Ep 201 — Ed Martin, Don’t Let That Doorknob Split Ya!

I'm here on behalf of President Trump, who was a victim as we just heard of this atrocity. This was an egregious breach. Ma'am, I'm sorry. Could you just introduce yourself? Oh, excuse me, yes. Alina Habba. This was an egregious breach by an agent of the IRS who targeted the president of the United States, among others, for political purposes and personal gain. Welcome to Law and Chaos, where the DOJ finally got its perp walk of Don Lemon. Donald Trump is suing the IRS and we are suing the DOJ. We've got a lot to cover, so let's get after it. Hey guys, I'm Liz Dianne with me. As always is Andrew Torres. Andrew, how are you? I'm great, Liz. How are you? I'm good. You know, it's funny, Andrew. I know you were there. We were at a party this weekend and people said, how do you handle it? And I was like, yeah, man, I thought we were going to be doing a really fun show that was like about Rudy Giuliani's foibles. And we were, you know, no, no. I have a story on Hasbro that's locked up in the vault right now. I'd like to get to. I know. I would so like to talk about AI litigation. And we are, I promise, going to make time for all of these other interesting cases. But I must say, when people ask us at parties like, hey, how's that working out for you? I'm like, I love my job. And also this is not the job I thought I was going to be having. You're here. Okay. We have a bunch of updates to start this week. Apparently, the Justice Department did manage to indict Don Lemon along with journalist Georgia Fort and seven other journalists and protesters who disrupted the church service in St. Paul on January 18th. Yeah. And yet ICE disrupted a church service today to arrest an immigrant they've disrupted, court proceedings, other public area. But apparently that doesn't interfere with the free exercise of religion when ICE does. And another five prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota quit today, which is probably not a coincidence. I think they're like below half staff. And in what is also unlikely to be a coincidence, Chad Miselle, the former chief of staff for the Department of Justice is inviting people to slide into his Twitter DMs. Anyone with a bar card who wants to be a federal prosecutor, just hit him up. I remember I have friends that have gone through the Department of Justice. We're like, being in a USA should be and always historically has been a prestige position. It has been hard to get those jobs. There have been way more applicants than there are. It's just, you know, yet another cheapening of these institutions. Yeah. And today we'll have an update on our FOIA case against the DOJ, along with the bogus ethics complaint the government filed against Chief Judge James Boasberg. We'll talk about Trump's plans to cancel the Kennedy Center and for subscribers, we've got a patented Andrew Torres deep dive into the death on the high seas act. Oh, I love it. Ed Bruthe Law. But first, today we bid a fond farewell to Ed Martin. Oh, fond-ish. Fond-ish. Martin is the buffoon Trump tried to install as the US Attorney for DC because Trump doesn't know the difference between civil and criminal litigation or good lawyers and bad lawyers. Or he doesn't care. At any rate, Martin turned out to be unconfirmable by even this Senate because he's actually a January 6er. So instead, Trump gave him like 10 jobs at Maine Justice. He was US pardon attorney and special attorney for mortgage fraud and associate deputy attorney general and director of the weaponization working group. That last one is Trump's dedicated team lined up to prosecute his enemies, something that Martin was actually spectacularly unsuccessful at. But not for a lack of trying. No, Martin sent so many nasty gramps. He harassed Senator Chuck Schumer for saying that Brett Kavanaugh would reap the whirlwind on abortion. He harassed Georgetown Law for doing illegal DEI. He harassed Wikipedia for poisoning the AIs that scrape it with woke copy true story. He actually showed up in front of New York Attorney General Tish James' house in a Colombo trench coat with a camera crew. You know what he didn't do though? Was indict anyone. Oh, wow. And so he's being sent to a farm way out in the country where he can romp and play with all the other old incompetent Nazis. How feedershame. Yeah. And by the way, I suspect that one of the reasons that he's getting pushed out is that his freelancing has gotten in the way. He and Bill Pulte, the head of the federal housing finance agency, have actually been communicating via Twitter DM with Rando's and it gets in the way when the Justice Department is, when the actual competent lawyers of the Justice Department, the few that remain, try and execute this weaponization working group business. I mean, Pulte has been busy turning Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into a research arm of Trump's plans for vengeance. Yeah, but without success, I mean, the Tish James prosecution has fallen apart and no one has indicted Adam Schiff or any of the other people that he suggests Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve Board Governor. But we are so sad to see you go Ed. We hardly knew you. Actually, I think we knew you far too well. On the minus side, CNN says that the DOJ's weaponization working group is now going to be ramping up to have daily meetings to plot Trump's revenge without that dingus Martin in charge. And coincidentally, Lindsay Halligan is out of a job right now. Maybe we know her next assignment. Yeah. Okay, so in real actual good news, Liam Ramos, the little boy in the bunny hat kidnapped by ICE in Minneapolis and taken to a concentration camp in Dilley, Texas is back home. Judge Fred Beery of the Western District of Texas granted the habeas petition filed by Liam's father and ordered the government to release them. Yeah, so heartening to see that this order is yet another angry distress signal from one of the old bulls on the federal bench. Judge Beery has been in the judiciary since 1994. He begins this order by saying, this case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently, even if it requires traumatizing children. A parent also is the government's ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence. Wow. Yeah. And then Judge Beery compares all the grievances that the colonists levied against King George and says, we the people are hearing echoes of that history. And then there is that pesky inconvenience called the Fourth Amendment. Amazing. Yeah. So Judge Beery talks about all those garbage administrative warrants the DOJ is using to break into houses. We discussed it on the last show. He says, civics lesson to the government administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. That is called the Fox guarding the hen house. