FREE MAHMOUD KHALIL

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.

0:00:57 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is Episode 1137. I am Thomas. That over there is real life attorney Matt Cameron. How you doing today?

0:01:04 Matt: To be honest, not great today, Thomas, what we have to talk about. This is a big one. I usually, I know, I try to keep a good face, but this is serious stuff. This a major inflection point in the Trump presidency a couple months in, and for American history, honestly, what talking about today.

0:01:18 Thomas: Absolutely. Yeah, there's a far and away a story that we're obviously talking about that everyone wanted. I already requested, everyone on Patreon requested. Yes, we're going to be talking about Mahmoud Khalil, who was apparently, well, you're going to tell us. I haven't even really been able to keep track of where he actually is or what's happened. But this is scary. This is someone who had a green card and still was apparently treated like, he could just be deported on a moment's notice. We'll get to the full story, but that's, what we're going to be talking about.

0:01:46 Matt: I'm going to tell you the scariest thing about all of this is that it's completely illegal. Something to keep in mind as we talk about it. Yeah, and then just to balance things out, we have a fun, frivolous footnote about a January 6th defendant that does not know how to take the W.

0:01:59 Thomas: There's been a few and those aren't so funny, that there've actually died in shootouts with police and stuff. At least I think two, right? It's crazy.

0:02:07 Matt: And now they're trying to say that their pardon extended to anything they're ever going to do in their lives, basically. So that's not pardon expert, but yeah, don't think so.

0:02:12 Thomas: That can't be right. I feel like that's not how that works, but cool. Yeah It is really true. Like taking the ultimate, taking the W, there's so many things like, you know, just like, had I ever written like the Harry Potter franchise, you just take the W, just fade into the sunset.

0:02:28 Matt: Shut up. You have more money than the king?

0:02:30 Thomas: So I did a January 6th and then somehow this whole crap happened so that I was pardoned, I'd be like, feel like I could find a new name, you know. That never happened. I'm going to take the W, but no, they can never do that. That's why they were there, essentially. So, well, it'll be good to talk about that because I'm sure our main story is not going to be much fun. We'd better get to it, though. So we'll take our usual break. As always, you can avoid the ads by signing on to patreon.com/law, pledging as little as a dollar. We really appreciate it. It makes the show happen. And you don't have to hear the ads. So take advantage of that. Right. After this, we'll get to it.

0:02:47 Matt: Pretty much.

0:03:10 Thomas: Matt, please give us all the basics and the breakdown. Catch us up. I definitely I've consumed some amount of stuff on this. But increasingly in hard to know even what accurate information I've consumed on that. So please give the breakdown, the OA breakdown we can trust here.

0:03:23 Matt: I've got to say, a lot of immigration law experts as of this week stepping up, but this is actually my thing. So I'm happy to talk about it. I've been thinking about it obsessively all week. I have written probably thousands of words on Substack by now, some of which we'll get into, but some of it is going to be new here. It is very important. And we need to establish some things upfront. So you can understand that this is not a particularly great issue. There's not really a spectrum of debate as far as I'm concerned. This is over nothing, but First Amendment protected speech.

0:03:49 Matt: And the government is conceding that at this point.

0:03:51 Thomas: They're proud of it. Yeah

0:03:52 Matt: They They are. Absolutely. And they've made it very clear that this is not calling him a terrorist. They're saying that he's affiliated with a terrorist, which actually was a surprise. That was something we were expecting.

0:03:59 Thomas: I saw some rhetoric around that. But so you're saying they're in the legal justification. They're not saying that

0:04:02 Matt: But that's not how they're charging him. Well, we'll get to the legal justification. Maybe you can make more sense of it than I can, but it is really something. But they're using an extremely rare provision that I have never heard of used.

0:04:10 Thomas: Thomas takes the fascism exam. Yeah sure. I'll try Take my my hand hand. At it Try

0:04:20 Matt: Let's start with the important part, which is the people involved here. We've got Mahmoud Khalil, who completed a master's in international affairs in Columbia last December. And he was in the news a lot throughout last year as the lead negotiator between the university and the student encampment. And of course, in Columbia, as I think anybody following these stories knows, Columbia is pretty much the leading protest site, encampments site in the country for students protesting the genocide in Gaza. Khalil is Algerian. He grew up in a refugee camp in Syria. And he worked in Lebanon before he came to Columbia. So he's got a real international background, very impressive background. He's worked in at the UN and he worked the Commonwealth Development Office in the UK, worked a scholarship program in Lebanon. Is a serious guy.

0:04:53 Thomas: So he's not Palestinian. I

0:04:58 Matt: He is Palestinian. He was born in Algeria, but grew up in a refugee camp in Syria. But he is ethnically Palestinian. Married to a US citizen named Nur Abdullah, and they met in Lebanon when he was in a volunteer program that he was overseeing. Give educational scholarships to Syrian youth. And they had a long distance relationship, got married in 2023. very importantly for this story, he gained his residency through this marriage in November of 2024. So he is a lawful permanent resident. And the word permanent, I think, in the lawful resident equation is very confusing for a lot of people. Your residency is not indeligible. And as we we talked talked about a few months ago, when I was talking about the triage of how we should think about, you know, who's going to be affected and how things are going to go down. You know, I was saying anybody short of citizenship does have some reason to be concerned. And certainly people who have been engaging in this kind of political speech, especially people who are out front this way, you're saying there's certainly a good chance the administration is going to target them. And that is what has happened here. And, you

0:05:02 Thomas: Oh gotcha

0:05:56 Matt: To DHS reminding them that they have the right to deport student protesters and how cool it would be if maybe they could start using that right to take their student visas if there's any kind of rhetoric we don't like. So he's been on board with this for a while, and Trump made specific promises. He signed an executive order at the end of January having to do with anti-Semitism, and that's what a lot of this is couched in. Of course, everyone can agree that we don't want anti-Semitism, but this is not that. This is not what we're talking about here.

0:06:21 Thomas: If we deported people for anti-Semitism, there wouldn't really be that much of a Republican Party. So

0:06:25 Matt: Yeah, possibly. Yeah, if they really cared about antisemitism in New York, they might not have just defunded the office in the Department of Education that was looking into antisemitism and education, which is a big theme here. So residency, I want to make the point, though, you are still on probation as a permanent resident. And there is an entire section of the Immigration Nationality Act, Section 237, with which I am well familiar, that has all kinds of different ways that you can still be deported as a 95 % of the time, that's going to be over criminal conduct. That's going because you committed a serious crime or a couple of serious crimes or a small crimes. It doesn't take that much sometimes, depending on your timing. If you commit a crime within five years of your residency, you are much more likely to be put in deportation proceedings. There are special rules for that. I just want to be sure because I've seen so many people saying that only Donald Trump would try to deport a permanent resident, and that's just not true. I have represented hundreds of permanent residents in different capacities who are either about to be deported or in the

0:07:15 Matt: Process of deportation or at risk of it.

0:07:16 Thomas: And one reason I wanted to specifically talk about this in addition to the millions of others is I think that, with the triaging thing, and I'm someone who doesn't work in immigration and quickly forgets all these intricate details, I was under the impression that people with green cards would be maybe more protected than I thought. Like, I think I think my brain, kind of put them in more of the category of citizen, you know, like more more like. And I do remember you saying that citizens really like order of things we should worry about. Citizens somehow being denationalized and deported was like the last thing we should I might have just assumed that that meant like green card holders were somewhere in there, you know, but it sounds like there's, there's less protections on them than maybe I thought.

