It's Not Just Prairieland and Broadview. More Lives Are Being Ruined by Unjust Prosecutions.

Transcript

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

0:00:04 Matt: From the next administration. All of these people that I'm going to be telling you about should all be pardoned. This is so excessive. In a video chat meeting with DOJ, he made it very clear that Donald Trump is the chief client of the Department of Justice. He said that anyone uncomfortable with advancing his administration's directives must step aside. I am just about recovered from the

0:00:34 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1277. I'm Thomas. That over there is real-life attorney Matt Cameron. How you doing, Matt?

0:00:41 Matt: Monstrosity that was the 4th of July in DC. Did you see any of that? I only watched it on the TV, but it was an absolute sensory overload. It was like you just take a regular firework show and copy and paste it six times. You didn't see that? Trump was intent on setting the world's record, So instead of like 20,000 fireworks, they literally shot up 850,000 fireworks. It was so bad. And I don't usually watch fireworks on TV, but I was just kind of morbid curiosity because I'd read about how he's trying to set the world's record. I just want to see what that looked like. And it was disgusting. It was really bad. They had the military band, like the army rock band, which is the thing they tell you that you're going to get into if you get recruited for the army of the musician. Ask me how I know. They started playing the opening lines of what I immediately recognized to be, and I'm sure you remember this song. We've all tried to forget it. But the Toby Keith put a boot in your ass song. Remember that one? It was literally like the three months after 9-11 song about how we're going to go over there and just bomb the shit out of

0:00:44 Thomas: Hmm. No, what happened? Oh, no. Oh, my God. That's insane. Hmm. Oh. Oh! Maybe by name, but I don't actually know it.

0:01:41 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Is it the one that's like courtesy of the red, white, and blue or something? Yeah, that stupid shit. Yeah? Wow. Okay.

0:01:43 Matt: You. Light you up like the 4th of July. Yes, that's the one. I hadn't heard that song forever. And I heard the opening lines and I could not believe that we were doing this. The whole thing was a monstrosity. It was insanity. But I had a lot of fun on the 4TH of July because I was playing on a float in Lincoln, Massachusetts, as God intended. Good times. I'm sure that's going to be part of our footnote today and we'll get there. We'll get There. Yes. I've seen that. Yeah.

0:02:05 Thomas: Okay. It's still not probably the same as that one time they accidentally set all the fireworks off at once at that one. I don't remember where that was, but you see that clips of that every, I remember when that happened. You see clips ofthat every year and stuff like that, where I'm like, I'm kind of glad that happens once, you know, I feel like it just take one for the team, have something like that happen once there's like a computer malfunction, it all goes off. And then forever we're like, well, now we know what it looks like when, yeah. Cause otherwise Otherwise, we never know. We never know what it looks like when all of the freaking fireworks go off at once. Now we do. I'm sure at the time, I'm sur they were mortified. I'm like, oh my God, we've blown it. But in retrospect, aren't you way more glad that we got one of those? It seems cool.

0:02:18 Matt: Yeah. Classic. Right. That's what that is. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I mean, I have some sensory issues and I don't like fireworks at all. And so just get it over with, get it done.

0:02:55 Thomas: Yeah, it's true.

0:02:55 Matt: That's the way. That is right. 30 seconds. Yeah that was all I could think about in DC was how

0:02:55 Thomas: It's done faster. I know. You know what's tricky is for the kids trying to explain why basically 4th of July, as vegetarians who hate America and don't like fireworks, there's nothing here for us. So we might as well self-deport and try to explain to our kids where it's just like, we actually told them, well, you know, dogs really hate the fireworks and then they kind of got it, you Know, but, but apart from that, it's hard to tell a kid like, Hey, you know, the thing that seems like incredible to you, like the coolest thing. It's kind of dumb. I mean, maybe this is West coast, whatever, but I actually just missed this.

0:03:28 Matt: Many dogs were cowering under beds. I was like, it was like a war zone. They just blew up DC. It it was a barrage. I've never seen anything like it. Very fortunate. We walked down,

0:03:39 Thomas: Maybe I haven't been up in the Trump news as much, but I totally missed this that's wow. But you were, you saw it on TV though. We weren't actually like involved in the fireworks. Yeah.

0:03:49 Matt: We saw the Boston ones, they were fine. Boston doesn't usually do that much. We have the music, we don't have the fireworks. And then we watched the New York ones, because Casey just likes to watch fireworks. The New York one's are beautiful, very tasteful, really showed off New York, great music. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Doing their part. We've got to talk about the criminalization of

0:03:59 Thomas: See, that's fine. I am fine with a coordinated show in a city that one group does. What is just maddening is that everybody buying the dumb little fireworks and setting them off all night forever. There's just no end to it. It could be midnight, past midnight. They're still doing it. Incredible. So that sucks. Anyway, what are we going to talk about law-wise today? Oh, that'S not even the fun footnote.

0:04:27 Matt: Dissent. So we have to pick up on, there's a Prairieland follow-up. I know we were both very concerned about the Prairieland protest case in Texas. There's one more piece of news out of that from last week. And I've also been tracking cases like that. There are some even lesser profile cases around the country in which people are being prosecuted for protesting, just as they were in Prairialand. So I just wanted to get a focus on that. We're going to talk about one of the sort of developing villains from this whole story from the Department of Justice, a name that has not been out there enough. And then I'm going to transition to kind of a funnier story, maybe funny, maybe not, involving the Department Justice doing pretty much the funniest thing they could could possibly do in response to a very bad prosecution. They can't stop doing this stuff. They just can't start messing up their own prosecutions. One more opportunity to talk about that. Then I've got my fun footnote from... It was inspired by... That's just the fun story at the end. And then we're going to have a footnote inspired by a towel that was handed

0:05:15 Thomas: Okay when you said that was like a fun wow it was like a two for one deal yeah wow oh what a what a teaser I love

0:05:22 Matt: To me on the 4th of July. A towel that raised major legal questions about Space Force and how it's trying to become Starfleet. We all forgot about Space Force. There's actually some interesting legal stuff I got into. I got a little obsessed this weekend. Yeah, we're ruling space.

