PROSECUTE AND ABOLISH ICE

Transcript

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

0:00:04 Clip: You killed my neighbor how do you show up to work every day how the do you do this every day your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety and you are doing exactly the opposite people are being hurt and I have a message for ice get the out of

0:00:35 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1224. I'm Thomas. That over there is Matt Cameron, real -life immigration attorney. How you doing?

0:00:43 Matt: This one's hitting hard. I got to tell you, the thing we're talking about today.

0:00:46 Thomas: Yeah, this is, you know, this isn't good. This isn't just bad.

0:00:52 Matt: It's very bad.

0:00:53 Thomas: We've got, I'm sure most people know, an ICE officer just murdering a woman. There's not any bright side to that. There's no funny spin. There isn't any fun or anything. It's just murder and it's awful.

0:01:04 Matt: As we'll talk about, it's not the only person they've killed, certainly, since Trump took on.

0:01:07 Thomas: This one's really bad, though.

0:01:09 Matt: This is very bad as a murder.

0:01:11 Thomas: Hopefully this will break through in terms of people realizing how horrible this is. I hope we'll do our part here. But not only that, January 6th, five -year anniversary the other day. That's a bummer. That is just a real bummer, yeah.

0:01:23 Matt: Yeah, not every anniversary is a good time. Yeah because

0:01:27 Thomas: It just really hit me. I saw an article, I think I posted a screenshot. It was just an article that I'm like, this headline shouldn't exist. The idea, and this is a CBS News, news five years after january 6th attacks senate democrats seek to ban taxpayer funded payouts to capital rioters it's just like I mean we had a few years we hada few years of feeling like justice was happening it was an immense effort a huge effort a lot of heroic people a lot of people who worked hard a lot a lot like citizens who tried to help coalesce footage and identify people like so much effort and then five years later it's not just like well well, a few of them got away, which would have sucked. It's no, they're all of course pardoned as we all know.

0:01:48 Matt: We have to do that now. Yeah

0:02:18 Thomas: And now it's like they're trying to pay them money.

0:02:17 Matt: Oh, we're going to hear from Enrique Tarrio and his opinion the other day, just this week, about how he feels about the way they've been treated. It. But we'll also just kind of do a quick catch up with the where are they now kind of on players involved.

0:02:33 Thomas: Yeah. Fortunately, few of whom are dead and in prison. I like that. You know, we got, so if we're trying to find upside, it's a, look, it'S a dark day.

0:02:36 Matt: And a few, a few. Yeah. Yeah,

0:02:39 Thomas: Trying to find a little upside. Few of them are in prison slash got in a shooting with police officers and were killed. Like that's the only bright side. I mean, it' s just awful. If you spend any time going back to the accounts accounts of the horrible shit these writers, these insurrectionists did. And for them to be like, now they hear, I mean, it's just truly staggering. Truly staggering.

0:03:03 Matt: They are rewriting history in front of us, which is why we have to talk about it today. You know, the fifth anniversary, especially. And one, I was going to say one bit of fun we get to have is I finally get to tell the story of the only Supreme Court justice arrested for murder while serving on the Supreme Court. It's actually relevant to today's topic.

0:03:19 Matt: So I've been looking forward to telling that one. I was waiting for an excuse. Cues. Otherwise, we've got a fun footnote involving DOJ being completed. It's in two different cases.

0:03:26 Thomas: At the very least, we've got a footnote, everybody. We all can hold to the footnote. Yeah, this is one of those where it's like, look, this we just need to talk about this. We need to get the word out.

0:03:37 Matt: Yeah, that's right.

0:03:37 Thomas: This is dark stuff. And we all need to know what's happening and be upset about it and do what we can.

0:03:44 Matt: And I got to say, I did not plan it this way, but we are talking for half the show about a murder committed, I believe, by law enforcement, and the other half talking about how the Department of Justice felt about attacks on 140 law enforcement officers on January 6th and how they treated that, and how different law enforcement gets treated differently depending on who is assaulting them or coming at them or whatever the perception is.

0:04:02 Thomas: No kidding.

0:04:02 Matt: I think this is a really important contrast. And as I said, we can't let them rewrite the history on either of these events.

0:04:08 Thomas: No, that's a really interesting comparison. So lots to keep an eye on. And so we have the footnote that, you know, at least we have that. And if you, you need something to take you up after this episode, make sure you caught episode one of the sandwich trial. That was so much fun. We're working on more of those and we'll get them out as soon as we can. That's going to be fun. I can't wait.

0:04:28 Matt: I am really glad about the timing on this. I knew we'd get to do more of this after today's news. It's a lot more fun.

0:04:33 Thomas: That's gonna be nice for all of us. All right. Well, we better get into it. Let's take our break and thank the patrons at patreon .com slash law for making the show happen. They avoid the break. They get the goodies and you could join them. So thanks so much. And after this break, we'll dig into it.

0:04:52 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:04:52 Thomas: Well, which awfulness do we want to start with? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:04:55 Matt: I think we've got to talk about today's news. I just got to get into it. And I got to tell you, this is hitting hard for me because we'll talk about the violence that ISIS committed, certainly since Trump came in. It has been committing violence for 21 years. I mean, it's since 22 years now going on. And this in particular, though, this as a US citizen observer, these are exactly the kind of people that I know and meet with and care about. I mean, I care about everybody, obviously, but this particular issue of people that are just trying to look out for their neighbors, and this is exactly what we were afraid of, is this kind of retaliation. So as we're at the time of recording, facts are still coming out, but the video is certainly very clear. This is a 37 -year -old victim, US citizen. We don't know her name yet, but we know that she was there to protect her neighbors.

0:05:38 Thomas: Okay. It's so fresh that I actually, I actually didn't know that yet. It almost looks like just a random person from the video, like some, but, but so it's somebody specifically there.

0:05:46 Matt: A legal observer is how she's being described. So that's why it's really hitting hard for me. This isn't exactly the kind of thing we've been talking to activists about.

0:05:54 Thomas: And we, you've specifically been giving the advice of do this in a non -violent way. Don't interfere, obviously.

0:06:00 Matt: Because this is exactly what we're afraid of.

0:06:02 Thomas: Even if you're following that advice, it sounds like there's a huge risk. Yeah.

0:06:06 Matt: Just keep your distance. Do not get anywhere near these people. Have you had a chance to see the video?

0:06:12 Thomas: I've seen some angles. I think I've seen one angle that fortunately doesn't like show anything too gruesome, but if people don't want to watch it, I get it. I don't usually want to watch these things. This one's so quick that I honestly just like thumbnail auto played in a few places, you know, it wasn't, it's like, it'S not very long. So like I didn't really avoid it. It looks to be from my I mean, you can give us more info, but just from a casual observer normie standpoint, it looks like someone's trying to pull their car out of the way of whatever's going on. Yeah and it looks like some asshole fascist decides to walk around like where like in front of the car sort of not even entirely in front of it but a bit in front of it even though her wheels are clearly turned to the right like she's going to get out of the way the guy is in front Of the car a little bit but he's on her left so that if she were to step on the gas as hard as possible with With the wheels turned like that, nothing's going to happen to this guy. She's clearly trying to turn out of the way and get out of something.

0:06:46 Matt: By request. Yeah.

0:07:22 Thomas: And he just guns her down. I mean, it looks like maybe there's some amount of like she kind of was pulling out. And because he walked so close to the car for no reason, maybe there was some amount of contact. I'm not sure how to interpret that. What do you make of it?

0:07:39 Matt: I mean, he threw himself at the car the way I see it. And I got to say, I wouldn't usually say this, but I do think this one is worth finding and watching for yourself. As you said, it's not graphic. I think that people need to have this image in their minds of what ICE is capable of and what we've unleashed on the streets, Because the context here is that this was the beginning, I think, within hours of what ICE was describing as the largest immigration enforcement action in its history in Minneapolis.

