Kash Patel Screws the Pooch

Transcript

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

0:00:03 Matt: The BIA found earlier this year that you don't have a right to a closing argument in immigration court. They just found that. That's just a thing they held.

0:00:35 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1297. I'm Thomas. That over there is real -life immigration attorney Matt Cameron. How you doing, Matt?

0:00:42 Matt: Hey, Thomas, you know, every week I worry that it's going to be a slow news week and we're not going to have anything to talk about.

0:00:47 Thomas: Well, that's stupid.

0:00:48 Matt: I know. It's 2026. Why would I be concerned about that?

0:00:50 Thomas: I mean, I'm gonna save you some worrying, Matt. That never happens.

0:00:54 Matt: The news hose continues to bless us and just douse us in news. I really thought it was a slow news week, for law at least. I mean, obviously the economy's doing what it's doing and, you know, everything else is happening the way it's happening. There's actually plenty to talk about and some things that maybe aren't getting enough attention, as always, that we can get into. We've got quite a lot to talk about today, actually.

0:01:13 Thomas: There's a lot going on. What are we gonna be talking about?

0:01:16 Matt: We're going to touch on the big USPS case in which the Supreme Court had the opportunity to completely destroy our chances of having a democracy. They chose not to do that. I want to let Jenessa cover the most important election law aspects of this, but I just want to give people the framework of what this thing is and isn't. The Alito dissent, of course, just exactly as expected, is just completely nuts, because that's what you expect from an Alito dissent in something as earth-shaking as trying to completely change the way that we do federal elections.

0:01:42 Thomas: Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Interesting thing has been true for the last 10 years. Even though it feels like things are worse than ever MAGA-wise, Republican-wise. The two worst justices are two of the old - one of the oldest and let's see, is Alito the second longest tenured or the third, maybe the third?

0:01:58 Matt: Yeah, after Thomas, yeah.

0:01:59 Thomas: Is he second or I wasn't sure if he was after Roberts. I couldn't remember.

0:02:02 Matt: Excuse me, Roberts first. Yeah, that's right. So Thomas Roberts Alito.

0:02:04 Thomas: So two of the oldest justices who've been there the longest anyway are two of the worst and by far worse, You know, like as bad as the other ones are. Don't get me wrong. This vote is one of those where you're like, how, what is the line for them? What would they not, you know, where, where would they draw the line on some of this stuff?

0:02:18 Matt: Very much like birthright citizenship, there's a lot of parallels here. This is very much one of those questions where we have gone all the way to the Supreme Court to ask, hey, what color is the sky?

0:02:30 Thomas: Yeah.

0:02:31 Matt: We got six people.

0:02:31 Thomas: Yeah. Seven, two. Yeah. Or whatever. Yeah.

0:02:33 Matt: We got five people, at least, that say that the sky is blue. And we've got one person saying, check back with me later.

0:02:35 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. One person's in Congress can pass a lot of change the color of this guy if they want, maybe, you know, that's usually Kavanaugh.

0:02:45 Matt: Yep. And there's a Kavanaugh thing happening in this one. And then you've got the two people that are like, no, the earth is just like strapped to the back of a chicken. It's fine. Don't worry about it. I don't know what color the sky is, but from

0:02:55 Thomas: Reminder, this is just the president can't just change voting with an executive order, right? I mean, isn't that pretty, pretty clear?

0:03:01 Matt: Your lips to God's ears, I don't know. That's how it's supposed to work. States are supposed to have a lot of authority, this kind of thing. And we're not supposed to just allow the federal government to say that a whole bunch of things can't be mailed unless it meets a whole much of qualifications, especially weeks before an election. I'm going to let Jenessa, she's our expert. I'll let her handle the election law part of it, but I want to talk about the legal sort of framework. As I said, we'll talk about the state of political prosecutions. There's been some interesting developments with DOJ's many efforts to find all of these political enemies of the president and prosecute them, including a pretty interesting Fourth Circuit argument about the James Comey and Letitia James prosecutions with Lindsay Halligan, of course, the argument over whether or not she was properly appointed. We've got a really weird Board of Immigration Appeals case. And I always like to touch on BIA cases because nobody else is reporting on them. The Board of Migration Appeals is very much a forgotten agency and is one of the most important agencies in the country right now, for reasons I can explain. They have just issued this month a decision that is the most openly pro -Trump political decision that I have seen out of them yet. And it's just adopting Trump's version of reality in a way that anybody can understand. This is not even really a legal decision, so we'll talk about that. Also, on kind of a similar vein, we've got the public charge rule is back. And you might have heard of that from the first Trump term. It's actually something that goes back to the 1800s.

0:04:16 Matt: It's the very specific Stephen Miller version of the public charge rule. And it's designed, of course, to keep as many people out as possible to keep them from immigrating. That's an immigration rule.

0:04:25 Thomas: The one where it's like, you can't come in if you would be a burden to the public or something. Yeah?

0:04:30 Matt: That's right. Zoran Mamdani has just filed the latest challenge. That's it. I'm not always great with names.

0:04:32 Thomas: Mom Donnie. Yes. Sorry that the Nazis always say it wrong. So just make sure you get it right. Mom Donny.

0:04:37 Matt: Yes. Zorn Mamdami has filed the first shot in, I think will be a successful challenge. It was stopped the first time. I want to talk a little bit about the difference this time, because it's pretty interesting, actually, and how they learned from the last set of litigation and how They are trying to sneak it in this time. It's pretty important. I think it's going to be in the news a lot pretty soon here. So get ahead of that. And then in today's footnote, you're going to find out why I had to Google the words Kash Patel bestiality video. Yeah.

0:05:03 Thomas: Bestiality. Yeah yeah. I haven't watched it. I've seen it around. Lydia sent it to me. And sometimes it's like, I just don't, I don't want to, I don't wanna do it. I will for the show, but sometimes I'm like that, whatever that is sucks. And I don'T need to be a part of it, but I will be for the show. Oh boy.

0:05:19 Matt: It's very funny, but it's also telling about what's going on with the FBI right now. And actually, there's a bigger point to it beyond just the fact that they're going to totally let people who have been involved with bestiality become FBI agents. I can't even believe I'm saying that out loud.

0:05:33 Thomas: Oh man. We'll get to it.

0:05:36 Matt: It says a lot of bad things, but we'll explain it all. Yeah, that is our footnote today, is Kash Patel's experience talking about bestiality in Congress.

0:05:43 Thomas: Bestiality in Congress or be finally blown the lid off this thing. Who knows these days?

0:05:49 Matt: There's a lot of comic beats just like that one in the bestiality conversation that we're going to listen to. So, yeah, good times.

