up reasons that you're not paying things out. I've told you, you have to pay them out. We'll figure out the rest later. We're going to figure out what, you know, but there are people counting on this money.

0:12:49 Thomas: They're just defying court orders. They're doing the thing that we were worried they were going to do. At the very least you have to be paying stuff out until you've done some sort of process to stop. You can't just be like like stop everything and then ask questions later. Cause that, that's not, that'S not how anything works.

0:13:24 Matt: And literally, in his Order on the Motion to Stay, and again, he said now, this is the third time that the judge is saying, I really mean it. You have to pay this money. The court reiterates once more, and he goes back and quotes himself. Court's TRO does not permit defendants to simply continue their blanket suspension of congressionally appropriated foreign aid pending a review of the agreements for whether they should be continued or terminated. That is the very action the Court temporarily enjoined, because plaintiffs had shown that blanket suspension pending review would cause irreparable harm, etc., etc. So, like, you're doing the thing that I told you not to do, and you're coming back and telling me that you can't do it because you're going this other thing, which is is the thing that I told you not to do, in a sense.

0:14:01 Thomas: We can't comply. Cause we're then too busy. I'm not complying. So that's why

0:14:05 Matt: You see. And also, saying that they've managed to pay out something like $100 million in three -week period in which they're supposed to have been complying with this order, is nothing, because there's about $2 billion on the line here. And they claim that they have changed up their payment systems in such a way that they can't just turn the tap or faucet back on. This is what they they say in here.

0:14:23 Thomas: Trying to pull like an it thing. Oh you see it's the, they're hoping the judge is like an old guy who won't understand.

0:14:28 Matt: Right. Well, yeah, we broke it, you see. So right.

0:14:30 Thomas: The Linux database. PDF, it won't, we we can't, a virus.

0:14:35 Matt: The algorithms, judge, the algorithms, our favorite word. Literally in their motion to stay this, said they that we can't possibly comply. This is two weeks later after the TRO is entered. Can't possibly comply and pay all this money by Wednesday night. You can't make us do it. When that was the order two weeks ago, and it was also just the status quo. It's the thing they were already doing as a routine. So either they've messed up the payment system that badly, or they're just absolutely defying a court order, and maybe it's both. It definitely could be both.

0:15:03 Thomas: This really bad.

0:15:04 Matt: But there's also in one of the filings from the plaintiffs, there's an anonymous declaration from someone inside USAID explaining that they know this is bad faith. It is really crazy to read this. They know for sure that the government is playing games here, and that they just don't want to make the payments, and that they're defying the court order.

0:15:21 Thomas: So this is incredibly scary because this been worried about the now let him enforce it kind of the courts branch. And worrying that a level of it I guess I didn't consider which is also if you just make up a bunch of bullshit excuses along the way that's smart it's sort of blunting the impact whereas if they just said like no we don't follow laws like then there'd be a buncha protests there'd be a buncha noise but like stringing them along with this this whole process of excuses is a smart way to do it for the evil people. Really thought that she couldn't just do this, Matt. Like there's gotta be, is There any, I know there's never any consequences for Trump or anyone who matters, but like, is there any consequence to anyone in any point in this process, isn't, isn'T there some problem with this? Don't you get in trouble somewhere, Matt?

0:16:03 Matt: Would think. I was actually wondering if it would constitute something like conspiracy to deny civil rights or something at some point with some of these payments, but I don't know. I mean, most of them are international, obviously. But right, no, right, more directly, yes. There should be a contempt order here. But the problem is, as you've said, that there, in this particular issue especially, it's very easy for them to come in and file things like a motion judge, we didn't get it the first time. What did you mean? Can you explain it a little better?

0:16:11 Thomas: Just like contempt of court or something.

0:16:26 Matt: But two weeks later, right? Or it's also, it's hard to get a global picture of what USCID is doing because there's a lot of money, a lot people involved, a whole lot of contracts and grants.

0:16:25 Thomas: Wow yeah

0:16:35 Matt: And so the court can't really get a snapshot at any given time of how much in compliance they are. I think that's part of the problem here too. And so they can come in and say, well, we've done some of these things that are in compliance. And they've held a really unusual joint status statement the other day. Never seen anything like it where the plaintiffs are like, the the defendants are completely in violation of this order. They have not even tried to comply with the order. They go into pages and pages of facts about why that is. And then the defendents are like, oh no, we're complying. And here's some bullshit about why we're complying and just, yeah. I mean, this is how you play the game and this is what they can do in our federal courts, which are considering so many of these things. If you go and look at the litigation tracker on just security right now, it's a blizzard of filings. There's so many things for federal judges to do right now.

0:16:35 Thomas: Yeah who's

0:17:16 Matt: And they know it. They know for sure. So what happens here is that, again, you have a temporary restraining order, which could not be more clear, on February 13th. Now, of course, they're saying that they think there's a loophole in there that they can use. There isn't. The judge has made clear there isn't, the judge issued not only the TRO, but in order enforcing it and saying, I meant it the first time, did I stutter? Can't you hear me? And then a denial of emotion to stay on top of that. And so they're appealing that to DC Circuit, But they also have, of course, the opportunity to use the All Writs Act to jump up to the Supreme Court and try to get the Supreme Court to do something about this. Now, I totally with our patron Matthew Williams here. Then I don't understand what's going on. This is bizarre because they're not appealing the TRO. Essentially what they're appealing is the order saying saying you have to follow the TRO, you actually have to do the thing. And this is unheard of. The court shouldn't have jurisdiction to even look at that. It's meaningless.