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer. Here, here. And the caption is just as Matthew 1914 and John 1135. Matthew 1914 is let the little children come to me and do not hinder them for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. And John 1135 is just Jesus wept. I don't know what else there is to add to that. I mean, this is such a moral stain on the nation. I hope someday we can recover. And obviously, we're just glad that little Liam is home. Yeah. Okay, two related stories. The first is about congressional visits to immigration facilities like Dilley where there is, by the way, measles outbreak. Sure. Liam was visited by representative Joaquin Castro of Texas. That's because members of Congress have oversight responsibility for the immigration facilities. In fact, the budget bill contains a provision that says no money appropriated under it can be used to bar members of Congress from conducting oversight of facilities used to house immigrants. And they do not have to call first before they show up. DHS has been trying like hell to keep Democratic members of Congress out. So in June, Kristi Noam put out a memo saying that they had to request access a week in advance and have it approved by her personally. Judge Gea Cobb enjoined that order in December and said DHS had to let the legislators in. Then the brain geniuses over at Homeland Security put their heads together and came up with a new memo, same as the old memo. On January 8th, Noam announced the exact same policy, but said that in order to evade that provision from the budget, it would be implemented only with the slush money fund that was allocated to DHS under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Abo the Hut! We talked about that in episode 197. The government argued that they could easily segregate funds by keeping track of the costs, dealing with congressional visits separately, and then debiting them from the Abo the Hut! funds at the year's end. Basically it was one weird accounting trick. That argument is just wrong on its face. These are facilities that were built using regular budget funds, with staff paid for by regular budget funds, on contracts paid for with budget funds, using computers and Microsoft 365 licenses paid for by budget funds, under the supervision of Secretary Christi Noam, who is paid for, whose salary comes from the budget. There is no way to keep a running tally of expenses and say at the end of the year, okay, well, we're going to reach into the right pocket, but no, that's not how the law works. Right, which is exactly what Judge Cobb said today. She granted the TRO and she said no budget gimmick can undo the fact that the entire DHS apparatus runs on normal budget funds. The members of Congress can resume showing up to inspected attention centers, aka concentration camps. Yeah, two things. First, thanks to the Supreme Court's conservatives and the CASA decision, Judge Cobb's TRO only prevents Homeland Security from enforcing the January 8th notice requirement as to the plaintiffs in this case, because there are no more nationwide injunctions. That means Joe Nagyous, Benny Thompson, Norma Torres, Jamie Raskin, the rest of the 13 members of Congress that have signed on to the amended complaint can go visit ICE facilities. But Homeland Security can, and I imagine they still will, require any other legislator to go through this seven-day rigmarole before going to inspect an ICE facility. So make friends with Jamie Raskin if you're in Congress. I mean, they could all join. I'm sure every Democrat would be welcome to join as a plaintiff in this case. I think they should. OK, second, I thought this passage from the end of Judge Cobb's TRO was really interesting. She ends with defendants, that means the Trump administration, have also requested that this court proactively grant a stay of its ruling pending appeal. Because the court has only granted a temporary restraining order, it is premature to rule on a stay pending appeal, given that this temporary restraining order is not appealable. And then she has the citation to a DC Circuit opinion from 1978 called Adams v. Vance. And that reminds everyone that, you know, look, we talk about on the show a lot that the Trump administration seeks review of every temporary restraining order. You know, temporary restraining orders are definitionally not immediately appealable, right? And this is Judge Cobb throwing down a marker and saying, I, for one, am not going to pretend as though the last 50 years of the law have just changed so that you're now allowed to immediately appeal TROs you don't like. You are not. Yeah, trial judges are so over the DOJ in his portion. Yes, they are. OK, so the other related story has to do with those administrative warrants. ICE has been signing for itself. We broke down that nonsense in episode 197. We called it Kristi Noem's lawyers are making shit up for obvious reasons. Yeah. The Fourth Amendment imposes a requirement that an independent judicial officer find probable cause to invade someone's home. ICE director Todd Lyons just put out a memo saying like, eh, we make our own probable cause around here. Go ahead and kick indoors. What has happened? But kick indoors everywhere except the Central District of California, where a judge has already said, no, that's not how the Fourth Amendment goes. The government's position is that it's unconstitutional in LA, but totally legal everywhere else. Right. So remember we read from Judge Berry's opinion in the Liam Ramos case where he said, administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. That's what he meant about Fox's guarding the henhouse. Right. So now plaintiffs in Massachusetts have challenged that memo and asked a court to set it aside. The parties here are the Greater Boston Latino Network and the Brazilian Worker Center. And what they want is a declaratory judgment that this policy violates the Fourth Amendment. Which it clearly does. Yes. Right. But I don't know if I love this case. Oh, yeah. And this looks to me like something that would have been successful at fixing this problem 10 years ago before the Howler Monkeys took over the Supreme Court. Right. I mean, look, these six justices discovered last year after 100 years of nationwide injunctions that a nationwide injunction is illegal. Yeah. The Supreme Court has said the trial judges, as you said, can only grant relief to the parties in front of them. That's why Judge Cobb could only rule in favor of the 13 members of Congress named in that lawsuit, not all 536 of them. So getting a judge to declare an agency policy unconstitutional can only protect a really narrow set of people. Which is insane. You already have a judge in California saying, no, these fake warrants that ICE issues to itself are unconstitutional. Stop that. And in response, thanks to the Supreme Court, Homeland Security says, okay, we'll stop that in LA. Right. With the implication being you have to file in all of the hundreds of federal district courts if you want a ruling that binds nationwide. Or look. You believe in a society. Well, yes. And also, that's why I prefer to have the states as the plaintiffs. That's really been the only way that this works. And that's not on these plaintiffs here. Right. Right. Right. They have to litigate in this mess of John Roberts making. But that is why I worry that a case like this cannot provide any kind of complete... I mean, look, maybe they can provide statewide relief in Massachusetts because it's a small state with only one federal district. And these plaintiffs want any relief that they can get for their clients. But I do wish, as I said, that this was a coalition of blue states suing because it would provide a much wider avenue for a judge to say, I declare these administrative warrants to be illegal and enjoy them in whatever... The 20 blue states who have joined this case. And I suspect that there will be such a case. My worry is that the trial judge here is going to have to pick her way through and craft some kind of ruling that says, well, no breaking down doors for Latinos and Brazilians in Massachusetts. And that's an effort to evade the fallout from the Casa decision that says there are no universal injunctions. But that's just a mess. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. We are going to take a quick break and then we'll come back and talk about the arrest of Don Lemon. But first, it is Tuesday. So let us thank our new subscribers over on Substack at LawNChaosPod.com. Thank you to our new subscribers, Matthew, MGH. Thank you, BitterScribe and SteelSpark, Innocent Bystander, Eric, LizNOT. Thank you to Jason Shapiro and Barbara Swat. And on Patreon to those folks who have signed up at Patreon.com, SlashLaw and ChaosPod, a big thank you to Philip Sutherland, Ted Ross, Nina, Donald Kramer, Evelyn Jensen and Jenny Gilfoyle. Thank you, Jenny. Thanks, Jenny. And if you'd like to join their ranks, you know how to do that, just head on over to LawNChaosPod.com or to Patreon.com, SlashLaw and ChaosPod. Sign up to give us a little as a buck an episode. You will get every single episode ad free. You will get the extended episodes. You'll get all our bonuses. You'll get all our goodies. And you will help keep us doing this project that we love. Thank you so much. And for everybody else, we're going to take a quick ad break right now. And not our subscribers. You will go straight to Don Lemon. And we are back on Friday. The FBI finally managed to arrest Don Lemon taking this terrifying menace off the streets along with Georgia Fort, a well-known Minneapolis journalist. Yeah, you guys will recall that Lemon accompanied a group of predominantly black protesters into a predominantly white church on January 18th where they shouted, Ice out and hands up, don't shoot. They had selected that church because one of the pastors there, David Easterwood, is the acting field office director for enforcement removal operations in St. Paul, Minnesota. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the racial component of this because I didn't really emphasize that part in my own prior reporting. And I don't think you can ignore it here, especially having read the indictment. This is a group of black civil rights protesters on MLK Day led by an ordained minister who is also a lawyer. And I believe seven of the eight people arrested are black. And of course, they're being charged with violating the Klan Act because they supposedly intimidated people in the exercise of their constitutional right to practice their faith. And they're also charged under the FACE Act, which is a law that protects access to abortion clinics from so-called sidewalk counselors that harass women on the street. And since we're speaking about this, frankly, let's highlight just how much of this indictment frames this as scary black people intimidating defenseless Christian white people by their mere presence. Like the indictment, as you alluded to, Liz, refers to the defendants as agitators participating in what they describe as a coordinated takeover style attack. It accuses the unarmed protesters of gesturing in an aggressive and hostile manner, which congregants and the pastor perceived as threats of violence and a potential prelude to a mass shooting real words from this indictment. These are people who are shouting, hands up, don't shoot. Right. The inference here is that black people in white spaces are inherently threatening, which is a neat trick when the statute you're charging under requires use of force or threat of force or physical obstruction. So they have to play up the fact that these people were big and black and scary. So the indictment says that they oppressed, threatened, and intimidated the church's congregants and pastors by physically occupying most of the main aisle and rows of chairs near the front of the church, engaging in menacing and threatening behavior, chanting and yelling loudly at the pastor and congregants and or physically obstructing them as they attempted to exit and or move about within the church. Yet to get there, they had to accuse Lemon, his producer, and Georgia Fort of intimidating the pastor with their microphones. Oh, no. Yeah, it says, with other co-conspirators standing nearby, defendants Lemon, Richardson, that's the producer, and Fort, approached the pastor and largely surrounded him to his front and both sides. How do you largely surround that? Right. Okay. Stood in close proximity to the pastor in an attempt to oppress and intimidate him and physically obstructed his freedom of movement while Lemon peppered him with questions. How dare journalists do that? To promote the operation's message, while talking to the pastor, defendant Lemon stood so close to the pastor that Lemon caused the pastor's right hand to graze Lemon, who then admonished the pastor, please don't push me. Lemon intimidated the pastor by getting shoved and saying, don't shove me, please. Yes, while other people, quote, punched their fists in the air. Yeah. You know, I mean, it sounds to me like these people really did trespass, and if they should be arrested, it should be for trespassing or possibly disturbing the peace. Yeah, agreed. But those are state crimes, Liz, and state law crimes would not allow Attorney General Pam Bondi to tweet about them. So the government had to find a way to turn this into a major civil rights violation with serious jail time attached. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about the procedural aspects here. Initially, the government brought a criminal complaint, which is not an indictment, against the journalist and the ring leaders of the protest and asked the magistrate judge, Douglas Miko, to issue a arrest warrant for all eight. The magistrate crossed out the face act count and refused to sign arrest warrants for the five journalists or, I guess, three journalists and two other people. He did sign with respect to the Klan Act to the three ring leaders. Then the DOJ threw a tantrum and demanded that Chief Judge Patrick Schultz and then the Eighth Circuit counterman, the magistrate, neither one of which happened. Then the DOJ went to a grand jury and got an actual indictment. That surprised me since they've been getting no-build so much lately in these jurisdictions where they've descended on and terrorized the local population because the grand jurors then refused to indict. Yeah. That surprised me too. Minneapolis has been under siege for months now. But I guess as I try and parse it out that this isn't a clear-cut case of the residents on one side and ICE on the other. It's residents on both sides. So you could maybe play it up in that way. Yeah. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't uncomfortable with the group's tactics here. I mean, I do think this is obviously trespassing in the mold of Act Up doing dynes in the 90s and the 80s in churches. But I think this group showed exceedingly poor judgment if their plan was to draw attention to this, right, that it was certainly bad optics. I don't think the plan did what they wanted it to do. But I don't think it was a civil rights violation. I mean, come on. Yeah. I agree with both halves of that. I don't want to tell anyone how to do their protesting, particularly at this point in time. But I will say you reference Act Up. It has always been understood, if that's the kind of protest that you're going to engage in, that being arrested by the local and state cops comes with the bargain, but not facing trumped-up charges under the FACE Act and two years in jail. That's not part of the bargain. Yeah. So these cases have all been assigned to Judge Lara Provenzino. All the defendants have been released on their own recognizance without having to post-bond Nakeem Alevi Armstrong, the ringleader, has moved to modify the conditions of a release so her husband can keep a gun in the house in light of the numerous death threats that rained down on her after the DOJ tweeted at her mugshot and the White House tweeted out an altered image of her being perp-walked. That image darkened her skin and made it seem like she was weeping. These people are so vile. Yes, yes, they are. Let's catch up now on our FOIA suit against the Justice Department over the infamous Attachment A. We wrote about it for the website at lohncastpod.com. But briefly, the DOJ filed a bogus judicial ethics complaint against Chief Judge James Boasberg in D.C. in July. They alleged that he attempted to intimidate and influence Chief Justice John Roberts and several assembled judges at a judicial conference in March because Judge Boasberg said that judges in D.C. were worried that the Trump administration was about to provoke a constitutional crisis by defying courts. Which they absolutely had. We do not know what Judge Boasberg actually said. But the evidence of this was minutes or maybe notes that were taken at that closed meeting which appear to have been taken by one of the participants, a judge or someone on their staff, and then distributed to the attendees. One from the judiciary we infer must have leaked this document and it wound up in the hands of the Justice Department. The Justice Department then sent their complaint to Judge Sriswina Vasan at the D.C. Circuit quoting from these leaked minutes with a footnote at the bottom for support saying see Attachment A at page 16. But there was no Attachment A to that complaint. And when Judge Sriswina Vasan said, hey, you want to send over Attachment A, the DOJ just ignored him. So our FOIA lawsuit is about that attachment. But first, let's talk about the progress of the underlying ethics complaint along with a copycat filing by a right-wing astroturf group called the Center to Advance Security in America. Yeah, they so want to take the acronym CASA from the Latino Advocacy Group. I mean, it's just like such unbelievable trolling. Yeah, you have big NAMBLA energy there. Yeah, we're the North American Marlon Brando lookalikes. All right, Marlon Brando. Yeah, except the Marlon Brando was problematic and hot. And these guys are just trolls and problematic in every way. We all learned so much about you at every episode of this. So Judge Sriswina Vasan forwards this to Chief Justice John Roberts, who then dumps it on Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the Sixth Circuit. There's some issue about there being a conflict of interest because a lot of the complaint alleges that Judge Boasberg is biased in cases which are pending before him. So it's got to go somewhere else. So then Judge Sutton audibly rolls his eyes and tells the Turf Lords to get lost because all they've got is media reports. That's not evidence for a judicial complaint. But he's not like that mad because trolls going to troll and he's used to that. He is, however, disgusted with the Justice Department for abusing the process by filing this idiotic, baseless complaint as a means to attack the judiciary, which, remember, Judge Sutton is a member of, we quoted from his decision extensively in our post. So we'll just be brief here. But he said, look, citing a document that you failed to attach is bullshit. And even if Judge Boasberg said what you accused him of, that would be still bullshit. It's not enough. And if you guys at the DOJ are mad about Judge Boasberg being biased, then you can file a motion to recuse. And anyway, the Judicial Council cannot order a judge to be removed. You dumbasses. But other than that, bang up job, Pamela Jones. Yeah, this was a beat down. The DOJ behaves like an astrotroth troll litigant. And that is not normal. It is utterly forfeited the presumption of regularity, which the government always enjoyed, right? The Trump administration just burnt that to the ground in a year. Which is the perfect lead in to our lawsuit. We are suing the Department of Justice to hand over attachment A. So first, the Office of Information Policy, or OIP, said our request was complex. It's one, it's one document. You just, you have it. We all know you have it. It's sitting right there on Bondi's desk. So, so then they refused our request because they said the document was a judicial record and the judiciary is not subject to FOIA. And, and look, that, that's true, right? Judicial records are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. But we're not foying the judiciary. We're foying the DOJ, which quoted extensively from this document and relied upon it when making a complaint and an accompanying press release, which Bondi herself tweeted about, right? It started life as a judicial record, but now attachment A is very clearly an executive agency record and therefore subject to FOIA. Government disagreed. Hey, surprise. They filed a motion to dismiss and this really was not subtle, right? It is, it is a shot across the bow to, to Judge Adam Appelson, who's the presiding judge in our case, that granting our request would lead to dirty podcasters pulling through his emails, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but, but in the course of doing so, they've made some, uh, let's call them odd representations to the court about how that document came into the DOJ's possession. So specifically they say, no one knows. It's just a big mystery. It appeared on their servers one day, like the Tooth Fairy left it or Santa. Yeah. Listen to this shit from the OIP lawyers declaration. She says, searches conducted of DOJ leadership office officials, departmental email