0:08:02 Matt: This is how they started, with just cold -blooded execution in the street of a U .S. citizen. And this is just exactly what we're afraid of. Minneapolis and Minnesota being especially in the news with the fraud allegations and we're going to talk about that another time around the Somali community and that I think was what ICE was responding to was just because it was in the News and it's just a meme -able thing to be able to go in and enforce against the Somali Community in Minneapolis. You're piling injustice upon injustice here. This is the fifth person that ICE has killed in the street this year. Fourteen shootings and four deaths and there's a theme here that I wanted to mention because it's so relevant to the video here. ICE officers Officers, I think they're being trained or they're just sort of passing around this information that the way to do this is to say that somebody was coming at you with their car. And we've caught ICE now multiple times lying about being rammed by cars. And then body cam footage will show, including in the terrible death of Silvero Villegas Gonzalez on September 12th in Chicago, I believe. We actually should watch that one so you can get a sense of just the way they lie. You're not going to be surprised. This is a body cam of an officer walking, responding to the scene. And the immediate statement from ICE was that an officer was dragged and seriously injured by Villegaz Gonzalez.

0:09:11 Matt: Now, as they're panning the camera around, you're going to see medics working on Vegas Gonzalez while these people are standing there talking like nothing's happening. I mean, the man's dying in front of them.

0:09:19 Thomas: Oh, so this is just the aftermath.

0:09:21 Matt: Yeah. But this is the lie. This is because, again, remember, the statement was he was dragged and seriously injured. And what you're gonna see is the direct evidence of the opposite at 45.

0:09:29 Clip: Minneapolis. Uh, there's a left knee injury and some nothing major. Officer, wouldn't it be states at a minimum? It's a federal shooting. They're not going to investigate a federal office.

0:09:46 Matt: That's a good place to stop. They're not gonna investigate a federal officer. We'll pick up on that. As you can hear, the officer said nothing major. No problem. He's obviously walking around. He's doing fine. He is not getting treatment. This this is not somebody who's been seriously injured or dragged. So this is just an outright lie. And that's been the theme in every one of these.

0:10:04 Thomas: Chris Farley mean. But you could imagine what it would be like if if ice was in danger. So therefore, I had to had to shoot him.

0:10:07 Matt: Yeah, what it would be like, exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Just to run these down, Mara Mara Gonzalez was shot, fortunately, not fatally. She was hit in the arm. She was able to drive herself to treatment. But ICE's first statement was that she was trying...

0:10:20 Thomas: Drive herself to treatment. Wow.

0:10:21 Matt: Yeah, she got shot in the arms. Yeah., they didn't respond. I think she left the scene, but yeah.

0:10:24 Thomas: What? OK, that's weird. Yeah.

0:10:28 Matt: I mean, it's a good time to leave when you've been shot in the arm." ICE's initial statement was, of course, that she had rammed the car and they shot in self -defense. And then, of course, texts come out during discovery of an ICE officer, the shooter, Charles Exum, bragging about his shooting skills and about how, I fired five rounds and she had seven holes. Put that in your book, boys. This is not a guy who was afraid for anything. No self -defence here. But the worst part was that the government released his vehicle to him, which, again, would have proven that she had rammed a car because he was alleging there was damage to the car, let him drive it 1 ,000 miles, got it repaired, and then continued on with the case. So obviously, that case died. It had to be dismissed because they messed with the evidence And these texts were so bad against Marmar. Yeah.

0:10:49 Thomas: What? Oh, the case against her. Okay. But nothing happens to the shooter.

0:11:11 Matt: No, of course, as we'll talk about immunity once again. There was an influencer, a TikTok journalist, Richard, called, goes by Richard LA, Carlitos Ricardo Parias. He fortunately was not killed, but badly wounded, shot in the elbow, trying to drive away.

0:11:24 Thomas: Ouch. Jeez.

0:11:24 Matt: You know, this is somebody that, you know, they know that these people are watching them. You know? This is the concern here. So I could go on, but these are, there've been so many shootings. This is first time that I'm aware of, I think we know of, that a US citizen has been killed and it was inevitable, unfortunately, in a nice operation. Several have been shot. This is the thing we've been afraid of for a long time. But I did want to play Mayor Jacob Frey's response. If you haven't seen it yet, it's quite a response. It's really good.

0:11:47 Clip: But I do have a message for our community for a city and I have a message for ice to ice. Get the fuck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety and you are doing exactly the opposite. People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart. Long term Minneapolis residents that have contributed so greatly to our city to our culture to our economy are being terrorized, and now somebody is dead. That's on you, and it's also on you to leave. It's on. You too. Make sure that further damage, further loss of life and injury is not done. We're gonna be working towards justice as quickly as we possibly can right now. And justice is what we've all got to get.

0:12:50 Thomas: That was well said. I do appreciate that, that he's saying that. Good message. That prompted the question that I had for you, Matt, which is, we know about immunity. We've done some episodes. We did some good interviews about qualified immunity. I don't even know why there's a qualified on there. It's pretty much just immunity. It seems like I feel like there's the letter of the law and then there's also functionally what can happen. I feel like at the very least by the letter of the law, there's got to be some line like they can't just do anything and get away with it functionally. I don't it seems like they can do anything get away with it. But my question is, is there anything that states or even I guess a city can do to to pierce that immunity in any anyway, is there any way to craft legislation on a state level? Is there any, is there anything you can do to get past the fact that they, they just can do what they want with impunity? Is THERE ANY WAY TO FIGHT THAT?

0:13:10 Matt: Pretty much. There is. And I'm so glad you asked because I have been wanting to talk about this. It gave me a chance to go a little deeper. But first of all, the good news across the board is that a state prosecutor can bring charges. You can try to do that. And that's what they should do. It sounds like the way that Jacob Freya is talking here, that is what they're going to try to Do. There's nothing to stop the prosecution from filing the charges and ICE can raise its immunity defense all day. And that they can raise those pretrial motions and see how that goes for them, take it up.

0:14:13 Thomas: That's good. I guess, you know, especially based on the interviews we did, I mean, wasn't there something where, like, often it can kill it before we even see it?

0:14:20 Matt: Yeah. The real thing though, is in this case, I should start with, is the supremacy clause immunity issue, because you're talking about the state prosecuting a federal officer, which is not something you're usually supposed to be able to do.

0:14:28 Thomas: Right. Yeah, because normally we're just talking about state police. Yeah.

0:14:31 Matt: Yes. But this has been the big question about ICE is what happens when the worst does happen here, because we know it's inevitable. Unfortunately, it's just really tragically inevitable.

0:14:40 Thomas: When you have a bunch of untrained fascist pieces of shit, no one should have had a gun going in this situation. Nothing was happening in this situation. Completely needless. It seemed to me that there was only one, the murder was the only one who had a weapon out, I think, that I saw. I mean, at a quick glance, which I think shows that like, for the most part, I Think that everything was fine. And I think they would have been fine, but one guy wants to do a murder. And so it's all ready to shoot and just shoots this woman in the face. Yeah.

0:15:08 Matt: He's got his gun out. He walks out already. Horrific. And actually we should add, before I to go on just because I think this is relevant to the murder allegation. They refused to allow medical care to this woman, and who knows if it would have helped or not. But certainly, you've got a doctor to try to step up. I've got that clip if you want to play that.

0:15:27 Thomas: Warning on this. This is pretty, This is pretty awful.

0:15:30 Matt: Even just listening to it is intense.

0:15:31 Thomas: Yeah, just listening to it is not good. But yeah, I think it's worth playing.

