Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, August 7

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Friday, the 7th of August, 2006, it is 4 o'clock p.m. in Washington, D.C., and folks, you are watching Lawfare Live. I'm Benjamin Netanyahu Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare, and it is the trials and tribulations of the Trump administration, and I am here with three Lawfare senior editors, Molly John Roberts. Roger Parloff and Eric Columbus who are appearing randomly on your screen, not in the order that I say their names. And... And we got a lot to talk about, but we are starting today. You heard the grand ballroom music to introduce the show. We are starting today with breaking news in the ballroom litigation. Molly, as our specialist in litigation over absurd construction matters, we have a D.C. Circuit ruling. in the ballroom, no, which is really a secure bunker with a drone launch pad that's not there at all so that we can have waltzes, but is there to protect the president against enemies, foreign, and Antifa. What did the D.C. Circuit decide? I was going to say, I'm not sure we can even call it a ballroom anymore. It's a single integrated project that includes bomb shelters, state of the art hospital and medical facilities. That's only the beginning of this tweet that President Trump did, or truth, that President Trump did reacting to how upset he is over this ruling. Maybe we should only call it that, the single integrated facility. It's very, very ominous, I have to say. He was very upset about it. And also, I should mention. Because I think the context around this is interesting and important. He's been obsessed with this. He's been tweeting about this earlier this week as well, even before the decision came down. And in an earlier tweet this week, he mentioned how important this was going to be. to the people of D.C. for operations both for defense and for offense, which I do not know what that could possibly mean. When the people of D.C. go on offense against, like, the state of West Virginia or something? Well, who knows? I don't know. The range of possibilities, none of them is even remotely comforting. So in any case, what happened this week and what prompted the latest truth social screed was that the D.C. Circuit, 2.1. affirmed Judge Leon's preliminary injunction blocking above-ground construction of the ballroom, but permitting below-ground construction where we all know there's a presidential bunker to continue under a safety and security exemption. And so then the litigation is going to continue to play.

out, but with this injunction in place. So this was judges Millette and Garcia in the majority and Judge Naomi Rao in the minority, for which we should also note she has been commended in this truth social post in no uncertain terms. She is the highly respected Judge Naomi Rao. And in any case, so what happened here, and I think it was relatively expected from the litigation, was that the D.C. Circuit ruled against the government on basically every point, starting with standing, or standing in all caps, exclamation point, as the president has said several times. And this is important, too, because it's the basis on which Judge Rao dissented primarily. But the National Trust for Historic Preservation brought this lawsuit, and it did that via one of its members, Alison Hoagland. the woman walking her dog, according to the president, who said that she was injured by the construction of this ballroom because she enjoys walking through Lafayette Square, walking through the president's park, and admiring the Republican simplicity of the building for which it was designed, and that its modest style, size and skill is part of a message that this is a home for a president, not a palace. And you contrasts with the capital, and it's really the only way to appropriately appreciate and understand Pierre Launfant's plan. And the majority agreed that that is a cognizable injury. It's a particularized injury. And then they found that the National Trust had associational standing also because the historical architectural injuries are within its area of expertise and concern, and that makes it germane. And that's where Judge Rao. broke with them. She focused on germanness by saying that statutory authority, when the National Trust is a congressionally chartered nonprofit and that if its statutory authority didn't explicitly say anything about protecting the White House itself or about construction, then. you couldn't use it to say that it was germane. And the judges, they didn't buy that, and they said that what she cited didn't really have anything to do with congressionally chartered nonprofits or with the issue. So then to the merits. They found that the Constitution's property clause gives Congress control over all real property belonging to the United States, but that Congress, as they put it, placed a statutory exclamation point on these powers with the main statute at issue here, which is 40 USC Section 8106, that says you can't erect a building or structure. on any reservation park or public grounds of the federal government in D.C. without express authority of Congress. So that's really the central issue here, is there express authority of Congress? And the government had located that in two places. One of them was the National Park Service Organic Act. One of them was a law having to do with maintenance, alterations, improvements to the...

executive residents, having you know more generally with management of the executive residence, section 105D of that. So what they found was sort of interesting. Essentially, they found you need to succeed on both of these. If you just succeed on one, you can't do it because of this strange arrangement by which the White House, the executive residence, is purporting to be running this project, but doing it with donations that only the National Park Service is able to get and give to it. And there's a sort of complicated argument involving the Economy Act where one agency delegates authority to another. Side note there. given that the government had initially managed to get the TRO and the PI denied partly because it was saying the White House isn't an executive agency. So there's no APA claim here. The judges were a little peaked by that and saying, well, you know, you're trying to use the Economy Act. But earlier, you were saying this wasn't an agency. But even agency question aside, the idea is essentially that you can't transfer the funds for the White House to do something. If you, the National Park Service, don't have the authority to do it. And if you're the White House, you can't have authority transferred to you if you don't have authority of your own. So you essentially needed both statutes for that reason. And they said neither statute works. The National Park Service Organic Act is about preserving and conserving the parks. That's not what you're doing here. And the Section 105D, first of all, is an appropriation authorization. It's not an authorization. Congress didn't appropriate funds, so you're not authorized. But also, even if you had the funds, you're not authorized because the maintenance contemplated here is not as vast reconstruction project as you're attempting in this case. So that's basically what they said on the merits. They kind of continued after and talked about separation of powers, and the basic idea was that this is an infringement on Congress. the government didn't actually make any article to claim, which makes it easier to not have trouble with the separation of powers analysis, but Congress has the authority when it comes to the property to make the judgment of how to protect the safety and security of the president, has plenty of expertise to do that. And so as the litigation goes forth, this doesn't stop the ballroom if Congress wants to authorize it. But it does stop the ballroom, at least for now, if Congress doesn't, which it hasn't. And I had thought that... Article 2 of the Constitution included inherent authority to build large ballrooms based on the fact that, you know, George Washington had won at Mount Vernon. And, you know, there was that time that everybody remembers when John Adams built a giant claw to have an ultimate fighting competition.

in the new uh uh White House lawn. What about the, but I can because I really want to argument? Yeah, shockingly, they were not persuaded by that. And, you know, he'll say, I kind of doubt that Judge Leon, as it goes forward, is going to be persuaded by that, too. Whether the Supreme Court is persuaded by that, I think, is going to be the question the president has said that he's going to move forward right away and appeal. to the Supreme Court. And would it be an emergency docket? I mean, because it's an emergency ballroom or would it go up as a, as a, I mean, is this the merits docket at the D.C. Circuit? What's the posture right now? I actually don't know the answer to that question. I don't know whether, I mean, I imagine that they could allege that it's an emergency because they're saying that it's the security, the safety and security of the president that's at stake here. Well, that would be an argument for expediting it. The question is, is this on some kind of a stay motion or is it just Judge Leon issued an injunction and they appealed it? Do you know the answer to that, Roger, what the posture of this case is?