0:05:29 Thomas: That oh yeah I forgot about space force that's still going on yeah well ever since we won the war against the martians it hasn't been as relevant you know it was it was definitely super relevant at the time made sense but now that whole skirmish is over you're left wondering what are they even

0:05:50 Matt: Yeah. Well, they're trying to make Starfleet happen is what they're trying to do, but we're not quite in the United Federation of Planets yet, so we'll see. Yeah, that's true. No, but it's important.

0:05:51 Thomas: Doing now yeah yeah we're not in the united federation of of us yet. We're so far away from global cooperation. Forget that. Can we get just any cooperation? We'll be good. All right. Well, that sounds exciting. I can't wait to learn all about this. Although not excited for other cases like Prairieland. That's not good. I don't know if you're going to touch on it. At least Judge Dugan didn't get any jail time. I mean, it's small comfort, but yeah, it's like, cool. The judge that didn't do anything at least avoids

0:06:21 Matt: Yeah,that's all we can ask for now. That's very true. Yeah.

0:06:28 Thomas: Going to jail well excited to talk about it hey as usual you can support the show patreon.com slash law you can avoid the ads you can sport what we're doing you can get the lot off of movies the book club so much good stuff and just you know support a good thing who doesn't love that thanks so much to those who do we'll take a quick break and then we'll get to it all right matt so what other just horrific injustices is the fascist um department of justice trying to inflict maybe

0:06:29 Matt: There's just one more. Relatively speaking, it's a lesser injustice, but it is still a significant injustice. If this were the entire story, if this were what had happened in Prairieland, this would still be very bad. We've done multiple episodes on this now. A group of protesters received a combined sentence of about 450 years between eight people a few weeks ago. And I'd mentioned at the time that there were still some people left to be sentenced. And one of those on Monday, on July 1st, was sentenced. That's Susan Kent. And I just want to mention her case in particular because she had actually entered a plea agreement. The conduct for which she was convicted, she's 24 years old, remember, somebody with no criminal records, somebody who was at a protest and was on a signal chat like the rest of these people. Again, as we've talked about, we've got people that were convicted for doing things like buying and bringing fireworks works that didn't hurt anybody or, you know, Harmony Federal Buildings, being on a signal chat, removing people from a signal chat. But in her case, she was convicted of having a conversation about how to help Benjamin Song, who was the person who actually allegedly took the shot that ricocheted and hit the police officer in the neck. The only thing approaching violence

0:07:52 Thomas: Maybe. Yeah. Unbelievable. That's incredible. What? You're never as bad as you were? What?

0:07:54 Matt: In any of this, maybe, right? It's very unclear exactly what happened, but it was not an intentional shot from everything that I can tell. It was not something he was trying to actually physically hurt somebody. The main thing that she was convicted for was moving blankets and water bottles from one car to another. Yeah. And we already, of course, have had somebody do 30 years for moving zines, for moving pamphlets and literature from one house to another, right? So this is very much along those lines. So she's 24 years old and is getting six years on that offense. Six years. She'll be out when she's 30. Judge Mark Pittman, who of course has been responsible for all the Prairieland cases. I don't even know what this means. I was looking at this story and I was wondering if maybe you can make any sense of this. She was in tears, obviously, because this is terrible. This is her 20s. They're going to be in federal prison for having a conversation and moving some items from one car to another, not doing anything actively. This, again, the allegation was essentially that she was an accessory after the fact, but the charge that she pled to was material support for terror, which is what they were all charged for, as we discussed. Pittman said to her as he's sentencing her, and again, he doesn't have to give her any time at all. This isn't a thing that carries a mandatory minimum. I don't know where they came up with six years. It seems extremely excessive. He said to Her, remember the old saying, you're never as bad as you were on your worst day. And I don't know how that's supposed to comfort someone who's being sentenced to six years for nothing. Yeah, on your worse day. I

0:09:16 Thomas: You're, you're never, is it that it'll all go uphill from here? I don't, yeah, I don't. What's

0:09:18 Matt: Don't if he means the worst day being the day that you're being sentenced or the worst day being the day you had a conversation with somebody. Maybe? I don t really appreciate it when judges who are doing terrible things try to act normal. Remember the old saying, Pittman told a tearful

0:09:33 Thomas: The precise wording on that? I guess he's saying it's all uphill from hier. Like it's, this is,

0:09:37 Matt: Kent, you're never as good as you are on your best day. He's giving her her worst day, like he's in in the process of giving it to her like that's not yeah you could have given her probation or

0:09:44 Thomas: I guess? I DON'T KNOW. Yeah, yeah. He's saying like it'll ALL be uphill from HERE. Maybe. I DON' know yeah I don't think we are properly dealing with this you know I mean it's just so insane I

0:09:56 Matt: Fine which is what hannah dugan just since you mentioned her before she got a five thousand dollar fine which it still like seems excessive to me but that's still better than jail time it's terrible uh the whole thing is terrible yeah well it's gonna have to be pardons from the next

0:10:10 Thomas: Still think everyone thinks there's going to be some easy solution to that I don'T KNOW i'M NOT SURE WHAT IT'S GOING TO BE yeah what but what happened Prairieland it's obviously bullshit

0:10:18 Matt: Administration all these people that I'm going to be telling you about should all be pardoned like this is so excessive the message that we're sending here as to the criminalization of dissent just straight up people who are opposed to what ice is doing this is the theme here is everything talk about what's going on in Spokane. I don't know if you've seen this, because there was just a conviction for three people in Spukane. It's pretty shocking, especially when you find out who these people are. All this was was essentially a protest near the ICE building in Spekane when people found out that there were two Venezuelan men who had been detained. People who were taking asylum, the usual thing, arrested, had to check in. A former city council president, this is kind of the shocking thing about this, is the high-profile nature of the people involved in this. It is very much like the Broadview thing, where pretty much everybody in the Broad view protests in Chicago, which we've covered pretty extensively now, were names. They were people that were known in their communities politically. There was a former city council president that was accompanying one of these men to the check-in and become his legal guardian as a young man. He put up a Facebook post after the man was taken in, told people to come in. This is what's going on. Let's be heard. Let us tell us what we think about this. It's exactly the same as the Broadview thing in which they were charged with conspiracy. People basically that just showed up at the same time to engage in this were charged aveconspiracy. Yeah, nothing. Somebody kicked a car at some point. So I guess that car still hasn't recovered. Right. Yeah. No injuries.