0:05:51 Thomas: Yeah. Can't wait all right well we'll take our usual break support the show patreon .com slash log at the goodies the lot of movies avoid the ads the book club the everything thanks so much to the supporters we'll make sure that you're subscribed to the channel take a break and we'll get to it

0:06:09 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:06:09 Matt: Well, let's talk about the biggest news legally of the last week, which is, of course, the Supreme Court, as we said, determining that the sky is in fact blue and that it turns out that at the very last minute, you can't actually just decide that the Postal Service can throw out 10,000 ballots at a time. You and Janice have talked about this somewhat, about the rules change, the attempt at trying to have a federally standardized mail-in ballot thing. The whole thing is obviously designed to basically negate mail-in ballots, to make it almost impossible for people to successfully get mail-ins, or always to it to take down the numbers of successful male imbalance. It's very obvious that this is a last minute midterm grab. That's why it was so essential that the court do what they did. And again, this is exactly like the birthright citizenship thing to me, where clearly something illegal that the executive is trying to do has to be stopped, and zero gold stars for stopping it, guys. Like, thank you, but no.

0:06:17 Thomas: Seven, two. Yeah. Yeah

0:07:01 Matt: But I just wanted to read you very quickly how this actually worked, because it is a rules change that is just so obviously reviewable. The Postal Service, to be fair, and Alito does have a point here. Congress, for whatever reason, did exempt the Postal Service from all kinds of review. Like they have a very much an independent kind of thing going where there's all kinds of statutes that don't apply to them. The Administrative Procedures Act doesn't necessarily apply the same way, but it does apply. And it is arbitrary and capricious to just change things at the last minute, obviously.

0:07:27 Matt: There's a reason that Alito doesn't mention the voters or the public or the people that are actually going to be harmed by this, right? Let's just start with the majority. There are six people who are agreeing that there should be an injunction on this and it's not going to happen. So that's the really good news that's it that's the end of this thing and it is something to celebrate the government is unlikely to succeed in the merits of its challenge to the district court's preliminary injunction of course that's a very important analysis when you're trying to get a stay is there a chance you're actually going to win is it more likely than not the equitable factors applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this court do not favor a stay and of course those factors also include things like irreparable harm now the irreparable harm in this case is not to the public although they can consider that as we'll talk about but it's to the government is there going to be irreparable harm to the federal government if the state's ballots can't be messed up? It's basically the question.

0:08:12 Matt: So that's pretty stupid. So the Kavanaugh concurrence, and you know, as you mentioned, of course, with the birthright citizenship, Kavanaugh had to have it his own way and say, well, I think there's actually not a constitutional right to birthright citizens and Congress could change the statute. And here, this is very concerning, what he says. And again, this isn't the majority view yet, but give Trump another couple of Supreme Court justices or one more, we're going to start having some problems here. He's saying that there's at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service's statutory authority, but applying the rule in the 2026 elections would be arbitrary and capricious in violation of the APA because state and local officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections. You don't say. This is a massive battleship of a project to completely reform every one of these jurisdictions' mail-in ballots to conform with the stupid rule. He's saying basically, if you'd brought this to me earlier, that I could have told you the sky was purple, but we're not doing that now.

0:08:58 Thomas: You give me some time to start messing up my eyes a little bit like give me some lead time and that sorry that was Alito or that was, oh, that was Kavanaugh.

0:09:05 Matt: That was Kavanaugh. Yeah?

0:09:07 Thomas: Kavanaugh's got to have his weird answer to it. Yeah.

0:09:08 Matt: That's right, his weird concurrence. As expected, and this is exactly what I thought was going to happen, Alito and Thomas come out with the weird take that the Postal Service can do whatever it wants. There actually is a irreparable harm to the government, to the federal government, if they don't get to do this. He does not mention the potentially millions of people that could be disenfranchised by this, of course, because all he cares about is what Trump wants to do. He's saying basically that this isn't what they call an ultra vires argument and that it should not work. Ultra vires, of course, being beyond the power because the APA, the Administration Procedures Act, may not apply to the Postal Service's exercise of powers. And I think maybe Jenessa can explain a little bit more about some of the technical details here, but I don't think I need to tell you that this Alito dissent is contradictory to the law, to logic, to facts. It certainly does not fit with my understanding of what should get an injunction because this is obviously so last minute. It's obviously so fraught with problems. He also blames the court and the plaintiffs for the delay. This rule came out, I think, in April. And he's talking about how the court wasted a month writing a 40-page decision before when they sent it back as premature.

0:10:07 Thomas: What?

0:10:07 Matt: He never talks about this in any other case. It gets so weird. I mean, it wasn't even that much time, But they will take their sweet time with, you know, whether Jack Smith was lawfully appointed or, yeah.

0:10:15 Thomas: Yeah. Also, they could have just left it to the lower court. I mean, that doesn't exactly go against what Alito's saying because he's nuts, but I still can't get over that part where it's like they reached their grubby mitts down to mess with this, right? And then ultimately, are they doing anything substantially different from what the lower court did anyway now?

0:10:35 Matt: Alito, of course, is completely disregarding what the lower court did because that's what he does. That's what they all do now.

0:10:38 Thomas: Sure. But, but, I mean like the effect of the decision.

0:10:41 Matt: Effectively, yes. No, we still have a stay.

0:10:43 Thomas: What were we doing here? This whole thing could have been an email. They could have let just the lower court decision, which was considered it's their effing job to actually look at it. The lower court put a bunch of effort into it. And this just feels like they must not have enough to do the Supreme Court, right?

0:10:46 Matt: Yep. Yeah, pretty much.

0:10:58 Thomas: Famously, they have not enough to do. So they took this whole course of action for no reason other than, I think, to just try to kind of signal Trump support a little bit, even though it ultimately or just to F with us. Like, what was the point of this whole thing? You know?

0:11:12 Matt: They just have to have the final say. They have to be the court of last resort. They just love doing it. And here they are.

0:11:17 Thomas: Yeah, that makes sense. It's kind of like just trying to hang on to as much of their power, exert as much power and influence as they can, I guess.

0:11:24 Matt: Yeah. But you know, it's pretty clear that Alito buys into the fraud conspiracy stuff and that he really thinks this is worthwhile and that it should be done. That's what we'd expect. We know at this point we expect nothing out of Samuel Alito, but there you go. So we can move on to our next topic here, which is just a quick check-in on the state of political prosecutions in the United States. Just that.

0:11:43 Thomas: Just a quick check into the fascism.

0:11:45 Matt: It was on my mind this week because the Fourth Circuit was taking up the oral arguments, and I wanted to cover more oral arguments in the circuits because they can get pretty interesting. In the case, it's a combined case of Letitia James and James Comey, the first James Comey indictment, the one in which they're saying he lied to Congress. These were both dismissed, as we've discussed before, because Lindsay Halligan was unlawfully appointed for a very long and complicated explanation here. But essentially, Trump was trying to stretch out her term way beyond what is allowed because she couldn't get through Congress. But the Fourth Circuit is looking at this. And there is obviously one question that I have when we're talking about unlawful appointments, which is why you were so quick to say that Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed, and this is different somehow?

