BREAKING: Federal judge OUTSMARTS Trump in brilliant move

Metatube

For more from Brian Tyler Cohen: Straight-news titled YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@briantylercohennews YouTube (español): https://www.youtube.com/@briantylercohenespanol Order my #1 NYT bestselling book: https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/shameless Newsletter: https://plus.briantylercohen.com Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/briantylercohen Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/36UvEHs Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0066rKCBIycIMI4os6Ec5V Twitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohen Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohen Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohen TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@briantylercohen Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/briantylercohen.bsky.social Threads: https://www.threads.net/@briantylercohen

Transcript

00:00Let's start, if we might, from the decision by Judge Boasberg. Tomorrow is

00:04your deadline to answer questions. Those questions include the following. What

00:08time did the plane take off from U.S. soil? Where did it leave from? What time

00:12did it leave U.S. airspace? And what time did it land in a foreign country? You

00:16have, I don't know, four, five, six questions the judge wants answers to

00:20regarding the details of those flights over the weekend. How will you respond at

00:25the Department of Justice? Well, Will, our lawyers are working on this. We will

00:30answer appropriately, but what I will tell you is this judge has no right to

00:35ask those questions. You have one unelected federal judge trying to

00:40control foreign policies, trying to control the Alien Enemies Act, which

00:46they have no business presiding over, and there are 261 reasons why Americans are

00:53safer now. That's because those people are out of this country. The judge had no

00:58business, no power to do what he did. You're watching The Legal Breakdown.

01:03Glenn, that was Pam Bondi on Fox News railing against Judge Boasberg, who

01:07committed the cardinal sin of trying to prevent the Trump administration from

01:10deporting folks who hadn't had due process yet. She says that the judge had

01:14no business, no power to do what he did. He has no right to ask those questions.

01:19Can I have your reaction to that? Yeah, Attorney General Bondi is wrong, and she

01:24knows she's wrong. Brian, every day I mourn the death of the Department of

01:28Justice, the death of the rule of law. I hope we can revive it, shock it back in

01:33to life someday. We won't be able to do it under the leadership air quotes of

01:38somebody like Pam Bondi, and here's the thing. I actually want to start out, Brian,

01:43with a Supreme Court quote about why it is that people must comply with court

01:49orders. So here's what the Supreme Court said back in 1975. Persons who make

01:55determinations of the law and refuse to obey an order generally risk criminal

02:01contempt, even if the order is ultimately ruled incorrect. You know, that is a

02:07bedrock principle of law. When a judge issues an order, you can contest it, but

02:13you must ultimately comply with it. And I'll tell you, these DOJ attorneys, I

02:19don't know where they found them. I don't know what rock they crawled out from

02:24underneath, but Brian, the kinds of things they are putting in written

02:29pleadings and the kinds of things they're saying in these now daily

02:34hearings before Judge Boasberg, and we'll talk in a minute about why Judge

02:38Boasberg is playing a game of chess and the DOJ lawyers are not really very good

02:44chess players, but let me just quote one more thing. This is something that DOJ

02:49lawyers actually put in writing. They said, the two branches of government,

02:54meaning the judiciary and the executive branch, are co-equal and the court's

03:00continued intrusions into the prerogatives of the executive branch,

03:05especially on a non-legal and factually irrelevant matter, should end. Yeah, that's

03:13right. That's what they said to a federal judge. Brian, in 30 years in

03:17courtrooms, I've never heard anybody talk to a federal court judge or any judge

03:23that way. First of all, it is not for these DOJ attorneys to decide what is

03:30relevant to a judge's determination and what is not, and the last thing you tell

03:36a judge while that judge is conducting a hearing is, hey judge, your inquiry must

03:42end. This is impertinent, this is disrespectful, and it is borderline

03:49contemptuous, but let me tell you what Judge Boasberg is doing. Boasberg is

03:54pressing these DOJ lawyers. These are Donald Trump's lawyers, make no doubt

03:59about it. I don't know who they are, but they're not, you know, courtroom

04:03practitioners based on what I am seeing them write and hearing them say, and he's

04:08and they're saying things like, well, you know, Judge, we have this state secrets

04:13doctrine that says we don't necessarily have to tell a judge everything about a

04:18particular issue. Now, Brian, mind you, all we're talking about here, and you

04:23don't have to be, you know, a constitutional scholar to understand

04:27this, is when did the planes take off, when did you learn of my order telling

04:33them to turn around, and what did you do? Did you turn around? No. You landed in El