0:11:38 Thomas: But at least they can say someone shot somebody maybe what is this it's just the property damage that they're doing it for huh what the hell this is insane how are they getting these convictions

0:11:46 Matt: Again, there was blocking ICE agents, people locking arms. There was an allegation about slashing tires. But again, as with Broadview and as with Prairie Land, none of the people actually charged were being charged with anything specific. In Prairie land, there was vandalism, which again is not necessarily a federal crime, but none of those people were necessarily charged with that either. Specifically, they're just charged with material support for terror because of the property damage. 31 people were arrested. Nine people were indicted federally. Six of them took plea deals and the three that went to trial were just convicted and I just want to note this because one of them was the human rights commissioner for the city of spokane this is a non-binary person who goes by justice for all f-o-r-r a-l which I think is a great name justice forall jack archer the co-director of the spokan community against racism scar and a student at gonzaga law and beijing malvawa afghanistan vet who founded a nonprofit to help afghan refugees he was literally he just saw the the facebook post and thought it was the right thing to do to stop in because this is his cause. These are people, again, going to a protest, facing a maximum of six years in prison, potentially $250,000 each. These need to be pardons. These should not have been convictions. It continues to be. Well, it's the same that we've been talking

0:12:55 Thomas: How are they getting even the indictments or anything? Like, how are they even doing this? I just don't get how you're finding a jury to convict these people.

0:13:01 Matt: About. All of these different cases, everything from throwing a sandwich at CBP to showing up at a protest with fireworks to being anywhere near in the way of an ICE vehicle, it is so broad, the statutes they can use here. There's 18 U.S. C-111, of course, we've talked about at length, about basically getting in the way of any kind of performance of duties. 18 U.S.C. 372, which, as we've discussed in the Broadview case, was not particularly popular, not in a very well-known statute, but that's essentially a conspiracy to forcibly assault, resist, oppose, impede, intimidate, or interfere with a federal officer. It's anything that they say, you know, looking at them the wrong way. It is extremely broad law. That's part of the whole problem with all these things. Yeah. I agree. Yeah, yeah. You showed up with that intent. And, you

0:13:45 Thomas: I just I don't I don' get it. I don''t understand how this is happening. I''m in disbelief. Basically, the game is if anyone protested and kind of anything happened that was like, I don ''t know, damage to property or anything, then they''re not necessarily even charging people for that. They're just saying like the whole thing was a terrorism and therefore you supported it or conspired to do it what but then but but another taint but they were all of them deceived

0:14:17 Matt: On social media, show up, protest ICE, and mentioned in the post that some people might be risking arrest to block the exits. Blocking the exits is not hurting anybody. It's a valid protest, but that's enough. That's enough to get a federal charge at this point. And that's just posting. They're not even saying that this person did anything. There are other people who were arrested who did things like slash tires or throw incendiary devices, but none of the people who were charged in these cases, the ones I'm telling you about right now, did anything other than get in the way or place trash cans on the road or whatever. Just basic stuff, again, that maybe Maybe state offenses, maybe there's other ways to deal with these things, but these federal charges, these hardcore federal charges that carry many, many years, it's a real problem. There's another case out of Minnesota, and this is kind of in the aftermath of the Rene Good and Alex Pretty shootings when things were pretty hot in Minnesota around the time that I was there in January. There's an indictment that came out last month that I should take a closer look at. It's a very long indictment, and I think what they basically did is they tried to find the most Antifa people they could find because, of course, all of this comes back to allegations of membership in Antifa. These are people who are actually identified as anarchists. What ICE is trying to do in this case, in the Minnesota case, and this is actually a direct action Minnesota, which goes by DAMN, which is a great name, D-A-M-N. This is all around actions around the Whipple building, but also around what they called the commuting. And when I was in Minnesota, I learned a lot about this, about the incredibly organized, very well put together groups of people on signal chats, watching where ICE was, following them around, showing up, blowing whistles, trying to warn people, just monitoring them. These are people that are trying to watch ICE, as is our absolute right as citizens, to just see what our law enforcement is doing. They hated it so much. They just despised the idea that people were watching what they were doing and not even getting in the way. People just watching them, following them around, yelling at them, staying far away, keeping their distance. What they did is basically put together a 95-page indictment, mostly made up of signal messages, and they found a way to indict 15 people essentially for getting organized around these actions. They found that the worst kinds of communications they could. Some of them aren't great, but none of them are really calls to actual violence. I think one of them is completely taken out of context. It's the same kind of thing where you can find one or two people that say the most extreme things and indict a whole lot of people about it. It is all just a continuing attempt to criminalize protest, to criminalized dissent. It didn't work in Broadview because they were so bad at it. If they had actually managed to not lie to the grand jury, if they'd managed to Not actually completely violate everything you're supposed to do in front of a grand jury they might have actually gotten convictions of Cadabra Godzilla and the other Broadway defendants. But you know, this is the game plan. This is this is The Playbook. I just want to keep talking about it and make people aware of it. And in the course of looking into these cases, I became aware of a name that I kept seeing in a lot of the DOJ materials that we've been talking about. Somebody named Akash Singh. He's an associate deputy AG, and he's basically stepped up. He is 33 years old. He stepped up to take the space that was left in the Department of Justice by Emil Bove, who has, of course, since become a federal judge of the Third Circuit. We've talked quite a lot about Emil Bove, of course, who was one of Trump's defense attorneys and became the third in command at DOJ. This is a name that's worth knowing, my gosh, saying, because I think he's on his way up. Ed Martin, of choice, one of our favorite OA characters, former plea attorney and current henchman in DOJ, called him the great one. Mike Davis, who is one of the most extreme Magawa people, was one of his mentors. A colleague in a story I saw described him as an octopus with 93 tentacles, which is not really how I'd want to be described, but that's how many U.S. attorney's offices there are. Remember, we've been talking about this kind of as an ongoing theme that right now the Department of Justice from D.C. is micromanaging these cases. In the Camargo-Garcia case, which we've talked about at length, he was actually the taint behind the tainting. I went back and looked at the opinion. Aakash Singh has mentioned 76 times Judge Waverly Crenshaw in that case was talking about the vindictive taint. Yes, he was talking about the vendictive tame that Todd Blanche had brought to the case, but literally, yes, that's right, the taint behind the tain.