0:12:23 Clip: What about the bestiality it automatically disqualified any individual who participated on either side of it I think this points up to what I was trying to say to your honors earlier which is that an indefinite appointment is not equivalent to a time-limited term appointment again that would that's a recipe for instability and I think the senate would very much have something to say about that if we behaved in that way which we haven't done despite taking the position since at least 1987 that successive

0:12:28 Matt: The judges aren't too impressed with this all around.

0:12:52 Clip: That's to serve you wrong, and that she, how would you then distinguish the United States versus Trump when Judge Cannon found that Mr. Smith, whatever his name was, wasn't lawfully appointed?

0:13:09 Thomas: Okay.

0:13:09 Clip: What happens in this case? How would you distinguish if Ms. Halligan is not lawfully acquainted? Well, of course, In the Smith case, we didn't invoke the interim appointment statute, Your Honor. The point is that she says it wasn't a lawful appointment. She did, Your Honor, but Judge Cannon there was faced with the appointment of a special counsel to which different appointment authorities apply. For example, in this case, we could have appointed Ms. Halligan to conduct these prosecutions under 28 U.S.C. 542 and 543, which were appointment authorities that the United States did not invoke in defending the Jack Smith appointment and what was really driving I think well judge canis I put it bluntly would have could have should have that didn't happen so the question is was the appropriate appointing statute used and was it used in a proper manner and I going back to your point about incentives I understand that you're representing that this administration has no incentive to engage in a cascade or carousel of interim appointees, but under your reading of the statute, that is the logical conclusion that an executive could, to glom on to Judge Floyd's question, on day 119, just continue with a succession of appointments, thereby essentially cutting off both the court, the district court, and the Senate's advice and consent power. Isn't that true? No, it's not true, Your Honor, because we have no incentive. No, no, no. See, that's not responsive. You're saying you have no incentive, but under your reading of the statute, a nefarious ne'er-do-well executive could do exactly that, right? Well, in theory, Your Honour, in theory or not, Your Honors, yes, but I think the court needs to look at the practical application of the statute. What about the bestiality?

0:15:10 Matt: I really like that moment of the hypothetical. What if there was a nefarious executive that did a bad thing?

0:15:14 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Just theoretically.

0:15:16 Matt: In theory, that could happen, I guess. But that's not what's happening here. So the reason it matters so much, that was Judge Henry Floyd, and there's a George W. Bush nominee, and I appreciate his skepticism throughout this argument. For as interesting as this issue actually is, the argument is pretty dry because so much of it is about statutory interpretation. But the fundamental point they're getting at is that the government tried to ratify that Pam Bondi went back and said, actually, everything that Lindsay Halligan did was fine and we're going to ratified, give it our blessing, basically, even though she was unlawfully appointed. In the Smith case, they were vociferously arguing that Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed. And of course, Eileen Cannon bought that argument, even though, as he says, it's different statutes, different grounds. In theory, if you think that somebody is unlawfully appointed and you had to go back and ratify that, then it should be the same thing that anything that they did was off the table. It didn't happen. Not that we're surprised by hypocrisy, but I just wanted to point that part out. It's hard to say where this is going. The judges are pretty skeptical. Floyd is very much against allowing this to happen. Just to be clear about where we're doing this, this is both Letitia James with the stupid mortgage fraud thing, and James Comey with his allegedly lying to Congress. So these are kind of combined issues because Lindsay Halligan was involved in both of them and presented and signed off on the indictments. Great.

0:16:23 Thomas: James Comey, not with the seashell thing. Did that die?

0:16:26 Matt: That's still pending. There's a good First Amendment challenge on that. Obviously, I think that's going to be fine. We'll see where this goes. In terms of the other political prosecutions, I just want to mention there was the thing with Alyssa Slotkin and the other five lawmakers that made that video about how military troops shouldn't have to follow legal orders, which seemed pretty straightforward. They're trying to indict Adam Schiff for mortgage fraud, very much the way they're trying to indict Letitia James. That doesn't seem to be going anywhere. There's an investigation now into how that probe was run. There's the Lisa Cook thing, the Fed person, where there's a criminal probe opened.

0:17:00 Matt: And of course, the Supreme Court found that she can't be removed because she's on the Fed, even though other independent agency people can be removed. We've got Miles Taylor. You might remember as the guy who wrote the anonymous piece and then the book from inside the administration. He's being investigated by executive order. Nothing has happened on that yet, but this is something to watch. And then we've got John Bolton, which we're going to talk about.

0:17:19 Matt: The Bolton prosecution was somewhat righteous. He did actually have a real problem. He had classified material on his personal accounts, like real classified material was hacked by Iran.

0:17:28 Thomas: Was that real? Because I thought it was like they were trying to kind of get him by just being stingy about what was still classified, but I guess I don't, it's been a while.

0:17:35 Matt: There was actually an issue with, and this was started by Biden, so this is not necessarily a straight up Trump political prosecution, but this is the only one of any of these that we're talking about that started.

0:17:42 Thomas: Okay, am I thinking of a different thing? Because there was, when he was releasing a book, Trump tried to stop him. So is that different?

0:17:46 Matt: They were trying to say, yeah, that is different. Nothing they're saying about the book, but I think that that was at least an investigation. Investigation. Nothing's gone to trial yet on any of these things. But the thing I really wanted to talk about was what they call the grand conspiracy grand jury, which was in, you'll never believe this, Fort Pierce, Florida, of all places, where all the crime happens, apparently. And of course, as we know, the best judge in Fort Pierce Florida, the Best Federal Judge there is, Eileen Cannon, and also the only judge in Port Pierce, Georgia, if you bring a grand jury. Now, this hasn't made it past the grand jury yet, fortunately. But if it did, it would go to Eileen Cannon and they know it. And they have not yet even presented an explanation for why this is happening in Fort Pierce, except I guess that Mar-a-Lago is there. Part of this is about the search on Trump. But let me just explain very quickly, because I think we've talked about this, but it's called the grand conspiracy grand jury, because the main target is John Brennan, who is the, you know, obviously intelligence chief. He's got a subpoena coming up for a grand jury that they're trying to quash right now. But they're tried to fold in everybody that Trump doesn't like into this conspiracy. They want to get as many people involved in this thing as possible, but they have to bring it under 18 U .S .C. 241, which is conspiracy against civil rights. So that would run the conspiracy, basically from whenever the conspiracy started in 2022, it allows them to still bring it. The big news out of this was that Joe DeGeneva, who is like a hardcore fraud conspiracy theorist, somebody who really seemed to believe that Trump was being persecuted by lawfare, he resigned from this thing. He was like one of the true believers. It might be a little more complicated than true believer resigns from grand jury, but I think this is a really good sign and who knows what kind of idiot they're going to replace him with. He's basically said they they were rushing this thing. It's been five or six months. They've got no indictments. And obviously Trump wants something before the midterms. And now they're coming up on the 60 -day rule. They can't prosecute any kind of political figures or get into political prosecutions before midterMS. This thing is worth watching because obviously if any of these indictments happen, they're going to be ending up in front of Eileen Cannon. And that's what they're counting on. But this to me is sort of the pinnacle of Trump political prosecutions, this conspiracy thing, because it really is like an actual, I mean, obviously the statute is conspiracy, but they're talking about the kind of conspiracy that just involves everybody. This was the whole thing that John Durham was already appointed to look into, and he could bring no conspiracy charges after four years. You have to be able to prove some kind of specific intent among people across two administrations, people that never even worked with each other, maybe never even talked, potentially going back to 2016 and all the stuff that Trump keeps talking about with Russia and the Mueller investigation and Mar -a -Lago searches, the Jack Smith Smith prosecutions. They're trying to add everything into one sort of big grand conspiracy of the deep state. Basically, from what I can tell, just kind of looking at all of this in one place. Obviously, it should fail. I hope it fails and I hope never makes it to Highland Canon. But I think it's a really good sign that we've got this resignation from somebody who seemed to actually believe in it.