0:07:47 Matt: Down there. And I want to be clear. I don't think that everybody who's ever made a Facebook post about Gaza is at risk here. I've had a lot of people contacting me who are very worried about their status. And as before, I do want to bring some caution to this. The reason they came for Khalil and they're going to be coming, frankly, for other student leaders is because he was so upfront. And honestly, it's a compliment to his work that as we're going talk about, they basically considered him to be a one -man threat to our foreign policy. Means he's, I think, very effective at what he was doing. Yeah.

0:08:24 Thomas: That hard to be a one man threat to.

0:08:25 Matt: A plus. Yeah. No, I mean, that's really a credit. The idea that you can come and arrest anybody without a warrant, if you're ICE, is something else that people weren't really familiar with, something I've been dealing with for 18 years. And I forget sometimes. I get really inured to this stuff. And it becomes so normalized for me that it's actually very healthy for me to see this in the news and to see people responding in the way they have been, very rationally responding and saying, how is this possible in America? How can somebody be arrested without a warrant by ICE, sent off to Louisiana a thousand miles away from his eight -month pregnant wife?

0:08:54 Thomas: God.

0:08:55 Matt: Basically, and not given any kind of reason, basically. No criminal charges. And not even until recently, the immigration charges have been filed. This is normal. This is how things happen with my clients. This how things happened in my life. I guess I've just been seeing it for so long.

0:09:07 Thomas: Well, you say normal. OK, like normally if they committed a crime or something.

0:09:11 Matt: Typically, yes. But it can also happen if you have allegations of gang membership, which doesn't require criminal conduct. And it can happen, and I've never represented anybody who's been directly accused of terrorist ties, but I have represented people who have been accused of what's called material support for terror. And material support doesn't have to be anything. It can be giving a glass of water to somebody who comes to your house and holds a gun to your head. It It's an incredibly low bar, so I'm not trying to say I've represented actual dangerous people. None of those cases that I've worked on have been found to be. Oh, yeah, let me just read into the record very quickly a letter from Nur Abdallah, his wife, just want to make sure that human voices are in here, as always. My husband, Mahmoud Khalil, is my rock. He is my home, and he is my happy place. I am currently eight months pregnant and could not imagine a better father for my child. We've been excitedly preparing to welcome our baby, and now Mahmood has been ripped away from me for no reason at all. I'm pleading with the world to continue to speak up against his unjust and horrific detention by the Trump administration. The last week has been a nightmare. Very quickly, is that ICE comes to his door and tells him pretty late at night that they're revoking his student visa. Now, that's pretty strange because he hasn't had a student visa since November of 2024.

0:10:19 Matt: And ICE is DHS, Department of Homeland Security, the same agency responsible for managing his student visa and his green card. So this is not that hard. They can check. They easily just run a quick check and make sure before they show up to somebody's house what their actual immigration status is. And so his lawyer in their habeas petition, which we'll talk about. Talks about how she was on the phone with the ICE agent and the ICE Agent was like, look, we revoked a student visa. She said, what are you talking about? He's got a green card. Oh, well, we were revoked his green card, just like as if they knew about it. Right.

0:10:26 Thomas: So they should know that. Oh, wow. Sure.

0:10:48 Matt: But they didn't. They can't just do that.

0:10:49 Thomas: I feel like they would have said that if that's what actually happened and not the wrong thing.

0:10:53 Matt: There's an active debate to be had about whether this is just these ICE agents that just were misinformed. Because honestly, I got to tell you, I've heard a lot of stories of ICE arrests. And ICE agents are not experts in immigration law. They often don't know much about what they're doing or who they're arresting or why. And they'll say all kinds of things to people.

0:11:08 Thomas: Yeah. We're famously, police don't need to know the law. I feel like ICE agents even less so probably.

0:11:11 Matt: Even Even less so. Exactly. And immigration law being even more complicated than criminal law. There are already 3 million signatures on the petition to free him. As I'm sure everybody has seen, it's become quite a cause. This is the top most requested patron story we've ever had in terms of the likes and requests we've had so far, and I'm happy to talk about it. Again, this is somebody who's been out front as a student leader. He was already thoroughly reviewed by Columbia University, and they declined to suspend him. I want to make that point. They did not suspend him from school, and ICE thinks he should be deported.

0:11:39 Thomas: And And Columbia was the one that specifically had the president who, who tried to go really hard. She was like, oh, okay. You say lick boots, I say how hard. So she tried really hard on the protesters and go extra, you know, incredibly inappropriate. A lot of the stuff she said, she even revealed an investigation that she shouldn't have. A professor who frankly shouldn't have been really any major threat of investigation. So she went out of her way to try to like accommodate this fascism. And then in the end, I think she still lost her job. It doesn't, it's just another lesson.

0:12:08 Thomas: I know I brought it up before, but like they don't, they're not going to be satisfied. The point isn't the or whatever. The to, so for them to not suspend him, I guess is the point I started with, for a university that, you know, was going really hard on protesters, I think that says something about how thin, thin these accusations would be oh

0:12:27 Matt: He appealed it and they reversed it. He was very much behind the scenes in this. He knew that his status could be at risk. He certainly had lawyers ready to go in case, but he was a negotiator, as I said, on behalf of these students.

0:12:50 Matt: He was fully prepared to get behind whatever it was because I can tell this is a deportation of a free speech. But I was bracing for something pretty bad. I assumed that he must have actually at some point said,

0:12:58 Thomas: Like there'd be Some you know signal conversation With a terrorist or something like some Random thing

0:13:02 Matt: Yeah, I heard Hamas or something, right? I mean, just like somewhere. But they got nothing. I mean this is really like he is never – and in fact, there are plenty of statements. I'll just read one here in which he said things like, there is of course no place for anti -Semitism. He told CNN last April. He recently told CNN that as a Palestinian student, I believe the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand in hand. You cannot achieve one without the other. Our movement is a movement for social justice and freedom and equality for everyone. Doesn't sound like terrorism to me.

0:13:32 Thomas: I don't know. Are you sure you weren't just reading Osama bin Laden just then? I'm not sure.

0:13:37 Matt: Pretty much. The most that they've been able to do is show a picture of a table. And now this is very suspect because it's at a time when there were Zionist students coming in to film what was going on, and there was like this unattended table. And there was some literature on there, including one pamphlet with the Hamas media thing on it, right? Which has been verified like it was real, but it has never been connected to Khalil. Like he didn't put it there. He wasn't handing it out. He And that's about all they've got. Just the fact that he was associated with student protests and negotiating on behalf of students with the university, it's about what they have.

0:13:52 Thomas: F sake. Here we go. Yeah.

0:14:12 Matt: Significant. There are a number of different Zionist activists online who have been like... dogging anybody involved in these protests and really just trying to go after and get attention and dox them as much as they can. There's a website called Canary Mission that has a whole profile on them. And again, I'm reading this profile expecting to see something that is at least going, and

0:14:22 Thomas: And this is you're saying this is even the propagandists that are trying to like and they don't have anything.

0:14:32 Matt: Most extreme Zionists, right? And at this point, I clear, nobody should be deported for things that they say. I'm prepared to back him up. I'm ready for whatever that is. But I couldn't believe as I'm reading this, this is just nothing, absolutely weak tea. And so David Litterer quote-tweeted Marco Rubio on X, on March 6th, he... gets a lot of traction for this, for quote-tweeting Marco Rubio, who stated on March 6th in an X post, who support designated terrorist organizations, including Hamas, threaten our national security. The United States has zero tolerance for foreign visitors who support terrorists. Violators of U .S. law, including international students, face visa denial or revocation. So as a quote - tweet to this, this person quote - tweeted and said, meet Muhammad Khalil, and gave some pictures and information about him and video of him at a protest. Marco Rubio even quote tweeted, these people are so on the line, I wouldn't be surprised at all if they're just like, okay, well, here's a good target. Now, we do know from Ken Klippenstein, they've been doing actual intelligence work, that intelligence agencies have been involved in trying to track different student protesters. I'm not surprised if he's

0:14:38 Thomas: Course. Yep.