0:18:22 Thomas: For another tainted was made yeah yeah wow he really is a tank yeah

0:18:27 Matt: This guy has been involved. I mean, he, he Was pushing so hard on the Avery Garcia thing. He's one of the people sort of that orchestrated this incredible, stupid human trafficking charge that was eventually thrown out, as we talked about. But also, just his greatest hits include the Southern Poverty Law Center indictment, which we've talked about, having prosecutors look into George Soros' Open Society Foundation, which is, of course, a regular non-profit, helping out Lindsay Halligan, who was the sham U.S. attorney who finally was removed because she wasn't supposed to have been appointed, and her sham indictment of James Comey, the seashells, and previously the seasells, actually, the fake lying to Congress charge. The Don Lemon indictment in Minnesota for showing up at a church and doing journalism, he led the prosecution of Hannah Sanadugan that we just talked about in Wisconsin. He's all over. He has a very large taint. He is very sizable. It's quite an image. And actually, the Broadview defendants are now, in their

0:19:15 Thomas: Yeah. Taint has tentacles that reach all over. Yeah. Yeah, sorry, which thing in particular?

0:19:24 Matt: Discovery, are looking for his communication specifically because he was in touch on the Broadview case. The reporting is, in a video chat meeting with DOJ with the 93 U.S. Attorney's Offices last month, and again, this is the person I think is pretty high up in D.C., maybe not quite as high as Eze Mubabe was, but about that position, he made it very clear that Donald Trump is the chief client of the Department of Justice. He said this out loud in a video meeting. He says that anyone uncomfortable with advancing his administration's directives must step aside. The chief client, the idea that the president is your chief client. We know that's how they've been acting, but just to hear that somebody was saying this out aloud. The reason I brought this up is because these protest cases, federal cases, never would have been federal cases before. This is really not something, unless you actually set fire to a federal building or hurt a federal agent, it's not the kind of thing you would have charged for federally before. There might have been state charges available. They might have given you a strict warning or whatever. These kinds of protest actions, these kinds of just showing up, coordinated sort of

0:20:16 Thomas: Oh, just all of them in general. Okay, gotcha. Wow. You are a monstrous human being and will

0:20:21 Matt: Following ICE and keeping track of what agents are doing, that kind of stuff, again, without doxing people, without hurting anybody, without threatening anybody. He's been basically trying to coordinate under the NSPM7 memo that we've been talking about, which essentially criminalizes what they call Antifa, which is anti-capitalist. And they say it's explicitly in the memo. Again, just to remind everybody, I can't say this enough times, that it includes things like anti-capitalist beliefs, anti-Christian beliefs, what they consider to be threats to traditional morality and all that. Allowing federal agents, and he's saying that they should be hounding these agents, that the U.S. attorney should be working closely with these agents to make sure they make these cases. He said to go big and go loud on Prairieland. That was his directive to the Texas U. S. attorneys. Just to bring it back to one of our favorite cases, in the direction of the sandwich trial, all those different cases we talked about in D.C. where people were being charged with getting in the faces of federal agents or otherwise doing things that wouldn't have been, and where multiple grand juries around the country were refusing to let these indictments go forward because they saw what they were. Singh was the guy who was telling their criminal team to come back. Rinse and repeat, he said. Come back for a new panel. Just keep getting the jury you want, grand jury you want, until you get the indictment. So just like we saw with Broadview, where they're just coming back week after week after weak. I've also been tracking people who are being hounded by the Office of Professional Responsibility by ICE. And these are basically, they're coming after people who have talked about ICE or tried to contact ICE. And they're using the massive new resources they have to do this. And there's a new complaint filed in the D.C. District Court by David Strever. He is just one of many people like us who was very upset after the shootings in Minneapolis. He sent an email, a three-paragraph email, to Todd Lyons, who was the head of ICE at the time. And Strever has no criminal record, has never presented as anybody who's dangerous. He's married to an Episcopalian minister, for what it's worth. This email, I'm actually going to send it to you so you can read it out loud, so you too can also threaten ICE. It is an extremely fair comment. If you put this into a New York Times editorial, editorial. I can't see how this would be particularly controversial. See if you can find the threat in this. I don't see it. Not a threat. It's poetry, actually. But, you know,

0:22:20 Thomas: Go down in history as America's Reinhard Heydrich the Butcher. The way you are protecting the obvious execution in Minnesota, even as we see the videos, will lead to your downfall. Even Trump will turn on you before the end, and you will be a sad, despised man who eats himself self alive with shame at your own pathetic weakness you will never know peace you will seek to lose yourself to escape the burden of knowing the truth about yourself but wherever you go you will find yourself you will torment yourself until your last day on earth yeah yeah

0:22:53 Matt: This is the man who's in charge of ICE. And, you Know, he found his email and sent him an email.

0:22:55 Thomas: It's getting some public comment yeah yeah yeah that's what I was gonna what's the office of

0:22:57 Matt: Five months later, he had ICE agents at five months, right? This is how urgent they thought this threat was. Five months Later, while he was in Europe, he Had ICE agents show up to his door and drop off a notice with his wife, just letting him know that he may be in violation of federal law. Very scary looking warning notice saying that the Office of Professional Responsibility that he was looking into him, that they're responsible for. Yeah, that used to be.

0:23:18 Thomas: Professional responsibility what are you talking about what is that oh boy yeah holy crap this is

0:23:23 Matt: This is just another way that kind of like the civil rights division now is basically just looking out for threats to white people. It's completely abandoned its responsibilities to constrain police departments across the United States and is releasing them from these agreements. The Office of Professional Responsibility used to Be what it sounds like. It used to actually be looking out from making sure that ICE was at least somewhat following its ethical guidelines. Now it is taken on kind of this watchdog protection role of going after enemies of ICE. Yeah, it's not good. They have a lot more money now than they did. Yeah, yeah. The idea that you'd

0:23:52 Thomas: Is that is insane I haven't heard about this this is I mean we don't even bother saying orwellian anymore but that is wow yeah that's an internal thing right like that should be them keeping an

0:24:00 Matt: Call that the Office of Professional Responsibility's job, right? Yes, exactly. But not on us, exactly. Have you guys been reading the news about what ICE is doing or supposed to be? That was