0:20:32 Thomas: What are we going to be looking for with that? I mean, what's the next step there?

0:20:36 Matt: The Brennan thing is a thing to watch. He's been subpoenaed to come in and testify. He is the main target of this investigation because they put him at the center of this sort of conspiracy, obviously. He was supposed to be testifying on October 15th, so we'll see how that goes or if he actually comes in.

0:20:47 Thomas: Sorry, what is the conspiracy?

0:20:49 Matt: Great question.

0:20:49 Thomas: I don't know if I missed it or if it's just like, in general, these days, DOJ is just like yeah, it's a conspiracy. If there's more than one person we don't like, that's a conspiration. Conspiracy.

0:20:59 Matt: They are working working together. Mike Davis, of course, hardcore Trump politician here, calls it a decades -long conspiracy to bankrupt Trump and try to throw him in prison. And this is literally, I mean, it's not a stretch to say this is just kind of all of the conspiracy theories in one place, all of your favorites, all in one piece.

0:21:15 Matt: I'm sure there's some QAnon stuff thrown in here just for fun. They're going all the way back to 2016, and they're trying to say that there's been this ongoing deep state intelligence community conspiracy to come after Trump. And of course is the Jack Smith prosecutions. And Trump really wants to be able to prove on some kind of federal record that he's been prosecuted unfairly, that he has been persecuted. This is lawfare. Like so many things, like the election stuff, right? As soon as it hits the courts, it's a different thing. You can talk all day on Newsmax about your conspiracies, but you actually have to prove this to a grand jury. And I don't think it's going to happen, especially because the John Durham thing, it was like that guy was really trying and he got nothing, came up with nothing at all. No conspiracy. There was one guy that was indicted for falsifying an email.

0:21:50 Thomas: All right, well, we're going to take a quick break and then get to the rest.

0:22:01 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:22:01 Thomas: All right, Matt, we got some immigration related stories.

0:22:04 Matt: Yeah, quite a few, but I'll narrow it down to the things I think are interesting this week. As I said, the Board of Immigration Appeals does not get enough attention because it's something that really only immigration lawyers care about, but it has an enormous amount of power because it is the appellate body for the immigration courts. And it's just a couple dozen people. At this point, majority Trump appointed. Any immigration judge that makes any decision, the government can appeal. And this is actually pretty unusual because this doesn't happen in criminal cases. The government can appear with a grant, yeah, and they can rubber stamp whatever, or they can reverse it and say the judge was wrong to grant something and send it back. This is the kind of thing where when I read the top line thing on this case. I was like, well, that sounds like it could be promising. And then I realized it was about Venezuela. So here's the deal.

0:22:26 Thomas: Just goes their way.

0:22:43 Matt: This is somebody who's bringing an asylum claim based on the fact that he was working against the Maduro regime. Well, I represent a number of people who were in one way or another politically involved in trying to oppose the Madura regime in Venezuela. The immigration judge found that there's a change in country conditions, which is a really important idea in asylum law because it means that, yes, okay, maybe I would have granted this a year ago, But now the United States has fixed Venezuela.

0:22:42 Thomas: Oh, it's all it's all set. Wow.

0:23:09 Matt: It's all different. It's fine. The immigration judge, though, wrote that the essence of the Maduro government remains, which is true. From everything we know, we removed the guy at the top. Maybe there's some shuffling around at the time. But like all of the people that this guy is afraid of are still there and they're still in government. They had some amnesty for like a few hundred people, but they have in no way stopped persecuting political enemies from what we can tell. The reason I want to mention this is because the board found this in a way that basically is going along with the Trump narrative that in this one quick move that he fixed Venezuela, And you don't really hear him talking about it now, but he did at the time. He's talking about how it's ours now. And yes, we reopened the embassy in Venezuela, but that doesn't really mean very much. Everything is pretty much still the same. After the immigration judge's decision, they took notice of a fact sheet, some press statements, some Senate testimony from Marco Rubio. These are not what we call commonly known facts. These are just basically administration promotional materials. This is stuff that they want you to believe about Venezuela. The fact that we have a new oil agreement, which is obviously a lot of the point of trying to get into Venezuela.

0:24:06 Thomas: Does that make that guy feel better? Like he's Yeah.

0:24:08 Matt: Exactly, right? Right? He's a dissident. He still opposed this regime that is still there. And the fact that we have some leverage on the government and maybe we have Some influence doesn't tell you that we can stop any of this. The most frustrating thing is that the board has done this before where they'll reach a precedent decision because they don't have to make all these precedent decisions, but they'll publish it as a precedent. They'll say it's a precedent, but they're sending it back because they said the judge reached a conclusory finding as to the fact that this was basically not a substantial change in country circumstances. And that means that we can't review it, that a circuit court can't view it. It is now a precedential. It was is a remand that is precedent. So it's not going to get reviewed by an actual judicial court.

0:24:45 Matt: And that always bothers me. So this is now something in all Venezuelan asylum cases that the government can cite and say, well, this is actually a material change in country conditions. It actually turns out that it is a different country now, just because we went in and illegally kidnapped their president. It really bothers me because it is Trump reality.

0:24:57 Thomas: That's terrible. Why would that change anything? The oil deal especially is like, hey, you're worried about getting killed by your own country. But you know, America's getting some oil now. So it should fix that, that right

0:25:11 Matt: Yeah, I don't understand it. It's a political decision. But that's the thing is, I mean, this isn't, to be clear, this not a judicial court. This is an administrative body, just as the immigration courts are administrative body. And I wanted to pick this one out because I get emails about BI precedents every day. I try to review what the BI has been doing because it matters so much for our individual on -the -ground practice in immigration court. The BI I found earlier this year that you don't have a right to a closing argument in immigration court, they just found that. That's just a thing they held.