04:39Salvador. These are not exactly closely guarded state secrets, so Boasberg is

04:45walking them down the garden path. Oh, fine, you want to invoke the state

04:52secrets doctrine? I am ordering you to return tomorrow with actual evidence

04:58about why these things I am requiring you to disclose to me so I can decide

05:04whether you're in contempt or not, satisfy the state secrets doctrine. I

05:10mean, people might get frustrated because this seems to be bumping along day by

05:15day, but it is because, you know, Jeb Boasberg, Judge Boasberg, is buttoning

05:21this thing up so when he first begins to discuss the matter of contempt of court,

05:27he is going to have a very complete, detailed, evidentiary record, and he will

05:34hold them in contempt if that is what the evidence dictates. So he's basically

05:39letting them dig their own grave and doing it quietly and patiently, and at

05:44the end of this, when they have to substantiate all of the lies that

05:47they've gotten themselves into, presumably they're not gonna be able to

05:50do it. They're not gonna be able to do it, and here's the thing, Brian, people

05:53probably don't know this because now Donald Trump has been yelling and

05:57screaming about how Judge Boasberg is a radical, lunatic, left-fringe type. You

06:04know, we've talked about this before. He was first appointed as a judge by George

06:07W. Bush. Yes, he was. That radical communist, George W. Bush? Yeah, that radical left-wing

06:12nutjob. And thereafter, admittedly, he was appointed to the federal bench by

06:18Barack Obama. However, thereafter, Brian, he was elevated to be the chief judge of

06:24the FISA court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, by Chief Justice John

06:30Roberts. And get this, people probably don't know this, you know, he is also the

06:35chief judge over something called the United States Alien Terrorist Removal

06:41Court. That was a court created in 1966 to litigate issues regarding whether a

06:48particular alien, meaning a non-citizen, actually qualifies as a terrorist such

06:54that that person should be removed from the United States. So here's the thing,

06:58Judge Boasberg is actually a subject matter expert on alien removal, not

07:05necessarily under this act that they're proceeding under, but generally, I'm

07:10telling you, Brian, I'm not going to say he's setting up the DOJ lawyers for a

07:14fall. But as you say, he's giving them enough rope and he's going to tie it into

07:18a nice little contempt knot, I suspect.

07:22This is like when someone's like, oh, I sorry, I don't I don't really speak

07:25English. I speak I speak Italian. And they're like, perfect. I am Italian. Let's

07:29talk in Italian. And they're like, shit, I don't speak any Italian. Glenn, you had

07:33mentioned that this is borderline contemptuous. Now, I understand that

07:37everybody has free speech rights. Everybody is able to go on to cable TV,

07:42cable news and basically spout off about any judge they want to. Does it change

07:46things if the person spouting off about the judge is the attorney general?

07:51So everybody has free speech rights, including government employees,

07:56government officers, cabinet secretaries, even the president of the United States.

08:01But you also are what's called an officer of the court. And your

08:05representations must be honest, truthful, factual. You know, Pam Bondi saying the

08:11kind of things that you played in the lead in. You know, those are the kind of

08:14things that will damn near get her referred to her own bar counsel. I don't

08:18know if she's a member of the Florida State Bar. I would assume she is. She was

08:22attorney general down in Florida. But, you know, you do have a duty of candor to

08:28the court. That is an ethical canon that we all must obey as practicing lawyers.

08:34And if you violate these ethical rules and canons, you could very well find

08:39yourself being investigated by your state bar, being sanctioned by your state

08:44bar. And if your unethical misstep was significant enough, you could find

08:49yourself disbarred like guys like Rudy Giuliani, who is disbarred twice over,

08:54both in New York and in Washington, D.C.

08:58So, Glenn, what are next steps now in terms of what we can expect with this

09:02Boasberg trial as it continues on? And again, just a reminder for folks who are

09:06watching, this is all regarding Donald Trump sending off these accused gang

09:11members, these accused Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador, despite the fact

09:15that none of them had due process here in the United States. And so when we talk

09:18about this, this isn't to blindly defend gang members. This is making sure that

09:23everybody in this country is afforded the right of due process so that somebody

09:28who's not a gang member, for example, doesn't get swept up among people that

09:33they shouldn't be swept up with.