0:24:06 Thomas: Eye on them right isn't that usually what that is I'd be like hey wrong number I think you got I'm not in ice I don't know what you're talking about yeah I mean that would be what you do in that job right wow oh my god wow wow the abusive power is just insane to round that all up

0:24:23 Matt: Previously my understanding of what OPR did. In this complaint, they also mentioned something I hadn't heard about, a very similar incident in which someone emailed an ICE attorney. And again, Again, this is just an attorney for ICE who was in court. The Washington Post had reported that he had made misleading claims in the course of opposing an asylum claim in immigration court. He was asking a judge to deport a father of two to Afghanistan, where he expects the Taliban to kill him. That was the claim. This attorney, Joseph Dernbach, made a number of misleading claims to try to get this asylum claim denied. And literally, someone who'd read this story found his email address and wrote, Mr. Dernback, don't play Russian roulette with this man's life. Error in the site of caution. There's a reason the U.S. government, along with many other governments, don't recognize the Taliban. Apply principles of common sense and decency. Five hours later, after asking an ICE attorney to be decent, he got a notice from Google reporting that he had received a subpoena from DHS to get his Google account information. And two weeks later, DHS showed up to his house and interrogated him about this email. Only after he filed the motion to quash did they withdraw the subpoenas, and they actually voluntarily dismissed this. Yeah. And this is what the ACLU to their full credit predicted in 2002 when DHS was created. They said this is inevitably what's going to happen is you're creating an agency that's going to turn on citizens that is going to be going way beyond immigration enforcement. If you continue to give them this much unfettered power, now they have unfettering power and funding. And this is where we're at. The First Amendment still exists. We still have these rights, but you wouldn't know it from what I'm reading in this complaint. We'll post the complaint and you can see it for yourself. This stuff shouldn't be happening. And we should not have people like Akash Singh directing these prosecutions from D.C. It's really bad. So I just want to make sure we can stay on top of it and people know what's going on with ICE right now. Yeah, I'd like to look more into the Spokane cases because, you know, I read the indictment

0:26:14 Thomas: How many different things are you looking at right now? Like, like are people on trial been sentenced or, or facing trial and what, cause I'm wondering how can we just, we gotta have like defense funds for these people. I just call me naive. I don't understand how they're getting convicted. It seems insane. And I just wonder, I know with Prairieland when we're talking to them, it wasn't like they had tons of resources to work with. I, how is that still true? Like can't we get something going here? Why aren't they being well defended? Or if they are, how in the hell are they getting convicted? Yeah. Yeah. If this is the only crap we've heard of, you know there's

0:26:53 Matt: And I don't see it. I don'T see it with the three people that were just convicted at trial. I think there's a reason they went to trial.I think the defense that thought a good case. I THINK THEY SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT. I DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH DOJ THINKS THEY HAVE GOOD CASES IN ANY OF THESE things. But the Minnesota case is purposely set up to try to get the most extreme convictions they can, although not as extreme as Prairien, because they're not alleging material support. From what I've seen in Minnesota, they have very good organization, and I'm sure that they're getting good defense. If you have a case like this in your community, obviously see what you can do to get involved, because these are happening everywhere. I'm just trying to highlight some of the ones that have been in the news, but I know that there's a lot of stuff that has to to be going under the radar oh yeah sure yeah right right I have seen fire and I have see nice

0:27:33 Thomas: More. I mean, that's what happened with the firings that we covered at length, the Charlie Kirk firings. It seems like once a week I'll see a headline that's like, well, professor gets a million dollars or some crap. Which, good, but for one, that is not everybody. For two, a lot lot of people I'm sure just got fired, didn't have the wherewithal resources to be able to sue. And for three, even if they did, who knows how many were as successful as the few headlines we're seeing? Because when you look at the numbers, it was hundreds, if not thousands of people. It was crazy. I have been really critical of the fire.org because they suck, but I got the email, I guess from, I have no idea why I got like an email from them about, I think the one that you were just talking about where they're like, we're defending the man who sent an email to ICE. And I was like, oh, OK, so this is your first like free speech thing. Congratulations. The first time you're actually defending free speech in a meaningful way. And not just because, you know, professor maybe had to like take a take a sensitivity class for being an asshole. This is like the first time even ice is even ice fire and the fire. There you go. Yeah. Even the fire dot org is like, OK. Okay, I guess we have to actually do what our whole job description was. So that's good. Better late than never. Yeah, that's the one. Yeah. Oh boy. All right. Well, we'll take a quick break

0:28:51 Matt: Uh and they're both here no the fire actually did bring the um the strever complaint I was reading from so full credit to that yeah that's the one we'll keep watching which all we can do but uh you got a more light-hearted starter coming up here yeah well as always in some of

0:29:07 Thomas: And then I'm excited. We have sort of a bonus Lighthearted story before the footnote even. As rage inducing as that all was, hopefully Matt can bring us back here. So quick break and then we'll be at it. All Right, Matt, what do you have for us? Oh boy, yeah, yeah. She has done

0:29:24 Matt: Our funnier stories this involves the best judge in fort pierce florida eileen cannon who's of of course, the only federal judge in Fort Pierce, Florida. Just to take everybody's minds back to the prosecution, she was supposed to be responsible for this case of Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago, the documents case. All the way back in July of 2024, not long after the Supreme Court found that Donald Trump had total immunity, she went with the Clarence Thomas position and and found that Jack Smith had no authority, had not been properly appointed, and dismissed the entire indictment against Donald Trump. You remember that in the course of that, there was a second Jack Smith report. So it was the first Jack Smith Report about January 6th that did come out. That's right. Yeah. And she received it on January 16th. Five days later, after she took a look at

0:30:10 Thomas: Done everything she could to keep this from being seen. And it's ridiculous. I mean, the naked corruption here, it's just, there's no reason for it. It doesn't make any sense.

0:30:25 Matt: The Jack Smith Reports, she puts out an order on January 21st of 2025, keeping anybody from sharing this report at all. A DOJ prosecutor, Carmen Mercedes-Landberger, had been at the the office for more than 20 years. She was the manager of that DOJ office. She went ahead and emailed the report to herself, allegedly. And this is not unusual for federal prosecutors to email important case documents from their work accounts, their personal accounts. You're not really supposed to do it, but it happens all the time at the state and federal level, especially when people are working from home. They can't access their systems for one reason or another. The problem for this was that she renamed it to chocolate underscore cake underscore recipe dot PDF. She had two two different documents. One of them was an email that she wasn't supposed to send, that she did a screenshot of and saved it that way. The other one was bunt underscore cake underscore recipe dot PDF. So she renamed the Jack Smith report as a bunt cake recipe, right?