0:18:04 Matt: They shouldn't. I mean, it's just like, first of all, just to be very clear about this, you can't appeal a TRO. You can appeal later kind of injunction, but the temporary restraining order is just a quick in place just to keep the status quo.

0:18:03 Thomas: The supreme court showed it yeah yeah it's designed to be kind of emergency a band band -aide

0:18:16 Matt: Right. And if you could constantly appeal those, it would just be total chaos.

0:18:20 Thomas: They would be useless what

0:18:21 Matt: In itself, and I think that's what they're trying trying to get around it by saying, well, we're repealing the order to enforce the TO. What's the difference? But I know.

0:18:26 Thomas: Because so I does make intuitive sense to me that like can appeal decisions broadly speaking but if there's a a decision. And then the same court is like, Hey, make sure you do this. That's not, that shouldn't really be a separate thing. That sort of just like court business in a way, like, or something. I don't know if that's the right way to say it, but as a not lawyer, that kind of makes intuitive sense to me. Is that what you're describing?

0:18:48 Matt: Yeah. You're lucky if that order isn't stapled to a contempt sanction or some other kind of sanction, right? Because you've just spent two weeks ignoring the order. And the plaintiffs had actually asked for contempt. And The Judge said, I'm not giving it right now, but I'll reserve this, obviously. But the government says they're trying to comply, and we'll see how it goes. Think that in contempt territory right now.

0:19:06 Thomas: They, they appeal this thing that you're saying convincingly shouldn't even be appealable. So why does that even work? How did that happen? I don't get it.

0:19:14 Matt: It's so weird. And again, all they're asking, and this was late at night. This was late Thursday night last week. And John Roberts is running the docket at this point. They do the after -hours review of things. He grants this administrative stay state of the TRO essentially allowing the Trump administration to continue to withhold this life -saving funding and ordering the parties to brief it. Now, the briefs, I believe, have gone in as of the time we're talking. We'll see. Maybe we'll have some action on this by Monday or Tuesday. I don't understand why John Roberts touched this. A dispute between the parties. There's an issue here that involves a lot of money. It's the middle of the night. Let's just have some briefing on this. I understand that that's a normal thing for courts to do. And some people are saying that is normal. That was my first thought when I saw this, that it seems pretty normal. And then I looked at the actual docket and the procedural history, and then I read through what the plaintiffs are saying to the Supreme Court, and I realized this is nothing. This is just nothing. Don't understand. I it's just the Supreme Court having deference to, well, I don't even know what they're having deffence to, because the DC Circuit already found that this was fine. It sense.

0:20:14 Thomas: How do we even get to the Supreme Court? I don't understand. How

0:20:16 Matt: The All Writs Act is this catch-all thing that allows federal administrative agencies to preserve the status quo when something that's going to prevent or impair the agency from carrying out its functions, which is kind of weird because it's just telling it to do its functions and they're saying that impairs us from doing the thing we want to do, dual

0:20:29 Thomas: Let's compare our functions if you make us do our functions. Okay.

0:20:32 Matt: Functions. Yeah, that's pretty much it. But yeah.

0:20:34 Thomas: So it's like a direct line that the federal government has to the Supreme court or is it, did it go through DC circuit for, did go through a lower court first?

0:20:42 Matt: They're also appealing the whole thing to the DC Circuit, but of course, they thought they'd shoot their shot with the Supreme Court at the same time under the All Writs Act.

0:20:48 Thomas: Two separate things so I'm we're right now we're talking talking about the appeal of the thing that that's an order that shouldn't even be appealable right okay so use this this writs act to just go straight to the supreme court wow well

0:20:53 Matt: Right. That is garbage. Yeah and yeah, just for this review of whatever this is. And there were people online saying this is the end of everything, this is is the Supreme Court's joke or whatever. And yeah, I mean, in a lot of ways it is.

0:21:08 Thomas: That's already been true yeah yeah

0:21:10 Matt: It is also like in any other case, this would be a very routine thing to do. And there's even like a shadow of a doubt that maybe this should be reviewed. I think John Roberts could have really made a statement by saying, this is not anything. This is not something we're allowed to review.

0:21:21 Thomas: So what did what he say then what is the ruling so

0:21:25 Matt: Just to hold off and to allow briefing. Hold to on the TRO, administrative stay on the TRO and allow the Trump administration to continue to withhold the funds until further briefing. Expedite. It's gonna be very quick, and we'll probably see something quickly here.

0:21:38 Thomas: We're going to get briefing before the supreme cort of that wow wow is

0:21:41 Matt: Very quick. Yeah, it's just gonna be a really thing.

0:21:43 Thomas: It oral arguments or just just Okay.

0:21:45 Matt: Don't know. See. We don't see what they do with it.