accounts using e-discovery software revealed no electronic trail indicating transmission of attachment A into the department, nor has OIP's point of contact within the office of the attorney general been able to identify how attachment A was received by the department. I can know what this. I, I actually believe that. Yeah, I do too. No electronic trail. This administration runs on signals set to auto delete. They are constantly communicating with randos on Twitter and sending disappearing texts and conducting government business via personal email. Like I 100% by that OIP asked the attorney general's office how it came to have what was clearly created as a judicial record and got no reply. But like that's not on us. If the judiciary wanted to keep that memo in house, it shouldn't have allowed it to leak, right? Correct. They had to know whoever gave this to Pam Bondi or Chad Meisler, whomever had to know that this administration was going to turn it into a weapon to attack Judge Boasberg. That's the entire point of giving it to them to rile them up and, you know, the trip it made through right wing media. So, so no, the department of justice cannot hide behind the judiciary skirts on this one, although I suppose we'll see how Judge Abelson rules. Yeah. Let's before we go to the break, I want to flag while more thing about the judiciary, which is that the New York Times reported this morning that Chief Justice Roberts is pissed about all the leaks coming out of the Supreme Court of late and he has been making employees sign non-disclosure agreement. This is just this is the most John Roberts thing imaginable, right? It is incredibly stupid. It is incredibly tone deaf. From a legal perspective, it's absolutely unenforceable, right? Like, is John Roberts going to sue clerks or staffers for damages? Is the Supreme Court going to file a motion to get prior restraint to prevent publication of stories that it doesn't allow and then what, have to recuse itself from review? This is the dumbest possible thing. And again, let me add, I clerked for a judge back in 1997. That judge has passed away a while ago and I will nevertheless take Judge Rodawski's secrets to the grave with me, right? Like, you do not need to intimidate the employees at the Supreme Court and the clerks who were just out of law school who are hoping to use this as a springboard to their professional careers to say, maybe you shouldn't piss off Chief Justice Roberts. This is nonsense. Yeah. I mean, a couple of observations. So the article said that there have been other periods in the past when such an NDA was required or standard or whatever, but it has not been standard for a while. And it seems to me an admission that the judiciary kind of runs on gravitas and that revealing what actually goes on in it would even diminish its gravitas further. I mean, it's a little bit of like, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. And if you have to threaten people so that they don't reveal what's going on behind the scenes, it makes you look even less legitimate. I will say it like this. By all appearances, we do not know, please do not sue me, Justice Alito. It looks like Justice Alito leaked the copy of the Dobbs opinion overturning Roe v. Wade to right-wing agitators. I think he did. And at any event, I think this is a whole lot of throwing up hands to try and say, we're going to make sure we get those darn dirty leakers. And it's just, it's tone deafened up. Yeah. I mean, if Justice Roberts thinks that the problem with the court's declining approval ratings, if you want to call them that, is the leaks and not the stuff that's coming out the front door. And not Trump v. US. Yeah, he's confused. Yeah. All right, we're going to take a quick break and then we're going to come back for our recurring segment on who is Donald Trump suing today? Hey. And now for our recurring segment, who is the president suing today? Andrew, would you care to do the honors? It's a long, oh yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. The Grammy Awards are the worst, virtually unwatchable. CBS is lucky not to have this garbage litter their airwaves any longer. Well, we'll get to that in a minute. And then I'm not going to try the Trump voice any longer. The host, Trevor Noah, whoever he may be, is almost as bad as Jimmy Kimmel at the low ratings Academy Awards. Noah said incorrectly about me that Donald Trump and Bill Clinton spent time on Epstein Island. Wrong. I can't speak for Bill, but I have never been to Epstein Island, nor anywhere close. And until tonight's false and defamatory statement, never been accused of being there, not even by the fake news media. Noah, a total loser, better get his facts straight and get them straight fast. It looks like I'll be sending my lawyers to sue this poor, pathetic, talentless dope of an MC and suing him for plenty dollar sign. Ask little George Slopinopoulos and others how that all worked out. Also ask CBS. Get ready, Noah. I'm going to have some fun with you, President DJT, an actual message sent by the actual president of the United States of America. So he's going to sue Trevor Noah for making a joke about him and Bill Clinton visiting Epstein's Island? Enjoy discovery, friendo. Yeah, so Trump's whiz bang libel slander lawyer, Alejandro Brito, is going to have his hands full with that. Trump is also threatening again to sue journalist Michael Wolfe. Wolfe popped off on The Daily Beast about Epstein introducing Donald and Melania, after which Brito threatened to sue Wolfe. Wolfe then filed an anti-slapsuit in state court in New York and threatened to issue a shit ton of subpoenas to those who frequented or who were part of Epstein's circle, including Mr. Trump. Nice word. That is one way to make yourself an unattractive target. And I note that Michael Wolfe has not been sued, although the Trumps did remove the case to federal court. Well, perhaps Trevor Noah ought to take a page out of Wolfe's book, if and when he received such a demand letter from Brito and filed a preemptive slapsuit to kind of anchor it in some particular state, which is the point of that maneuver, so that you don't get dragged down to Florida. But last week, Trump really did file one of his bogus shakedown suits. Oh, God. This time against the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion, and since he's effectively the government, he's basically suing himself so he can cut himself a check. Yay, Maulument's Clause be damned. Yeah, let's, we'll get to that. So the case arises out of the actions of one Charles Littlejohn, a government contractor for Booze Allen who stole hundreds of thousands of tax documents and leaked them to news outlets in 2020. These were tax returns of some of the richest Americans, and they formed a basis for a whole bunch of Eat the Rich articles, particularly at ProPublica. I am very much in favor of Eat the Rich, particularly when they don't pay any goddamn taxes. Yeah, so among the returns Littlejohn leaked were Donald Trump's, the Trump organizations, and those of his two eldest