0:31:05 Thomas: Okay. And this is all intentional, right? To try to hide what she's doing.

0:31:23 Thomas: Whoa. We're talking about somebody being prosecuted? You skipped right to that. I

0:31:23 Matt: That doesn't look good. It looks like concealment. I'm mentioning this in the course of this is obviously over prosecution. This is typical selective prosecution. I think she has a pretty strong vindictive prosecution case because think about what we're actually doing here. And we're not getting to the funny part yet. We're talking about somebody being prosecuted for sharing something with herself. Yes, this was a prosecutor and she's being prosecuted. Yes. From what I've

0:31:43 Thomas: Thought you said this was a prosecutor, right?" Wow. So what happened? So she emailed to herself, then how is that discovered yeah yeah the state of california had that when we worked there it's

0:31:51 Matt: Learned looking into this, DOJ and other sensitive government systems have pretty sophisticated filters or they're looking for certain kinds of things for metadata. They are looking at what you're attaching and sending out. So it doesn't really matter if you rename it Bundkape recipe, they're going to figure out that you're sending the Jack Smith report. Yeah, they're

0:32:08 Thomas: Pretty interesting like if you sent anything out that seemed like it had a social security number and a lot of times it'd be stuff that it was a little oversensitive but also stuff we didn't realize you know but it's like if it has something somewhere it triggers the thing and it's like oh wow they're they're keeping an eye on it that much must be that kind of thing so merely renaming the file probably not going to do it so she didn't try to say like she this is just

0:32:28 Matt: Going to catch it. And unfortunately, she didn't just email it to the New York Times. She had to email it herself. And who knows, maybe she was planning to leak it at some point. Well, this

0:32:36 Thomas: Just to do work? Or was it just to do work?

0:32:40 Matt: This was months after the order, right?

0:32:42 Thomas: Oh, yeah.

0:32:43 Matt: So this is September. And again, this is well after, by the way, the case was dismissed in July 2024. The docket is still there. And remember, of course, there were still co-conspirators.

0:32:50 Thomas: That was always the excuse. Well, can't release the reports prejudicial to the co-conspirators. Hmm.

0:32:55 Matt: And co-defendants. And so this docket istill kind of live a little bit. So this isn't September that she emails this to herself. This is well-after the order. And then in December, she sent the full report to herself, she's charged with stealing it, essentially, under 18 U.S.C. 641, which is, as I understand, something that the DOJ hardly ever charges anymore at all. And then 18 U.S.C. 1519 obstructing the order by renaming the Jack Smith report a bunt-caked recipe. And then a couple of other miscellaneous charges along those lines. Now, what is the funniest thing that DOJ could do in the course of this prosecution? I ask you.

0:33:14 Thomas: Stealing it. Oh, accidentally email it to somebody and leak it.

0:33:34 Matt: Yep. So yeah, to their full credit, as credited in the filing is ultimately done. So the way this

0:33:35 Thomas: It really is how it happened. I did think I saw a headline about that, but I wasn't sure if it was referring to this prosecutor that you're already talking about. So that was a hopeful guess on my part. But wow. Oh, my God.

0:33:51 Matt: Goes down is DOJ is very happy to notify Eileen Cannon about this violation because they want to get her sanctioned. So they have to file something into the record saying that she's been charged with these federal crimes and they want notify that the order has been violated because she emailed to herself. And then this is, I think it made them to do this. And then they find out that they accidentally in the course of discovery, even though there was an order right at the beginning that they couldn't share the report, that it could not be put in anywhere. They accidentally in discovery shared the report in three different places with the defense on a flash drive that they shared with them in the discovery. It was attached to several different emails. So they had to file a notice to Eileen Cannon again. And only a month after they found out. They really took their time on this. And they credited the defense. And they said, thank you for letting us know. Apparently, the defense said as soon as they realized this, they deleted everything. They immediately contacted because you don't want to have multiple more charges coming out of this. But they had to notify Eileen Cannon that we also now have violated your order because we shared it with the defense."

0:34:21 Thomas: Three. Wow. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. Oh my God.

0:34:54 Matt: You have to laugh because like everything else, we don't have a lot of choice at this point. But just step back from the entire thing and think about the fact that Donald Donald Trump committed massive multiple life felonies keeping classified documents and potentially, I'm willing to believe, trying to sell them or otherwise gain from them. There's all kinds of potential things he might have been trying to do. A lot of sketchy stuff around these documents. We may never know the whole story. But the fact is that nobody has ever paid for this except for this one prosecutor who emailed it to herself and emailed a report that we should have seen by now. The only reason we haven't seen it is because Owen Kenna doesn't want us to see it. It's just kind of, I guess, in the Orwellian theme that we've been talking about, that

0:34:57 Thomas: Yeah. Yep. Yeah, absolutely should have seen it. Yeah Yeah. Can't somebody leak it somehow?

0:35:33 Matt: This is the only person who's going to be punished in the whole scheme of all of this. For something that should have already been public and that we should get to see. So just add that to the pardons, I guess. But I had to share this because I just think that that is such a typically DOJ thing to do at this point. Yeah, I know.

0:35:49 Thomas: Yeah. Well, it's like this prosecutor lady is already in trouble. Like, what

0:35:50 Matt: I'd really like to read it. We have reached the point where I can just have you guess what's the funniest thing they could have done. And that's the thing they did.

0:36:00 Thomas: Would it have been more trouble if it leaked?

0:36:03 Matt: Right. That's what I'm thinking. Like, why not just send it off?

0:36:05 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah you would think. I'll tell you what the reason isn't

0:36:06 Matt: Maybe she didn't have time to. Maybe she got caught first. I really don't know. Someday. I'm sure someday we'll get the full picture. But I think there's a reason that Eileen Cannon does not want us to see it. So yeah. Yeah.