I didn't read the whole opinion. So I'm not sure. All right. I have stumped the panel. No, the, they had requested a stay pending appeal. And so is that part of the question? So they had appealed the preliminary injunction and they had requested a stay pending appeal. And now the motion for the stay is denied as mute. And they've affirmed the grant of the preliminary injunction. I see. Okay. So, you know, you could imagine it going up either way, right? Either as an emergency stay matter or as a just appeal, the... injunction and accept that you're not going to be doing this construction during the pendency of this Supreme Court term. All right. Well, thank you, Molly. And, you know, Molly is, you know, monitoring from afar all crazed building matters that may happen. And we have theme music for all of them, you know. golf courses and, you know, we got it covered, but we will be back if there's any late breaking developments in ballroom construction. Roger, let's turn to one of your favorite subjects, your favorite scorecard issues, which is who is ahead in the... vindictive prosecution grant motions. So far, I think Kilmara-Brego-Garcia is still out front because he's had one granted, but he's behind in that James Comey has two of them, right? But the SPLC had a rocking good one, and it got denied. So, S-PLC, like, Kilmara-Brego-Garcia and Petrova won SPLC-Zero? Why did they lose this? Well, honestly, I didn't think this was one of the strongest. I'm not going to hide the ball. There is a Trump appointee judge here, Emily Marks, but I'm not 100% sure that Judge Bozberg would have ruled differently. This is a case where it really heavily...

is going to hang on when it goes to trial, the facts, whether the government can really make out what it's alleged. Here, the judge found that not only would she not dismiss for... on vindictive prosecution grounds, but she would not grant discovery. And they hadn't shown, and the basic thing was for her that they couldn't show animus on the part of the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, who she considered was the one of bringing it. You know, they could show animus from... Trump, they could show animus from Kash Patel, they could show some senators, Chuck Grassley, and some representatives like Jim Jordan and Roy. But, you know, those people weren't even in the executive branch. And it all basically came down to you couldn't show that the U.S. attorney. for the Middle District of Alabama was tainted. And this wasn't a case where although Trump and Todd Blanche and Kash Patel all made... you know, sharp comments after the indictment. There wasn't a ton of it before the indictment. There was a ton of it from, like I said, representatives and senators, but it was hard to even show that this was something Trump wanted beforehand. One of the key... One of the key arguments they made had to do with after the Kirk assassination, a lot of the right. focused on the SPLC hate map, which a list of hate, what they categorizes hate groups, which included Turning Point, Kirk's group. And it also included a group called Liberty Council, which they treat as a hate group relating to LGBTQ stuff. And after the assassination, A lot of these groups wrote to Stephen Miller and they, you know, wanted to get back at SPLC. But they, in a letter, the letter didn't call for an indictment specifically. And then one of those groups, Liberty Council, did reach out to the FBI. And they...

presented a theory, apparently, of fraud, which is close to the one that's charged in the indictment. And the then U.S. attorney or acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District did open an inquiry, but he also closed it. And so... there was a speculation that somehow that theory, which would have been to retaliate against SPLC's protected First Amendment speech, was how this got prosecuted. But there were those gaps between it was a bit speculative. And so she thought, The judge thought that... This didn't merit discovery. It would be a fishing expedition. It hadn't really created that presumption yet. And a lot hinged on timing that there had been an investigation under the first administration, Trump administration. It was dropped during Biden. It was reopened during Trump. And so the argument was that this was politically inspired. She said, you know, there are different administrations have different priorities. I can't use that. So, and she actually did rule against the government on one of its arguments. The government was trying to say that it was arguing that. vindictive prosecution is very narrow. It can basically only be when you are retaliating against somebody's exercise of a specific legal right, like say, when somebody appeals a conviction and wins and it comes back down and then you add new charges. And they were saying you can't just have one based on retaliating against First Amendment protected speech. And she said that's simply false, simply wrong, obviously. So anyway, and she does talk about the presumption of regularity and so on. So. Anyway, that's it. It was not, to me, it was not a shocker. I can't, I can't sluff it off entirely on her being a Trump appointee. Yeah, I'm a little bit perplexed by the absence of discovery more than, I mean, it doesn't seem like they've, I mean, it may be a lacuna in the law, which the law assumes the law of the.

vindictive prosecution. And Molly, you know this law. better than I do. But so correct me if I'm wrong. It presumes that the vindictiveness is on the part of the person who's bringing the case or the investigator who investigated the case rather than that they're working for somebody where the corruption is kind of way, way above the line level of the people who are dealing with it. But it does seem like if you're... And so you saw this in the Abrago-Garcia case where they're arguing, hey, you know, maybe Todd Blanche has it in for this guy, but this was made on the merits by the U.S. attorney and the acting U.S. attorney. And like there's some point at which the law needs to recognize that if you're, if the president hates your guts. And there's a reasonable inference that that's why the case is happening. Like, that's inside, not out. That's not a defense against the charge of a vindictive prosecution. Molly, were you trying to get in? Yeah, yeah, no. I think that, I mean, you're the stalking horse theory of it where the person on the line doesn't have a personal grudge, but is enacting the personal grudge of someone above them. That definitely can be a vindictive prosecution. I mean, that's what we saw with Lindsey Halligan, but you have to show that they're acting as a stalking horse. You have to show that they are. like enacting that grudge and that, you know, through some, whether they are doing that because they know that it's true or whether they're doing it because they've been directed. And you have to show that that's what they're doing rather than... But there's no inference about it, right? It's not like... And the government, so the Lindsey Halligan example is a great one. The government's response is, hey, they haven't shown that Lindsey Halligan has a... hatred of them. All their statements were about the president. I don't know like, well, she was parked in the office because, you know, and it never got ruled on. Right, right, right. But it was a strong motion because it was showing that she was put there for that position and it was very clear that the president was making sure that whoever was in that position was willing to do that and then he was going to fire anyone who was in that position who wasn't willing to do it. And so we didn't get ruled on. You're right. But definitely in cases on vindictive prosecutions, the stalking horse, that's like part of the part of the.