0:25:35 Matt: Because it's immigration court! The rules don't matter. Like, it's just, yeah, that's right. Turns out, yeah. Because you don' have constitutional rights, you don'' have procedural due process rights the same way. You have basic ones, but they're statutory and they can be changed. And they found there's no statutory right to closing argument. Just to give you the idea of something very simple and straightforward that you would never think would be challenged that way. Fortunately, the judges in Boston let us do a closing because they want to know. And the irony, of course, is that if they had actually allowed a closing argument, if the judge would allow a closing argument in this very complicated asylum case, he almost certainly wouldn't have made the mistakes that he made on the record that they reversed him for.

0:25:33 Thomas: Where'd they find it like yeah it was under the uh under the couch here behind behind the cushions yeah

0:26:08 Matt: And that was another one where they reversed him, sent it back, and then made this a precedential decision that you don't have to have a closing agreement and the judge can just cut you off and say, no, I'm just going to decide now. I've seen the evidence. It's a small thing, but it matters a lot for lawyers. Like that's, it's huge. Just to give you the idea, because nobody, I guarantee you, nobody is talking about the Board of Immigration Appeals on any podcast and anybody's listening to you.

0:26:25 Matt: I'd want to make sure I throw it in once in a while, because this is the real nuts and bolts. This is how the sausage gets made. And this is where the real policy is happening, because you got this majority Trump appointed thing in an administrative body that nobody cares about, that is able to keep a squeeze on the immigration courts and make sure that they follow Trump policy. Just want to show you how that plays out.

0:26:41 Thomas: Jeez if we get somebody else in there how quickly can we get rid of every immigration judge ever that trump hired

0:26:49 Matt: It's going to take a little while, but a lot of them will still be on probation in the first two years. It is a

0:26:54 Thomas: Okay I hear that answer matt now let me try again how if we are as aggressive as republicans were as maga is can we make that a little faster is there anything we can do what can we we need a project 2029 with this exact thing

0:26:56 Matt: Lot Yeah. Yes. Yes, yeah. One Trump policy that's going to backfire is the fact that he pretty much destroyed the Immigration Judges Union. So at this point, I think anything goes. I think they can be replaced pretty easily. They're not real judges.

0:27:14 Thomas: That adds up to now two unions that I don't support. It's the cop union and the immigration judge union. No, yeah, I don' know.

0:27:24 Matt: They should have a union. But yeah, I'm with the other police unions. In this case, that's fine. I'll take it if it makes it that much easier to replace people. Every time I see one of these news stories about immigration judges being fired, there's always comments that are like, Trump is so lawless, he's firing judges. Judges. Well, yeah, it sounds pretty bad, but they're not judges. They're DOJ employees.

0:27:41 Thomas: Yeah, for once, that's the thing he can do. You pick the one thing that he actually did that wasn't illegal.

0:27:43 Matt: It is legal. Yeah. It turns out it sounds bad. That's right.

0:27:50 Thomas: That's why you got to listen to our show.

0:27:51 Matt: That is what we are here for, to try to actually talk about the actual mechanics of how this immigration policy plays out. So I want to talk about one more thing, which is the public charge rule. And this one got a lot more news. I remember when you and Lydia and I talked about Stephen Miller. We did a whole episode of him. It was a lot of fun.

0:28:06 Matt: He, in high school, was obsessed with the public change rule, which which is so weird to me.

0:28:11 Thomas: In case you missed that episode, let me summarize it. Yes, he's always been this way for no reason.

0:28:16 Matt: Yes. And for no reason. He wasn't bullied or he was the bully. He's just like this. Yep.

0:28:20 Thomas: And just Satan happened to spawn in human form

0:28:23 Matt: No sympathy. Imagine while everybody's doing normal high school stuff, you're sitting around reading about the public charge rule and thinking about, wow, way too many immigrants who don't have enough money are coming to this country. That's the thing you're worried about.

0:28:33 Thomas: And saying that you shouldn't have to pick up your trash because the janitors will pick it up. Remember that? Wasn't that what it was?

0:28:38 Matt: Exactly. Yep, that's all pretty consistent.

0:28:41 Thomas: God, what an asshole.

0:28:42 Matt: This comes from a very old immigration statute, which goes back to the Chinese exclusion days. I think it was 1891 one that introduced this, whether you can admit someone who is likely to become a public charge. There's been pretty straightforward tests back and forth across the years. It's often been very much in the discretion of the officer. And it's been very generous for the most part, as it should be, because people can have temporary circumstances that make them unable to work. It is very, very, very unlikely that people are just going to show up here and start taking public benefits, especially because immigrants can't get most public benefits. Yeah, exactly. But everybody needs help sometimes. The previous rule in 2019 was so long and so complicated, and it introduced a form that we all hated so much, a new thing that made the residency process so much more complicated. Essentially, looking into all of these different factors in your life, your education, your ability to speak English, any potential thing that looked like maybe you've used public benefits, you had potentially the opportunity to explain about reasons why you've been out of work, Maybe you're taking care of a parent, maybe you're disabled or something, but it was not very case by case. It was very much trying to exclude as many people as possible. Of course, it was stopped eventually in 2020 in a New York case, a federal case. And so I was really interested when this new rule came out. And the reason I'm talking about it now is because it becomes effective the day that this show is airing

0:29:11 Thomas: Yeah, what ones? Oh,

0:29:58 Matt: On Friday, September 18th. What I'm looking to see is if this court challenge filed by New York City is going to stop it. And I hope that it will at least stay it because they filed one injunction request, obviously, together with the actual complaint. And I took a look at this complaint last night, kind of went through it. I'm trying to see what they might have learned from 2019. They're trying a different tack here. What they tried to do before in 2019 was actual rulemaking, where they tried to promulgate an actual rule. I think it was over 100 pages. It was very lengthy. It had a lot of different stuff in it. There were some hardline things, like if you had more than 12 months of designated benefits within 36 months, then we could automatically find you a public charge. Long list of different kinds of benefits that weren't counted before that now would be counted toward that.

0:30:39 Matt: Level set here, the way it's supposed to work and the way that it's worked for most of the time that we've been alive has been that you file what's called an affidavit of support if you're the petitioner. And this is mostly family cases that we're talking about that are going to be affected by this. That's how most people immigrate is through family. And so you file an affigative of support where you show that I'm making a certain amount of money. Here's my tax returns. Here'S my current job. And that's enough. We just say basically that here's one person who can vouch for you. That'S going to BE the petition. The family petitioner has to do that. If they can't sustain it, then you can get a joint petitioner and it can be any US citizen or resident that can help out and can be the joint petition and say, I'll take responsibility. And you're actually signing a statement that says that if this person takes benefits they're not supposed to get, the federal government can come after you and they can get the money out of you. So it's a huge deal.

0:31:19 Thomas: God, we're so freaking hardcore about the dumbest shit.

