Ep 235 — The Only Thing Bigger Than The UFC Claw Is The Grift

When you put the right things together, boom! Great things happen. It's like having a chat with the Cambridge Building Society. You'll always find us in Tune with You. The Cambridge Building Society. Borggers and savings. We can work it out. I want to cut my energy bill. Can solar panels help? Yes, that's good energy. And they'll help lower my carbon emissions too. That's good energy. And I can get paid for the energy I don't use. Yes, that's good energy. And you have 25 years experience in-house engineers and a five-star rating on trust pilots. Yes, that's good energy. Sounds great. One more thing. The solar panel's battery is another hardware. It's all quality tech that's built to last. Of course. Making solar simpler for your home. That's good energy. Visit goodenergy.co.uk. This is not demolishing the east wing of the White House. This is not polluting the Potomac, right? This is a big, ugly building. But again, assuming that Trump is trolling, is a big, ugly building that's coming down in a week? Yeah, I have a couple of problems with this. I mean, first of all, why the hell did you guys wait so long? Yeah. Right? You knew this was coming. And that there's functionally no time to make this happen. What, are we like five days out or something? That's, it's not, you know, and two of those are weekend days. Welcome to Law and Chaos. We've got a cage match on the White House lawn, enforcers in the Department of Justice, and the president's D-list lawyers who have decided if Trump picked the judge, that means deadlines are totally optional. All that plus a subscriber bonus on how there are only four religions in the world, and they're all Christianity. We've got a lot to cover, so let's get after it. Hey, guys, I'm Liz Dianne with me as always as Andrew Torres. Andrew, how are you? I am all right. I am recuperating from a rather nasty cold, but I'm on the upswing. Did you have a nice weekend? I had a lovely weekend. It was pretty restful. I mean, I did work a little bit, but I got out to see my family and got some exercise, so it was good. How about you? I did much of the same, so I'm glad to hear that. And I want to say a big note of appreciation. I want to send that out to our listeners. Thank you for being patient with us as we take care of some of the back-end server migration issues. I am very, very sorry if you got spammed with like 30 or 40 episodes of long chaos in your, what is it, overcast? That's what I use. I got it. I'm sorry. Not going to happen again. We're caught up if you still have any lingering issues. Hit us up on social media. That is at lisdai.bsky.com or wherever she is on Bluestone. I can be found. Don't you worry. OK, we have 11 million stories today. I'm actually a little worried that we have too many stories. There's just, there wasn't a big Supreme Court ruling today, so there isn't one main story. So we are filling you in on, I don't know, 1,000, maybe 400, minor stories. But first, talk it alerts. And we will start off with our doofus of the day, who is George Santos. You know, I always knew he had it in him. Yeah. Santos is, of course, the former New York congressman and serial fabulous who pled guilty to identity theft and wire fraud and then was pardoned by Trump. But apparently Santos misses his pals back in the pokey since he is now back in law enforcement's crosshairs. I don't want to step on a good joke. But I think maybe the more parsimonious explanation is that George Santos is literally unable to stop himself from running scams and that he's pretty sure that Donald Trump will bail him out again either on the front end by killing any federal investigation into his crimes or with another pardon. Yeah, that tracks. So in February, this doofus starts saying on Twitter that he's definitely going to the state of the union market. He will be there. At the same time, he is on Cal-C placing bets against him showing up. And I'm sure you can see where this is going. Yeah. We need a new name for these sites. I like that they keep trying to rebrand themselves as prediction markets. But they're more like rigged casinos. Degenerate markets, rigged predictor, scam up haluzas. I like that last one. It's catchy. Yeah. So obviously, Santos does not show up to hear Trump ramble. But instead of handing him his winnings, Cal-C throws his accounts and referred the apparent insider training to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Department of Justice, both of which open investigations. I'm as surprised as you are. And we know this because NPR reporter Bobby Allen reported it on June 2. Although, honestly, I'm a little confused because I thought the entire point of these prediction markets was that insider trading was good, actually. It's like the all-steroid Olympics for gambling. You laugh. But I am almost positive that Cal-C