0:21:47 Thomas: Sure seems to mess up the whole idea that you're doing a TRO to make sure something doesn't get, ruined you in the meantime. And then you're like, well, we'll hold off on that to do a whole bunch of talking and writing and, you Am I wrong?

0:21:58 Matt: And preserve the status quo for the last several weeks, which is violating a court order. So yeah, not a little torn, I guess, between my lawyer brain saying this makes sense for it to review and then also just continue to remind myself as I read through the docket that this is nonsense. This doesn't make any sense. That's where we're at. Court, once again, inserting itself somewhere where it just doesn't need to be.

0:22:20 Thomas: What made sense was the idea that you would do this, but for the first thing, like, you'd appeal the Hey, you can't just turn off the spigot. And you know, like you can just turnoff all this funding. Oh, you're right. Let's pause that and do some briefing on that. That makes sense. But then the part where you're like, no, not that we're going to pause the pause for reason. Well, guess my question would be in that instance, what are you briefing? Cause if, if they appealed this like enforcing the TRO is are they briefing the TRL itself rather than the order to enforce the, you know what I mean? Like, okay.

0:22:52 Matt: The plaintiffs are saying we we shouldn't even be here. There's no jurisdiction at all. And even whether you treat it as they were appealing the TRO or they were appealing this other thing, there's no reason to be here, and the defendants are trying to say there is. And

0:23:02 Thomas: Cause my question Would be like, Like, if you're appealing the whole issue itself, that's one thing you would want to brief. But if they're appealing this order to enforce it, I would think the brief would be like, well, courts can enforce things. You know, like, that would be the legal issue you're briefing. You know? Like, I guess that's – does that make sense? Like ,I don't understand which thing you'd be briefing the way they've done this.

0:23:23 Matt: It's interesting because you might remember John Roberts' big end -of -the -year letter that we talked about a couple of months ago, where he was very concerned about courts not having their orders respected, and now he's perpetuating.

0:23:32 Thomas: -hmm. And yet – yep.

0:23:34 Matt: Yeah, here we are. Does.

0:23:35 Thomas: That sucks. Not a big fan of that. So when's the next step on that?

0:23:38 Matt: Know. Filed everything on Friday. I don't know what the next things are going to be.

0:23:41 Thomas: So that's, yeah. So the rapid response kept, you until now. Nothing's really changed yet. Okay. Show is brought to you by HelloFresh What HelloFesh you get farm fresh, pre -portioned ingredients and delivered right to your doorstep. Skip those trips to the grocery store and count on HelloFresh to make home cooking easy, fun, and affordable. And you haven't tried HelloFlesh, really I think you should. It solves so many problems for Lydia and I. We don't have enough time, even if we do have enough Time trying to plan dinners ahead and then get the right ingredients in the right amounts. So it doesn't go bad. I mean, it's just so much work that honestly, Hey, if you're a fan of doing that more power to you, but we just do not have that bandwidth in our lives with all that. Try HelloFresh. I'm got several ways to enjoy their delicious food now that they didn't used to have. It's addition to the classic, hassle -free meals to choose from, you can also get the ready - made meals. Those go from the fridge to your fork in just three minutes. And it's the same high quality ingredients and restaurant worthy flavor, but just with none of the work. So it's even better. They have these prep and bake meals. Now a little bit of prep, just like five minutes, but then you just pop it in the oven. So still is something that you made that comes comes outta the oven, it's hot, it steamy, it delicious. That's all all you could want for diner. Saves us so much time and hassle. It really does. Think you should give it a try. Up to 10 free meals and protein item for life at hellofresh .com slash hellofreshpodcast. One per box with active subscription. Free meals applied as a discount on first box. Subscribers only varies by plan. That's upto10freehellofreshmeals .com. Justgo to hellofresh .com slash hellofreshpodcast. I think you're going to find out why it's America's number one meal kit.

0:25:22 Matt: I want to talk about something that has been briefly in the news that I think should be talked about a little more, which is this announcement about an alien registration requirement to register everybody in the United States. And this sounds shocking. It is. I mean, it sounds like it's a completely new thing. It's not exactly new. Want to talk a little bit about how we got here, kind of the history of this registration requirement and what it means and why Trump's doing it. Let's hear Kristi Noem, Secretary of DHS, explain it before we get going here.

0:25:47 Thomas: Joy. Shut

0:25:48 Clip: Alien Registration Act says that within 30 days of being in this country illegally, someone must register with the federal government. They will be fingerprinted. They must announce that they are here. And if they do so, they can avoid criminal charges and fines. And we will help them relocate right back to their home country. And what this does is provide them an opportunity to come back someday and to be a part of the American dream. If they don't register, they're breaking the federal law, which has has always been in place, we're just going to start enforcing it.

0:25:56 Thomas: What?

0:26:08 Matt: Hope that we're like, yeah,

0:26:09 Thomas: Okay.