0:31:22 Matt: Oh yeah. Yeah. And this is also, this has become a men's rights issue. This is actually kind of funny. There is like a whole genre of whining that I really enjoy online of men who have been rightfully accused of domestic abuse or other kinds of abuse during the marriage. And of course that's a special visa category that you don't have to stay married to somebody who's abusing you. And if you can prove, obviously through testimony from your friends and psychiatric evidence that you've been in an abusive relationship, you can get a self -petitioning visa. But the wonderful thing about this is if they previously signed an affidavit of support, they're still on the hook, right? So they're very mad about this, that they still have to suffer this because this woman lied about them in public or whatever. It's a huge obligation. I always make sure to warn people just so they know. Obviously, my clients aren't in it for benefits. They're here to work. They'RE here to support themselves and their families. Very few people that I've worked with in 21 years who are living on public benefits. And if they they are, that's usually because they're disabled. I warn people that the only way out of this is when this person becomes a citizen or dies. That's it. Otherwise, you're on the hook, whatever they do in the future. People are willing to sign that because they know the people they're signing for. What they did this time, instead of doing the whole rulemaking process, is they tried to bury the rule inside a bunch of guidelines, which I don't think is going to work out well for them. In 2022, obviously, Joe Biden immediately repealed the public charge rule as soon as he could, and then they repealed that repeal and replaced it with nothing. What you've got basically is a general statement of policy, and it's already published, right? But they're trying to keep this a lot looser and they're trying to put this more into the hands of adjudicators on the ground. And they're giving them kind of some outlines of things they can look for. And it's much more detailed than it ever was. Kind of goes back to the Ellis Island days where they made decisions on the spot as you're standing there in front of them. And they'd say, well, this looks like a young, able-bodied man. Looks like he's here to work. I'll let him in. Versus if somebody seems like maybe, you know, they're disabled in some way. Of course, there has always been significant disability discrimination in immigration law. Or, you know, if it otherwise seems like they showed up to the country drunk or something. I don't know.

0:33:17 Matt: Or they don't have anybody that they can say they're going to live with when they get here. They could turn them around as a public charge. That was always something they could do on the spot. This only covers residency applications when you're here and you're trying to apply through residency. There's a whole other public charge analysis that's being considered right now for the consulates that I want to get into. That's a whole other thing, but this is about adjusting domestically. They did learn something about trying to make this a little more vague and like not going through the rulemaking process, but I do think that's going to end up biting them because they should have.

0:33:16 Thomas: Why is it going to come back to bite them?

0:33:43 Matt: So it's basically just guidance that obviously they're all going to follow, but it needs to be done with notice and comment. And this has always been an issue with all of these things. And it comes back to bite Democrats too, if they don't follow the process.

0:33:54 Thomas: Yeah, but we usually do, you know?

0:33:56 Matt: Usually. Oh yeah, usually. But there's ways you can make an emergency thing. But also it is arbitrary and capricious. It's contrary to law. Like there's some stuff in here that just departs from the actual statutory law. We'll see how it plays out. But I think that we'll at least get an injunction. I hope so. But any application filed as of the 18th has to include a lot of this new stuff. They're going to include it on the residency application. A lot of people are already asking us what this means and, you know, am I going to be eligible? It's going to be much more case-by-case. But they're trying to actually vacate the thing, not just get a universal injunction because they can't really get those anymore. And they're just trying to say this whole thing should go. We'll see how it goes. I'll keep a watch on it. This is really important. This matters a lot. And this is very much one of the core Trump immigration policies, which is why I've been waiting. And honestly, I don't know why it took this long. I thought they were going to come out with this last year

0:34:38 Matt: Because they already knew what they wanted. I think they were really trying to craft something that would survive a little better.

0:34:38 Thomas: Well even the fascists have to sleep sometime you know

0:34:45 Matt: Yeah, they did quite a lot Yeah,

0:34:45 Thomas: They can't it's been a busy yeah a couple years give him a break matt like gosh yeah

0:34:52 Matt: But the whole thing, I mean, even just the headlines about it is a chilling effect and makes people not want to apply and makes people potentially not get benefits that actually they need for their families. This only applies to people who are applying for residency now, but I'm getting lots of questions from people who were already residents to whom it does not apply. One of the things we know that Stephen Miller wanted to do in Trump's second term, which I have no reason to believe they won't try to do now, and this question is not answered as far as I know in this, is that there is also something that has never been used before, which is a deportability provision about public charge, that they can actually deport you for being poor or for falling on hard times or for having a bad credit score ultimately.

0:35:25 Matt: They were talking about having credit scores go into this analysis. That gets dark. I don't want to have that happen. Yeah. I mean, you have a bad couple of years, your business fails, you have to take care of your mother or something, right? You should be able to explain that. That should not be something you get deported for.

0:35:38 Matt: I hope that doesn't go that far. And I think that is going to be a lot more controversial because that's something, when you're getting deportation, you're taking people's status away and removing them from the country. I would hope the courts would step in at that point. Yeah,

0:35:55 Thomas: I just imagine all the bullshit we do around this apply it to doing an Iran war I think trump should have to get a supervisor to be like all right I promise he's not going to do an Iran war and if he does it's on me you know know what I mean like all that we're nickel and diming these immigrants that just probably want to come here and work because in case they get a little bit of benefit sometime and it's just for what like what could possibly be the financial implications of this to the country broadly speaking just means test after means test can we means test the pedophiles then we means test the Epstein class that rules our government you know

0:36:27 Matt: No, I've actually, I've just been reading Character Limit, which is a new book about how Elon Musk destroyed Twitter. And one thing I I didn't know during some of the litigation when he got in trouble for some of his tweets, the court actually had to appoint a Twitter sitter to screen all of Elon Musk's tweets. He just made me think of that. We need that for the entire government, especially for Trump's tweets, obviously. Twitter sitter.

0:36:44 Thomas: They each need a supervisor. If you're going to end up in an Epstein list, there's somebody's going to be on the hook for it.

0:36:48 Matt: Yeah. Somebody, somewhere.

0:36:50 Thomas: You know, you promise you swallow. It's all we swear. You're not in the Epstein files. Oh, boy.

0:36:56 Matt: Yeah. Well, speaking of sexually deviant behavior, what a lead in.

0:37:01 Thomas: Great transition. We'll take our last break and then I'm excited to talk about this a little bit more. I won't say cheerful, but it's a little less depressing than the immigration news. Yeah all right quick break and then we'll be right back

0:37:11 Matt: It's pretty funny. I got quite a clip for you.

0:37:20 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:37:20 Thomas: Okay I'll finally click on the thing my wife sent me several days ago who do you want to play it oh

0:37:25 Matt: I sent you a clip here that starts at the funny part. All right. This is Kash Patel testifying before Congress today. I don't know if he was expecting to answer these questions, these are not questions that have ever been asked in front of Congress. You need to hear the very first words out of John Kennedy's mouth. This exchange with Kash Patel is very funny.