09:34Yeah. Dangerous criminals, whether they are non-residents, aliens, permanent

09:39residents or citizens of the United States, ought to get due process. And if

09:45convicted or if found that they should be deported, then they can be convicted

09:50and imprisoned or they can be deported. But the whole key is due process, not

09:55leaving it up to the whim of a corrupt, in this instance, president and his

10:01corrupt flunkies that he sends out to do his dirty bidding.

10:05And I should add, and I'll let you get to the actual question that I asked in

10:09just a moment, but I should add that if we just blindly accept this pretense that

10:14everybody there was gang members and to just trust the Trump administration,

10:18that's basically setting up the precedent that so long as the Trump White

10:23House says that somebody is what they say they are, so long as the Trump White

10:26House says that this person is a gang member or a murderer or a rapist,

10:30whatever it may be, then and we and we allow it without questioning it, we allow

10:35it without due process, then that gives them the ability to sweep up other

10:39people that may be completely innocent under this pretext that, oh, we're just

10:44doing this because they're gang members.

10:46But look, Trump's priority is making sure to get people out of this country.

10:49And we've seen from these ICE raids that people who are American citizens and

10:53green green card holders and permanent residents, all of the above are getting

10:57swept up in these raids and being and being held in many instances for days

11:02without any due process.

11:03And so this is an administration that's already proven that it's not willing to

11:07act in good faith.

11:08And so allowing them this this broad latitude to just be able to deport people

11:15without asking any questions will inevitably set us on this path where the

11:19Trump administration is saying one thing as a pretext to be able to just get as

11:23many people out of this country who actually have the right to be here as

11:27possible.

11:28Yeah, the fear, the intimidation and the deterrent effect it will have not only

11:34on people who may be in the United States without status, even if they've done

11:38nothing wrong beyond coming here illegally and people who might be

11:43contemplating trying to come to America, whether legally or illegally, Donald

11:48Trump is hoping they will be deterred.

11:50Stay out.

11:51We are not a welcoming country.

11:53And so to answer your question about next steps before I get to that, let me just

11:56say Donald Trump has been spouting off recently about how this Judge Boasberg

12:01character just wants to let murderers run around in the United States with

12:05impunity.

12:06You know, Judge Boasberg, Jeb Boasberg was one of the most accomplished

12:10homicide prosecutors we ever had at the D.C.

12:14U.S.

12:14Attorney's Office, putting lots of killers away, but honoring their due

12:19process rights in the process.

12:21Come on, Donald.

12:22You need a better rap than that.

12:23So what is it?

12:24Not only Glenn, not not only is this guy known for putting these dangerous

12:28people away, but it was Trump who actually released sixteen hundred charged

12:32and convicted insurrectionists.

12:34And yet he's the one beating his chest and cosplaying as some as some defender

12:39and some some person who's going to keep the streets safe when the only person

12:42who's actually released these criminals onto the streets is Trump himself.

12:46It's the death of irony, Brian.

12:48Right.

12:48OK, so next steps.

12:50As I said a few minutes ago, you know, Judge Boasberg is playing chess with

12:54these sort of second rate DOJ lawyers, and he's going to have them come back

12:58tomorrow.

12:58And, oh, you want to invoke the state secrets doctrine to decline to provide

13:03me the information I need so I can determine whether you are in contempt of

13:09my order.

13:10That's fine.

13:10Come on back tomorrow and give me all of the evidence and information that will

13:14satisfy the state secrets doctrine.

13:17So we'll be back in court tomorrow.

13:19We'll be keeping up on this story.

13:21And Judge Boasberg will keep moving the you know, the chess pieces.

13:26And at some point, figuratively speaking, you'll probably see the DOJ attorneys

13:30just upend the chessboard because they know they can't win on the merits.

13:35Well, look, this is an especially important case.

13:38If for no other reason than this is the first case that we're seeing in broad

13:42daylight, the Trump administration refused to comply with.

13:44And so we've been speaking about the prospect of a constitutional crisis,

13:48at least legally speaking, for quite a long time now.

13:51This is the first instance where we did have a judge hand down an order.

13:54The Trump administration outright refused to comply.

13:56And so that's what's being litigated right now.

13:59Obviously, major implications as this process continues to play itself out.

14:04With that said, we will, of course, stay on top of it.

14:06For those who are watching, if you want to follow along,

14:08please make sure to subscribe.

14:09The links to both of our channels are right here on the screen.

14:11That's also a great way to support us and independent media more broadly.

14:15I'm Brian Tyler Cohen.

14:16And I'm Glenn Kirshner.

14:17You're watching The Legal Breakdown.

Category

Transcript

Recommended