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who had the temerity to take a chip of paint off of the base of the reflecting pool has gone away. And, well, sort of gone away. Roger, they moved to dismiss it. They said, oh, we were shocked, shocked to find out that the damage predated. Mr. Hearn's malicious tearing of the thing. So he couldn't have done $1,000 of damage. Maybe he only did pennies of damage. But we were just, who could have known that, that somebody had already vandalized it? And by somebody, we mean it was badly installed and the president drove a car over it. Who could have possibly known that? But then. There was a hearing. The case hasn't gone away. What is going on in, and will this be the last time we play the Olympics theme to introduce a discussion of this case? Well, importantly, I think we can play the theme again. We'll be able to play the theme again. It was dismissed today. I'm using air quotes if you're listening to the podcast version. Or yesterday, but we haven't yet determined. The litigation goes on and we will determine whether it's going to be dismissed with prejudice or without prejudice. And the briefing will continue till at least around August 25th. So last week, so we get at least one or two more Olympic themes music. Yeah, so that's the important question. Okay. Yeah, so I think. It was just a week ago. It seems like months, but it was just a week ago. It might have been right after our podcast or during it that the government filed this motion to dismiss. Now, remember, the event was June 19th. That's when David Hearn was arrested. And then he was indicted July 2nd. And then, so it was last week, July 28th, they moved to dismiss. And as you know, they blamed the Department of Interior and the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Codings, especially the Department of Interior. They said, you know, we had requested, quote, everything from them, dozens and dozens of communications. But it wasn't until... July 17th, when they went out to the reflecting pool with the defense expert, and the thing had now been drained, that they noted extensive damage throughout the now drained pool. It was the first time USAODC.

became aware of significant damage throughout the pool. And accordingly, we requested all docs from DOI, that's the Department of Interior. They produced 695 megabytes, and then they took days to go through that. They discovered, whoa and behold, a rushed and flawed installation and a botched installation. Obviously, the Hearns lawyers don't accept that. and that they feel it was obvious from the get-go. There was, they submitted under seal a damage assessment from before the indictment. And obviously there was no rush. I mean, there was no need to rush except to please Trump. You know, the guy was. he was out, it's not like he was detained and you couldn't keep him detained without an indictment. You could have finished, you could have drained the thing and found out first what was going on before you indicted. Isn't it just to put, not to put too fine a point on that, Roger, but. Generally speaking, we do the investigation before we indict people. Well, prior administrations took that approach. Okay. This one often we've seen does not really view that as the modus operandi. The... And then over the weekend, Trump gained fury. And then he said that Piro choked and folded like an umbrella. And the important things here are that he doesn't really say she got it wrong. She says she folded, though. And he also hallucinated. He invented a theory that the judge had been vicious with her, vicious. and that that's why she backed down. And, of course, the judge was never in Piro's presence. You know, Piro never came to the hearing. She wasn't arguing the case herself. No, of course not. And in fact, neither judge was ever vicious. I mean, they were professional. Second time, I mean, there was a second time that Judge Edelman was a little stern, you know, well, if you're going to tamper with the, with the evidence, you know, with the site, you do that at your own risk. But no, nobody was vicious to poor Judge Judy's, jeanine. So anyway, and the, so Herne's lawyers. I think just a couple of days ago, asked that it be dismissed with prejudice, pointing to Trump and Bergam's behavior, saying, look, you know,

If you didn't think this was political before, look, I mean, you have the President of the United States throwing a tantrum. There's obviously a danger of more harassment and renewal of the prosecution. You need to dismiss with prejudice. And so we'll have more briefing. We have a reply brief. from Piro's office, and then we'll have a surreply from Hearn, and that should be done by the 25th. All right, so plenty more time opportunities to play the Olympics theme music. All right, Eric, first of all, your background has changed. Are you also remote following events from afar? I am. Excellent. Well, I like the fireplace background, and it's a good, it's a good look. Better look than Todd Blanche has had this week. And see what I did there? Nice. That's very nice. Yeah, I thought I was, I was proud of it. Anyway, Todd Blanche has. As his confirmation vote, which looks increasingly good for him, approaches, he has revised the settlement documents in that IRS case involving Trump in a fashion that, you know, the one that created the slush fund and immunized Trump against all actions forever involving taxes. So what is the status of that case now? What is the government now say it is and isn't obliged to? Well, to be precise, Todd Blanche has not revised the settlement, which he has no unilateral power to do, but rather he has revised the orders that he issued in the wake of the settlement and that purported to rely on the settlement. He revoked his order that had established the, quote, anti-weaponization fund. He says that's gone. Now, of course, that does not revoke the underlying settlement with the Trump family in which the government pledged to create such a fund. So, in theory... Trump could sue to seek enforcement of that settlement and to require... Right, it's argue a breach of the settlement. Exactly, yes. And then secondly, he put out an order to clarify his second-day order, if you will, his May 9-teeth order that... gave the Trump family immunity from all audits or other pending claims that the defendants in the case might have. And he clarified some things that I think were...

and actually were in fact intended by DOJ, but he clarified them to make clear that, one, it applies only retroactively. If Trump cheats on his taxes next year, this is not preclude an audit. Two, and that the immunity applies only to the claims that could have been brought by the defendants in that case, meaning IRS. and the Treasury Department and does not apply to other agencies. And notably does not mean that if there had been a crime that Trump had committed, the Department of Justice could still prosecute for him. That was... My reading and Anna Bauer's reading of the documents, they were written so poorly that it was not clear that was the case. But after several weeks, that was what we had concluded. And he did this because he was getting asked by John Cornyn and Thom Tillis about it. And these small changes appeared to suffice to win their votes, which is kind of sad. Remind me why it is appropriate or... The acting Attorney General, who is seeking to be the Senate-confirmed Attorney General, to be conducting a settlement agreement with a former client, with whom he has a continuing fiduciary attorney-client relationship, and why it is appropriate for him to be revising the terms of the Justice Department's policies.