0:26:20 Matt: May not be surprised to learn this has not always been in place. The Alien Registration Act is a thing. It was passed in 1940. And there have been multiple attempts throughout US history, going back to 1798 to try to get people to register who are in the United States. And of course, immigration law was very different in both 1798 and 1940. 1798, it's kind of interesting, it was actually to introduce a new naturalization requirement, because even seven or eight years after the Constitution was ratified, you have people trying to play with the vote count. You have the federalists that changed the law to the Naturalization Act of 1798 to require this registration before you could naturalize, and also extending the naturalization period to 14 years of residence before you can become a citizen rather than five years. That was all just to mess with the vote in the 1800 election. Was summarily later overturned. Liked that Registration Act requirement at the time. This is 1798. You can imagine it's much harder to enforce registration in 1798, but you were supposed to go down and register with your local district court and the district court clerks were supposed to submit these regular reports to Congress on the registrations they'd received. None of it worked. Nobody liked it. It didn't happen. It just wasn't anything that anybody could do. There have been multiple other attempts, but I just want to note that what Trump was doing in his order of January of February 20th it was titled Protecting the States from Invasion. We didn't talk about this part of it. I noticed it, but I didn't really have anything to say about it at the time because I was waiting going to see how it plays out. But the of Homeland Security is going to take all appropriate action to immediately announce and publicize information about the legal obligation of all previously unregistered aliens to comply with requirements of the relevant chapter and verse. For me as an immigration lawyer, I look at the Immigration and Nationality Act. So I'm looking at INA 262 if you want to follow along at home. This is the Alien Registration Act, as I said, in 1940. this is a wartime measure to try to identify subversives. And we did things like this before. World War I, Woodrow Wilson actually required all German men over 14 living in the US to be designated alien enemies and to come and show up and be fingerprinted and register. I didn't realize this until I was doing this research. I've been writing something for Substack about it as well. But 2 ,000 people were interned during World World War I were actually kept in camps.

0:28:15 Thomas: It interred? I is that a different thing?

0:28:18 Matt: They're buried. Yeah, that's when they're dead. So

0:28:19 Thomas: You're interned. OK. Really awkward if you go for an internship and they're like, oh, no, we meant discriminating against you and rounding you up and putting. Oh, OK.

0:28:25 Matt: Or Turing, yeah. Much worse. Was interesting to note though that J. Edgar Hoover was 23 years old when he was overseeing the Alien Enemies Registration Division of DOJ back then in 1917. I also want to note that the whole idea of aliens or non -citizens having to register has actually been extremely controversial throughout American history, like much more than you might think. It seems like such a routine thing now, especially now that we have the technology to do it. It was considered to be a huge hassle and something that we shouldn't force people to do. Great Emanuel Seller, who was an incredible member of Congress for about 50 years, did a lot of really good stuff in immigration, but he had some really fiery things to say about, you what a scam it was and what a terrible thing it was to force people to go pay money and register and have to check in and have the government know who they were when they're in the country.

0:29:08 Thomas: Thing that christian was saying I mean it's just so stupid because like we know the reason that they are coming here is because we don't have a process that can allow them to come quote unquote the right way we don'T have it it just doesn't happen so your whole thing is like well in order to preserve your right to do the thing you couldn't do and is the reason you came here anyway you can register and then leave it's already know that's not going to do it because that's, they wouldn't be here.

0:29:34 Thomas: I guess I could think of a couple of edge cases, but like for the most part, that's not really going to do anything for them.

0:29:40 Matt: The way that she phrased that about how you'll be helped to leave or something, like clearly, you're going to come find you after to your register.

0:29:43 Thomas: It will help you. Like, like it's a bunch of people just got lost actually. It's a, there's, oh, I ended up here. So weird. I didn't mean to. Oh yeah. We'll help you back.

0:29:47 Matt: That's right. Guatemala. Sure. It's the South. Yeah, get going.

0:29:56 Thomas: That's what they say for, uh, South. It's just all South. Just go South.

0:29:59 Matt: Just point down. To point out that, yes, the Alien Registration Act of 1940 is in effect. At the time, you had to go register at your post office. And this was, of course, just before World War II, and we were getting concerned about Germans and Japanese in the country or may or may not be associated with countries we might be going to war to. Talked about the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which was used to justify the internment of the Japanese, which I hope everyone's familiar with. They also had a registration process, a special one imposed on them to keep their citizenship.

0:30:26 Thomas: That was famously super cool and great. And we look back fondly on it.

0:30:30 Matt: And unfortunately, upheld by the Supreme Court.

0:30:31 Thomas: Joke, but I don't know what the next iteration of history books is going to look like on this. I really don't.

0:30:36 Matt: Yeah. Well, that's why I want to talk about it, because this is ominous. I mean, you are talking about enforcing something that basically the government has refused to do anything about and has considered to be dead for a very long time. There is no general registration requirement. It's technically in the books. It has never been used since 1944 or so. They changed it over from the post office to just basically register to port of entry when you're coming in, but you don't have a requirement to do it in the country. And the one that's inside the country is very burdensome. It's for anybody who's been here for more than 30 days, and then they have to change their address within days every time they move. Thing about this is that there was actually something I like to remind people as often as possible. There was what amounted to a Muslim registry in the United States from about 2002 to, 2002 to 2011 through lot of Obama. That required men of a certain age after 9 -11 from certain majority Muslim countries to go register every year with serious penalties if they didn't. But that wasn't based on the Alien Registration Act, that was a special registration process that was created by the executive just for

0:31:31 Thomas: We did a new racism for that one.