0:15:35 Clip: Can I go check a pulse? No, back up now. I'm a physician. I don't care. Hey, listen, we understand. We got EMS coming. I get it. Just give us a second. We have medics on scene. We have our own medics. Where are they? Where are they? How can I relax? You just killed my neighbor. You caught your father in the face. You killed my fucking neighbor. How do you show up to work every day? How the do you do this every day? You're killing my neighbors, you're stealing my neighbors.

0:16:09 Matt: Wow. I hadn't actually heard the whole thing. That is well said. Yeah.

0:16:12 Thomas: Everybody should listen to that. That should be played every fucking where. These fucking fascist pigs just shot your neighbor in the face for nothing. Why do we keep letting this happen?

0:16:26 Matt: I'm getting really emotional right now, honestly. I mean, this is just really... I mean because knowing the truth, when I hear that clip, when they're saying we have medics on scene, the ambulance came 15 minutes later and they blocked it. They wouldn't let it down the street.

0:16:37 Thomas: They blocked it?

0:16:38 Matt: They carried her to the ambulance because they knew she was this woman has every right to scream in their faces and ask why they can't let a doctor through to at least confirm. I mean, within seconds of the incidents, they're saying, no, we have medics. 15 minutes it takes. They don't have medcs on scene. She's just lying to her like everything else. It's so important just to hear these things and to bear witness to them.

0:16:47 Thomas: We all do. Yeah, yeah.

0:16:57 Matt: And again, there's a lot more we're going to find out. And I just really feel for everybody who cared about this woman and just for Minneapolis, because this is, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, man, it's a brave thing to do. And please be safe. So I got to talk about the law a little bit because the Supremacy Clause issue is actually pretty interesting. And it does, we can lighten up for just a second and talk about a case I've been wanting to get to for a little while. It's called N. R. E. Neagle from 1890. As I teased up front, this is about the only Supreme Court justice ever arrested for murder while serving as a Supreme Court Justice.

0:17:02 Thomas: And this could be any of us. This could be so many of our listeners. Like this is this is exactly the kind of thing that so many of our listeners do. Huh.

0:17:34 Matt: It is a great story about Stephen Field. He did not actually commit the killing, but he was assisting in self -defense. So what happened was Field was actually on the California Supreme Court with a man named David Terry. This case just keeps getting crazier as you go. Terry was representing his future wife. It gets messy, But there's a will dispute. She claims she married a Nevada senator and she was entitled to a state. It's a whole thing. But the point is, Terry did not like the outcome of this case because he lost a lot of money on it. And Field was riding the circuit, as Supreme Court justices do or did back then, 1889. And this is just after the point at which the president had decided that maybe it's okay to give Supreme Court Justices bodyguards. So he's got a federal marshal assigned. Neagle is the defendant in this case. So the federal marshal saw that Terry was coming at Field and shot him fatally. And so Field and the marshal were both charged. Field was unarmed. Turned out Terry was also unarmed, he was just assaulting a Supreme Court justice, but still, that was a pretty queer self -defense situation. But the question was about immunity, because this was a federal officer in the performance of his duties protecting a Supreme court justice. The description of supremacy caused immunity is where we decide whether or not we can charge a federal office or in state court for things he did in the state. There's a test that they set up in this case that has basically held on. Now, as we're going to talk about. There's some interesting variations and potentially a good one in the Eighth Circuit where we're talking about Minneapolis. The test is that if he was authorized to do the act by the law of the United States, and it was his duty to do it, and if in doing that act, he did no more than what was necessary and proper for him to do, he cannot be guilty of a crime under the laws of the state.

0:19:02 Matt: And so they found that this was necessary and improper for him the Supreme Court justice. That was his job. It was pretty obvious that he had to do something. Maybe he didn't have to shoot him, but they decided it wasn't criminal. The amazing thing about this is that Field was on the Supreme Court at the time they were reviewing the case of his attempted assassination. He did recuse himself.

0:19:19 Thomas: I would I would hope so.

0:19:19 Matt: I was wondering if Alito would do that. Maybe he'd say he could be impartial.

0:19:23 Thomas: Alito wouldn't. But, you know.

0:19:24 Matt: No, yeah. But the amazing thing, the reason that I love Nagel as a case is that there was a dissent. Two Supreme Court justices dissented from this because Charles Field, and I don't know if this is relevant, but Charles Field was a real bastard. People did not like him.

0:19:38 Thomas: Like it was like a one out of every two back then. Would you be like, boy, they're a real bastard.

0:19:42 Matt: Yeah, Supreme Court justice, Yeah, probably. Well, this guy made a lot of enemies, but you learn from this dissent that his coworkers would be just as happy to see him dead because they actually write. This is incredible. You think about what they're doing.

0:19:54 Thomas: He's like the Ted Cruz of Supreme Court. He's if you convicted this man in Florida Supreme Court and there wouldn't be a single witness here.

0:20:03 Matt: Nobody would show up. They actually found in dissent, that attempting to kill or killing a Supreme Court justice is not a federal crime. That's literally the finding. It's probably the least self -serving thing a Supreme Supreme Court justice has ever done any time.

0:20:16 Thomas: Yeah. They're willing to take one for the team for this.

0:20:19 Matt: I guess.

0:20:21 Thomas: They'll go to read the decision. So it's not a federal crime to kill us. Don't print that. But yeah, that is true. But just don't tell anyone.

0:20:29 Matt: You don't read that part. Yeah. Right. Don't read it out loud. If the act of Terry had resulted in the death of Mr. Justice Field, would the murder of him have been a crime against the United States? We say no, basically. I just think that's amazing. Different times, different times.

0:20:43 Thomas: Yeah, wow, well, there's no federal murder law, right? Is that what it is? Yeah.

0:20:49 Matt: Right, that was their point. And at the time, there was no specific crime of killing federal officers like that, amazingly. So So yeah,

0:20:55 Thomas: Oh, they should probably make one of those, I suppose. Those yeah I mean that's what I meant like they probably should have yeah right

0:20:57 Matt: They should probably do something about that. Or excuse me, they did something about them. It is a crime to kill a Supreme Court justice, yeah. My point is, though, that the NIGL has been interpreted different ways by different circuits. But I went looking today, of course, after today's events, to take a look at the Fourth Circuit, where Minneapolis is. And I am encouraged by this. Now, there's not a direct holding that's relevant. But there is something that I think is very promising. And this actually comes out of a traffic accident. It's a 1991 case called Cisneros. And this is, again, this is the most recent sort of precedent on non -supremacy immunity. And it's a Marine, an active duty Marine who's in a convoy and he runs a red light and kills somebody in an accident. Just a totally routine thing, not necessarily criminal, but I think that he's being charged as criminal, as negligent, and obviously there's a liability issue all around. So he was claiming that he was having trouble with his brakes, but that's a trial issue, obviously. So you have to decide whether or not he has immunity. They were looking specifically in the fourth circuit at vehicular traffic accidents, but the logic applies pretty well to a situation like this where there's an exigency, where something urgent is happening. Happening. And they found that a federal officer has to show the accident resulted from an exigency or emergency related to federal duties, which dictated or constrained the way in which he was required to or could carry out those duties. They give the example of exceeding a speed limit to catch somebody or executing a raid. Facts do not reveal any such legitimately constraining duty related emergency or exigiency in this case. Or in a previous case where a guy actually thought he had the right to run a red light when he's driving in a convoy, he just thought that for some reason. They'd said that wasn't enough. Yeah. So that to me, if you're kind of refining the Nagel standard down a little bit more and talking about you have to have some kind of exigencies emergency and that it would basically kind of reasonable law enforcement, that's a lot of these things. And this is again for criminal liability. Now we can talk about damages, but of course I really do want

0:22:21 Thomas: Oh boy they don't send their best

0:22:41 Matt: To see, and I know we all do at this point after watching that video, I want to See Justice as Mayor Frey said, and that's going to start with criminal liability and this was just to point out, I'd meant to mention this before, this was 10 blocks from George Floyd was murdered. This is very much an immigration George Floyd moment. I really do believe it is after seeing this video. It's really just that kind of shocking. I think that they should give it a try. There is no reason not to put this in front of a judge and say, this is clearly not somebody properly performing his duties. Of course, he's going to say it's self -defense. Of course he's gonna say that he was freaking out in the moment, but I mean, he is walking up, as you said, walking up to that vehicle, clearly ready to go. And they're not happy with her. And there was some back and forth before all this happened between the officers and her, but But certainly nothing that should lead to somebody's execution in the street. I can't really imagine what that would have been that would've justified that. We've talked before about how Bivens claims are no longer available, thanks to a Supreme Court decision from Clarence Thomas in 2022, pretty much ended the idea of suing for federal damages against federal officers. And that's based on the classic 70s BivenS case that allowed you to do that.