0:37:28 Thomas: Good times and John Kennedy you know not it's not a lefty so whatever this was it was not because it was like you know a democrat looking some sort of moment.

0:37:50 Matt: You got to hear the first words, clearly.

0:37:54 Clip: Same thing, because the regs wrote it up in a fashion before I arrived that addressed prostitution, bestiality, and trafficking.

0:37:56 Thomas: Same. What?

0:38:02 Clip: They were there before I got there. Tell me what it said before. It automatically disqualified any individual who participated on either side of it. Obviously, we are never going to hire the criminals.

0:38:13 Matt: Stop. I'm sorry. Stop either side. We got to improve. Yeah, we got to open it up to canines. They have to. Him. Both sides. Do you hear yourself? Yeah.

0:38:18 Thomas: In other news, we're introducing our new dog federal agents or something. I don't know. You found a rule that a dog can't be a part of the FBI. And now we're repealing it. Oh I hope he was talking about the prostitution thing but still oh man oh

0:38:41 Matt: I really don't even know what he meant. But I will point out also, the prostitution thing is about paying for not doing sex work. So they're still going to exclude people for having done sex work, they're just going to let people in that paid for it.

0:38:54 Thomas: That's probably what his sexist ass had in mind hey before not only were we keeping out you know prostitutes what's fine but we were keeping out people who are paying for prostitutes and so that you know we got that must be charitably what he was thinking but uh are we I got to hear more of this. Are we stopping?

0:39:10 Matt: Oh, there's more, but I got to tell you one other thing. This is all by memo. He's going to make it sound like it's regulation, but this is all stuff that's internal memo. So, they can just decide to do however they're going to do it. They're also going to let people who have stolen from their employers, they're going to open that up too. Because why not?

0:39:22 Matt: Generally speaking, I'm in favor of not punishing people for criminal records, but we are talking about the Federal Bureau of Investigation here, folks.

0:39:22 Thomas: I mean, fine. Yeah, that is a little weird.

0:39:29 Matt: I don't know. A little bit, yes.

0:39:30 Thomas: They're just hurting for real people.

0:39:32 Matt: They lost 1,329 people, I believe, since Trump came in. That's a lot of agents.

0:39:37 Thomas: Look, the animal furs are the only ones who will come back to work. Oh my God.

0:39:41 Matt: Apparently. I mean, also, I am sorry, I also have to mention, a lot less funny, they are also going to opening up for animal cruelty, not just bestiality.

0:39:48 Thomas: Oh, that's, I mean it's sort of the same thing, but yeah.

0:39:51 Matt: But yeah, the policy becomes those animals, obviously.

0:39:54 Thomas: Yeah, but as long as they're letting both sides of that, so any animals who've been hurt, you know, they should get a job at the FBI. I actually support that. Okay. Oh God I gotta hear that again sorry I'm not the whole thing I want to hear the whole thing

0:40:01 Matt: He's about to address the both sides thing in a minute. But they kind of slip by them for a moment. Let's keep going. It's good. Yeah. What about the bestiality?

0:40:13 Clip: Because the regs wrote it in a way that addressed prostitution and bestiality. Trafficking they were there before I got there tell me what it said before it automatically disqualified any individual who participated on either side of it obviously we are never going to hire the criminal side of what the bestiality yes so you disqualified the animal well I don't think we have great canines but we're not going to disqualify I understand I'm trying to understand why you did this. This is not directed at you, Mr. Director. And I understand the game. People try to make you look bad.

0:40:56 Clip: We do the same thing when the other party is in office. And all this stuff has really hurt the FBI. It's really hurt the FBI. So I'm trying to get to the bottom of this. Why would you, in light of the context and what we're going through, and we're having a tough time attracting agents, good quality agents

0:40:54 Thomas: Game oh okay all all the animals

0:41:28 Clip: We all can trust, because so many people, fairly or unfairly, think that in order to be an FBI

0:41:31 Thomas: Or we can trust in the room with our pets

0:41:36 Clip: FBI agent now, your political point of view matters. Why would you even get into bestiality?

0:41:43 Thomas: Why did I get into bestiality you're

0:41:44 Clip: We are not into bestianity, but a lot of these individuals... I know you're not, but you changed... But I'm trying to explain it. Hang on. You changed the qualifications and mentioned bestialities. If Joe participated in bestialty, not as the animal, but as the human,

0:42:02 Matt: Not as the animal. Not as the animal.

0:42:05 Clip: Don't you think he ought to be qualified, disqualified? If he voluntarily did it, sure. But if he was trafficked into it, then it shouldn't be considered. Okay, how do you involuntarily do it?

0:42:08 Thomas: Asking so good if he was trafficked into it okay

0:42:14 Clip: In a lot of these cases, when human traffickers, who are some of the worst individuals on planet Earth, they don't just traffic you for prostitution, they traffic you for degrading acts of all kinds, and they force you into that type of conduct.

0:42:24 Thomas: Yeah but that wouldn't be

0:42:26 Clip: Some of these individuals would go on to be law enforcement officers who qualified to

0:42:29 Thomas: What

0:42:30 Matt: Hold on a second. Hold on.

0:42:30 Thomas: What there's no chance that's the edge case you're talking about like you wouldn't consider it bestiality if that's like you're forced at gunpoint or something

0:42:38 Matt: No, you're a victim. Exactly. And that person would never be convicted. And also, I should point out, Kennedy doesn't really, this does make it a little less funny. It's only actually if you're under 18 for the bestiality thing if the conviction if you were under 18

0:42:50 Thomas: What's only if you're under 18. Hold on. I'm sorry. I know this is crazy, but so you're saying the FBI is now allowing people who were convicted of bestiality as long as they were under 18 at the time.

0:43:03 Matt: Yeah which I generally support not punishing juvenile behavior but like it's weird that he doesn't really I feel like that would have been kash patel's first defense just say that exactly right

0:43:05 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah, why don't you just do that? This is how unprepared for his job he is. That would be a way better way to present that. Look, I know you can find, you know, weird stuff to quote, but like all of this is about things people did before they were 18. You know, I noticed some of these words are going to look bad but we we want to give people a chance if they were a child and they made any sort of mistakes whatever it might be still give people chance wouldn't that be a way better thing than whatever he said oh

0:43:35 Matt: Yeah well right and because you don't remember of course kash patel is a QAnon guy at the end of the day right like he was a conspiracy guy and I don't know how much of it he still believes or where he's at on this stuff but like this is the kind of stuff that the QAnon people were talking about all the time that there's like massive child rings that are making people do these degrading things that honestly I would never have thought of. I don't know where these people get this stuff. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but he's trying to claim that there are many such cases that this has been brought to him that like people have been kept out of the FBI because of this very strange fact pattern.