0:31:33 Matt: That. Exactly, right. I meant to point out was that every time we've done this, it's been based on racism. It's been based on xenophobia. It's been based on fear of the people living in our country. Back to the Geary Act of 1892, when it was the first time ever that anybody living in the United States had to register as aliens for any reason, like with the government. They didn't have such a thing as permanent residency back then. And of course it was for the Chinese and mostly in California. And they wanted to be sure that they had special Chinese identification cards because the Chinese Exclusion Act was in effect. And they want to make sure that you were there as of 1882 when it passed. And they had for the first time in U .S. history, something called Chinese inspectors, people that could just go out and check out anybody who looked Chinese and ask them for their papers. And that was the first.

0:32:09 Thomas: Shouldn't have that. That's not a thing anyone should have.

0:32:10 Matt: Not. Well, we do have it. It's called ICE now, but they get to inspect everybody. You know, just the idea that there's like an inspection service just for one ethnicity. Right. Right.

0:32:18 Thomas: Chinese inspector. Yeah. That's dark.

0:32:21 Matt: It's that obvious. And, you know, here, of course, it's for everybody, but it's going to be majority Latino. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of different ways to challenge the way they're going to implement it. Now, this is not in effect right now. They're going, going to come out with regulations. There's going to have to be, you're going to have a whole process before they can actually promulgate this and make it happen. We'll be following it and I'll be interested to see how it plays out. But now my clients are in a very strange position. I am in a strange position they are going to have to do this. Like, this is something that on paper they're saying you have to go do it within 30 days or whatever. You have to go register and give your name and address if you are not already registered in some way, which means you're not already a lawful permanent resident or that you don't have some other kind of immigration status that has already required you to come in contact with the immigration system. Even if you're in removal proceedings, you're already considered to be registered under this act. So this is something that my clients are going to be asking me. Should I go register? And of course, I'm going to tell them, you have to follow the law. It's my job to tell you

0:33:09 Matt: That you have to follow the law, but it's a trap.

0:33:10 Thomas: Do you get to wink a bunch during that? Do they let you do?

0:33:13 Matt: Maybe I could just, can I just pull up my phone and play like the Admiral Ackbar? It's a Trap.

0:33:20 Thomas: Just this gif I want to show you unrelated is

0:33:22 Matt: Pretty funny, right? Yeah. Again, just to be very clear to everybody listening, I will be telling my clients, as I always do, that they have to flow the law and that it is their choice.

0:33:31 Thomas: He winking a ton right now we don't know it's a podcast oh

0:33:33 Matt: Being very sincere. It's just another way to make people feel unwelcome and to to give ICE, when we get to the point when ICE is ramped up to where they want it to be, because as I hope I've been clear so far, ICE is nowhere near the place where they can do the kind of mass deportation efforts that Trump has been promising. But they are asking for a lot of money, whole lot of money. And I don't know if you saw the proposal from Blackwater from Eric Prince, did you see that one?

0:33:55 Thomas: Know but whatever that is sounds horrible wow

0:33:58 Matt: It's so bad. He wants essentially like a Blackwater private army to do immigration enforcement. And he was proposing $25 billion, 25 billion with a B, when I think even Stephen Miller is only asking for 75 million or something. You know, like a private planes, fleet a small army of, I think he said up to 10 ,000.

0:34:13 Thomas: Well and a bunch of grift and like uh bloated you and bloated

0:34:17 Matt: Yeah. Eric has got to get his, you now, obviously. Yeah, no, I mean, this is scary stuff.

0:34:20 Thomas: The amount of money that we wasted in the iraq war and all those conflicts is really staggering If you haven't looked at it in a while, or it's just like, where did it go? Well, we don't know. We don't Know. We just duffel bags full of literal millions of dollars of stuff just to, and we wasted so much money. We have endless money for stuff like that and no money for, you some with HIV that costs $2.

0:34:45 Matt: No trouble getting that ICE funding. It's not going to be an issue. Now, the Blackwater thing, allegedly, it hasn't really gotten a serious look by the government. It was just a proposal that went in, but apparently they want us to know that it's under consideration.

0:34:53 Thomas: That's very troublesome.

0:34:54 Matt: Yeah, we're talking a private army and camps. That never goes wrong in any country, obviously. So yeah, that's we're at with alien registration. We'll continue to follow this, but I just wanted to make the point that this is yet another thing that Trump is putting out there and sort of pretending that they're inventing when, you kind of are because nobody's used this law for a long time, but this has been a thing throughout American history again and again. It's never been in effect for more than a few years. Technically, the Geary Act was actually in effect until about 1944. The Chinese were still required to register that way, but that wasn't upheld that much, obviously. Yeah, of like with with the gold card thing? I'm sure you saw about that, where Trump was pretending that he invented the industrial visa. I meant to mention that too, because it's...

0:35:28 Thomas: Would they pay $5 million to get, wasn't, we related to those rapist brothers, do The Tate brothers.

0:35:33 Matt: The Tates. Yeah, they're already US citizens. I think

0:35:36 Thomas: That's right. So what, what, so that didn't have to do with that, but that was weird news where it was like that same day or the next day, it was like, they're, coming on over for some reason.