sons. These returns were the subject of multiple stories in the New York Times in September of 2020, with titles like The President's Taxes, Long Concealed Records Show Trump's Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Abundance, which pissed Trump off a lot. He's filed multiple defamation suits against the authors of those stories as well without success. Littlejohn pled guilty in 2023 and was sentenced to five years in prison, and the Trump lawsuit against the IRS is based on the IRS's supposed failure to supervise contractors, which allowed Littlejohn unfettered access to the return and allowed him to ex-filtrate the data. Liz, remind me again who the president was in 2020, the person who had ultimate responsibility for supervising the IRS, supervising its contractors at a place, but okay, let's finish laying the insane groundwork. In 2022, the hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin sued the IRS for allowing Littlejohn to disclose his tax returns, and Griffin argued that the government violated the Privacy Act, five USC Section 552A, as well as the Internal Revenue Code, 26 USC Section 7431. Griffin demanded monetary damages and a commitment from the IRS to do better in the future. The government moved to dismiss Griffin's lawsuit on the theory that the IRS was not responsible for the illegal conduct of its contractors, but Judge Robert Scola said that was an open issue of fact and denied the motion, right? It's not ruling either way, but it's saying that that is an open question. The court did, however, dismiss Griffin's Privacy Act claim since he failed to adequately allege any real damages from the stories at ProPublica. That case got settled in 2024 for $0 and a public apology by the IRS, which then put out a press release saying the IRS takes its responsibilities seriously and acknowledges that it failed to prevent Mr. Littlejohn's criminal conduct and unlawful disclosure of Mr. Griffin's confidential data. Accordingly, the IRS assures Mr. Griffin and other victims of Mr. Littlejohn's actions that it has made substantial investments in its data security to strengthen its safeguarding of taxpayer information. But Donald Trump has something that Ken Griffin doesn't have, which is total control of the U.S. Treasury, so he filed functionally the same lawsuit attached to a demand for $10 billion. Oh, not zero? On the plus side, Alejandro Brito got to copy someone else's work this time, so unlike his usual... This is a lot less janky than his normal pleadings. I mean, that is very true, but there is still some crazy shit in here. Brito's theory of damages is that by disclosing Trump's true tax returns, the IRS allowed the New York Times to write a lot of fake stories about him mischaracterizing his perfect finances. Brito also says that plaintiffs incurred substantial financial and other damages, including having to defend against a meritless civil suit brought by the New York Attorney General based on a wrongful interpretation of unauthorized disclosures of these confidential tax returns and related tax information. You cannot recover because an independent prosecutor files a civil enforcement action against you, nor can you recover because journalists write mean, true words that hurt your feelings. There are also one or two tiny other problems with this lawsuit, if you can even believe it, like the fact that the statute of limitations runs two years after the discovery of the disclosure and the Times started writing articles based on 15 years of Trump's tax returns in September of 2020, which by my calculations is more than five years ago. And little John was arrested in 2023 by which point it was widely reported that he had leaked Trump's tax returns, that he was the guy. Well, Donald Trump has an answer for that. And that is that he did not discover those violations until January 29th of 2024 when the IRS sent him a letter informing him that little John had been sentenced. And then this case was filed on January 29th, 2026. So I mean, literally on the last day of the statute of limitations right under the watch. Yeah, but I have an answer for that. I have two answers in fact. You know what, let's do a little transcript read through for fun Z's. You can be judge honor as at little John sentencing on October 12, 2023. And I will be the mystery guest. I am getting the better of this bargain for sure. All right, as judge Ray is. Okay, you may be seated before I go on to accept or not accept this plea. Are there any victims or their representatives here today that would like to exercise their rights to be reasonably heard under the Crime Victims Rights Act? Yes, Your Honor. Please come up. Thank you, Your Honor, for the opportunity to be heard as an attorney. I find that I should probably state that I am not licensed in this state in the District of Columbia. I'm here on behalf of President Trump, who was a victim as we just heard of this atrocity. This was an egregious breach ma'am. I'm sorry. Could you just introduce yourself? Oh, excuse me. Yes. Alina Habba. This was an egregious breach by an agent of the IRS who targeted the president of the United States, among others for political purposes and personal gain. As we just heard in the statement of facts read into the record, President Trump's returns were turned over to the New York Times right before an election. As I also learned today, his return over before anyone else's. His returns were kept in a vault in the IRS because they were so sought after. A government agency and its contractors and employees have no business stealing the personal data of American citizens in reckless disregard, let alone the then sitting president. This likely cost my client thousands of votes and was all by design. Political motivation has no place in policing agencies or the justice system. This is a clear example of using the press to influence and interfere with an election. And I asked this court to send a strong message that this type of conduct will not be tolerated. All right. Well, ma'am, I'm not going to sentence him today as you know. I know. Oh, I knew we had not heard the last of Alina Habba on this show. But you said that sentence thing was in 2023. In October of 2023. That makes it a little awkward for Trump to claim he didn't know until January 29, 2024. Right. Since he sent Alina Habba to go insist that Little John be sent to jail forever and ever. And PS, Trump posted an article on Truth Social about Little John leaking his taxes. And that post was on November 22, 2023. So you can miss us with that theory that he did not know about the leak until January of 2024. Oh, Alejandro. But obviously, they don't really care about the real law here. And I improve to you that they don't care because they filed this case in the Southern District of Florida, where they risked winding up in front of Judge Donald Middlebrooks, who already sanctioned Trump and Alina Habba a million dollars for frowning that RICO troll suit against Hillary Clinton and two dozen other people. In fact, there are a couple of judges that