retroactively putting the United States in breach of the explicit terms of those agreements that he negotiated. Is that just where does he get the, I'm not sure if the term is, why is it appropriate? Where does he get the, Doesn't seem very appropriate. I do think that he claimed that he was not personally involved in the negotiations. No, but he's he's personally involved in making representations to the Senate about what he is doing by way of putting the United States in breach of those agreements, right? He's not recused. No, correct. And yeah, exactly. And by that, that ironically kind of cuts against the, I mean, he's ironically putting himself in breach. He's breaching an agreement with his former client. Correct. Which just makes it even weirder. Like, I actually think he has a, he had, there's a. I am not a legal ethicist and I'm not claiming expertise here. But if I were, imagine the situation in which Donald Trump and Todd Blanche have a falling out, which, you know, he tends to do with his prior lawyers, see Ty Cobb, right? So imagine the situation in which a year from now they don't get along as well as they do today. What prevents Donald Trump from arguing truthfully that Todd Blanche supervised the negotiation of a settlement with me and my family in which he promised us immunity? Then when it became convenient for him, he abrogated the agreement. with the signed agreement between the United States and the Trump family and made representations and policy adverse to us that subjected us to potential liability on behalf of the United States in violation of an agreement that he had supervised with his client? Well, it wouldn't have been... I don't think he's, Todd Blanche is abrogating the immunity agreement. He's abrogating the part of the agreement that enabled the anti-repanization fund. Sure. But then, so two years from now, you have an administration of whatever party that says, wait a minute, this agreement is already toast because Todd Blanche abrogated it. So clearly the other provisions aren't enforceable. And they go after $100 million and say, hey, Todd Blanche got rid of this agreement. They would not be wrong to say that. And Trump.

God bless him, would not be wrong to say my lawyer shouldn't have done that to me as Attorney General of the United States trying to get a permanent job. Shouldn't have done what to him? Shouldn't have abrogated the agreement on behalf of the United States. Of the anti-webunization. Yeah, I suppose you're suggesting that he would kind of just sue. I don't know what remedial action he might take. My point is that Todd Blanche's conduct is not ethical vis-a-vis the United States, and it doesn't seem to me to be ethical vis-a-vis his former client, Donald Trump, either, though it may be convenient for Trump right now. And then, of course... Where am I wrong? I don't think that's necessarily wrong at all. I think then, of course, the maybe even the... People are kind of losing sight of the substance of this, given all the procedural irregularities. The substance of it is that it's completely absurd for to settle a claim that Trump... Trump... correctly claims that he was, his taxes were illegally leaked, his tax returns. And as a result of that, Todd Blanche is essentially releasing him from an audit that reportedly was set to cost him $100 million. And the remedy has no connection to the violation of Trump's rights. All right. I just want to say for all of you who practice law out there, when you go into government, Don't involve yourself in the disposition of cases involving your former clients. It's a simple bright line rule. Don't do it. Speaking of revisions. Eric, Democracy Forward has revised its complaint in the slush fund case to add a challenge to the immunity provisions. How do they get standing to challenge the immunity provision? So the new plaintiff is the National Treasury Employees Union. which represents all, basically the civil servants at Treasury and IRS, the people who will need to implement the immunity deal and basically end the ongoing audits. And what they argue is that this lawsuit, sorry, that what... Ending this, the audit, violates a provision, a statutory provision that

forbids the president and various other officials, but notably not the attorney general, from seeking to end or start an audit against any specific taxpayer. And so they're saying that Trump has violated that law, which apparently is a criminal statute, and that also that they would be that the payout of the, rather the, the, cancellation of an order that would cost them $100 million is essentially an emolument to the president, a benefit in addition to a salary paid by the federal government in violation of the domestic emoluments clause. And the argument outstanding is that forcing the participation... of these civil servants would require them to violate their oath of office, to swearing allegiance to the Constitution, and possibly expose them to criminal liability. Now, I'm a little bit not certain about the criminal liability because the statute that applies, that forbids Trump from asking anyone or directing anyone to... end an audit. I don't see how that. I think that crime is complete when the ask is made. I don't see how the recipients of the request would be in violation of the law. The domestic emoluments clause issue is an interesting one. I think that the standing argument is stronger there. Whether it is actually an emolument to receive a cancellation of an audit that might cost you money, I don't know. The answer is that one. Call it an issue of first impression. Yes, to say the least. They're also alleging on the merits that it is arbitrary and capricious and beyond the statutory powers of the Attorney General for him to settle a case in this way with a settlement that is so far afield from the claims at issue in the underlying civil case. I mean, they're right about that, whether it's, whether it is, in fact, I mean, but the government has an extremely broad settlement authority, and I'm not sure that they're correct that is actually a violation of the law for the government to settle it that way. But we shall see. It's before Judge Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia, who has been shown herself to be very sympathetic to the plaintiff's claims in other respects. All right. Finally, in this DOJ politicization cone, we have yet another vindictive prosecution motion, this one from Don Lemon, about, frankly, whose case I had forgotten, because so many people had been dropped from it. Eric, what is the status of poor Mr. Lemon's case? When should we expect him to be convicted as a member of Antifa and locked up for the rest of his life? Don Lemon, just to refresh the memory of those who've tried to block it out, the former CNN host who was...

kind of rode along with a bunch of protesters in a protest in a church in St. Paul, Minnesota in, I believe, January. They were arrested for a violation of law things. The FACE Act, their freedom of access to clinic entrances and also a conspiracy. Because they attacked an abortion clinic, right? Well, there is a provision that is very rarely used that applies to churches. Right. And we will find out in a minute why it's very rarely used. But his... He's arguing that was vindictive. Basically, the basic argument is that, look, Trump hates me. He has hated me for like 10 years. He calls me the stupidest man on television, and he's trumped up, if you will, these bullshit charges against me. And that's basically the motion. It is not as impressive a litany of hatred as James Comey mustered in his... vindictive prosecution argument in his first indictment, but it is still pretty impressive. And he asked for the case to be dismissed or at minimum for there to be discovery in the case. That's only one of the three motions that he's filed. He's also filed a motion arguing that it violates the First Amendment to charge him because he was basically participating in a journalistic capacity. And I guess more important because there was nothing that he did that violated the terms of the statute, which he did not, in fact, block anyone, he argues, from accessing the going into or leaving the church, and that a fair could be statutes need to be construed with the First Amendment in mind and that there's no way in which he... can, in fact, be convicted on the basis of that. He's got a bit of a James Comey problem here, which is he may have, I think it's, I agree with you, it's a less righteous vindictive prosecution motion than Letitia James or James Comey has. But it's, you know, it's not implausible. But there's this other, just as with James Comey's case in Virginia and frankly with James Comey's case in North Carolina, there's another path to dismissal. You don't reach the question because Lindsey Halligan is illegally appointed. You don't reach the question because... arranging seashells, taking pictures of the way somebody else arranged seashells on the beach is First Amendment protected speech. You don't reach the question because if you're there doing journalism and you're not violating that you're not alleged to have blocked anybody's entrance to the church, you can't have violated the statute, right? And so it just seems like there's this category of plainly vindictive prosecutions.