0:15:29 Matt: Top of the list and has been for a while. This is what they've got.

0:15:33 Thomas: I didn't hear anything. What was it? What was the, that they've got? Or, that was the what that they got? I mean, there's nothing. It was just somebody tweeting that he was a terrorist or something. What?

0:15:39 Matt: I will tell you. Well, that he was basically a student protester. And for a lot of people, opposing what Israel has been doing to Gaza is anti -Semitic and is terrorism. And as I think we both do, you can oppose the that Israel is doing in Gaza without supporting Hamas. That is a thing that is possible to do. That is no statement on record with Mahmoud Khalil saying that he supports Hamas. Even so, I was fully expecting that the government was going to bring charges under some kind of support for terror, because as we're going to talk about, the law on this is incredibly broad and should be changed because it's very dangerous. The grounds they went with are very different, and we'll talk about those. So the sequence of events, though, is that they, at some point, we don't know exactly when still, they got him out of New York and sent him down to Jano, Louisiana. And I've been down to Oakdale, Louisiana, which isn't too far away. It's pretty desolate. There's nothing out there. It is an actual government facility. Jano is a private facility. It has had a long history of abuse and not a good place. Was also a dry town, from what I remember, which wasn't fun.

0:16:40 Thomas: Worse.

0:16:41 Matt: I'm not much of a drinker, but still, when you're visiting Oakdale, Louisiana, you got nothing else to do. He has an incredibly legal team, really solid set of lawyers. I was just talking to Liz Skeen, friend of the show, of course, about his attorneys. Maybe we'll get it another time. He clearly was ready for this and he was prepared and he had a really really good team ready to go. So, so they filed a habeas petition. And as we know, I hope habeas corpus is the oldest writ, right? It's the one that allows you to challenge the government's detention. And, you know, very smart move to file it. And his lawyer filed it four in the morning the night he was detained. Like, this is great wiring. And they filed it at that time because they know that they play games. And especially from New York, they will send them off to other places because there isn't that much detention space. And this was a big thing. When I started under George W. Bush, they would often arrest people and whisk them away to the other side of the country. So they'd be away from their family, be away counsel, be

0:17:24 Matt: A lot harder to do anything with your case, right? And this is before cases were on video. So you're going to have to find a local attorney to show up to a court for you. So his attorneys filed this habeas petition, as we've done a few times, to keep him. In the jurisdiction. It didn't work, but they filed it in time, arguably at a time when he was still physically in New York, that there is still jurisdiction for the judge to consider the conditions of his detention. And I want to be clear that habeas petitions are filed in federal district court, in an Article III actual court, and the rest of his proceedings he'll be talking about for deportation are going to be happening in an immigration court, which is an administrative court. It's created by Congress. Where you don't have a lot of constitutional rights. So he has this backup right now of an actual federal judge who will be reviewing the circumstances of his detention potentially. And there's an initial hearing on this already this week, and the judge did what happens in every habeas case. This is kind of reported as some kind of big development, but this is normal that the judge would say, you can't deport him while I'm looking at this case. That's what you'd expect. There's still an argument about jurisdiction because ICE is trying to play games about exactly where he was when, and if at four in the morning, he was actually in New York state. So what's going on with detention. He'll have a chance at a bond hearing. It doesn't look like he's been charged with anything that would make him a mandatory ICE detainee under INA 236C. So he's going to have, I think, a very solid case for bond when you have a wife who's very close to giving birth, when you massive community and national support,

0:18:40 Thomas: To be fair, he might

0:18:40 Matt: When

0:18:41 Thomas: Go hold up a few signs. That's, you know, we can't have that. He's a danger. He is a sign risk, Your Honor. We recovered markers. Your Honor, we recovered markers and poster board.

0:18:53 Matt: Pretty much. That's where we're at.

0:18:55 Thomas: Unreal.

0:18:56 Matt: I want spectrum on the issue of Israel and Gaza. I think everyone knows where we stand on it at this point. I want of any of this or of anything that Mahmoud Khalil has ever said or done or what he stands for. Is for all of us. We all have to stand up for this one because, as going to talk about at the end here, is a very good reason to believe that this is all just a test case for the rest of us, that really is.

0:19:20 Thomas: It's literally, they're just doing the first they came for the... They're just starting. I

0:19:25 Matt: It really is."

0:19:25 Thomas: Mean, I don't know if this is the very first one. Like I would argue like first they can for the trans people probably, you know, but like we're in that poem and a bunch of people who are, you know, that poem previously when like, I dunno, Obamacare was trying to be passed. They like, first they came for, you know, for nothing. And now that a bunch those people are like, no, this is fine. He's a terrorist. Yeah.

0:19:44 Thomas: It's, it's, this is the test. This is where we're at the poem. That's what the poem has been for this whole time.

0:19:49 Matt: I would tell you the Venezuelans they sent to Guantanamo I think are a line above those trans people absolutely first, I think. But we are at this point, if they get away with the grounds that they're trying to use for deportation, in this case, we're down a very dark path. We have to stop this. We cannot allow these grounds to ever be used the way that they've been used. And I'll tell you why. First, I want to tell you about the actual charging document in the case. I'm going to send it to you right now so that you can take a look at paragraph three. Now, I know you're not a lawyer. You're not an immigration lawyer, but you also are competent to read and write in English.

0:19:52 Thomas: There you go. Yeah.

0:20:20 Matt: Well, you know, I think so. Remember, this document initiates deportation proceedings for what I'm going to argue is going to be one of the most significant deportation cases in our lifetimes and one of most significant cases in U .S. history when this is done because of the nature of this, as I'll explain with the law. If you want to take a look at this whole document, this is called a notice to appear, and I've seen thousands of these myself. And I will say up front, obviously, the people who draft these are often in a hurry. Sometimes we do have mistakes. Sometimes I see misspellings of names. I've the wrong country once in a while listed as where they're from. Things can happen. Take a Look at paragraph three. Just really get your head around that. You can read it out loud. I think it might be helpful. Is very typical, and it just says you're national of the United States. So basically just saying we know you're a citizen. You're a native of Syria, citizen of Algeria. Then the rest of the document goes on typically to explain why they think that you should be deported and why it is what your current status is and what you've done to be deserved deportation.

0:20:21 Thomas: We'll say depends on Wow. Okay,

0:21:13 Matt: Now, paragraph three is a mess. Apparently, it was written and put out by a lawyer. The Washington Post got it. The document's been filed, apparently. Let's just take a look.

0:21:20 Thomas: All right. You were admitted to the United States at unknown place on or about unknown date as a as a unknown manner.

0:21:29 Matt: Let' just stop there for a second. Came on a student visa. This is knowable. You're DHS. You have CBP within your jurisdiction.

0:21:36 Thomas: Wasn't smuggled in a suitcase or something like what? I don't understand. This seems like the most documented way you could probably come in. Right. I mean, one of them.

0:21:45 Matt: Thoroughly through the consulate, getting a visa and entering on that visa. And this is the kind of thing, just to make the point, this language is what I expect to see in my clients who came over the border, because we don't know what and how you came here. But as an unknown manner, it's not even English.

0:21:58 Thomas: A known manner. Yeah Wow.

0:22:00 Matt: Let's keep going. Same paragraph.