0:35:36 Matt: They're dual citizens. Yeah. That's bad. Yeah? Yeah, he helped him out. Yeah... And they're not supposed to leave Romania?

0:35:45 Thomas: But that's the kind of of people brilliant minds we could get with a, with a program like that.

0:35:50 Matt: It's a... Well, the thing is, this was just joking about this, because Trump has has this way of slapping his name on things and pretending he invented them, right? And marking them up five times, because there already is a program like this, the EB-5 investor visa program, where if you put in, depending on which version of it you do, either 800 ,000 or a million into a disadvantaged area, and if you basically are supporting American jobs somewhere where there's not a lot of opportunity, then you can get the opportunity to go to residency, just the way he was talking about. Now, they don't call it a gold card, which is pretty cool. That's a good name. I got to give them that. We're lucky he didn't call the Trump card, probably, but maybe that'll be coming. I just wanted to mention that because I got some questions about that as well. And people are saying how shocking it is that you can buy your citizenship, but honestly, it's been that way for 35 years since the EB-5 was created in 1990. So this is another example of Trump sort of taking credit for something that already existed and has for a while, but just making it worse. Because from what I understand, what he's proposing, and this would have to be an act of Congress, but he's proposing that this program would not only be $5 million instead of 1 million, but it would go straight to the treasury instead of going going to disadvantaged areas. And he was talking about how great it would be to pay down some debt with this program. Yeah. Yeah, so there's that.

0:36:51 Thomas: Right. So you see this going into effect right away. They have to do some more stuff to make this, um. Registration thing happen. Just feel like we just owe George Takei better. Like, you know, like he, we went through this period where at least the desire for things to be more progressive and and like and you sensitive at if it wasn't being you fully lived up to at least the rhetoric was like welcomed and you realize like how much worse it is now like poor George Takei time and again had to talk about what he and his family went through you the Japanese internment camps and now a bunch of people are like, no. That was cool. Let's do more of that. It's like the ways that are embarrassing the people who came before us and failing the people are coming after us. It is hard to fathom sometimes. Times.

0:37:32 Matt: Reading about Japanese internment when I was growing up and thinking, well, there's no way we're going to do that again. We must have learned how not to do that. No, this certainly does seem like a prelude. This kind of registration thing is always scary. And I meant to point out too, it does carry potentially up to six months in federal prison and $1 ,000 fine. And they're talking about enforcing both civil and criminal penalties for this. So it's an easy way to get somebody to federal court on of everything else. So again, we'll see how it plays out, but I'm not liking it. Don't like it at all.

0:37:58 Thomas: Well, let's hope this footnote is something that's going to make us feel better, but I don't know. What's This show is brought to you by NPR's Up First. A day goes by that we don't hear from somebody who's a little bit burnt out, at least from everything going on. And you you know, we get it. Don't blame you. Coverage the way we do, so it doesn't to add that burnout. Maybe if you're feeling burnt out by the news, maybe it's the way you're getting the news. Maybe all -day scroll obsession, which, hey, that's tiring tiring you out. NPR's Up First. The all-day scroll obsession by telling you everything you need to know in an easy 15 minutes. No BS, just the facts. Up First is the cure you need for your news fatigue. How the show works. They provide the top three news stories to start your day. With digestible 10 to 15 minute episodes, it's all the news you need so you can get back to your life feeling informed while preserving your sanity. Recently, they covered the Zelensky -Vance -Trump blow up, and that was a great episode. And what they did is they actually talked to Ukrainians about it, which was really refreshing. That's the way they do coverage over there. You that insight, but in that short format, which is perfect for a commute or getting ready, making breakfast. It's also thorough. Both national and international coverage. Both fact-based, but personable. Up First, you can start your day a little more in the know than when you went to sleep. So listen to the Up First podcast from NPR. Check it out.

0:39:25 Matt: Might have to be a whole other episode at some point, because like I said, I've gotten obsessed with this story. It's gotten to be pretty amazing. There's a lot to it, but I just want to tell you about the of a pretty boring website that I'm sure that You and I know Lydia and plenty of people listening to this have used the SCOTUS blog, which does a great job of keeping track of the Supreme Court, and we rely on for live decision days. Founder of that blog is named Thomas C. Goldstein, and he got on my radar back in November when he put out an editorial in the New York Times that was one of our favorite genres at the time of the Trump should have all of his criminal charges dismissed because he won the election. It was oneof those editorials. Yes, same

0:40:01 Thomas: I didn't make that connection that that was that guy. Okay.

0:40:04 Matt: Guy. And I flagged that at the time because I thought, well, I thought that was a Democrat. And he was, he actually was, uh, he's best known as a Supreme court litigator for being involved with Bush v. Gore on the Gore side of things. Know, it didn't come out right, but, uh. He was second chair of that one. He's nominally been a Democrat since then.

0:40:18 Matt: And everybody's commenting at the time how weird this was that Tom Goldstein is coming out and swinging for Trump and saying he should have his charges dismissed. It was like November 18th. Totally unnecessary act of bootlicking. But it turns out maybe it was necessary because Tom Goldstein has been getting up to some stuff, it turns out.