that never get adjudicated as such because they're so vindictive that they violate other rules that are clear before you get to that. I think that's, yes, that's quite possible. To call that a problem depends upon one's perspective. Well, no, that's a really good point, but I want to say from my position as a citizen. I want some of these cases resolved on the basis that you're actually not allowed to maliciously go after your political enemies and that there's something deficient about our collective adjudication of these cases that you have one case after another that is. What joins them is their malicious prosecutions against Trump's enemies, but they're all being dismissed, very large numbers of them are being dismissed because, you know, the union leader maybe didn't do this and the, you know, Don Lemon's being a journalist. And James Comey's prosecutor was on law. And Letitia James's prosecutor was unlawfully appointed. And so you never actually have adjudication about what binds these cases together, which is the Trump administration is lawlessly oppressing the people that Trump really hates. And I do think that's sort of a problem at the level of like how we as a society are responding to these cases. Yeah, I mean, I don't disagree. I mean, although certainly the individual defendants have the incentive to throw everything they can. I am not, it would be malpractice of their lawyers not to be making these arguments. I'm just saying it produces a weird, a weird outcome that lowers the stakes for Trump. Yeah. And to finish the Don Lemon Loop, his final motion, which is also, I think, fairly strong, is a challenge, is twofold. First, it's a challenge to the statute under the Commerce Clause, arguing that there's not a sufficient nexus between the...

religious activities of the church and interstate commerce, which was the hook for the statute. And courts of appeals have unanimously upheld against commerce clause challenges the abortion parts of the statute because abortion is a business that takes place in interstate commerce. Religion and churches, however, are very differently situated. And there's... Not much case law on this. There's a concurring opinion in the Second Circuit by Judge Walker, who says that it cannot be justified by the Commerce Clause. There's also an argument that he makes that the conspiracy against Wright statute... that kind of bootstraps, the Face Act, is kind of, cannot be used here because that requires a government action, which is not present here. I will add just to plug Lawfare's work, that all everything in his, as far as I can know, everything in Don Lemon's motions, all the issues that he raised and all three of them were previewed in a piece that Anna Bauer, our former... Public Service Fellow Troy Edwards and I, the three of us, wrote about the Don Lehmann case shortly a few weeks after he was arrested. And it's just a very fascinating case because there are just so many issues presented. It is an excellent piece, and I was going to plug it if Eric didn't. So you should all return to it. It will give you a very good sense, not of the briefing that has happened, but of that that briefing was going to happen. All right, it is time, Roger, for our immigration roundup. And before anybody gets upset with me, when I say immigration round up, I don't mean we're going to be rounding up immigrants. I mean we are rounding up immigration cases. We got a whole lot of action in the TPS revocation front. I've got to say this one tears at my heart a lot. I know a lot of people who are here on TPS and how bad is it? It's very bad. So I think three countries, I think, terminated the TPS this week, beginning with Haiti, probably the roughest. Have conditions in Haiti substantially improved? The Supreme Court has decided that that doesn't. Matter? Yeah, but it matters to me. If we're going to send hundreds of thousands of people back to Haiti, I'd like to know that conditions there are substantially different from the conditions that arose giving rise to TPS in the first place. No, they're worse. Okay, just checking. Today, South Sudan and Burma, it seems the...

stays or the postponements were lifted as to them. Any improvement in the conditions of either South Sudan or Burma? Not that I know of. I don't think that played any role. What's going on is obviously in those cases, the lawyers are attempting to file amended complaints that They raised some new claims. They recast some claims that were APA claims as constitutional claims. And Judge Patty Saris of Boston found that the proposed new claims would be futile and unlikely to succeed. And again, I have to agree with her as a... As an attorney, looking at the situation, that's probably right. But, you know, anyway, and so she denied further postponement. Same thing, just a few hours later, if that, in Chicago, Judge Cannelly, a case involving Burma or Myanmar. In fact, one of the arguments, one of the new arguments that's been raised, and I have to say, it's not what I would say is strong. You know, when TPS was created was before we had a Department of Homeland Security, and so all of the decisions are. to be made by the Attorney General. And in fact, this is something that everyone writing about this always puts brackets and then puts the Secretary in there because the Attorney General makes all decisions. And there is a general statute somewhere. Oh, I have it written at 8 U.S.C. 1103, I think. And it explains, okay, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary, now that one exists, is going to handle all the decisions in this title except, and then, you know, there's a bunch of things the Attorney General keeps. It's not a very clear statute. So the argument now, and it comes late in the day and nobody has argued this before, is that, well, You know, these were retained by the Attorney General, and so Judge, I mean, Secretary Kristi Noem shouldn't have been making these decisions. That's not a very strong argument in my humble opinion. But, you know, on the other hand, you've got people that are about to be. sent to their death. So that's the situation, and the judges are dutifully saying, I don't think that's strong. Somalia is going to, Judge Allison Burroughs is struggling with these issues. She issued an administrative stay last Friday over the weekend.

Representative Andy Ogles, who I guess lost his primary, presented articles of impeachment against her. General Counsel Percival called it a mutiny. We will see what she does. Some of these judges, and of course Brian Murphy has to make some decisions involving Ethiopia. Murphy has already been, you know, publicly chastised by the Supreme Court in the DVD case. So we're looking at People that are, judges that are in tough spots. And it's a very, it's a sad week, but we know how these are ultimately going to end. Yeah, I mean, I will just say about this that TPS was created as a way of giving the president flexibility to. allow people to come here. It was mostly contrived with the idea of natural disasters. I think that they're, you know, places like Montserrat where you have like these. You know, volcano makes the island uninhabitable, right? So you bring people to the United States. But it has application to situations in which there are humanitarian disasters of other kinds, including man-made ones. It can be used to deal with large numbers of people on a temporary basis. And it is not imagined. I think it is fair to say this is not a legal argument. It was not imagined as something where you throw a switch depending on political whims and upset the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. And, you know, it is not, it was really imagined as a way of giving the president flexibility to admit people who are. you know, who wouldn't be eligible for immigration visas. And it has been used by presidents of both parties for wonderful humanitarian gestures that have protected the lives of a lot of people. And I've never seen it used to... you know, mass deport people before. That's not what it was ever imagined to do. And the idea that it would be being used that way is, is, you know, I think would be a genuine shock and horror to the people who created it. If I could just read Judge Burroughs' own. lines explaining that administrative stay. She said the court's decision to enter an administrative stay was informed by the fact that if or when the revocation of TPS takes effect, over a thousand people may face grave risks of severe physical violence from move to a country suffering a humanitarian crisis that has led the president to refer to it as one of the most dangerous in the world.