0:22:02 Thomas: Semicolon or or. Oh, so is that the key? Like maybe the or is the operator there that let's see. Or same word or your what or your one word. I guess it's been smashed together. Status was adjusted to that of a lawful permanent resident on November 2024 under Section 212 A3C of the Act. What?

0:22:08 Matt: It means nothing. Catch everybody up on the joke here because there's some really funny immigration law stuff in here. First of all, but just as a matter of logic, right? You're saying either you came in over the border or some way that we don't know on an unknown place or time, or you became a lawful permanent resident, which is a green card, in November 2024, which in fact what happened. Under, now this is the really weird part, became a lawful permanent resident the usual way under INA 245A through marriage. What they're alleging, this is such a complete mess.

0:22:49 Thomas: So they have the wrong thing then. They don't even.

0:22:51 Matt: Just the wrong thing. What they've actually cited is the grounds of inadmissibility for... thing that they're trying to deport him for. This is completely nonsensical. It's saying that you were adjusted. You got your status through this part of the law that we're trying deport you for. It is a complete mistake. There's no explanation for this other than this entire thing. Mean, maybe they wrote it at four in the morning after not having slept for three days.

0:23:11 Thomas: I almost I think I need to hear what a normal one is because I don't, I'm trying to understand what's even happening here, Matt. So this normally says what it this says section, the purpose of it is established that you are not a citizen and also that there's some reason to deport you. Right. Is it those two things?

0:23:28 Matt: So that paragraph three there should be just that your status was adjusted to LPR on November 2024 under section 245A, which is the actual section through marriage, through family visas.

0:23:38 Thomas: It's a little bit of history. Okay.

0:23:39 Matt: You because have to establish these things as a matter of law. This is a charging document, right? It's a civil document.

0:23:42 Thomas: Gotcha. Yeah, yeah.

0:23:43 Matt: I would be very clear. These are not criminal charges, but like any charging document it has got to be accurate. You have to get every date and place and time and you have you had the wrong middle name, that would be a different person. So we could get that dismissed because it's just not you. And in this case, this is a normal looking NTA for the most part, except for this weird paragraph three. But then we get to paragraph four, which is the actual grounds for deportation.

0:24:04 Thomas: I'm going to stop you right there. I think by the letter of the law, you were admitted to the United States at unknown place, or about unknown date as an unknown manner. I mean, I guess that's true. Like if they're like your honor, so it's an or, or as the operator. So if the second thing you've covered, that's wrong. Like they have the wrong section of law. That's not right. So the second part of the or wrong. But the first part of you were admitted in an unknown time, unknown place. We don't know. I guess they could argue that's true. Your Honor, I swear we don't. No, we just said all that.

0:24:34 Matt: That's the point at which the respondent produces a copy of his student visa. It's pretty easy. And here's the stamp in my passport when I came in. This is easy stuff. This happens. Sometimes they get your status wrong. Sometimes we get to prove otherwise, right?

0:24:48 Thomas: I would expect that. So then the next paragraph, shouldn't there be, correct me if I'm wrong, is there a, so this is just establishing you're not a citizen, essentially, like, here's your thing. But then there should be a why, why we're deporting you, right? So there should and you robbed a bank, essentially or whatever, you know, that kind of thing.

0:25:02 Matt: Typically, 95 % of the time, if you're talking about a lawful permanent resident being deported under some section of 237, it's going to be because of a criminal conviction. Almost always. But check out paragraph four, because this is the first time that this has ever been used, as far as anybody knows, since 1997.

0:25:17 Thomas: Secretary of state has determined that your presence or activities in the United States would have a serious, would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United Holy crap.

0:25:26 Matt: Take that in. You, Muhammad Khalil. A serious problem for our foreign policy, which apparently is just Israel's domestic policy because you're protesting it. Gets worse. It actually gets much worse than this because... So in the bottom, you see that the basis of the foregoing gets charged. So this is the statement of facts, basically the complaint, if you're thinking about it as a legal document, as a charging document. And then the basis is what they're citing here is section 237A4C1, which is the deportability grounds, which mirror what you just read, that essentially that this person... Now, I have been aware throughout my career that there is a foreign policy grounds of deportability, but

0:26:00 Thomas: You just said 1997. I have to ask, like, what was it for then?

0:26:03 Matt: We'll talk about that in a minute. I don't want to. Yeah.

0:26:05 Thomas: I was like, I'm trying to imagine what the appropriate usage of this could be.

0:26:06 Matt: There's like one published case on this.

0:26:09 Thomas: Like, like Kim Jong -un's son or something. I don't know, something weird.

0:26:13 Matt: Right. And to be clear, I don't want to get too in the weeds here, but I do want to show that I know what I'm talking about here. INA 212 is about inadmissibility. So the thing they're citing in that other paragraph, which is completely wrong, inadmissible is we can deny you entry to the United States or we can say, and it's much easier to deny somebody admission to the States than it is to deport them for obvious reasons. Once you're already here and have residency, the law requires they show a much higher standard to deport somebody. They should. Because you've got, you know, in this case, family, right? You've got ties, you've a degree here. If we just want to say, no, you can't get a visa or ever come here, that's a much lower standard. It's just the way the law is designed. The foreign policy grounds of inadmissibility I was somewhat familiar with, because we use that all the time as like a foreign policy as immigration, excuse me, we

0:26:55 Thomas: Oh, it was inadmissibility. I didn't catch that. So that's not even like get rid of you. That's you shouldn't be allowed in.

0:27:00 Matt: Oh, no, I'm sorry. Contrast. So the contrast here is that usually, if you're going to hear about the foreign policy grounds, it's going to be for inadmissibility, because we're going do something like... Remember when Colombia turned around our planes and wouldn't let deportees come in a months ago? I know it's just part of the many things that have happened, but...

0:27:14 Thomas: 20 years ago in news cycle time.

0:27:17 Matt: Rubio signed a couple of orders under this grounds of invincibility. And one of those was for the president of Colombia and officials in Colombia basically to retaliate, to not allow them to come to the United States because they were involved in embarrassing us with these things. So that's like a minor little tit for tat thing. Obama did it with Russian officials. It's a good way to impose sanctions to say that these Russian officials, especially when they got involved with Ukraine, are doing things that are against our foreign policy.

0:27:38 Matt: So we can, yeah, it's a punishment. Is unusual? Is using it as a grounds for deportability for somebody who's already here. That is unheard of. And it is very dangerous. And this whole thing is from a Cold War statute from 1952, the McCarran -Walter Act. And at the time, of course, they were very concerned about communists and other radicals and socialists that were in the United States. And they wanted to have a tool that allowed them to deport these people. Even if they were engaging in First Amendment protected speech. And this is where I really want to highlight, because this part is not in the charging document, it's going to have to come out in court, but I want to preview the argument that the government is actually going to make. So let me just pull up the law here. I will also note, if anybody wants to check this stuff at home, this is very complicated, but the interplay between INA 212, which is inadmissibility, and INA 237, which has deportability, can be very complicated. But all you need to know is that the deportability grounds incorporate the inadmissibility grounds by reference, so it's basically the same. There is this higher standard for if you want to deport somebody based on otherwise protected speech. That's an option. It's written into the law as an option that we get to do this. Me read you this part so you can understand just how high the standard actually should be and what Marco Rubio is going to have to prove when he brings this to court. Remember, language the that they're using straight up from 212ac1... that an alien whose entry or proposed activities in the United States, the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences. So that's her inadmissibility for denying somebody a visa. And it was very surprising to me when Marco Rubio, just before this arrest, he was talking about how he had the right to revoke green cards because that's unheard of, right? Again, Secretary of States controls visas and controls the issuance of what happens at consulates abroad, but the Secretary

0:27:38 Thomas: Well, that makes sense. Yeah, right. Yeah.