0:40:33 Thomas: You know it? You can set an effing timer, Matt. I mean, it's the same with Dershowitz, although I'm a Democrat, but I'm just going to make every excuse for trying. You know, it is like there is always set a damn timer. The minute they start defending these people, you you know it is because they they need to please the side that does not care if you are evil. Just, it always what it is. Slash, maybe you get a pardon or whatever, you now.

0:40:56 Matt: We're just getting around that Donald Trump is going to pardon pretty much as much white collar fraud and crime as he can, including this very unusual series of events here that has led to one of the strangest things I've ever seen a lawyer charged with. So Tom Goldstein, just to give you some background, was a very well known appellate litigator. Somebody who appeared in front of the Supreme Court 45 times at least, a lot. And he doesn't even have an Ivy League background. He taught at Stanford and Harvard law schools, had his own boutique appellant firm that did Supreme Court litigation. Delegation, Goldstein and Russell. He officially retired in 2023. the time, he said he was pursuing other business. Let's flag that for the moment. And he said that, but he gave a statement at the time which I sort of remembered. I went back and found, I was trying to find like what he'd been saying in public in the last few years. He said essentially that now that we have this sixth justice majority, I don't feel like I can do much good, which makes sense.

0:41:15 Thomas: That's a lot of times. Like, I'm gonna going go into the white collar crime industry. It seems like it's paying off right now and nobody cares about consequences. You know, anyway, I don't blame him. Can't beat him. Join him, I guess.

0:41:54 Matt: And was into this entire time was extremely high stakes poker. That's what he'd been getting up to. So just the kind where you're doing like half a million at a time, millions of dollars at a time. There's one game I think he re-won something like $20 million, which I just, yeah, this is a whole other way of life, obviously. I'm never going to see anything like this. I'm not good at poker, but I certainly don't have $20 billion to throw around. He's a total nerd about it too. I was looking through the indictment. The indictment is a great read. It might be an interesting bonus thing at some point. But he did the nerdiest thing and just wrote himself a 24-page memo about how he's going to win a poker tournament against some of his opponents. He did extensive research.

0:41:59 Thomas: All right. Oof. It's a lot.

0:42:27 Matt: He was spending a lot for poker to win. He was a

0:42:27 Thomas: For what? Oh, okay, no, I know. But like, why are you writing? I understand that People play poker, and 99 .9 % of them do not write whatever you're talking about. So, like, what is that about?

0:42:32 Matt: Memo. Yeah. No, probably not.

0:42:38 Thomas: Like, just a journal entry? Like, what does he, to himself?

0:42:40 Matt: Like a strategy memo, basically, like you'd do for a case? Yeah.

0:42:42 Thomas: Okay, all right.

0:42:43 Matt: Yeah. Why not? It's how you live.

0:42:44 Thomas: I appreciate it. I feel like you would do something like that.

0:42:47 Matt: Oh, absolutely. I'm always writing memos. Yeah, no. If I ever commit a white collar crime, I'm definitely gonna have a memo.

0:42:52 Thomas: It's going to be memorialized in the series of memos. Yeah, long emails.

0:42:54 Matt: Can't help myself. Yeah? No. It's just another reason I shouldn't be doing crimes. And I'm not, in fact, just to be very clear, doing crimes, so, as I'm reading this indictment, like, he was being really weird with his money. He was clearly using his law firm to launder a lot of his poker winnings and also to lauder his debts. He just didn't pay his taxes for quite a while. The IRS actually interviewed him several times about why he was not paying his taxes. He kept saying that this new income was from legal fees. And like I said, he was using his firm to do that.

0:43:21 Thomas: Why does that matter? He's allowed to play poker for money like the way he's doing it like it's or something or he's oh

0:43:24 Matt: Sure. But different kind of taxation on it than there would be on legal fees through your law firm.

0:43:30 Thomas: So he's trying oh because gambling okay so and is he doing the kind of thing where he's kind of like make the losses count but not the wins as much kind of things like yeah

0:43:38 Matt: He's playing a lot lot of games with all of this. Also just like reporting fake legal fees, as we've talked about with Michael Cohen, right? About just like playing games with your finances. Yeah, it's going to be a tax problem. And also lying to the IRS about where this money is and where it's coming from directly is not going to do any favors either. Also got a number of other lawyers to invest in his poker games, like actually using their law firms to invest in his broker when he was basically just trying to pay back his many debts. I think my favorite part of the indictment is I actually clipped this paragraph that he was trying to persuade the partner at a firm to invest, which they ultimately did, about $500 ,000. Sent him a gambling -related forum where they were talking about how bad his opponent was at poker. But sending it, Goldstein did not reveal to law firm 2 partner that over the preceding months, he'd already lost approximately $10 million to the same person. So he's so bad

0:43:39 Thomas: Get generally not cool oh

0:44:24 Matt: At poker, but but I

0:44:24 Thomas: My gosh wow yeah this guy's terrible he has no chance don't worry he beat the shit out of me but you know yeah what in the world this is wild

0:44:31 Matt: But yeah, he's really bad. Yeah, no. it gets crazier. It actually does. The reason it really came to my attention when I was out vacation a few weeks ago, I meant to mention this earlier, Tom Goldstein got himself re-arrested on February 11th. He was, so he was only brought in on January 26th and indicted on this. And he was released on on the condition that he don't open new bank accounts, don't make any unusual transactions, right? Keep your money where we can see it, as you might expect. And he was pleading poverty to the court and saying, he was putting up his house as collateral, but he's saying, I need to include relatives' houses. I don't have enough money for an attorney. He's also, by the way, charged with multiple acts of mortgage fraud on top of the tax fraud, on top the money laundering. Yeah, there's a lot going on here.