they want no part of in SDFL. And the fact that they filed there is ample proof that they have no intention of actually litigating this case. Like the fake lawsuit over the Mar-a-Lago raid, which he, it's not really a lawsuit. It's an administrative claim. But Trump intends to loot the Treasury by settling with himself. Yeah. And like that Mar-a-Lago complaint, this one is also wholly barred by law. Although I do wonder, it got assigned to Judge Kathleen Williams? She's an Obama appointee. Okay. And I wonder if Judge Williams is going to take kindly to Trump abusing her courtroom in this way. So the question is, can she throw a spanner in the works? Can she slow this down in any way? And what comes to mind is an argument that the IRS, an executive branch agency, paying Donald Trump the President of the United States, violates the domestic emoluments clause. Remember, that's Article 2, Section 1, Clause 7. It says, the President shall receive for his services a compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the period for which he shall have been elected, and shall not receive within that period any other emolument from the United States or any of them. Obviously, the President paying himself $10 billion or $10 violates the Constitution. But I am concerned that the many emoluments clause cases, both foreign and domestic, from Trump's first term make it difficult to have standing. I know we can't go way down that rabbit trail now, but certainly individual taxpayers will lack standing to bring a domestic emoluments clause case, even though they ought to have it by legal rights. Perhaps members of Congress would have standing to bring the suit. I think they would have to be in the majority, but maybe we will retake the majority. I don't know. Yeah, and I would anticipate that some of these good government groups will try and intervene in this lawsuit to the extent that it's a real lawsuit, and not just an effort to kind of collude with the IRS attorneys and settle in favor of himself. Yeah, and I want to piggyback on that because if a party is admitted as an intervenor, as somebody having an interest in the outcome of the case, that would prevent being able to settle without their consent. Norm Eisen, I think that's your walk-off music, man. Okay, we're going to take a quick ad break, and then we will be right back to talk about the Kennedy Center. And we're back. In 1958, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower had a vision to create a world-class national cultural center in Washington, D.C. He signed bipartisan legislation to make that happen. It got built under President John F. Kennedy, and two months after Kennedy's assassination was renamed the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and designated as a permanent living memorial to President Kennedy. And then after Trump got elected, one of the first things he did was to fire the entire board of directors of the Kennedy Center and replace them with such luminaries as Rick Grinnell, the former ambassador to Germany during the first term, best known for causing an international incident by endorsing the far-right alternative for Deutschland Party. Trump also appointed his former campaign manager and current chief of staff, Suzy Wiles, his comms flak and former golf caddy, I should not dance guvino, a guy named Sergio Gore, who works in the White House. He's whatever, he's a pro-Trump super PAC dude, O'Shavence, whose vice president, Vance's wife, you get the idea. This is not people who are, you know, cultural luminaries. And the new board named Donald J. Trump as its chairman. Oh, he doesn't have anything else to do. I mean, you know, if that was the only thing he was breaking, I'd be like, great, give this man a hobby and get him out of here. But it's not, since he's burning the entire country down. I also take Umbridge at this. For a while, the only thing Trump did in his capacity as Kennedy Center chair was basically make it more unpalatable for any mainstream artists to perform there. Right. I mean, I think maybe they'll get Shen Yun. But there were all of these cancellations and Trump said, oh, yeah, if you cancel, we're going to sue you for all the money. Yeah, well, he threatened to sue them, but not even the most litigious man in America, right? A man whose name is literally synonymous with frivolous lawsuits actually filed lawsuits against artists for not doing a thing that they don't have to do. I mean, that was so unbelievably dumb as a threat. Right. So on December 19th, the board voted to rename the Kennedy Center to the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. And I guess they went to Home Depot and bought some letters that like kind of looked the same, but maybe not and stuck in above the Kennedy Center's actually actual name. They they like to deface shit. They left in both thus, right? So it is now the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Center for the it's ridiculous and not to belabor the point. It's 100% not legal. The Kennedy Center's name is fixed by an act of Congress. It is 20 USC section 76. I it says that the building is quote to be designated as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, not the temple to the patron saint of the arts, Donald Trump or whatever they decide to make it. Right. And after Trump named yet another thing after himself and defaced the front of the building, basically everybody else who was scheduled to play the Kennedy Center bail. Right. So there's no Hamilton, no Philip Glass, no Renee Fleming, no Stephen Schwartz, no Washington National Opera, no US Marine Band. Yes, the band created by an act of Congress in 1798, affectionately known as the president's own band would not play at the president's own Kennedy Center. I mean, would you know? So over the weekend, Trump announces on Truth Social that he's shutting down the Kennedy Center for two years to renovate it, even though it was renovated and expanded in 2019. He says you gotta read this one. This important decision based on input from many highly respected experts will take a tired, broken and dilapidated center, one that has been in bad condition both financially and structurally for many years and turned it into a world class bastion of arts, music and entertainment far better than it ever was before. Sure. As to what that renovation is going to be, Trump suggests putting in marble arm rests in every seat, which like, ow, how padded are your elbows, weirdo. I mean, I have seen the back of his hand, so like, maybe he does have a marble arm rest. I do not know. Well, all of that is also, this will not surprise you, Liz, wildly illegal. And I have to hair off to a story about the crazies. But to get there, we do have to understand how the Kennedy Center is funded. So again, the Kennedy Center Act 20 USC section 76i that named it, it also authorized the board of the Kennedy Center to construct it under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, quote, with funds raised by voluntary contributions, right, Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower, President