0:29:17 Matt: This one place, he can. So And there's an exception in part three here. Says that you should not deport somebody, essentially, because of the alien's past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations. If such beliefs, or statements, would be lawful within the United States, e .g., First Amendment protected. So the law says you can't do this to somebody. First Amendment -protected beliefs or associations or speech, which is what's going on here, unless, unless you take this in. The Secretary of State personally determines, Marco Rubio sits down and gives it a thought, that the aliens' admission would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest. That is an incredibly high standard.

0:29:34 Thomas: That sounds like, yeah. Yeah.

0:29:58 Matt: Compromise. Like, do us in with Israel. Like

0:30:00 Thomas: Tell me what the policy would even, we already fully support them and they, you know, like, what we worried about losing? Oh no, they won't let us give them billions of dollars of weapons? No, too bad.

0:30:13 Matt: Call up Donald Trump and Marco Rubio and say, you got to get this guy? He's compromising our ability to talk to you? Is that what happened? I don't think that's what happened. Compromise, compelling. And compelling, of course, you might remember from a compelling governmental interest. We're talking about First Amendment litigation and other things. Compelling governmental interest has to be more than optional. It has to an essential governmental interest, so you're talking our support for Israel is that essential, and our support of Israel's actions in Gaza is that

0:30:44 Thomas: That just having this guy somehow does anything to that. It does nothing. What does it do? It doesn't do anything.

0:30:54 Thomas: I worry that we're going to get an affidavit from Benjamin Netanyahu saying, well, I was about to cut off all diplomatic ties if this guy was in your country. And then the court will be like, well there you go.

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0:32:36 Matt: Here's the reason that this really concerns me, because like I said, there's one published case on this from 1999 for the Board of Immigration Appeals. Interestingly, in this case, there was a predecessor statute that was very similar under INA 241 before they changed the law back in 94. And it had pretty much the same language I just read you about the reasonable grounds to believe. And a New Jersey district court struck that down as unconstitutional, rightfully. They found that this is way too broad, that we can't really know what it means, that you're talking about essentially, like, sure, there's an exception for protected speech, but you're still allowing the Secretary of State to override protected speech. This is just too much. And enemy of the show, Samuel Alito, sitting on the Third Circuit, reversed that on procedural grounds, and it never went any further. But the Board of Immigration Appeals case that this came from... is really complicated. It's 30 pages long. I don't want to get into too much, but it's the only analog. It is the only precedent that I can find for this. And from just sort of looking around in the community what people have been saying, it appears that this arrest in 1997 was like the only time that they tried to use this as a grounds of deportability. It was a very different situation. Name of the case is Matter of Ruiz Masiu. We will link to it. It was published in 1999. And it involves someone who was the deputy attorney general of Mexico in

0:33:42 Matt: The 90s. He resigned and then came in on a tourist visa. And he failed to declare $26,000 that he brought with him. For all kinds of complicated political reasons, we decided that it would be adverse to our foreign policy to allow this man to remain in the United States because of corruption, I think. And they would jeopardize their ability to work with Mexico on law enforcement matters. So they held on to him. They initiated deportation proceedings. Basically, in this very long decision, the Board of Immigration Appeals goes back and forth. But they say, basically, the statute says that all we need to sustain this is a letter from the Secretary of State Warren Christopher at the time, which says that this meets the standard.

0:33:56 Thomas: What? Have to provide any more than just like, yes, I say so.

0:34:20 Matt: That is the evidence that you need. Service is not required to present additional evidence of deportability. It's right here in the decision.

0:34:25 Thomas: I mean, I guess I could see like, yeah, I could say a use. OK, corrupt official or maybe even someone, I don't know, commit some friggin war crime somewhere, flees somehow ends up here. And then another country is like, hey, no, we give them back where we want to punish them in our justice system or something. I could be being like, well, yeah. We let's you reason or something I donno. I can see something like that being a valid foreign policy reason or maybe there's a better example. And if I'm trying to. Think about that situation. I suppose the Secretary of State being the one to determine if our foreign policy is affected and all that makes sense. But that's not anything like what we're doing here.

0:35:02 Matt: At all, not at all. And I do want to make the point that they still have to – so the letter is not 100 % enough. You're still in deportation proceedings, and the judge still has to determine under clear, unequivocal, and convincing evidence, which again is just the letter, that the Secretary of State has made a facially reasonable and bona fide determination that it meets the standards.

0:35:20 Matt: So the judge does still have the Secretary of State just says, you know, he's got green eyes and brown hair and, you have to actually have a judge consider what's in the letter, even without evidence. Again, Marco Rubio is going to have to meet the standard of saying that it presents some kind of a threat to a compelling foreign policy interest. And then it's just like such an incredibly urgent matter that we have to deport him and not just deport him. We have to strip him of his lawful permanent residency. And then deport him, and presumably in a way that he will not be able to come back no matter his family ties, no matter the fact that he's about to be a father. This is incredibly serious. And I think this is a test case. And the reason I'm extra concerned, actually, this is little strange, but I'm a little concerned because they didn't bring any allegations of terror, which they would have had the easy option to do, because I will tell you that our grounds right now for deportability on terror under... INA 237 also includes security and related grounds talking about terrorism. And there's an incredibly broad language here about people who endorse or espouse terrorism. So I could see the Trump administration trying to

0:36:20 Matt: Make the argument. And again, no, we don't agree with this, but you could say that he's taking a position that, and the way they put it in public was that he was aligned to Hamas, that his activities were aligned to, which turns out is actually good English. That kept bothering me. But you can actually say aligned to when you're talking about philosophy.

0:36:34 Thomas: Not aligned with? Interesting.

0:36:35 Matt: Aligned with is actually a physical alignment. I've just learned this recently, so now I get to be pedantic about it. Because me. That was what they kept saying, was that he was aligned to Hamas.

0:36:42 Thomas: Because Hamas famously is like protest at the university. I don't know what what was aligned to Hamas, even allegedly. Do they have to say what or they just get to say that?

0:36:47 Matt: That's their major strategy. You know what? Person we can ask about this would be the Deputy Secretary the Department of Homeland Security, who was just on NPR this morning and who made me stop everything I was doing. I don't usually listen to NPR, but I really wanted to know what they were going to say about this story. I just happened to be listening when he was on this morning. And we have to listen to this. You have to hear what this absolute idiot said. This is the second in command of the remember his background was that he was the mayor of Los Alamitos, California, and he owns a construction company. Are his qualifications.

0:37:19 Thomas: Guy. Wow. Wow, okay. Jeez.

0:37:21 Matt: Troy Edgar. Let's much. As we're about to learn, he knows nothing about immigration law.

0:37:22 Thomas: He's one of the more qualified Trump appointees. That's, yeah. Fox show he host?

0:37:29 Matt: No, he definitely had a podcast called Ameritocracy, in which he interviewed white guys who made it in America through, you know, Ameritracy. Yep. They all have, podcasters have taken over, man. It's bad news.

0:37:40 Thomas: I live in the dumbest

0:37:43 Matt: We should not be running the world.

0:37:44 Thomas: Timeline. Yeah, nothing wrong with being a podcaster. There is something wrong with that podcaster and now being in the cabinet.

0:37:51 Matt: Hear him explain this to Michelle Martin, who does a pretty good job of pushing back.

0:37:55 Thomas: I hope so. Jesus.

0:37:57 Clip: Asked him, what are you going to do here? He said, I'm going to go and protest. So it's protesting a deportable offense. We would never let him into the country. He's protesting. He said that he lied on his application. He lied to an American citizen. I think if he went into clarity for terrorists, we would never let him in. And what did he engage in that constitutes terrorist activity?