0:23:43 Matt: Civil damages are the next thing you have to seek. If you can't get criminal justice, obviously you have try to sue these people in their their personal capacity and have them know that they could be on the hook if they do something like this.

0:23:51 Thomas: So you said we can try to charge this guy with murder but what is the qualified immunity I can't now I'm mixing it

0:23:56 Matt: I know, yeah, it can be. So qualified immunity does not apply to criminal prosecution. It just applies to civil damages. I didn't mention this because it's just not going to happen, but the federal government could prosecute him. I mean, he's clearly operating pretty recklessly. So we're just assuming that's not going happen and moving on, unfortunately, in our current situation.

0:24:01 Thomas: Up oh okay right okay gotcha so the next best thing would be civil something

0:24:16 Matt: Right. And as you mentioned before, it saves them the burden of trial, right? Because it just allows them to bring this right away and say, I'm immune, I can't be sued. And that it throws it out pretty quickly. We need to amend this. And there are two proposals right now. Seth Moulton here in Massachusetts has introduced to the Senate a bill that would, it's kind of cleverly titled because we like to do this now, the National Oversight and Enforcement of Misconduct Act, the NOAM Act, would add federal immigration enforcement to Section 1983, which is how you sue, generally speaking, to get damages against state or local officers. It doesn't include federal officers right now, but it needs to. And that's what this would do.

0:24:49 Thomas: And it could and that wouldn't run afoul of any constitutional thingy.

0:24:53 Matt: No, yeah, if you're just allowing federal civil damages because it basically would just overrule that part of the Supreme Court's qualified immunity doctrine for ICE officers. I think you can do that. It's not like it's a constitutional right. Right.

0:25:03 Thomas: I guess I'm just I'm never clear on like when legislation I guess it just depends on the particular case where it's like if the Supreme Court found something as a matter of like constitutional whatever versus, oh, we're interpreting the law to mean this or whatever. And so it's if it's legislation, they can always theoretically Congress can always write different or clarifying legislation. So this is one of those things.

0:25:27 Matt: Fortunately, there's no constitutional right to shoot people. So they're not protected that way.

0:25:32 Thomas: I don't know, man I don't believe you oh

0:25:33 Matt: It feels that way, I know. I got you. I feel you. So I wanted to clarify all that because on the way out here, we can just hear Stephen Miller's opinion. I was putting it off as long as possible, but he overstates it so much, I have to play it.

0:25:45 Clip: Well, we need to reassure a couple points. To all ICE officers, you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties. And anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony.

0:25:59 Matt: So that's not true. Just wanted to make that point from either criminal or civil liability. That is just not true. I mean, but that message, just putting it out there to all ICE officers, go ahead and do whatever you want because it's a felony to touch you.

0:26:00 Thomas: Great yeah and we all know that you punish felonies by just murdering them on the spot too

0:26:14 Matt: Yeah. So if it's felony, yeah, you can just kill him. That's how it works. That'S where we're at. So I do think that reform is possible. Justice is possible I would really like to see this prosecuted and see what a court says about how far within the scope of his duties this was. And maybe if that fourth circuit precedent can kind of be applied here to an exigency and how much of an exigencia it was when she's trying to leave the scene, they'd been asking her to leave. There's going to be a lot to to come. But I'm glad we're touching it today. It's just a lot to think about.

0:26:34 Thomas: Yeah none zero

0:26:43 Matt: Yeah, that's the only way.

0:26:41 Thomas: Exigency abolish ice boy that was too radical it's too radical everybody knows what we should do and it's what we need to do and what's what we should campaign on that just abolish eyes they're just a bit some murderers who are doing doing nothing good.

0:26:54 Matt: I've known that for 20 years, but I don't blame anybody who didn't have to deal with them before. They're about to massively increase. And that's why we have to talk about it now, because they're getting so much more funding through the July funding bill. They are going to get so many more untrained officers. They re allowing them to hire at 18 now with no qualifications. If we don't stand up right now, and I really think this needs to be a George Floyd moment for immigration purposes, this is what people need to see, then this is going to become normal in America. This is going be our new normal.

0:27:24 Thomas: Okay. We can, we can take a break and then get to, I don't, it's the same level of depressing. Really? Cool. All

0:27:30 Matt: More new normal, yeah, but more that we can fight. So let's talk about that.

0:27:38 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:27:38 Thomas: January 6th anniversary. I didn't get you anything.

0:27:41 Matt: In fact, we forgot to honor John Eastman week this week, which I had so much fun with last week. I do want to recommend people go back and listen to... These are still fresh, these episodes, and I was very proud of both of them. OA1007, we talked about the lawyers who are responsible for January 6th, including John John Eastman, who should never dodge responsibility. We'll talk a little about him. In 08 -11 -11, we watched the Eastman Dilemma.

0:27:46 Thomas: Last year. Oh, good times.

0:28:02 Matt: We had a lot of fun with that one, one of our classic, a lot awful movies. Yeah, that was a fun one. They screened that at Mar -a -Lago right ahead of January 6th last year.

0:28:05 Thomas: I look back on that fondly. No,

0:28:11 Matt: So it's worth talking about the attempt to exonerate Eastman. That's mostly what I want to talk about today was the way that they're trying to rewrite history. And they were trying to whitewash everything because I think it's just worth stopping and saying out loud what has happened in the past five years since this terrible event. So I just want to give a quick rundown of some of the major players on January 6th and sort of what's happened. But we have to start to talk about this, about the website, which I'm sure you saw the Department of Justice just put out.

0:28:37 Thomas: I have not seen the website. Oh. I think I heard about this though. Yeah.

0:28:39 Matt: On January 6, 2026, you have to just read, I'll give you a little excerpt here because it is astonishing. Even for the expectations I had for this, this is scary. And this is why we have talk about it today. So just check out at the bottom here, they've got a little timeline. This is at whitehouse .gov slash J6. This is on the White House website. And this is the history that they want you to know about January 6th, 2021. Notice whose picture is right up front when you click through.

0:29:08 Thomas: Nancy Pelosi.

0:29:10 Matt: The true villain of January 6. And then a bunch of Democrats, right? We've got pictures of Democrats.

0:29:13 Thomas: Cause so there's There's two Republicans.

0:29:15 Matt: Right. It's the J6 committee.

0:29:17 Thomas: Yeah. Kinzinger and Cheney.

0:29:19 Matt: Scroll down to the timeline. There's in gray, there's a timeline there.

0:29:22 Thomas: This is so it is shake. That's part of the website programming.

0:29:26 Matt: It's so bad. So bad.