as well as forced separation from community and family in the United States, including their minor U.S. citizen children, all due to an abrupt reversal of government policy that has been in place for three and a half decades. Right. These are not, you know, at some level when you're playing with TPS, you're playing with very large numbers of people's lives. The numbers in the cases of places like Syria and Burma are presumably pretty small. The numbers when you're talking about Haiti are not small. The numbers when you're talking about Ukraine are not small. And, you know, the conditions in certain countries are not. conducive to normal human life. And Haiti is certainly an extreme example. All right. We have a preliminary injunction in the case of the Iranians who are suing Marco Rubio alleging that this continues to shock me, Roger, that the U.S. government is providing the Iranian government confidential information on asylum seekers. uh by way of deporting them like well do we have any ground truth on whether this is true and i mean obviously it's true enough to grant an injunction no no no injunction has been granted i might have maybe i wrote uh that whatever you're reading from and misleadingly um oh sorry there was a hearing on hearing yeah um No, there was a hearing. And Judge Reyes, I think we're pretty far from an injunction still. This is still a cloudy situation. We do have a declaration from the government about what they claim is going on. But, yeah, last March, Trump began, the Trump administration began. deporting Iranians. And that requires something called a, you get a travel document. You need to get a travel document. So the state department and the DHS began to speak to the Iranian interest section of the embassy of Pakistan. That's how you do this. And they provided them a list of 150 people. And then in November, a lot of Iranians in detention centers reported to ACLU that they were being required, told to meet with Iranian and Iranian official.

and that the official had information about the state of their asylum cases, and they were being pressured to agree to go back. One claim that her fingerprint was forcibly placed on a document saying that she was agreeing to either go back or to be sent to an African country. Government did provide a declaration from an ERO official that's the enforcement and removal office of the ICE. He said, well, we need to get a travel document. And the discussions that we have are routine. We have to share enough information to get the travel document. We don't share confidential. We would never do that. There have been three charter flights to Iran since September 2025, the last one in January, 26, before the war. None since Epic Fury, which was February 28th. Last November, yes, a guy from the Iranian interest section did go to detention centers, and the ERO offered Iranians the opportunity to speak with them. They didn't require it. Some did. Some didn't. And so Judge Reyes. isn't sure right now what she can do with this. You know, she's got a handful of declarations, even if a ice guy did violate their confidences and even if it will result in their deaths, that doesn't prove a policy, which is the legally important thing. So how does she prove a policy? Also, there's a concrete injury problem because apparently we aren't. there aren't discussion since the war started, or I guess that's a little disputed. There aren't removal flights since the war started. So she wants more evidence about whether she even has jurisdiction in late August and early September. So, or early September. So. She's moving carefully. She does think there's organizational standing for this group. It's the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund. But I don't know where this is going. Well, I have to say we have found the one good thing about the Iran war decision, which is that it does appear to have stopped at least temporarily forcible repatriations of people seeking asylum to Iran.

I could say these are people like Christians that are LGBT people. Yeah, and this is a government that the president on a regular basis points out has killed some number of tens of thousands of people this year in protests, right? I mean, it's not. You know, this is not a regime to which you should be erring on the side of repatriating people. All right. Judge Bozberg. has in some attention with his usual propensity to rule on things himself and not let the government move things to Texas or to South Central America by moving people, has transferred to the Southern District of Texas, a federal tort claims act case. brought by a Venezuelan man who was earlier sent to Sikot. Why did he let go of this one? Yeah, and I sort of wanted to include this case because it's one of sort of a steady stream of cases that get no attention where Judge Boseberg, excuse me, Boseberg, two syllables, does...

A Brett Kavanaugh stop is kind of a mocking term that folks on social media applied to. what Brett Kavanaugh described in his concurring opinion. And when this case reaches the Supreme Court, the majority, the court and court majority, basically overturned an injunction that Judge Frimpong had imposed. And typically, as it usual, they don't, as is often these days, they did not provide any. reasoning, and Brett Kavanaugh wrote a brief concurring opinion in which he said that the stops at issue here where ICE agents kind of stop people and demand that they, you know, show their papers, et cetera, that the user are usually very brief stops and no one gets hurt and then people go about their business the rest of the day. There are lots of counter examples to that, of course, and so people have mockingly... I've been calling them Brett Kavanaugh stops. Judge Frimpong, who, by the way, she was a former colleague of mine as a political appointee in the Department of Justice, and I can vouch for your pronunciation of her first name. I cannot speak to the other names. Well, I think it is a fabulous name, and I think more federal judges should have awesome names. And you should hope, I think, for more Democratic presidents because I think there is a greater diversity of namage in... It's true, although I think J.P. Brulet has a great name. You know, I mean, not at the order of Judge Frimpong or Sparkle Sukhnanon, but I do think that there's, there are great... You know, the point is you want names that are fun to say on Lawfare Live, the trials and tribulations of the Trump administration, and also fun to make puns on. And, you know, names like, you know, Merrick Garland, you can't do anything with that. I mean, he was a great judge, but, like, it's just not a fun name to say. Fair enough. But, okay, so in this case what happened is that the plaintiffs are trying to prove, among other things, that DHS, ICE is stopping people without reasonable suspicion. And in discovery, they're trying to get up. trying to get, among other things, communications among DHS officers, among ICE agents, and a lot of whom apparently use their personal phones to do this. And there's an order that ICE image the personal phones of a large number of ICE officers and turn them over to the plaintiffs. And...

ICE has, or DHS has been saying in litigation, oh, this takes a long time. It's an ongoing time-consuming process. And apparently they have not even begun it. and they've not even, they've got permission, apparently they need permission at the first level from the officers in order to do this. They have received such permission, but they just haven't begun this very lengthy process, which raises some suspicion perhaps about what is in those messages and that they may be trying to hide. Judge Frimpong has imposed. has held him in civil contempt, and at least for now, imposing, imposing, imposing, imposing, imposing, $500 fines per day against DHS, which. On a federal agency. On a federal agency, and which DHS has been paying, or at least they paid so far. Yeah, that seems, it seems eminently affordable. It's the cost of doing business. Can I ask a stupid question? I did not know you could hold an agency in contempt as opposed to the head of the agency or an official of the agency. Back when Judge Lamberth went on his spree of holding cabinet officials in contempt in the Indian Trust Fund cases in the... Yes, late 90s, early aughts, they were always directed against an individual rather than like the Department of Interior is. Is it a thing to hold an agency in contempt rather than the responsible officer? Well, I guess maybe I was a little bit less than clear. She holds defendants in contempt, and the defendants include the head of DHS, who at the time was Kristi Noem and now is Markwayne Mullin. I see. Yeah, it may run against him, but effectively against the agency. All right. Molly. The Trump Organization, as we all know, has been the subject of a woke debanking for political reasons crusade by among other people, the Capital One bank guy who features in those commercials for Capital One. And I like to imagine that he personally has been like on a crusade to debank the Trump organization.