0:38:29 Clip: I mean, Michelle, have you watched it on TV? It's pretty clear. If it isn't, well, explain it to those of us who have not, or perhaps others have not.

0:38:27 Thomas: Probably. Oh,

0:38:37 Clip: What exactly do you do? Well, I think it's clear, or we shouldn't be talking about it. I mean the reality is that if you watch and see what he's done on the university... Do you not know? Are you telling us that you're not aware? You don't know what he did? No, I find it interesting that you are not aware. I think you could explain it to us. I think others would like to know exactly what the offenses are, what the propaganda was that you allege, what

0:38:41 Thomas: My God. Jesus Christ. Oh my God, boy.

0:39:08 Thomas: That is a student who didn't read the book.

0:39:09 Matt: So bad. Yes.

0:39:10 Thomas: Wow. It's amazing that you don't know what my—the sin man was about, teacher. I mean, I loved all the mice that were in it. And I, I think, and like we, that's why we're talking about them is because of the book.

0:39:15 Matt: I've definitely read it. Presumably, the mice survived, I assume. Yeah, so that's not even – we didn't have time to play the whole thing. We will link to the whole things so people can hear how bad this is. That was the last half. First half he keeps saying that Khalil had a permanent residency. He's like, no, no. This is about the visa process. And he doesn't even know. He doesn't know.

0:39:30 Thomas: Oh my God. Did. God.

0:39:52 Matt: And there is a thought here that they didn't actually know that he was a resident and that they were not prepared to actually charge him as deportable instead of inadmissible.

0:39:59 Thomas: Then let him go. Right. The F now. Right?

0:40:01 Matt: That would be great. But they've embarrassed themselves. They've got to keep going, just dig in. Also seen some things that indicate that somebody at least knew this, but they just weren't prepared. And again, when you're doing something this big, you know, this is the intersection of Palestine and immigration policy. You know people are going to be in the streets, as they have been, as we should be over this. And New York has been great about turning out on this. You're going to get more response. I mean, this the new travel ban, right? This is the closest thing we've had to the thing that gets people out. Besides the mass firing of federal workers, which has gotten federal workers out. But this is something that so many people are rightfully upset about. And you didn't write the notice to appear ahead of time. You didn't have this thing lined up. You just can't even emphasize how bad this is, that not only were they not prepared, but now they don't even know how to talk about it. He didn't

0:40:49 Thomas: Not dealing with the best students in Matt. We're not with the, these weren't the valedictorians who got into this.

0:40:56 Matt: Is the person who is willing to work under Kristi Noem as Department of Homeland Security Secretary. So, yeah, the thing is, I guess I have to say, I know historically from my reading that fascism has never been particularly intelligent. There are no brilliant fascists in world history. Glories in ignorance often, but this is just disgusting. I would like to see them. And again, he doesn't even know the grounds of deportability. He doesn't mention the foreign policy thing at all. He's assuming. That DHS is deporting him for terror ties. That's the way he's talking all the way through the interview.

0:41:26 Matt: He doesn't even know what's in the document.

0:41:26 Thomas: Why do an interview? What are you doing?

0:41:28 Matt: Right. Three minutes to talk to your lawyers. Maybe don't talk to the lawyer who drafted this, but talk to somebody who knows something.

0:41:35 Thomas: You talk to the lawyer and they're like, oh yeah, it's unknown. You at unknown time, unknown location. It's like, that's not helpful.

0:41:39 Matt: Yeah. That guy? That's someone? Yeah. Yeah, I wanted to make sure everybody understood that not only is this, I is the most significant individual act, I think, of the Trump administration so far. Is the telling that they tried to do to one person. There have certainly been lots of other things that affect a lot of other people and a lot threats to rights and a lots of threats to vulnerable people. This one right here, and the reason I'm going to tell you just as we wrap this up why I am so extra concerned about this, is that on January 5th, 2021, Bill Barr this got overshadowed for reasons you can imagine on January 5th, 2021. This didn't really make the news. Barr signed off on an order after promising for quite a while to do this. Memorandum on inadmissibility of persons affiliated with Antifa based on organized criminal activity. There's been a movement which is continuing as of just a few months ago. Marjorie Taylor Greene and some others filed a bill to do the same thing. Secretary of State shall, in consultation with the Attorney General, review information received to assess whether to classify, capital A, Antifa as a terrorist organization. Under Section 1182, the same section,

0:42:40 Matt: Right?

0:42:40 Thomas: Antifa, TM.

0:42:42 Matt: Exactly. To review the publications from the board of directors of Antifa and see what they've been putting out. Know that Antifa is not an organization. They they were proposing to make it a terrorist act to affiliate with Antifa. And that would be grounds for denial of a visa as well. Again, it is one thing to say, you know, you're supporting Hamas. And of course, he's not actually supporting Hamass. It's one thing will tell you, and I've always told my students, that whatever they're doing to immigrants historically throughout history are things they want to do to us and eventually will get around to doing to those of us who were born here or have naturalized.

0:43:28 Thomas: Don't agree with them? Yeah, absolutely.

0:43:30 Matt: Right. If they could, they'd be doing all of this to us too. And they're working toward that goal. Because what Marjorie Taylor Greene filed on January 9th, and what Republicans are continuing to beat the drum about, is to declare Antifa a domestic terror organization. So it's one thing to say, and it's bad enough to say it's an international terrorist organization somehow, that can deny a visa if you're affiliated, so that immigrants have to be punished for it, for affiliation with Antifa. If they declare AntIFA to be a domestic terrorist organization, then we are all. Mahmoud Khalil. Where this goes. Are all going to be adverse to the United States' interests. And again, Secretary of State, this doesn't apply to that kind of thing, but we allow this kind of that's where it goes. And I'm sorry to have to say it that directly, but I've been talking about the coming rise of fascism, and it's here. This is it. This trying to criminalize trans people. There's all of this other stuff going on. But here is a direct assault on one person's civil rights that is a test case for everyone else. And I really believe this.

0:44:26 Thomas: Want to ask, you did say at the very start that this is all legal, but is that really true? I get that it could be legal in a non -made up world, but If I'm a corrupt police officer, is it legal that I get a warrant by just lying and being like, I saw just mounds of cocaine in his house, and that's totally made up? Would you say that's legal?

0:44:51 Matt: Legal until a judge says it isn't. And that's my concern.

0:44:54 Thomas: I think the important thing is if this is all made up and the points don't matter, is just want to make sure I get the conclusion correct. Like a difference between this could be legal if they could demonstrate terrorism or, you know, those things that could demonstrate those things versus, oh, no, they have wide latitude to just do whatever. And it's pretty much a formality. So I guess I want to ask, like, do you anticipate them getting away with this? Is it that level of legal or not?

0:45:22 Matt: I mean, based on this BIA opinion, it is very possible that they could just say that the Secretary of State's letters controls that they can't get involved in foreign policy. And that's what he says. But I want to be clear what I mean when I say this is legal. I mean that a lot of people learned this week that the Department of Homeland Security can arrest a lawful permanent resident, like take him away from his family, detain him without bond, overnight him thousands of miles away, and then just initiate proceedings to revoke his green card. That's all legal. Like everything they've done so far is completely allowed. And I think that people have been, you know, obviously the ACLU and everybody else is coming out and saying this is all illegal. And I think it should be found illegal at the end of the day. They have legal authority to do this. And thanks, unfortunately, to the Real ID Act of all things of 2005, they have broad authority to call him a terrorist. And so that was my initial concern. And when I wrote this up on Substack, we didn't know for sure about which grounds he's going to be charged under. I also wrote about this foreign policy thing. Ultimately, it is legal if the government and the judge concludes that it is. I want to make the point that it's not. Unlawful in the sense that there is a law that backs up that they can point to everything they've done so far. And the turning point is going to be about whether this charge about him being a threat to foreign policy is upheld or not. And it's going to a long fight. He's got awesome lawyers. Now, depending on how this all plays out, that there's some way that New York can keep jurisdiction. He is going

0:45:44 Thomas: Gotcha.