sold contracts for how many world records will get broken at the all-steroid Olympics that they really did have. But by the way, it was one. Yeah. Well, George Santos has to commit at least four crimes a day. He has a quota, or he breaks out in hives. So after the story comes out, the original story, he calls up Allen, that's the NPR reporter, and screams at him, which is par for the course. But then he says, this story is going to get you a gun in your face. That escalated quickly. Yeah. So that's pretty definitively crimey, although Santos denies having said it. I mean, who are you going to believe, an NPR reporter or George freakin' Santos? Wait, but here's the cherry on top of this doofus Sunday. This man had a promotion deal with Polymarket, Cal-C's direct competitor. Had, as in past tense? Correct. He has now lost that deal thanks to his shenanigans on Cal-C. I'm just glad that his criminal proclivities are only exceeded by his incompetence. Well, speaking of incompetence, Sam Bankman-Freed has formally requested a pardon from the president. Is that incompetence? I mean, that sounds like a fairly canny assessment of the realities of living in a corrupt personalist regime. Yeah, I hate that you're right. But you are totally right. I mean, very clearly, Sam Bankman-Freed did not want to pay his lawyers anymore. I mean, that's why he got in trouble for having his law professor mommy file stuff on his behalf that was denominated as pro se. Yeah. Look, obviously, he's done the math. He's realized that he's not getting out through the appeals process. This is the only door left that might open for him. Yeah, and considering that a pardon would likely wipe out some of his forfeiture obligations to pay back money that he stole, that would be great for him. I hadn't even thought of that aspect. So yeah, I would bet that Bankman-Freed gets out before Trump leaves office, especially since he was sentenced by Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is the judge who presided over the Eugene Carroll cases. Oh my god, he's going to be out in a week. Well, keep an eye on Polymarket. I'm in Calci. I suspect this is another one that you're going to be able to predict based on an uptick in certain trades. Are you suggesting that young Sam would have someone place bets against his release if he were pretty sure he was getting a pardon? How dare you, sir? OK, this is all crazy making. So let's end this segment with a nice story. Today, Judge Leo Sorokin of the District of Massachusetts struck down Trump's order imposing $100,000 fee on all H-1B visa applications. H-1Bs are temporary visas for non-immigrant foreign workers in specialty occupations. And since this administration wants to keep out all immigrants, it tried to effectively end those visas by taxing them out of existence. In September, Trump signed Proclamation 10973, which added a $100,000 supplemental payment requirement for every H-1B petition. The stated rationale was that the program had been, quote, deliberately exploited to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor. The Proclamation spewed a lot of invective about foreign tech workers replacing US citizens. It was, however, conspicuously silent about public schools, universities, and hospitals, where there are also a huge number of immigrants on H-1B visas serving in critical roles there, teaching Americans and providing us with medical care. Yeah, so 20 states sued because the policy would obviously have deleterious effects on their ability to staff schools and hospitals. They insist that changing this policy violated the Administrative Procedure Act because it was arbitrary and capricious, and because there was a notice and comment period. There were hoops that the administration had to jump through, and as per usual, they just didn't. But the state's primary argument was that this change violated the separation of powers because the $100,000 fee was actually a tax, and only Congress can impose taxes. And Judge Sorokin agreed with that analysis. He held that the $100,000 payment is indeed a tax, not some kind of regulatory fee or something otherwise within the jurisdiction of the president to just order. The Proclamation cited two provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, INA, as legal justification for his right to impose the tax, Section 212F, which allows the president to, quote, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or non-immigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. You may remember that section from Trump's Muslim ban in his first term. And Section 215A, which says, unless otherwise ordered by the president, it shall be unlawful for any alien to enter or attempt to enter the United States, except under such reasonable rules, regulations, and orders, and subject as to such limitations and exceptions as the president may prescribe. So, right, the