0:36:18 Thomas: Anything the F to do with other defendants because that's stupid. That's not real. Aren't they even not even on trial? It was just, I don't even think they're proceeding with it, right? It Was just that like, well, the case is technically still could, but what's the excuse going to be? What's the statute of limitations on some of that stuff? Eventually you're out of excuses, aren't you? If we can get back in power, there's gotta be ways that it can be released, but it's just, it's Just crazy. All right. What a bunch of assholes. Okay. Uh, well let's take

0:36:32 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's five years like everything else. Yeah, at some point it just has to come out. Yeah and we'll be talking about it. Let's get on to an actual funny footnote because I do have a good one here. I had two. So I was, as I mentioned, our band was playing in

0:36:56 Thomas: Take a break and then we'll get to the footnote I'm looking forward to the footnote about a towel about space force oh yeah okay all right matt uh space force apparently still exists I had completely forgotten about it yeah

0:37:13 Matt: The 4th of July parade in Lincoln, Massachusetts. We're on a float. It's very hot. We were getting a little sweaty. It was a very hot day in Lincoln. It Was Kind of Funny because as you do when you're playing in a parade, we had like a loop of songs that we were playing and one of the songs was Fortunate Son because that's just a fun 4th July song. If we're going to be a little subversive and

0:37:28 Thomas: Did you change senator's son to a member of the house's son I'm just

0:37:29 Matt: And unfortunately, songs about rich people who dodge their taxes and send kids off to die in wars are timeless. It turns out that song still holds up pretty well. We did have to change millionaire's son to billionaire's son because, you know, inflation. But right in front of us, oh, we changed military son to president's son, because you have to do that. The inner senators, yeah, yeah.

0:37:46 Thomas: Wondering yeah there's isn't I know senator's son or is it yeah wow was it freeze-dried

0:37:53 Matt: It still works. Yeah. So these military recruiters are in front us and came out, you're just young guys. And of course, the song is not about them exactly, but it's still a little embarrassing. You know, they were singing the song. They were super nice. And we're just waiting around to loop back around in the parade, and one of these guys runs back with some towels. And I realize that I'm being handed, and I actually could use it, I was very sweaty, a Space Force towel. It's a very small Space Force hand towel.

0:38:16 Thomas: Right oh I remember this from a while back when it was pretty much the same star trek thing pretty

0:38:16 Matt: Towel. It was beautifully printed. It was like a very nice looking towel. And I'd never actually seen the Space Force logo. And of course, there's like 12 people will also think this was funny, but I also thought it was very funny that the U.S. Space Force was giving me a towel because I think at least a dozen people will recognize you do need a towel when you go to space. That's a very nerd joke. But the Space Force logo, have you ever seen it? Are you familiar with it? Yeah. I hadn't really looked at the Space force logo and I hadn'T thought about Space Force because who thinks about Space force? I started doing some reading about Space force, but let's start with the logo ago, because that's one of the legal issues. Here's a helpful graphic from the BBC in which we're comparing United States Space Force with Starfleet Command of the United Federation of Planets. It is pretty close. If you want to describe the similarities and differences.

0:38:59 Thomas: Close well they're the same I don't know it's hard to I mean you got a triangular thing with a planet and a something orbiting around it I'm curious about the star distribution choices now is there is there a reason for that now you got you got some star in the you got like the star

0:39:14 Matt: Yeah, that is actually Polaris. They specifically wanted Polaris the North Star. No, it is. That's

0:39:19 Thomas: Star of like Bethlehem in the background or something. I don't know what the hell that's supposed to be. Yeah. Oh, sure. Sure it is. That's what they say. I feel like that's not leading you north based on these angles that I'm seeing, but that's okay. And then they got just two clumps of stars on either side, sort of not quite like, you know, three o'clock, nine o'clock, but sort of like, uh, you knows, almost like a three 30, you now, nine 30 or so on the, if it's a clock Oak.

0:39:26 Matt: What they say. Sure. There's a dipper maybe on the left that looks like one of of the dippers, but almost, kind of. Extremely similar. Yeah, it really jumped out at me as

0:39:49 Thomas: Well, maybe, maybe. Boy, could they get the rights to the Big Dipper? I don't know. The Little Dipper got the rights of the Big Dipper, but I don't know if anybody else can. Yeah, so that's kind of weird. The Starfleet one, very similar. The triangle thing is bigger, and there's no planet-y thing, but it does have the, like, orbit-y things. I don't know what to say. It's like an arc that's created by something coming around or orbiting around the the main graphic. So very similar. It's got, I mean, also it's a circle. They're both circles with a text that wraps around on the circle. That's kind of common, but still. Okay. Fair

0:40:30 Matt: I'm looking at this towel because it looked like the Starfleet logo. So I started looking into this and first of all, it is not actually rip-off. It turns out that Star Trek ripped off the Air Force. The Air Force originally had this chevron design and then in the 60s, they thought this looked cool and they put on the Star Trek uniforms. It became associated more with Star Trek and then Space Force kind of picked it up again. But it did give me as a thought experiment, what if if they did actually rip off the Starfleet logo, could Paramount have any kind of lawsuit, right? Because obviously this is their IP. I'd never thought about before what happens if the federal government rips off your IP, because when would that happen? It turns out there is actually a very slight exception generally for sovereign immunity that does allow you to sue the federal government if they steal your copyright. I appreciate that somebody thought of this, but all you can get is money, it turns out. You can't actually get them to stop doing it. Yeah. I guess they could just

0:40:49 Thomas: Enough. Yeah. Yeah, really? It's like eminent domain kind of, they just like, all right, we'll pay you for your property essentially. And it's ours now. Wow. No, it's definitely like not.