0:46:37 Matt: But if they can make an argument, perhaps, that they can keep this in the Second Circuit, we'd be a lot better off on this one. And this very well might have to get up to the Supreme Court. He may be held during that time. Although I really don't think that he should. I mean, and I should be clear that the standard for immigration bond is that you present a danger to the community and that you have a high risk of flight. And other of those things are true here. Obviously, you've got your wife's about to give birth and you have no criminal record and you're very well known in your community.

0:46:59 Matt: Yeah, right. Pretty much. Don't let him write into you. Yeah.

0:46:58 Thomas: Confiscate is markers, you Rubio actually write a letter in this? I might have missed that. Oh, we don't know. OK.

0:47:04 Matt: We don't know yet. Yeah. And the other thing is, too, if he's going to do this thing where he overrides his First Amendment rights, which is written into this law in 1952, he has to notify Congress. And we don't if he has done that either. I don't that any of this stuff has happened. But the will eventually be used in support of this notice to appear that's been filed, and we'll get it soon enough. Be very interested to read and talk about it.

0:47:22 Thomas: So right now, do we know where he is? Because I know there was a bunch of stuff about like they didn't even know where it was for a second. I know you kind of talked about that. But do we finally know he is in Louisiana or whatever? That's for sure. OK, they've been able to.

0:47:33 Matt: Confirmed in Jane, Louisiana. Yeah

0:47:34 Thomas: And so what's the what's

0:47:36 Matt: Got a deportation hearing on the March 27th, and I assume he'll be seeking bond at that time, and that's fine.

0:47:43 Thomas: Is he? Yeah, I hear you. But just so he are you saying he's basically locked up until then at a minimum, no matter what? Wow.

0:47:50 Matt: And that's pretty much I tell all my clients, if you're detained by ICE, you have to expect at least two weeks before you see a judge, possibly more, and before you get a chance to ask for bond. Totally part of this.

0:47:59 Thomas: There's no like the habeas thing that can't act any faster than that or this

0:48:03 Matt: Possibly. I mean, the habeas thing, if they're able to show just how stupid this all was, and they can come back and say, I mean look at this notice for a period, they don't even know what they're talking about, right? Maybe the judge might actually grant some exceptional relief here. But I think they're probably just going to let the immigration court play it out because he's in ICE custody. We'll see.

0:48:17 Thomas: This is real bad. OK, well, thanks for the coverage. I'm glad we finally got the the map breakdown. This is exactly what what you're on a way to do. And this is why we'll obviously be following this extremely closely.

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0:50:04 Thomas: We were promised a footnote that might be slightly less of a bummer than that, Matt. What have you got for us?

0:50:09 Matt: It's dark Fun, frivolous footnote that you've been promised is about a January 6th defendant, but this is the times we're in. And I like to make fun of these people. I think it's worth doing. So let's talk about William.

0:50:18 Thomas: Well, it could be good news. Maybe another one of them was shot. You never know. Could be.

0:50:23 Matt: We got William Pope. And this is an interesting fight because it is William Pope taking on the U.S. attorney for D.C., Ed Martin, who we haven't really had a chance to fully talk about yet. I really want to talk about. I think I've noted more than once in this show recently that Ed Martin is a conservative nut. He's a full -on hard right market guy. He wrote a book called The Conservative Case for Trump. He hosted a podcast called The Pro-America Report. Back and checked. The most recent episode of that podcast was called The Body of Literature That Shaped Donald Trump, which is... Read it, read it.

0:50:53 Thomas: I guess you could say it's the infinite set of all literature because didn't read it. So it's basically everything

0:50:57 Matt: Yeah. I guess just in the zeitgeist, it's just in The Water, he somehow... William Pope was a January 6th defendant. I have to say, to his credit, not one of the worst January 6 defendants. He's one of And the statement of facts in his case has photos, so you can see him wandering around the Capitol. No question that's what he did. Reported himself to the FBI. He was one of those guys. Pope is one of these people who thinks he's smarter than everybody. He represented himself all the way through these proceedings.

0:50:59 Thomas: He'd never read. That's all books.

0:51:22 Matt: To his credit, his former lawyer actually said that he's one of the few people he's met who might be capable of representing himself in a federal criminal proceeding. Has a total of three degrees, including a master's degree. Bachelor's in Management and Ethics, an MPS in Organizational Leadership, and a Master's in Strategic Communication. I got to say, you got to work on your communication a little bit here, Mr.

0:51:21 Thomas: Oh God.

0:51:39 Matt: Pope.

0:51:38 Thomas: That is a lot of bullshit degrees.

0:51:41 Matt: Is, yeah, especially ethics. But reported himself to the FBI saying, I would like to turn myself in. I was in the Capitol on January 6th. I did not damage any property or engage in any violence. I am loyal to the United States and was only there to exercise my freedom of speech. I left the building voluntarily. He later denied that he had reported himself at all, which is very confusing.

0:51:56 Thomas: That's weird.

0:51:56 Matt: Then he had some kind of conspiracy theory about how he was pushed by a government agent into the Capitol, and that's how he ended up entering the Capitol. Don't know. It doesn't really matter. The terms of the case don't matter because, of course, as we all know, on January 20th, 2025, Donald Trump dismissed all pending cases and pardoned everybody else who'd been convicted of anything to do with January 6th.

0:52:14 Thomas: Are actual terrorists, by the way. I wish we could deport all these people.

0:52:17 Matt: Contrast.

0:52:18 Thomas: Actual terrorists get

0:52:20 Matt: Trying to overthrow the government. And people who are associated in some cases with people like the Oath Keepers, who I do consider to be domestic terrorists, and Proud Boys at this point. You know, I want to be careful about throwing the terrorist label around, but if you're doing it, that's one place to put it. So he, this is very funny because, you account of this is, I represented myself in court, untrained in law, and beat the United States government in a hostile venue. Accomplishment has resulted in Ivy League law professors and the current U.S. attorney of the District of Columbia referring to me as the greatest pro se defendant in American history. This is a Trump fan, obviously. I want to be clear, he didn't win a victory. He won an election. That's how this happened. Yeah. I mean, well, Trump won an

0:52:53 Thomas: You want an election? Oh, oh, sorry. Yeah. What is he even talking about? I mean, if he got pardoned and the case was dismissed by the president, take on the federal government. The federal government let him go by

0:53:06 Matt: He outwitted entire federal agencies and more than a dozen of the fiercest and most powerful government attorneys in America. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm reading his own words by having his case dismissed by Donald Trump. Yeah.

0:53:11 Thomas: Nothing, by doing nothing. It was still like ongoing at that time or because of his expert, amazing pro se litigation techniques of President Trump being elected, he won his case.

0:53:26 Matt: Went on to say, it's surprising that Kansas State University has not yet awarded me an honorary doctor of philosophy for this historic accomplishment. It's not at all.

0:53:31 Thomas: It's not not surprising at all. Don't

0:53:33 Matt: Or a little longer.

0:53:33 Thomas: Think that's what they do.