argument basically boils down to that broad-ranging language, any restrictions, means that the president can cut off all immigration by fiat, he can regulate it, so if so fat so, he can also impose a tax on it because that's a lesser included, even if that tax is designed to make it so expensive that no immigrants will come. Right, so before we get to Judge Sorokin's holding, we should say that Judge Barrell Howell in the District Court for DC. Our favorite barrel. Right, she held the opposite. She said in a case brought by the Chamber of Commerce that this $100,000 levy was a fee, not a tax, and thus it was within the president's immigration authorities. But Judge Sorokin held the opposite, and he relied heavily on learning resources for Trump, aka the tariff case, where the Supreme Court said that you cannot infer a delegation of Congress's core powers from ambiguous statutory language. So that's also referred to as the major questions, doctrine. If Congress wants to allow the executive to do something big, like regulate pollution, Congress has to say so explicitly. And if it's going to give away its taxing authority, it really has to be specific. Judge Sorokin did not include the famous Scalia quote about Congress not hiding elephants in mouse holes, but that is basically his holding. If Congress had intended to allow the president to tax immigration out of existence in these H-1B visas, Congress would have said so. Yeah, instead, what Congress said was fees for providing adjudication and naturalization services may be set at a level that will ensure recovery of the full costs of providing all such services, including the costs of similar services provided without charge to asylum applicants or other immigrants. Such fees may also be set at a level that will recover any additional costs associated with the administration of the fees collected. Right, and obviously it doesn't cost $100,000 to administer. To process these. Right, to process these applications, that's ridiculous. This is far in excess of what is proscribed by the statute. Okay, so now we have two competing opinions from two district court judges. One in the DC Circuit, that's Judge Howell, who sits on the US District Court in the District of Columbia, and one from Judge Sorokin in Massachusetts, which is in the first circuit. So how do these two things work together? Yeah, actually, this is so clever. And it calls back to that dispute over the medical record of trans children at Rhode Island Hospital. Listeners may remember that the Department of Justice Forum shopped that case to Judge Reed O'Connor in Fort Worth, Texas, knowing that he is basically one of the only judges in the country who would say, oh, sure, I have jurisdiction over a hospital. Claire Cross, a country in Rhode Island, right? Yeah. Yeah, and Judge O'Connor granted the DOJ's motion to enforce the subpoena for those children's records. Then the hospital went to Judge Mary McElroy in the District of Rhode Island, where the hospital was located, and asked her to block enforcement. And she said, how about I just quash that subpoena entirely rather than get into a dispute with a fellow District Court judge? Then there's no subpoena to enforce. We are actually going to come back and talk about that case in the next segment. But here, Judge Sorokin did effectively the same thing. What he did was vacate, quote, the policy materials implementing the proclamation's $100,000 payment requirement, which is cutting this off at the root. Right, exactly the same as Judge McElroy did. And that also gets around the problem of universal injunctions, which, as we know, are not a thing anymore thanks to the Supreme Court. So instead of debating whether he can enjoin the practice across the country, he's like, screw that. I will just cut this off at the root. Poof, the policy is gone, and it cannot be enforced by anyone anywhere. I love it. And I appreciate that blue state judges are suiting up to play hardball. I do worry that this might get stayed by the First Circuit, and I worry even more that it might get stayed at the Supreme Court. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I worry. Look, the First Circuit is not dying to get into a pissing match with other circuit courts and would rather let this kind of play out. And I think Judge Sorokin is in the minority. Some of these other cases have preliminary injunctions, but not final orders. And so that they're not. But they have come out the other way. There's more than one case pending on this topic. And again, we mentioned Judge Howell. Right, right. And I think that the Supreme Court is so deferential to presidential power that even if it came out on Judge Sorokin's side, eventually, I bet you, dollars to donuts, they would let this policy go into effect pending that. I think that the policy will wind up getting killed other ways because