0:44:04 Thomas: Yeah hey boss I've got I've gotten this friend has he had sex with the odd animal who's to say hell of an agent though he would be a hell of an agent if you just give him a chance I you know in a way though that's like is who's left you know like that's that does who's who remains to want to work for this administration

0:44:08 Matt: Yeah, this guy I know. Yeah. What's funny when you think about it is the fact that the FBI is being used like it has never been used before for immigration enforcement. So they're just making them ICE agents. So that kind of explains some things too. Generally, as a person, I support a whole case review of anything and like taking somebody's circumstances into account. They don't have to be trafficking victims. They're different people from whatever they did before. I don't support generally keeping people out of jobs for this kind of stuff. But like, this is weird. It's just weird. It's kind of striking to see the difference between the way they treat drugs, right? Where if you'd had a cocaine possession charge, that's still going to be an automatic disqualifier.

0:45:01 Matt: They only loosened up weed because, you know, they had to, right.

0:45:03 Thomas: If you did cocaine you're out but if okay this is that's our priorities

0:45:10 Matt: If you didn't get caught for the cocaine, but you got caught for the animal thing, yeah, right. Which may have happened at the same time. One of the funniest things that James Comey ever said is when he was saying, he was explaining in 2014 about why they had to let in FBI agents, or at least consider FBI agents who admitted to smoking a certain amount of weed before. And it had to be like not that much, but it wasn't an automatic disqualifier. And he was talking about how they're losing all these potential candidates who are tech people, who would be really good tech people who smoke weed. He said that some of these kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview with the FBI, which I think is very funny.

0:45:40 Matt: Basically, legal advice, don't smoke weed before your FBI interview I guess yeah he's saying they smoke so much weed that like you know some of these super qualified hackers and other people they wanted to recruit but you know of course the norms on cannabis change the norms and bestiality or however I can hear John Kennedy say bestiality all day it's very funny

0:45:48 Thomas: Like to chill out or oh right yeah yeah yeah all right do you say bestiality that's funny oh okay

0:45:58 Matt: The way he says it no I think I said that but he really spells out because he's having a good time saying it he really does a lot of thinking about it

0:46:02 Thomas: Why is he always at the center of these weird sex ones every time but in a weird way like I kind of look forward to any of his highlights now you know it's just like it's always gonna be a good time pretty much no matter what

0:46:17 Matt: But I just don't believe this rationale this seems like he's making it up on the spot of like yeah I'm totally aware. There's a little bit more if you want to play a little more.

0:46:25 Thomas: Oh is there a little bit more I'll take as much of this as you got

0:46:28 Clip: These changes didn't start with you, did they? Somebody came to you and recommended?

0:46:32 Thomas: Matt, what are you talking to the what are you talking

0:46:34 Clip: And when you saw bestiality, I say this with respect, the person who recommended it, why didn't you just say, what planet did you parachute in from? Why do I want to leave with my chin and get into bestiality? That was my initial response, Senator. But they then explained to me and showed me cases in which people were forced into it and had applied to the FBI

0:46:54 Thomas: About what Oh, it ended There are very incredibly real cases oh my god yeah

0:47:04 Matt: Very real cases. Yeah. And there's already an appeals process if you think you've been unfairly denied. Like they don't have to do this. I went looking because actually I'm still looking to see like what the standards are for FBI employment. I think it's interesting. I didn't realize that every FBI agent actually has to get a top secret clearance on top of that. So obviously this is a problem for clearance too, but they have their own rules for this. I think one of the justifications they were trying to do is that they're kind of trying to match this up so they can be more like the way that they do top secret clearance where you can have some case-by-case ability rather than completely disqualifying people. This is also about stuff that comes out in the polygraph. In fairness, and again, I have to try to steel man this stuff occasionally, it does closer match what you get for the clearance. And the FBI has its own broad discretion to determine its own clearances, and it does its own background investigations, makes its final decisions. And there's an appeal panel if you're denied clearance. We don't have this memo, but from everything I've read about it, it seems like it's just trying to match the clearance guidelines so that they match up a little better, but they don't have to do that either. Like you could still just have an initial screening process before we get to clearance.

0:48:05 Thomas: Just leave this part out you know just yeah oh

0:48:07 Matt: Yeah. I just maybe leave it as it is. I think that's okay to say that people who abuse animals in every way possible don't get jobs at the FBI. Animal abuse is like a pretty serious predicate to all kinds of other violent and horrible psychopathic things. Like it's one of the main things to show where you're going in your life. There you go.

0:48:22 Thomas: Oh yeah of course yikes

0:48:27 Matt: But still fun to listen to when John Kennedy talks about it. I thought you'd enjoy that.

0:48:29 Thomas: God that was funny what a bad spokesperson for just I mean just imagine being that bad at your job you know

0:48:34 Matt: Yeah, you just had to say it's just for people under 18 and we're just trying to match the clearance guidelines. Moving on.

0:48:40 Thomas: Yeah easy be like oh it's you know there's a lot of stuff but it's just the guidelines I didn't you know whatever look over it whatever something it's anything you get out of that geez

0:48:49 Matt: No, but then he comes up with this convoluted QAnon sounding explanation.

0:48:52 Thomas: Yeah yeah well these people were forced like you said there's no chance that person hypothetically would be convicted of

0:49:00 Matt: No. What series of events would have to happen that an actual victim would go to a jury trial in that, let alone be charged? These things do happen. They're very rare. I presume maybe they do even happen in trafficking scenarios. I don't know. I hope not. It's rare enough that people are charged with this offense at all in 2026.

0:49:05 Thomas: Something insane yeah yeah oh boy that's the FBI right now everybody

0:49:20 Matt: Yep. Here we are. America's premier law enforcement agency.

0:49:24 Thomas: It's the best and brightest protecting us from the very people they're hiring I guess yeah Oh God well that is insane but brought a smile to my face that

0:49:28 Matt: Yeah. Well, then deploying them to be ICE agents too, just for fun.

0:49:35 Thomas: Was really funny uh good times what that guy I mean what is he going for a bit like like kennedy he just wants just

0:49:35 Matt: So I knew it would.

0:49:41 Thomas: Every weird sex thing that ever comes up in congress he wants to be the center of it you know that guy's a freak there's something going on something something's happening I don't know what

0:49:50 Matt: He's right on this one. So good for him. Not wrong to point it out.

0:49:54 Thomas: But he is, to his credit. I'm not saying he's wrong. Just, you know, it's interesting. All right, Matt. Well, that was a lot of fun. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Thanks, Matt, for the breakdown. And we're recording that one of the movies, Coyote v. Acme, coming up. So make sure to get on the Patreon for that.

0:50:13 Thomas: And as well as that book club, of course. And we'll see you on Monday.

0:50:17 Matt: All right. Good times. Thanks. No, the earth is just like strapped to the back of a chicken. It's fine.

0:50:57 Clip: We have great canines, but we're not going to disqualify understand

0:51:03 Thomas: Has he had sex with the odd animal? Who's to say?

0:51:08 Matt: Basic legal advice. Don't smoke weed before your FBI interview.