0:29:26 Thomas: That shaking like this. I thought there's something wrong with the computer. OK. Where am I scrolling down to? President Trump invites Americans to D .C. for a peaceful and historic protest against certifying the stolen 2020 election. He emphasizes standing up for election integrity while calling for peaceful demonstration. I don't remember that. Hundreds of thousands respond to the call to show support.

0:29:33 Matt: Now the timeline, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:29:51 Thomas: President Trump delivers a powerful speech. All right.

0:29:53 Matt: You can actually, if you go through the headlines, you'll see, and we'll get to the, when we get to later in the day, it gets really bad.

0:29:55 Thomas: Yeah, just headlines, I guess. Well, we're on the day. Patriots march to the Capitol. OK. Massive crowd peacefully marches down Constitution Avenue to the capital to protest. Sure. Capitol Police response escalates tension. Oh, so they do believe that police can escalate tensions when it's the certain. Yeah.

0:30:13 Matt: Right. In this one case.

0:30:15 Thomas: And this one time Capitol Police aggressively fired tear gas. Why? Why?

0:30:21 Matt: Yeah.

0:30:21 Thomas: Under what theory? This is Trump's government that, like, he's still the president. Why would they do that? Like, they're like, oh, we just got orders. We're now the Biden deep state. Everybody, we're Biden deep estate.

0:30:33 Matt: Rogue officers just started firing tear gas into the crowd for no reason. Just peaceful protesters.

0:30:37 Thomas: President Trump urges calm. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah.

0:30:39 Matt: Yeah, sure. I'll remember that after hours.

0:30:42 Thomas: As events unfold, President Trump repeatedly calls for peace. There's no sources for any of this. You could just write stuff, I guess. Leaked Pelosi video reveals security lapses.

0:30:55 Matt: No, it's Pelosi's fault once again.

0:30:56 Thomas: Well, wait, why did they need security? I don't understand.

0:30:59 Matt: Oh yeah, peaceful protest. You're right. Yeah yeah.

0:31:00 Thomas: If it's all peaceful, then what would the lapses matter? That doesn't matter.

0:31:04 Matt: I guess we got to come in on those Capitol officers. You got to arrest them.

0:31:08 Thomas: Oh, maybe the Capitol officers came in and started doing January 6th. Yeah. Ashley Babbitt murdered in cold blood. I don't think that's true.

0:31:17 Matt: We know that's not true.

0:31:18 Thomas: Yeah, Mike

0:31:19 Matt: The next one is really bad.

0:31:21 Thomas: Pence refuses to act. In fact, Vice President Mike Pence, who had the opportunity to return disputed electoral slates to state legislatures for review and decertification under the United States Constitution, chooses not to exercise that power in an act of cowardice and sabotage.

0:31:37 Matt: An act of cowardice and sabotage. The vice president doing his goddamn job. This makes me so angry.

0:31:43 Thomas: It's unbelievable.

0:31:43 Matt: I was already mad, and now I'm actually getting angry reading this again. I mean, this is on the White House website, folks. This is not Newsmax.

0:31:50 Thomas: I think we should burn down the White House. I don't mean you and I. I mean, Trump already ruined it. Like once we get a real president in there, let's just start a new thing. Like just a new, you know, this has been ruined.

0:32:01 Matt: It is the official position of opening arguments that maybe the British should do it. They've already done it once. They can do it again. We're not burning down the White House. The British, War of 1812, they came in and burned down the the White House.

0:32:05 Thomas: Can we let the Canadians do it? Didn't the Canadians do something like that? I thought it was the Canadians. Oh, what did the Canadians do? I though they came and did something. Hold on a sec. Did Canadians burn down White House?

0:32:14 Matt: They took out a ship on a river once. It may not be the first time that's been searched, as we often do.

0:32:21 Thomas: No. Oh it was British. Damn. I was trying to blame Canada. I just like that better. Well then they deserve a turn. It's their turn. Oh my god. Well let's keep going. Instead Pence presides over the certification of contested electors undermining President Trump's efforts to address documented fraud and ending any chance to correct the election steal sure yeah stolen election certified after law enforcement clears the capital of what

0:32:44 Matt: This is disgusting. It just makes me so angry. Yeah.

0:32:51 Thomas: Huh congress reconvenes late yeah of just animals and stuff there's like raccoons got in uh congress reconvenes late that night and certifies joe biden's electoral votes votes from battleground states marred by massive mail -in ballot fraud hidden suitcases of ballots exploding water pipes those are full of ballots uh voting machine irregularities and unprecedented pandemic era rule changes that bypassed state legislatures 2020 is considered the greatest election theft in U.S. history with widespread fraud deliberately ignored by courts officials in the media

0:32:57 Matt: Tourists. Exploding water pipes. What? The White House website. I think Trump personally oversaw this timeline. This is really something.

0:33:29 Thomas: Yeah the next one is great president trump silenced despite yeah yeah that's why I've never heard from him since despite his explicit calls for peaceful protest Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other platforms collude to ban president trump citing incitement in a blatant act of election interference JP Morgan, Bank of America Capital One and other major financial institutions debank president trump and his family closing accounts freezing funds and denying services in a ruthless campaign of financial persecution to destroy them politically and economically.

0:33:34 Matt: If only. If. Only. Which worked.

0:34:02 Thomas: Legacy media suppresses evidence of fraud. Yeah, sure.

0:34:05 Matt: They are destroyed politically and economically. It worked out pretty well, that debanking.

0:34:08 Thomas: Yeah, I don't think that happened.

0:34:10 Matt: No, no, it didn't.

0:34:11 Thomas: Would that it did, but it didn't. Yeah.

0:34:12 Matt: Yeah. You can imagine. It goes on. People really should look at this thing.

0:34:15 Thomas: Mass arrests of patriotic protesters. January 6th select committee exposed. Sure. Weaponized prosecutions target President Trump. FBI entrapment operation exposed. Okay.

0:34:27 Matt: Ray Epps, again, I mentioned Ray Epps. They love Ray Epps.

0:34:29 Thomas: Lawfare fails. President Trump prevails. It's triumph over tyranny. I feel like they got tuckered out there. They ran out of steam. They're like, ah, and then we won. Whatever. I'm tired of writing. That's the most we've ever written.

0:34:40 Matt: Anyway. Yeah, yeah. And everybody clapped. I don't know what to say. I mean, I've been watching the way the government talks to us a lot, but this is really so bad. I'm very

0:34:52 Thomas: I mean, I guess the only upside is no one, I don't think anyone takes this seriously, but you know, it's just not good.

0:34:57 Matt: Concerned that children are going to learn this history because it's on the White House website. Their teachers are going to teach it this way and justify it because it is on the white house website. Teachers, creatures. I'm sure of it. We're five years in and they're rewriting the history in front of us of one of the most documented crimes in American history and world history. There's thousands of hours of video of all this happening. And plus all of the stuff in writing, we've got to talk about very quickly, of course, John Eastman. I don't want to go back into John Eastman all that much, but John Eastman essentially did January 6th. He's the one who got it in Trump's ear that pence could reject the votes. We spent an hour talking about it. I need to get into it again, but I just want people to understand that John Eastmin is responsible.

0:35:31 Thomas: Been a lot more than an hour. It was fun. Good. There's like a lot of movies.

0:35:33 Matt: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, we did.

0:35:34 Thomas: You should check it out. Everybody's just, you know? Yeah.

0:35:36 Matt: Eastman week. It's a good time. And we're still in Eastman week just next year.

0:35:40 Thomas: Perpetual Eastman week.

0:35:41 Matt: So yeah, John Eastman now is one of the few people that actually has not totally escaped consequences because he was disbarred. He's still facing criminal charges in Arizona, not Georgia, unfortunately. They killed the Georgia RICO case.