Kennedy, right, they raised tens of millions of dollars, it was not built with tax money. That is why it actually took until 1971 to open. But after it opened, the Kennedy Center's performances are largely self sustaining from the public records, about 80% of its annual operating budget year over year comes from ticket revenues and donations, 20% comes from a line item in the annual federal budget. That 20% are funds allocated by Congress for the operation maintenance and upkeep of the Kennedy Center with the express instruction that it serve as a living memorial. Right. And let's be clear, most cultural institutions are sustained by gifts, they're not sustained by, they're not profitable in the traditional sense. Right. Okay. But as you might imagine, the 80-20 split became a crisis during COVID, because in 2020, the Kennedy Center had to cancel all of its performances. So there was zero ticket revenue, and that put it more than $100 million in the hole. And so during 2020, the last year of his first term, Trump signed the CARES Act that had $2 trillion in stimulus. And of that $2 trillion, $25 million went to the Kennedy Center. Yeah. And that is $2 trillion of which $25 million went to the Kennedy Center. So a little quick math that is less than 1,000th of 1%. And by the way, that was money promised by Donald Trump. And even with that $25 million infusion, the Kennedy Center still needed to temporarily lay off a lot of employees. Right. Like, you don't need a lot of ticket takers and ushers when there aren't any tickets to take or people to show to their seats. So enter the party of conspiracy cranks. They got out the pushpins and strings. So you see, it really must have secretly been Nancy Pelosi that snuck in a secret $25 million into the CARES Act. And then the Kennedy Center laid off all its employees anyway, and illegally funneled that money to the DNC and none of that ever happened. But it did lead certain Republican members of Congress to send a letter to the Kennedy Center demanding that it explain all of its furloughs, layoffs, or reductions in pay and identify, quote, a delineated explanation of expenses for the Kennedy Center, wink, wink, which it did, right, which did not stop the conspiracy theories about laundering money for Democrats from spreading to this very day. Yeah. In fact, one of the things that Rick Grinnell first said when he got to the board was that he was going to refer for criminal prosecution, the prior board members, because of said expropriation of funds. That didn't happen because the theft never happened. But that's who's in charge of the police now. David Rubenstein went on to buy the Baltimore Orioles. So he's doing okay. Right. So, okay, to be clear, they can't burn this institution down the way they've done so many other things because many Republicans really do appreciate the cultural significance of the Kennedy Center, right? Republicans go to the opera and the symphony and to Hamilton. They like to have a beautiful place to get their medal of honor and whatever. It's a world-class cultural center. It's in our nation's capital. Right. And I think that's part of the larger story here, right, that Trump can tear down a lot of things. Thanks, Chief Justice Roberts. Yeah. And like bulldoze even the East Wing and slap his name on whatever. But he cannot arrogate, steal cultural cache for himself. He cannot erect a monument to himself and have people worship it, right? And try. Yeah. So, Trump puts out this statement that says, like, I'm shutting it down. It'll be amazing. But the reality, which CNN reported today, is that he didn't shut it down. There were no artists left. There was nothing, nothing scheduled for the 2026, 2027 season. These board members who were supposed to make the Kennedy Center great again couldn't get anybody there, right? Ticket revenues were down for the artists who didn't leave. And then there weren't any more artists going to be booked. Yeah. And just to end with one more provision of the Kennedy Center Act, 20 USC section 76J says that the board of the Kennedy Center shall present classical and contemporary music, opera, drama, dance, and other performing arts from the United States and other countries, that they shall develop and maintain various educational and community outreach programs, that they shall provide facilities for civic activities and provide a living suitable memorial in honor of the late president. And I don't know how they're going to do that with nobody willing to play. But maybe that's something Trump should have thought about before he named himself chair. Yeah, I don't, I don't understand how you can shut this down or do renovations without approval by Congress. I suspect that there is going to be hearings about that particularly of Democrats. Yeah, there's a lot of shells in there. And this is a national monument. There are going to be so many agencies which should sign off on this. But okay, I want to end with another quick docket alert. Since it broke just as we were sitting down. And that is that Judge Ana Reyes in the district court for the District of Columbia has blocked the Department of Homeland Security from canceling temporary protected status for Haitians. There has been a lot of fear in the Haitian community, particularly in Ohio, that their temporary protected status is going to get yanked out from under them by the by Noam arbitrarily and super racistly, saying I undo what my predecessor has done without any procedural, just by fiat without any procedural requirements. And I just, I want to read this conclusion from Judge Reyes's order. It says, there's an old adage among lawyers, if you have the facts on your side, pound the facts, if you have the law on your side, pound the law, if you have neither pound the table, Secretary Noam, the record-to-date shows does not have the facts on her side or at least has ignored them, does not have the law on her side or at least has ignored it, having neither and bringing the adage into the 21st century, she pounds X, FKA Twitter. Kristi Noam has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies and any other in-app name she wants. Secretary Noam, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act to apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program. The record-to-date shows she has yet to do that. District court judges doing the work. Always, every time. Okay, that is going to do it for us today. We will be back Thursday with written content and Friday with another podcast. We so appreciate you hanging out with us and if you are a subscriber at patreon.com slash law and chaos pod or lawandchaospod.com, we have actually a really substantial subscriber bonus on the lawsuit by survivors of the boat strikes in the Caribbean. Do not want to miss that one. Andrew is going to geek out so hard, you guys. All right, that's going to do it for us. You know how to subscribe and we would, of course, appreciate it if you would leave us a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice. See you guys.