0:53:35 Matt: So here's what happens. Mr. Pope is in line for something called the Liberty Inaugural Ball on January 20th, a day that must have been a very nice day for him because it's the day that his president is being sworn in and that he's being dismissed, his case is dismissed. And he gets to meet Ed Martin, one of his heroes, standing in line. And Ed Martin, of course, is about to be the new US attorney. And so they have a little chat. And my guess is that this either didn't happen or Ed Martin was drunk. I don't know. Something like this.

0:53:59 Matt: Because allegedly, Ed Martin told him, hey, you should request to get an entire copy of your case file. Also, he alleges that Ed Martin that all this stuff was nonsense and that he was being persecuted or whatever. So again, case was dismissed, but you go and look at the docket and there's a whole bunch of activity about a week after the case is dismissed because he starts moving for all these things. He can't take the W and he has to move to get production of various case files, including all outstanding files and information requested by the motions. So he wants to get everything that they ever had against him, like the entire investigation, all of the prosecutor's notes, everything else. Now, some of this stuff he would have been entitled to in discovery if he was a defendant.

0:54:33 Thomas: I was going to say, if he's already defending himself, right,

0:54:37 Matt: But Right. When your case

0:54:37 Thomas: So did they just not get to that phase or something?

0:54:39 Matt: Is dismissed, you're no longer a defendant.

0:54:41 Thomas: Right, but I'm saying, didn't he already do that, or is it just didn't get to the trial,

0:54:45 Matt: Would have a lot of it, but he comes back and he's got a long list of things that he wants. Let me just give you a quick sample. I wants the government's case notes and work product. And by definition, work product is not something you usually get in this kind of litigation. He wants all internal government emails and communications, all communications with Kansas State University, all communication on Facebook and Instagram, banking and finance institutions, all

0:55:02 Thomas: What's the Kansas State University thing? What is that?

0:55:05 Matt: Think that was because he was a student there.

0:55:07 Thomas: Is getting his fourth degree or something?

0:55:08 Matt: So he was actually in the process of getting another degree, lifetime student.

0:55:11 Thomas: Maybe instead of getting more degrees, start using the ones you have.

0:55:15 Matt: I want to say get a job, but maybe get a guess there's something to me about somebody who just got himself out of a federal conviction and federal prison and all of the consequences that come with that out of sure luck because this guy won the presidency.

0:55:17 Thomas: Just don't be a piece of shit, I feel like. Yeah.

0:55:30 Matt: Otherwise, definitely would have been facing conviction along with a lot of other people. So he got really mad because Ed Martin filed a response to this and said, of course, he has no right to the many, many, things he's seeking. There's a long list. I'm not even going to keep going all the things he wants. Basically everything they've ever produced, because he's convinced that there's some kind of conspiracy he's going to unveil. He thinks that Ed Martin told him something to that effect. Martin makes the very reasonable point that he is no longer a defendant and that he has set forth no grounds in which he's entitled to any of the requested materials. So obviously, there's no Brady 16. There is nothing else that requires him to produce anything because his case was dismissed.

0:56:02 Thomas: Done here.

0:56:02 Matt: Yeah.

0:56:02 Thomas: We're done.

0:56:03 Matt: Of course, he responds on February 12th. He comes back and says, Your Honor, I did not anticipate, this is the beginning of the filing, that I would still be moving this court on this, the fourth anniversary of my wrongful arrest. Yet the government attorneys in my case are still terrible, to put it nicely. So regretfully, you'll have to endure me a little bit longer. Now he's looking for sanctions, and he's very regretfully adding in this that he wants to add Ed Martin to the sanctions. He's like, you know, I thought we were friends, but turns out he's not doing what I want.

0:56:25 Thomas: I thought he was speaking to me through the TV, but it turns out... Oh,

0:56:30 Matt: And then I'm just going to send you so you can enjoy the visuals at the very end of this. We'll out the last page of this filing. It does not require a wire to explain.

0:56:37 Thomas: Put a... Oh, okay, he put a meme? Of meme thing. You tyrants messed with the wrong man.

0:56:45 Matt: A picture of himself smoking a joint with a party hat and some party going on. And it says, happy arrestiversary. This is the end of the federal court filing. Go live your life. You're not going to get this case filed. Not going to happen.

0:56:56 Thomas: Got nothing else going on, Matt, this is the peak of his existence here.

0:56:59 Matt: That's probably got a long paragraph about how much Ed Martin sucks, and he ends it with, this level of treachery is typically only seen outside of Washington, D .C., in poker cheats, horse thieves, and back shooters. Back shooters. And then a footnote where he says, I am also alarmed that Mr. Martin would try to claw back discovery, to which he's not entitled because he's no longer a defendant, rather than make it public. Why is he now trying to cover up the truth about January 6th? Wasn't this supposed to be the most transparent administration? So you have to enjoy MAGA people not what they want.

0:57:31 Thomas: An asshole.

0:57:32 Matt: No, all around, just go live your life.

0:57:35 Thomas: Can he be sanctioned?

0:57:37 Matt: I mean, honestly, at this point for him, he's representing himself. It's, you get pretty broad latitude to file whatever you want, but this is frivolous, obviously.

0:57:43 Thomas: A meme. Don't know.

0:57:45 Matt: Yeah. We've had some heavy stuff today, but I want to take it out on something inspirational. Been talking a lot about how Democrats should be responding in this moment and how they should be standing up for us. And I have an example here of a Democrat doing exactly what I would want a Democrat to do in this And this is especially important because this man is running for the mayor of New York against both Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo, and he should win. Is Zoran Mamdani. And And we're going to hear a clip of him taking on Tom Homan, the border czar, and then giving a little press conference about what just happened.

0:58:19 Thomas: Yes. Here we go

0:58:33 Clip: Tom Homan. All he had to answer for that cruelty was a smirk. Because there is no answer for taking a man from his pregnant wife, who is due to deliver their newborn child in a month, from their Columbia University apartment, a day after that same man, Mahmoud Khalil, wrote to Columbia University and said he feared for his life. The cowardice that is on display across our city and our state is unacceptable. New Yorkers are looking to us. They are looking for their leaders for courage and for conviction, and what they are finding instead is collaboration, and that is just simply unacceptable.

0:59:11 Matt: There you go. Zohran Mamdani. So

0:59:13 Thomas: Yeah. Please, God, anyone but Eric Adams and what's-his-name?

0:59:18 Matt: Cuomo. Yeah.

0:59:18 Thomas: God, please, please. New Yorkers.

0:59:20 Matt: We've got a very good progressive candidate here. And so do what you can to support him and free Mahmoud Khalil.

0:59:26 Thomas: That's a great clip. Right. Well, that's our show. So much, Matt. Really valuable stuff in there. And yeah, yeah, got to keep attention on this. Keep up the protest and keep up the fight because this is this is it's the poem. They're doing the poem, guys.

0:59:38 Matt: Here.

0:59:38 Thomas: There are several stanzas in. Alright, we'll see you all on Monday. Thanks for listening.

0:59:39 Matt: All right. Thanks.

0:59:44 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.

1:00:01 Matt: Of those cases that I've worked on have been found not to be. Oh, is that too loud? That's a little loud.

1:00:04 Thomas: Maybe we'll wait for that to

1:00:06 Matt: Okay.

1:00:06 Thomas: Pass.

1:00:06 Matt: That pass.

1:00:11 Thomas: It was putting a little vibrato on it. It was really getting expressive. You know, sometimes they're like, I want to stand out. Okay, yeah, maybe take that last sentence if you remember what the hell it was. Ah, whatever.

1:00:20 Matt: What was I just saying?

1:00:26 Thomas: I'm sure it'll work.

1:00:26 Matt: I don't remember things I say.

1:00:27 Thomas: Yeah.