0:35:51 Thomas: Oh, what?

0:35:52 Matt: We hadn't even talked about that. But Fannie Willis's replacement actually killed all this, the election interference case. Yeah. We didn't even have time to talk about that right before Thanksgiving. A lot of stuff happened just before Thanksgiving.

0:35:57 Thomas: Holy shit. Oh my God. I, yeah, I didn't hear about that. Wow. Wow. Okay, cool. Well, might as well just get all, you know, all the bad news done at once. Because this will probably be all of it, right?

0:36:10 Matt: Let's hope. He is scheduled for a trial in Arizona very soon, potentially. So we'll see how that goes with very obvious election interference and the fake elector scheme. But one thing that I also hadn't noticed was that on November 7th, Trump quietly pardoned all of the, I'm going to call them masterminds, but there's some not-so-masterminds on this list.

0:36:31 Matt: We've got Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Boris Epstein, pretty much everybody you can imagine that was sort of at the top, Kenneth Chesbrough. Obviously, Eastman is facing state charges. I believe Ellis was too. I don't think she is anymore. But, you know, it's just in case anybody wants to prosecute them in the future and certainly for any other federal opportunities they might be having to be prosecuted. I didn't even notice that, but of course he did because he'd already pardoned everybody else. To be clear, Trump pardoned about 1,500 people total in January.

0:37:00 Matt: And pretty much in one big sweeping pardon on the 20th when he was sworn in, the 20th of January.

0:37:00 Thomas: You know, something I heard on another podcast, they had to carefully craft these pardons and clemency because they wanted to make sure they pardoned any gun crimes, but not child porn. And I was thinking like, what? And it's like, oh, yeah, you know, just a whole bunch of them had child porn, you know, or child sexual abuse material is the more accurate term. When they were arrested and they're like well I guess we shouldn't pardon that so you know small victories everybody but it just just goes to show the kind of crowd we're dealing with

0:37:29 Matt: We should be careful. Yeah, got to look out for it.

0:37:35 Matt: I've got some numbers for you. Six people after their pardon, six more people were arrested for child sex crimes. So six out of 1 ,000, hundred. Two rapes, two deadly DUIs. There was a threat to kill Kim Jeffries, a plot to kill FBI agents, breaking and entering, pulling guns on cops, multiple. There's a guy who was in possession of grenades.

0:37:53 Thomas: There was one guy who got clemency or pardon or whatever plotted to murder the FBI agents that were responsible and then tried to argue that his pardon should apply to that like

0:38:05 Matt: Right. Because it stems from January 6th.

0:38:05 Thomas: Yeah I know I should be allowed to that's we all know if you get pardoned for something you're also allowed to try to murder whoever was prosecuting you that's like basic law I mean come on listen to opening arguments crying out loud

0:38:13 Matt: Yeah. Right, of course, of course. Yeah, but they have all tried to argue that the pardon applies and it was supposed to be. And it is, it's an extremely blanket pardon. I mean, I have to read the language here. It's a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6th. So if you were just unrelatedly killing someone, I guess it's fine.

0:38:33 Thomas: Right right that includes a lot of stuff I do hope if there's any leftists who got like a parking ticket there they could at least take advantage of that you know something yeah federal literally yes

0:38:41 Matt: Yeah. Federal littering. Yeah, yeah. The January 20th pardon, though, did include a bunch of commutations. So this is a very important distinction that we had the most serious players. Somebody like Stuart Rhodes, they knew that even with that, because the original talk was we're just going to pardon the people that weren't involved in violent offenses, but that went out the window and they just pardoned everybody. And Rhodes, of course, is a leader of the Oath Keepers. They showed up ready to go. They were extremely in tactical gear and clearly ready for something. He got the second longest sentence of 18 years, but he was named as one of the people whose sentences were commuted. So he was not given a full pardon. And there's a number of other people, the most seriously liable people that were just commuted and not pardoned, but everybody else was pardoned. So that's 14 commutations and 1500 pardons. And the pardon that I just read you about the full complete and unconditional pardon is so broad that there's good chance that the DC Pipe Bomber, the guy who planted pipe bombs the night before, might actually be able to walk on this because that is something that occurred at or near the U.S. Capitol.

0:39:41 Thomas: We haven't even talked about that they just recently caught that guy right and it like turned out to be wouldn't you know it not a leftist

0:39:44 Matt: Yeah, just recently. Yeah. Yeah. It's a weird one. We'll have to talk about it.

0:39:50 Thomas: That took a long time.

0:39:50 Matt: There's some interesting stuff going on around it. Yeah? Yeah.

0:39:52 Thomas: They started with nonviolent, then they realized nothing matters and there are no consequences, so why not pardon whoever? And it really is, it's just, we're overloaded. There's just too much. The zone is flooded with shit. We haven't had a chance to talk. I had no, I didn't even catch the Georgia thing. That's absurd.

0:39:56 Matt: Go for it. It

0:40:09 Thomas: I can't, there's just so much. It's just what can we do but try to keep track of it and try to like keep people informed, you know?

0:40:09 Matt: Is the best we can do and it's all right. We only have a few hours a week. We can't cover everything. The Oath Keepers themselves, which are mostly military and vets, it's a pretty scary organization. They fell apart in 2023 when Rhodes went to prison, and now they're back because he's reforming them.

0:40:29 Thomas: Imagine being such a pathetic organization that losing Stuart Rhodes means you fall apart. Oh, no, we can't keep going without the leadership of Stuart Rhodes, a guy who shot himself in the face or whatever. Yeah.

0:40:34 Matt: Yeah, that's a really good point. And it was just an abusive, violent piece of shit in all his life, from what I can tell, allegedly, or not. The Give, Send, Go, fortunately, that is one piece of good news in all of this. Of course, that's the right-wing GoFundMe. Their Give, Sell, and Go is only $1,780 over the past month. They're seeking $75,000 to get Oath Keepers going again. So thoughts and prayers. Good luck.

0:41:04 Matt: Proud Boys, we should talk about Enrique Tarrio, who was not actually in the Capitol because, do you know why?

0:41:08 Thomas: Oh, you know, what was that? Hmm.

0:41:09 Matt: He wasn't in the Capitol because the FBI just served a warrant on him because he was wanted in D.C. already for having burned a BLM flag in possession of ammunition for weapons that he was definitely planning to bring on January 6th. The FBI actually said they arrested him on this warrant because they were concerned he was going to go to January 6. This is on the 5th that they got him.

0:41:27 Matt: Excuse me, it was a few days before that they caught him. The judge on the 5th ordered that he not be in D。C. He ordered him to leave D. C. because they knew that they couldn't have him in D .C. on January 6th. There was some knowledge here that you couldn't have these kinds of people on site. Tarrio got the biggest sentence, 22 years, and he was fully pardoned.

0:41:45 Matt: But his co-defendants from the Proud Boys were not. So their cases are still being challenged. They're still on appeal, even though their sentences were commuted. They obviously want this off their record. They filed a $100 million lawsuit against DOJ. And the entitlement of this?

0:41:59 Thomas: For what? Yeah. I mean, I just I get there can't be anything here. Right. But you know, whatever happened to the Trump paying himself out a bunch of money?

0:42:08 Matt: We'll see. We're basically setting up people to negotiate deals with DOJ as if it's a Trump organization.

0:42:14 Thomas: Yeah. Like what are the limits of that if they decide, yeah, we're just we're going to give up in all these cases, we're just going to settle or we'RE JUST going to, you know, they can just what's what is the limit of that money, like the budget of the or is it not limited by even that?

0:42:22 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Pay off. It's a good point. Yeah.