it's so, I mean, it's so destructive, right? Yeah, well, how do you think that interfaces with the point you made on the tariffs case and also on the birthright citizenship case that this could be an example of where the Supreme Court seeks to save Donald Trump from himself before the midterms? Right, right. I mean, I think H1B visas are relied on by a lot of people that Donald Trump spends time with, like all of these tech people. And the order, the proclamation, really, invade against all importing tech workers from other countries. But I think that it's just too destructive. It's too destructive to take away all of these rural doctors and people who are here on H1B visas. I think that the administration would kill this policy or not appeal it or quietly let it go in some way just because they don't wanna eat the political fallout. But look, the political fallout from tariffs was pretty bad and they stuck with that. So what the hell do I know? Okay, we're gonna take a quick ad break and then we're gonna come back and talk about Donald Trump's lawyer fun times in Florida. Stick with us. ["The World's Most Beautiful"] Hey, hey, chaos monkeys. It's getting hot in our part of the world and if you are like me, you're probably in need of a little wardrobe reset. You want pieces that are lightweight and classic, feel good and they look effortless. That's why I keep coming back to Quints. 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They also have housewares, kitchen goods and they make it easy to bring a more premium feel into your everyday life. So elevate your summer wardrobe and your home by going to quints.com slash law and chaos for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash law and chaos for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com slash law and chaos. ["Dark and Alert"] Okay, we got one more dark and alert. This one is from Florida where Donald Trump's sparkle magic lawyer Alejandro Brito is discovering that showing is fun, but reaping sucks a lot. Discovery? Who could have seen that coming in a defamation lawsuit? And also threatening to litigate is easy, but actually litigating is an extremely unpleasant paperwork and other work intensive slog. Right, so this is in Trump's troll suit against the BBC for tortuous editing. They spliced together two parts of his January 6 speech on the ellipse which suggested the edit itself, jam two pieces of the speech together. It suggested that he told his followers to go attack Congress. I mean, anyway, I'm sorry, go on. I mean, yes, obviously that's how his followers interpreted it, but the documentary in question never aired in the US. So there's really no, there's no venue for this case anywhere. But Trump did indeed file in the Southern District of Florida and has insisted that obviously people in Florida got to watch it because they used a VPN or something. He landed on the docket of Judge Roy Altman, one of his own appointees. It is not clear to me yet whether Altman intends to turn himself into the next Judge Eileen Cannon. Yeah, me neither. I suspect it depends on whether there's an opening at the 11th Circuit. Yeah, so far, I mean, the record is ambiguous. He has given Trump broad latitude for discovery, allowing him to take discovery before dismissing the case, which it pretty clearly will get dismissed because as we said, that documentary was never aired in Florida. He has allowed Trump to take discovery and waste a lot of the BBC's time and money. And can I say typically in federal court when there is a threshold issue like that, courts will confine discovery to the discovery you need to adjudicate the motion to dismiss. Like you could take discovery on who are your listeners. That's not the broad range. Right, right, right. And Judge Altman has another one of these Trump tortious debanking cases. This one's against Capital One because it cut its accounts after January 6th. And in that one, he really bent over backward. In fact, he kind of dismissed the case, but gave Trump another post-dismissal time to get discovery on Capital One and then amend his complaint and see if he could get it right. So clearly, Judge Altman is bending over backwards to let Trump, for lack of a better word, bleed his opponents before ditching the cases because they're super crap. And consistent with that, Judge Altman denied the BBC's request to postpone discovery until after Judge Altman rules on the motion to dismiss. And Trump is, predictably, taking advantage of that opportunity to go spelunking inside the BBC's internal files and documents. And can I just take a little practitioner's dog like you? Absolutely. Because it really looks to me as though Trump's lawyers have bitten off way more than they can chew. Oh, yeah. Right, I mean, Trump is represented on this outing by three of his regular bottom of the barrel lawyers. That's the aforementioned