Capital One claims that's not true and that he's actually completely innocent and that there are legitimate reasons for this. What's going on there? What is the Capital Bank guy's defense? Capital One Bank guy's defense. Yeah, the Capital One Bank guy, at least a stalking horse for the woke radical Antifa Capital One board. So what happened this week is that so in 2021 Capital One gave notice of its plan to close 300 bank accounts affiliated with Trump and the Trump family and the Trump Organization. And then in 2025, the Trump Organization and Eric Trump... sued Capital One alleging that that had been done because of Capital One's woke beliefs. So now, in this case, which is ongoing, the complaint has been thrown out twice, but the Trump organization has been invited twice to write an amended complaint. Capital One Financial has now made a filing, saying that these closures were done after, no, terrible time for my dog to bark. were done after review by anti-money laundering experts. And so the goal is to get the case, which, you know, is supposed to be about illegally denying services to the Trump organization on these political grounds dismissed. But what's interesting here, what makes it so relevant, is that it's the first time that a bank has stated formally. a link between money laundering concerns and the president's family businesses. And it's not a straight-up accusation of illegal money laundering, but it's a declaration that it was for anti-money laundering reasons that were arrived at after months of analysis and review according to the bank's rules and to government rules were what prompted the closure of the accounts. So it's not a great look for the Trump administration. It's sort of similar. We're not covering the ongoing litigation between the Trump and BBC this week, the BBC this week. But in that case, a judge on very technical grounds delayed Trump having to hand over these financial records in this defamation case. But the fact that he has to hand over the records that are not going to look good for him. is a result of him being super litigious and having brought this case. And it's kind of similar to what's going on in this Capital One case. Like, great, now everybody knows that the bank closed your accounts because they were worried about money laundering. Right. All right. On election matters, Molly, while we have you, the administration has asked the Supreme Court, to stay a district court order that prevented the federal government from applying provisions of this new executive order on mail in voting to the 23 states that have sued to block it along with D.C.

Any sense of where that's going and whether any of these provisions, these are data acquisition provisions, will be immediately enforceable against states that don't want to participate in this? Yeah, so the state of play is basically that the... First, so in the First Circuit, well, the U.S. District Judge Indira Tawani had concluded that these claims were ripe to review for the upcoming midterm elections and that the provisions having to do with the Postal Service refusing to transmit ballots to anyone who didn't show up on a list of eligible voters that states would submit to it, so a way to get this list of voters to whom states intended to transmit mail-in ballots from the states. She had concluded the bad and a similar... Directive to DHS to draw up a list of voters was that those were unconstitutional and that she could judge that now and she could issue a preliminary injunction that would apply to the midterms, although she judged it wasn't right for any future elections. The First Circuit agreed with her, and so that is what the administration is appealing. It's all in contrast to what's been happening in D.C. where Judge Carl Nickers ruled that the claim wasn't right, and then a D.C. Circuit panel. Contrary to some expectations, because it had seemed like the panel, which was Millett, Wilkins, and Katzis would tilt in favor of the challengers to the executive order, affirmed that ruling, although they explicitly stated that they hadn't taken into account that USPS is moving forward and had issued a notice of proposed rulemaking. But in any case, so the administration is appealing the First Circuit ruling. And it's making that same ripeness argument. It's saying the agencies haven't yet decided how they'll implement the order. The order isn't self-executing. And in fact, it says you should do this in accordance with law. And so... There shouldn't be an injunction against them doing that because actually if ultimately it turns out that the agencies do this in a lawful way, they'll have suffered irreparable harm and being prevented from it because there won't be enough time before the midterms for them to do these things they want to do to protect the vote, basically. And so the government has asked the justices also, well, did ask the justices also to issue an immediate administrative stay. Well, the court considered it. The court has not done that yet. And this is an emergency application. This week, the states, the 23 states who won this injunction from Tawani and D.C. submitted their own filing, pushing back. and saying that pausing the order would let the government rush out this legally indefensible program. And notably, even in the decisions favorable to the administration here, merits haven't been addressed. Nobody has said, oh, it is legal or even that it's likely to be legal. But anyway, they say the injunctions narrow only applies to these states, only applies to the midterms. It's right because the deadlines are tight, so states are having to figure out whether and how to comply.

And they need to be able to mount a challenge now. So what will the Supreme Court do? I mean, if I had to guess, I obviously do not know. But if I had to guess, they will do something similar to what the D.C. Circuit panel did and say that it's not ripe. But I think that very few people believe that there's any way that the administration is going to manage to implement this in time for the midterms anyway. It is really, really close to pull off what they're trying to pull off, which has to do with a complete redesign of ballot envelopes and agencies aren't that far along in implementation. That said, the 23 states in D.C. suing kind of have a point, which is that... they're in this bind right now where they have to decide, are we going to assume that it will go into effect before the midterms? And should we try to be prepared to have different ballots? And so should we be concerned that the Postal Service might say that they're not going to transmit those ballots? And I think that that's a real thing to be worried about. But my guess is that the states will not comply and continue not complying, and none of this will be ready in time for the midterms anyway. All right. Eric, the Justice Department has taken the rather surprising position that if you are a January 6th rioter and you claim that you were mistreated by police on January 6th. But you didn't make that claim until after January 6, 2003. your claim is barred by a time barred under the Federal Tort Claims Act. And I want to ask you why the administration is taking such a hard line against access to the courts by people who allege police brutality by a weaponized justice system that was in a woke fashion deployed against supporters of the president. Seems outrageous to me. You're muted.