0:45:09 Thomas: He seems terrible at poker so I believe him that he doesn't have any money maybe

0:45:13 Matt: He mean, I don't know enough about poker, but it seems like he was losing a lot and know, and again, I feel obviously he has a gambling addiction. It sounds like that might have translated over to his crypto issues because he started getting super into crypto. Yeah. Good. There's a lot of crypto involved in this too. It out though that he had two crypto wallets that he didn't, I forgot to mention the pretrial services when he was being released. About 14 million within the days after he was released and got them out of his accounts. Were, I guess, considered to be cold wallets, but he somehow got rid of them. And I don't know enough about crypto to really understand all this, but yeah.

0:45:43 Thomas: Don't yeah I'm not sure what that means but

0:45:45 Matt: But They're alleging that since 2022, he's used these crypto accounts to the tune of about $75 million. Yeah, you can make good money arguing in front of the Supreme Court, I guess, and playing poker. I you're doing a little of both.

0:45:55 Thomas: But wow. Not that not that he is, but or maybe I guess he must have some wins in there. Yeah.

0:45:57 Matt: He was. No, at some point, like I said, there was one game where he won $20 million. There's another one where he won seven or eight. I was looking through the indictment. It's a long history. Sure. Yeah. I mean, he's living a double life. He's doing things like he's taking taking a duffel bag of almost a million dollars through the airport so he can go gamble it in Macau, a international gambling capital. So again, again, I'm sympathetic to gambling addiction, if that's what's going on here. I don't know if he's actually said that's what's on. Of his first moves was to get Lauro and another one of Trump's former attorneys. And that's a move that a lot of people have been doing these days when you want a pardon, right?

0:46:05 Thomas: Chasing that high. Man. Yeah.

0:46:28 Matt: On top of bootlicking New York Times editorial, you can definitely connect with an attorney who's already represented Trump and try to work your way up for a pardon. Don't know what the status of those attorneys is right now, but he was rearrested, and I think he's representing himself for some portion of this, because of these giant transactions with the crypt that he was trying to hide, and briefly held again. And I think he has been released again now. But it's quite a story. There's a lot going on here. Like I said, probably the single most criminal person to appear in front of the Supreme Court that we know of. Possibly bigger criminals on the Supreme Courts at different times. But yeah, no, it's really quite an indictment. I'm going to link to it, but it's worth a read.

0:47:05 Thomas: Crazy. So I guess he's a lot better than Dershowitz. You He's know, are crimes which the victim is like the government and mortgage companies kind of thing? Or did he do anything really bad to anyone? He, I you know, some law partners out of money. Was that,

0:47:14 Matt: No, yeah, some other lawyers who probably sounds like they had too much money anyway. I don't know why their law firms would be putting that kind of money in. But he also, for what it's worse, he used his law firm to hire several different women that he was either having affairs with or trying to have affairs with and paid them fake salaries and health insurance. That's like the least of the issues here, given the amount of deception otherwise going on with the taxes. This isn't legal advice, but I guess it kind of is. If you're going to commit that much fraud and launder that much money, pay your taxes. Just pay them.

0:47:42 Thomas: What? Like, come on. That's

0:47:43 Matt: Make that a priority. Actually wrote to one of these businessmen that he was playing poker with that, I'm just not going to pay my taxes. He put that in writing. And he said, I'll just pay the penalties, but it's in the record here.

0:47:53 Thomas: In the world? That's curious. Did he count on Trump dismantling the IRS, but he didn't get there in time? He was like, ah, if I'd held out a little longer.

0:47:54 Matt: Yeah, this was done before Or he knew that Trump was going to be president again. So I think he just thought he was going to get away with it.

0:48:05 Thomas: What? Okay, that's crazy.

0:48:07 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Quite a lot going on here.

0:48:09 Thomas: What a weird story. How old is this guy?

0:48:11 Matt: Tom Goldstein is 55. pretty young to be retiring.

0:48:13 Thomas: Just a real mid -late life crisis.

0:48:16 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. We'll keep a watch on this one. This couldn't turn into Gavel Gavel material because it's got a lot of interesting factors for

0:48:22 Thomas: Crazy. Right, Matt. Well, thanks for holding those rapid responses till now. And they still kept. I like that. I appreciate it. And we will see folks this week. Again, check out Gavel Gavel. Thanks so much to those doing it. Really appreciate it, and we'll see you on Wednesday. And don't worry, Rapid Response Friday will be back on Friday.

0:48:41 Matt: Right. We'll see you then.

0:48:42 Clip: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.

0:48:59 Matt: He grants this administrative stay of the TRO, essentially... no, I'm doing it again. Yeah. Hold on. I promised I wasn't going to do this. Me just double check something. It's just another reason I shouldn't be doing crimes.