0:42:28 Thomas: Would it be like the whole freaking coffers of the united states it

0:42:31 Matt: They could. Just give it away to his friends, to right-wing militias.

0:42:34 Thomas: Felt like that was what was going to happen for a sec but I haven't heard it could be that he's swimming in so much corrupt money anyway from you know crypto and other other things that he doesn't need to do this but yeah who knows who's gonna stop

0:42:49 Matt: I will say Department of Justice did actually file a motion to dismiss to their very minor credit. They made a pretty strong argument

0:42:53 Thomas: Him wow who's responsible for that you're fired immediately

0:42:55 Matt: That because the... Probably by now. But the four defendants who weren't Tarrio, who were just seeking review of their convictions, that's pretty clearly you can't sue during that time because you're still appealing and you have to have a termination in your favor. And they're also arguing that Tarrio's pardon is not a termination in his favor, which is true. It is just a pardon.

0:43:13 Thomas: Yeah obviously you were guilty

0:43:16 Matt: You're not being acquitted.

0:43:16 Thomas: A pardon or a commutation or anything like that isn't like Like no one messed up, even if not, like people get convicted of stuff every day and there's never like people will be held in prison for like 40 years and they're like, they were obviously innocent. And then they'll be like, well, they gave him a sandwich and then that's about all he got.

0:43:36 Thomas: Why should they get a payout? What could even the possible reasoning be?

0:43:36 Matt: I hate to do this, but let's listen to the man himself. I've got you a clip for you. This is actually, I didn't realize because again, so much has been happening, but there was an Ashley Babbitt Memorial March this week, January 6th, because he's allowed back in DC now. So this is Enrique Tarrio speaking to a crowd at the Ashley Babbitt March just a couple of days ago.

0:43:58 Clip: For four years, for four years. Not just in the criminal system, in the civil system. Americans were weaponized again and the word that I'm searching the thing that I'm certain for is retribution retaliation what is that it is accountability I don't want any violence to happen to those people that perpetrated these crimes against humanity against Americans but I want them to pay. They made an example out of us and we need to make an example of them. I am very happy with what the man that sits behind in the desk has done. But it's not enough. That loyalty and that love does not go towards any of his

0:45:01 Thomas: What a dynamic speaker. God, it fucking put me to sleep.

0:45:04 Matt: He's going to DC, he's pointing at the White House and he's complaining about the treatment that he received after being pardoned an 18-year sentence for sedition, essentially. I mean, that's not what it was, but I mean that's what he was doing. It's insurrection. Yeah, this is the attitude. This is where we're at. And just the contrast of this against what we were just talking about at the beginning of the show of when law enforcement gets to do whatever it wants and there are no consequences and it's great that they shot somebody in the face versus you had the nerve to prosecute me.

0:45:36 Thomas: What, what's there to even say? Yeah. Yeah. It's just, we just got to put an end to this.

0:45:42 Matt: No, it's just, we have to get this out.

0:45:44 Thomas: Sorry to bump people up, but there's nothing we can do about this, right? I mean, these charges are done and the statute of limitations, I think, right, is on most of this five years. So that's done. These people got away with it.

0:45:49 Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's nothing else to charge him with, man. Yep. I

0:45:56 Thomas: The ones that, you know, weren't further convicted of child sex abuse material or other things, they got away with this. And that's because we let Trump get back into the White House. That's what it is. They got away With it. End of story.

0:46:09 Matt: Just want to remind everybody, because I don't know that everybody actually knows this history, but this is exactly how we got to the Third Reich. Just to remind everybody that Adolf Hitler was convicted for a plot against the German government in 1923. That's where he wrote Mein Kampf, was in prison. He became a martyr. And then he was released. He was supposed to serve five years, and he was released after nine months for the good of the nation. And he just went right back to what he was doing and ended up taking over the government. And this is what happens.

0:46:31 Thomas: Well, I think we are saved by the fact that Trump can't write.

0:46:35 Matt: That's true. He's never writing that. That's true.

0:46:35 Thomas: There's no way he's writing a book. So we'll just narrowly get away.

0:46:39 Matt: In a related civil case against John Eastman, Judge David Carter wrote just a really good summary. I'm just going to read this on the way out about how important this is, and then we'll move on to the next thing. Now, Carter was not reviewing any criminal charges against Eastman. And he acknowledges that this is a dispute over a handful of emails. It's about discovery issue. But at most, this case is a warning about the dangers of quote unquote, quote, legal theory has gone wrong, the powerful abusing public platforms and desperation to win at all costs. If Dr. Eastman and President Trump's plan had worked, notice that, Dr. Eastman's and President's Trump's plans, the proper order of responsibility there, it would have permanently ended the peaceful transition of power, undermining American democracy and the constitution. If the country does not commit to investigating and pursuing accountability for those responsible, this court fears January 6th will repeat itself. And this was only about 14 months later that he's writing that. And he's right on. He is right then, he's right now.

0:47:29 Thomas: Well, I hate all that, but at least there's the footnote.

0:47:32 Matt: We can have some fun

0:47:33 Thomas: Let's have some fun with the footnotes.

0:47:33 Matt: With a footnote today. It's the best we can do.

0:47:36 Thomas: We know what we need to do. We need to win. We need to stop letting these people win. We need to stop arguing with ourselves. It doesn't matter. It doesn't just like, I don't even care when it comes to the individual tiny differences that people on the left might have amongst themselves. I really don't. Like, it's just not fascism is enough now. And that's because we failed so much. So the whole argument that like the thing you needed to do to get your perfect candidate was let them win has just always been, and I know there's not that many people who really think that, but that's always been wrong. The more we lose, the more it's like, well, I will vote for a shoe if it's not going to be a fascist. It doesn't, you don't get, oh, now we're going to get a way better candidate. There's going to be all, no, you just have, you can't let them win. Then also you don't even get to vote eventually. There's no sense that that plan was ever going to work. I don't know how many people really believe that, but unfortunately it's also a thing where it's like, we're too uninformed. And a lot of that is, you know, people are too busy. They're too beaten down by capitalism to really be following enough of this to know that this is going on.

0:48:46 Thomas: So I guess, you know, we're trying to do our small part here, trying to spread the word and we all got to do what we can.

0:48:46 Matt: We're doing our part right now to write history. That's what we're doing by talking about it. All of us can do that. That's something we can all participate in because they're trying to do it too.

0:48:58 Thomas: Absolutely. All right. Well, we always have the footnote. We always have Paris and we always have to put it up. So we'll take a break and then get the footnotes.

0:49:08 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:49:08 Thomas: I mean, no pressure, but, you know, you've got to cheer us all up.

0:49:12 Matt: We got some darker laughs, but they're laughs. We've got two quick stories about how things are going in court for the Department of Justice right now, as we've discussed, of course, they are down to some dregs here. They're not doing well. They've stretched pretty thin and a lot of the qualified people have left the DOJ for very good reasons.

0:49:28 Matt: The first one I'm calling, we're too busy illegally detaining Venezuelans to deal with our prior illegal detention of Venezuelans. I want to thank Chris Gardner for catching this one. This is a good catch. I've been watching the docket on JGG, which is the litigation over the Alien Enemies Act. All of those people that were the Venezuelians who were deported illegally under the Alien Enemies Act ended up back in Venezuela. And now there's further justice trying to go on for them in this court in front of Judge Boasberg, including contempt proceedings. And I'm hoping, I'm really looking forward to those to see how that goes. But what happened this week, The fourth is that the defendants filed a motion for an extension for the craziest reason I've ever seen. And I'm just going to... Actually, I'll just have you read it because it's more fun.