This is, in fact, what the law says. The Federal Tort Claims Act requires you to bring your claim within two years of the alleged tort that the federal government committed against you. And now, I believe that it is discretionary on behalf of the government to raise this statute of limitations defense. And it may be a little surprising that we're seeing it here. One thing that Anna Bauer and I have written in our pieces about the anti-weaponization fund is that to a large extent the government can use the Federal Tort Claims Act as a way to accomplish what it wanted to do, what the Trump administration wanted to do using the slush fund. But I think we did note the statute of limitations issue here, but we weren't sure how it might all play out. And it does look in this, at least with regards to things that actually happened on January 6th itself, that the administration is, at least this one case, trying to play an accordance with the law. Now, I don't know whether this was kind of... somehow part of the Todd Blanche nomination campaign that they wanted to do it this way in order to make him look good, or whether, in fact, I was being a little bit too pessimistic about DOJ here. I mean, to paraphrase H.L. Mencken, no one ever went broke.

overestimating the venality and corruption of the Trump Department of Justice. But in this case, it does seem like they are taking a position that is both justified and against the interests of its ideological allies. Yeah, I'd just like to second that it was a really... To me, it was also surprising. And I think it's an important case because it was brought by three individuals, but it was a putative class action. One of the three individuals was, two of them were not actually arrested. But one was sort of a – he was charged with assault, with assault of an officer. He was never convicted because the case didn't reach trial, Alan Fisher. He was supposed to be affiliated with the proud boys. But they name 30 other people among the – which is a little unusual. They name specific class members who have also gone through the – initial process of filing civil claims that precede a FTCA claim. And they included some big players like Pizzola. Dominic Bezola, who got 10 years, of course, the guy that you know him, he broke the first window or cleared out the first window. Christopher Worell, another proud boy who also got 10 years. The government wanted 14 years for him. He came with body armor. He came with carrying bear spray and sprayed it into officers' faces. So this, you know, this would have, this would have been something. And also the, and the government just played it, you know, like the real government, you know, like the real DOJ. And they even said, also, you know, you shouldn't be bringing this in the Middle District of Florida. This is a D.C. case. Even if you don't dismiss, you need to send it back to D.C. So these are really important things. I didn't see coming. It's a. You know, somebody there is still doing their job. All right. Finally, today, Roger, a matter that I can't give a mocking introduction to Judge Meta has dismissed the eight cases of oathkeepers, six of whom were convicted of seditious conspiracy, and a trial that you are one of a very small number of people.

who sat through and wrote an opinion in doing so that is a bit of an elegy to the case and a reminder of who these people really are and with what level of regret he was forced to act. Talk about it and talk about his action and your feelings on the subject. Yeah, this was the eight remaining oathkeepers whose cases, who either did not get pardons or whose cases hadn't been dismissed yet. These were, they were all charged with seditious conspiracy, six of them, I think six convicted, all convicted of something. And he goes, you know, as you know at this point. His hands are tied. His precedents are clear. He has no. But he goes through, first he describes what each, almost all of them did. In fact, one of them, Ed Vallejo, after he wrote this, has moved to strike. You know, he says, well, now after you're dismissed, I'm innocent, you need to strike. Anyway, but he goes through and he describes what they were proven to have done. He goes through the government's reasons and shows that they are circular. They make no sense. He specifically says this does not serve the public interest, but he says basically it's not up to me. And then he says, this is the last of the prosecutions seeking to hold accountable, those responsible for the events of January 6th. That book is now closed. Today's epilogue diminishes the gravity of that day, denigrates the work of the prosecutors and law enforcement officers who secured those convictions, and excuses criminal acts that caused a centuries-long pillar of our democracy, the peaceful transfer of presidential power to buckle. The court cannot write a different ending.

Well put, Judge Meta and I... sad day for everybody who had to read that opinion, and I'm sure a very sad day for the judge who had to write it. We have three questions in the queue. The anonymous attendee asks for all of the panelists, and I want a two-word answer from each of you, the percent, the number and the word percent. What chance? What likelihood that the Supreme Court allows the ballroom to go forward? Molly, you have two words. 20%. Eric, two words. Sorry, Molly, you say 20% that allows it go forward or 20% that it... Oh, 20% they block it? No, I said 20% go forward. You think I'm being super polyanish, I guess. I was just saying 80%. All right, 80%. Roger, what percent? Whoops, you're muted, Roger. 75%. Oh, my gosh. I'm going to go with the answer that you can't get wrong with. 50%, because that way I'm right either way. What percent is six out of nine? I can't do the math. That would be 67 percent. Okay, I'll go with 67. John asks, is Eric prepared to talk about Katie Fang's case involving Todd Blanche? No, and this is one where I think ripeness, shall say, is an issue for why we have not yet put it on our agenda. order seems to be in order to produce things to give to the judge to look at things of that nature there is going to be a hearing next week on it and maybe there will be some more news that will come out of it that will be worth discussing you here so come back next time David asks a question for Roger. If David Hearn gets granted dismissal with prejudice, does he have any basis to get his legal expenses paid? Can he petition the court for this? Or is that a separate lawsuit? Interesting. It sounds like they might be gearing up for a separate lawsuit. I mean, I don't have any, just from their public statements, where he could certainly try to get that, plus more.

I don't know a provision where in the criminal case itself, you can ask for attorney's fees or illegal expenses. So there is the Hyde Amendment, the non-abortion Hyde Amendment, but that is in federal cases. And this was, of course, filed in Superior Court in the District of Columbia. I don't believe it would apply here, although... The application of the Hyde Amendment to the District of Columbia is a matter that I don't, I've never looked at, and I assume it is not, but I wouldn't. say that confidently. Does the Hyde Amendment go, you would go to the judge in the criminal case or you bring a separate? I believe it is, Eric may remember this better than I do. I believe the Hyde Amendment is for a case, it is a petition to the judge for a case that is not substantially merited. Is that, is that, is that, is that accurate? Yeah, it's something like that. It also involves the allegations of bad faith on behalf of the government. The Broadview Six defendants brought a motion under the Hyde Amendment, and to the surprise of many, the government conceded that the defendants were entitled to legal fees. in that case. It will be very interesting to see whether Letitia James after the Fourth Circuit rules or James Comey or, you know, some of the people in the most flamboyantly unlawful cases, I've been surprised that, you know, these are cases. You can, I think you can only do it when. It's dismissed as a matter of law, right? Like if it's a fact question that goes to a jury, you're not going to get. But like these are for cases that never should have been brought in the first place for one reason or another. All right, folks, we're going to wrap. This podcast is part of Lawfares live stream series, Lawfare Live, the trials and tribulations of the Trump administration. Subscribe to Lawfare's YouTube page to receive. By the way, we have 29,700. followers on YouTube, which means we only need 300 more to cross that magic number until 30,000. And what happens when we cross that magic number is confetti falls out of the sky, you know, bubbles and balloons happen. It's very exciting. So if you are not already a YouTube follower of the Lawfare channel,

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