0:41:27 Matt: Use the Coca-Cola logo if they really wanted to for some reason or another. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, I thought that was pretty strange. And then I started reading about Space Force more and sort of the similarities with Space Force and Starfleet. Now, Starfleet, of course, is not explicitly in Star Trek a military organization, or at least allegedly. It does a lot of military stuff. It's supposed to be exploratory and defensive. I started reading about something in the Defense Authorization Act of 2021, which was nicknamed the Starfleat Amendment. Does that caught my eye? This was backed by William Shatner, who wrote an entire column about why we should do this. So you know it has to be good. It was was backed by Dan Crenshaw. You might remember the eyepatch guy from Texas. There was a discussion about how Space Force should be set up. And I think this is actually just kind of interesting as a cultural thing. I love it when art and life kind of start to blend together. I think it would be great if we made Starfleet happen, frankly, because it's a lot better than Space Force. We should have something that's dedicated to exploration and diplomacy and not explicitly a military organization. But one of the reasons that Space Force has been really concerned about getting confused with Starfleет is they don't want people thinking that we actually are putting putting people on spaceships right now and sending them out into space, because people might think that. By the way, these guys were recruiting, as far as I could tell. They were recruiting for Space Force. That's why they're giving me towels. And in Lincoln, Massachusetts, that might get you

0:41:45 Thomas: Oh yeah. I guess. Yeah. Okay. It is a little bit. Oh God. Yeah. So that's why they were there with the towel? Wow. Huh. Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. Oh, didn't. Wow. So does that mean you can't have

0:42:45 Matt: A little further. Maybe you'll find some Space Force recruits. I just thought it was interesting because the Starfleet Amendment, and that wasn't the official name, but that's what it became nicknamed, was an effort to decide how rank was going to work in Space Force, because there's all this stuff they hadn't thought of. In Star Trek, they just picked up all the Navy ranks, basically, the the navy structure of command william shatner wrote this entire article saying that they should follow the starfleet slash navy designations and they should give people those commands because it's not cool to have a colonel it's way cooler to have captain dan crenshaw for whatever reason thought this is a good idea too I don't know if I've been enough about the military to know kind of what the difference is or what that's a good I just think the star trek starfleets stuff is pretty cool like those are cool designations the star fleet amendment did not pass it no it did not so they ended up going with the air force designation which just kind of makes sense because it's kind of a spinoff from the Air Force. It seems like an interesting sort of two roads kind of thing that they chose, the Air force hierarchy designations. Right. Exactly. No, no, no Ensign Crusher. He has to be at whatever the Air

0:43:41 Thomas: Like an ensign? I feel like that was, or are they in everything? I don't know. Wow, not really. I

0:43:48 Matt: Force equivalent of that is. I don't know how important that is, but I would like to make Starfleet happen. Eventually we are going to have space Marines, like it's going to happen.

0:43:56 Thomas: Don't think there's going to be any reason for any of that. Right. If they ever get one of those,

0:44:00 Matt: I hope not, but maybe, I don'T know. Then again, my favorite TV show now at this point is For All Mankind and I will not stop talking about it, but they have reached the point where there are space Marines. And they're making it seem pretty realistic. It seems like it's something that could happen, especially with all the assets that are going to be out there on these asteroids and Mars and the moon and everything else. Yeah, can't have the Ruskies getting our precious

0:44:17 Thomas: You know, if we like, if pro the jobs that the meteor creates, then we got to, you know defend those, those jobs up there. We got to bring some freedom to those asteroids. Yeah, that's what I

0:44:28 Matt: Asteroids. There's a lot of valuable stuff in those asteroids. But of course, there's also an argument to be made by the time we're mining asteroids that we're just going to have infinite supplies basically of rare metals and this kind of stuff we fight over now. So maybe that will change things. Right, right. It's no longer a rare mineral. It can't call it that. I think

0:44:41 Thomas: I always wonder too, when they're like that asteroid that's worth 11 jillion trillion dollars here on earth. And part of me is like, well, if it's that much, wouldn't that mean like if everybody gets a thousand tons of gold, that's worthless, right? You know, then it's just a heavy rock that we all have. Right. I mean, yeah, I mean it's got, I guess I'm sure there's a lot of room along the way for, for those metals, especially if we actually just need them to to produce phones or whatever the hell they're making with some of these metals. But at a certain point, it seems like you could top out, though. It seems like it could be too much.

0:45:18 Matt: That's what should happen because then you end up with star trek which is where of course as a 90s kid who grew up on 90s star trek I want luxury space communism that's that's where we're heading for I want replicators I want everybody to just be doing their jobs because it's fun to do your

0:45:21 Thomas: I wish. Sorry to be a bummer.

0:45:31 Matt: Job and we don't need to get paid anymore. You need to watch more star trek obviously we're

0:45:33 Thomas: Just space doesn't work like that. Everything sucks in space. You can't get anywhere. It's too far away. Everything's too heavy to travel to get there. It sucks. I wish it were better. It's one of the biggest betrayals of this world. I've watched a lot of Star Trek.

0:45:49 Matt: Going to get warp speed no I know I keep thinking that too with warp speed like that

0:45:49 Thomas: I love it. It's just not real. I wish I was real. I like Star Trek well enough. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

0:45:55 Matt: They had to invent warp speed so they had a solution for faster than light obviously it is is sad you know right it's not intelligent design when when the closest star is several

0:45:59 Thomas: It's too bad. I want to write to the manager, whoever invented all the physics of this universe. Like, come on, give us something. Or put us like a little closer together, you know, put something a little closer so that we can at least dream. Oh, no. Yeah, well, I mean, there's closer ones, but it's still, it's just so hard to travel fast enough to get there. It's possible that we could get a one-way trip to a star that will take way longer than any of us will be alive for someday, maybe. Maybe. But then what happens after that? Nothing. Too bad. So anyway, long story short, they can just take your stuff and you can't get them to stop, but you can get money and that's it. So it is like, I feel like it's like eminent domain a little bit. Yeah. And it's really moist

0:46:18 Matt: Hundred light years away or whatever right yeah yeah well yeah there's always star trek yeah it is yeah they just have they can pay you off if they really wanted to make starfleet happen and just steal the starfleets logo they could just do that fyi I didn't know that I'd never looked thought about the possibility that the federal government could rip off intellectual property and I love that there's actually a law that accounts for that just in case they do that's

0:47:05 Thomas: In space. So you need that towel. All right. Well, that was fun. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Thanks Matt for the breakdown. And we got to keep an eye on these stupid prosecutions. I can't believe it. I really am disbelief every time. It's so unjust. And what are we doing? We got to have a defense fund or something. There must be something. But anyway, more on that another time. We'll see you on Monday. Hey, you know the thing that seems like incredible to you, like the coolest thing?

0:47:08 Matt: That's right, that's right. I always know where your talent is. Keep talking about it, too soon.

0:47:33 Matt: He was actually the taint behind the taints.

0:48:13 Thomas: It's kind of dumb. Could they get the rights to the Big Dipper? I don't know.