0:50:06 Thomas: Defendants motion for an extension given substantial changes on the ground in Venezuela. Venezuela. Sure. And the fluid nature of the unfolding situation, defendants respectfully move for an extension to respond to this court's order, ECF 214, directing them to propose a remedy by Monday, January 5th. Over the weekend, the United States apprehended Nicolas Maduro. As a result, the situation on the ground in Venezuela has changed dramatically. Boy, you're already doing filler and you're not even a paragraph in. You already said all that. Defendants thus need additional time to determine the feasibility of various proposals.

0:50:38 Matt: Various proposals.

0:50:38 Thomas: Proposals. Defendants therefore request a seven-day extension to evaluate and determine what remedies are possible.

0:50:46 Matt: It's astonishing.

0:50:46 Thomas: What?

0:50:47 Matt: I've never seen... I've seen a lot of interesting motions for extensions and continuances. I filed some myself. I mean, I do have ADHD. I do need to file these extensions sometimes, but... And I never oppose them. And unless it's really critical, I would never oppose, you know, just if you want a week, that's fine.

0:50:58 Thomas: Sorry. Yeah. What, what, what are they getting an extension on exactly?

0:51:01 Matt: So this is over the remedies for the habeas suit. It's kind of complicated, but there's something they had to do by the 5th, and they're saying, we can't do it because over the weekend, we'd invaded a country and grabbed their leader, and we're busy.

0:51:11 Thomas: What does it have to do? I guess I just like, what does it have to do with Venezuela exactly? Or I'm Yeah, I'm sorry if I'm not understanding.

0:51:17 Matt: Because the plaintiffs in this case are Venezuelan, and I think what they're probably going to try to argue is that it's moot now because Venezuela is going to be fine. I think that's probably what they're going to say.

0:51:25 Thomas: Oh, okay. So we should be able to like, deport them because it's safer now or something.

0:51:32 Matt: Well, they're already there. And there's also the contempt proceedings. I don't know how it affects that, but I think this is for the other part. But again, though, the funny thing about this though, besides the fact that it's just this bizarre thing where they're like, we're too busy.

0:51:43 Thomas: Have you seen the news you know there's just a lot going on out there

0:51:45 Matt: Right. Other things going on. This is like in the same way that opposing counsel might file something saying, you know, I couldn't find a sitter for the week and my kids are home, right? I mean, this is like something that everybody can understand. What was funny about this is that they did not follow rule 7M, which requires you to state if you've conferred with local counsel. So, Boasberg comes back and says, hey, you got to actually comply with 7M. And the response they give is amazing because you're required to say, you know, I talked to opposing counsel, they don't oppose it.

0:51:52 Thomas: Yeah yeah

0:52:11 Matt: The condition was in here, so they filed an update saying plaintiffs, you know, there's defendants filing this, plaintiffs don't oppose an extension until Monday on the condition that defendants do not seek additional extensions. Given the fluid situation, defendants cannot currently agree to that limitation. That's funny. No promises, guys, but we talked to them. So then Boasberg comes back and grants them the week. But that was the first thing that kind of caught my eye this week, the DOJ just being weird in court. Second one's even funnier. This is Lindsay Halligan.

0:52:10 Thomas: Right

0:52:37 Matt: We've talked a bit about her illegal appointment and how she definitely is not the U.S. attorney because the 120-day period in which the The attorney general could have actually installed an interim U .S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. It was long gone. And the district court is supposed to have named that. That's worth going deep on at some point. The important part is that a court has found very specifically, Cameron Curry, that Lindsay Halligan is not the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and yet she is continuing to appear in court and say that she is. I've never heard of anything like this ever happening before. And now she might be facing a bar complaint for pretending to be the U.S. attorney. That's where we're getting to.

0:52:37 Thomas: Right yeah wow that's insane yeah you can't just do that right

0:53:13 Matt: No, a reasonable administration would tell you to stand down. It turns out you're not in office anymore because a judge said you're not. This is a really weird violation of a court order. Judge David Novak in the Eastern District of Virginia, very reasonably, in this latest order, directs Ms. Halligan to file within seven days of the issuance a pleading explaining the basis for her identification of herself as the United States attorney.

0:53:21 Thomas: Holy

0:53:33 Matt: Why are you telling people you're the U .S. attorney? It's just really funny. And so she will also set forth the reasons why this court should not strike Ms. Halligan's identification of herself from the indictment, which would not be good for the indictment. Ms. Halligan shall further explain why her identification does not constitute a false or misleading statement. The government's pleading shall be signed by Lindsay Halligan. So this is a very specific order.

0:53:32 Thomas: Crap yeah

0:53:54 Matt: And then he goes on for a page and he cites a bunch of case law about disbarment proceedings, basically. Yes. If somebody shows up to court having been disbarred and just enters their appearance, the judge can say, no, you go home.

0:53:54 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah I mean at a certain point aren't you impersonating like an officer you know like what yeah I would think also it might be like a criminal thing eventually right

0:54:13 Matt: It's a felony. Yes, at some point. I mean, she's still a lawyer, but she's not that lawyer. She doesn't represent the government. This is just where we're at. This is the circus. To end on some very minor good news, as we've discussed, I mean, it's not great when this is the best news we have, but the Department of Justice is completely inept in a lot of ways right now.

0:54:33 Thomas: Yeah and it could matter could very much matter

0:54:34 Matt: So for the things that really do matter, yeah, no, that is some hope that fascists are not historically very good at this kind of thing. We are still within the period in which they are more or less respecting, I was going to say respecting court orders, except for the one not to have the U .S. attorney show up.

0:54:48 Thomas: Yeah I don't know what you're talking about

0:54:50 Matt: Yeah. But not not massive departures. The reason we're talking about it again is because that's the most famous violation of a court order during this term. And that was back in March with those planes that they didn't turn around. For now, this is at least some hope that we do not have super qualified and experienced people doing these cases because the super qualified experienced people who want to work at the Department of Justice do not want to be doing any of this.

0:54:58 Thomas: There right yeah yep and it necessarily has to go that way because when you only award positions based on grift or connection or bribery or whatever you know like what or just pure like loyalty or anything like that it's the ultimate version of not merit -based it's just not not merit -based and, uh, they aren't going to be able to do their jobs. And it, you know, unfortunately it might matter for some things that do matter, but also it's funny when it matters for the things that aren't high stakes.

0:55:39 Matt: If the worst that happens is we don't have very effective federal prosecutions for a few years, it's better than what could be happening. So I'll take it.

0:55:46 Thomas: That's pretty crazy to just be like, no, I'm no, but still. And the judge is like, Hey, you're not this. You don't get to be that. What are you talking about?

0:55:53 Matt: A completely different judge said you're not. What are you doing here?

0:55:57 Thomas: Wow.

0:55:57 Matt: It wasn't just my personal vendetta, you know?

0:55:59 Thomas: She's like, Oh, you guys talk to each other. Dang. All right. Well, that's our show. That was a heavy one, but it just is a heavy one. Um, that's what happens when Ice murders a woman. They're not doing good things on their best day. They're ruining lives. They're ruling lives every day. But it's like, this is a more visible example that hopefully people will, maybe we'll shock people into consciousness a little more of what's going on. So all we can do is spread the word, everyone, please spread the word.

0:56:29 Matt: And stay safe and be careful.

0:56:30 Thomas: And yeah, there's a reason that Matt has consistently said, do not F with Ice, don't mess with them, don't interfere with them for your safety.

0:56:38 Matt: I mean, we're looking in the Sandwich Trial at kind of a funny use of 18 U.S.C. 111, which allows them to pretty much prosecute you for getting near them or looking at them funny, but they can be a lot less funny. So stay safe.

0:56:49 Thomas: Absolutely. All right. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, patrons. We'll see you next time.

0:56:53 Matt: All right, see you soon.