Alejandro Brito, Daniel Epstein, and Andrew Paltzik. Brito has three associates under his roof. He is the only partner. Epstein is a solo practitioner. And Paltzik is of counsel. He's basically a solo practitioner who's loosely affiliated with a firm in Houston. And look, I have nothing against solo practitioners. I am a solo practitioner. But as a responsible solo practitioner, I know that I am not set up for massive discovery intensive litigation that will involve millions of pages of documents, hundreds of hours of video, dozens of depositions, thousands of hours of labor. Even if I combined forces with a couple other solos, that would still not be the labor you need to handle a case of the supposed magnitude. Look, this lawsuit by Trump demanded $10 billion, which is ridiculous. But let's pretend that it was really just overinflated by an order of magnitude. Is really a billion dollar defamation suit? Well, what was the last billion dollar defamation suit that we saw in the, like, Dominion v. Fox? That was the one that Fox settled on the morning of trial for $787 million. I guarantee you Fox and Dominion, they each had multiple coat factory law firm. They probably 30 lawyers per side, right? When I was a baby lawyer back at Covicton at the Lake Cretaceous, one of the first cases I worked on was the Exxon Mopo merger. And like, look, I don't care what kind of AI doc prep you're feeding your discovery to, like, you cannot do that job. You cannot process the sheer volume of information coming in without a conference room full of recent law grads pouring over documents until their eyeballs bleed, okay? Like, I've been there. So, Brito, my point on all of this is, Brito waltzing in with his two dipshit pals and said, hey, it's us, Curly, Larry, Moe, we're here to litigate. That's what we, it is comical, right? Like, none of these are set up in any way to actually litigate this case. Yeah, I mean, I think what they do, and I've seen them do it a lot, Brito, Poltzik and Epstein, is they file these ridiculous suits and then they wait for the target to settle because Trump has so much power as president to extort them, whether it's ABC or the IRS, they're not really intending to litigate because they couldn't, as you said, they could not possibly litigate. But this week, that came around to bite them. Yeah, in two ways, right? So the first is that Trump, as Plaintiff asked, for millions of pages of discovery that, again, his lawyers cannot possibly process. But he seemed not to anticipate that the BBC would also get discovery, right? So the BBC has consistent, this is not retaliatory, this is not inappropriate. If this is really a $10 billion defamation case, you would expect the defendant to do what the BBC did, which was to subpoena 47 third parties, including members of Trump's family, members of President Trump's cabinet, and multiple federal agencies. Right, Ballard Spar, BBC hired a big coat factory law firm, which is what normal people do in a real lawsuit like this. And remember, this is a libel suit. Trump's argument is that the BBC defamed him by making it seem like he fomented violence. So Brito says, well, what do Trump's idiot kids or the White House counsel have to do with whether the broadcast made it look like he said something he didn't? And the problem with that argument is that the BBC is gonna move to dismiss on the grounds that the impression they gave viewers with that truncated clip is substantially true. Because remember, defamation involves publication, falsity, damage, and in the case of public figures, actual malice. So the BBC is gonna wanna ask, you know, former acting attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and former White House counsel Pat Cipolloni, hey, did you guys tell the president that if he went out there and addressed the crowd, they were likely to interpret it as an invitation to go attack Congress? And the BBC's gonna subpoena the secret service guy driving the limo that day and say, hey, did he ask you to take him to the Capitol, he being Trump? And they're gonna ask the DOJ, did anyone ever explore charging Trump with incitement? And the answer to that one is yes, and we know that from Jack Smith. Right, the BBC's argument is that all of that inquiry goes directly to the truth or falsity of their reporting. Right, one of the key elements of Trump's case, he asked to prove that it was false. They say, quote, in short, to prevail in this case, plaintiff, that is Trump, must prove that he did not foment or incite the January 6th Capitol riot. Plaintiff has placed that question directly at issue in bringing this libel suit. He cannot now prevent defendants from seeking records that could shed light on his true knowledge, intent, and state of mind in delivering his speech at the ellipse. And under the federal rules, discovery is very broad and the standard for what it is, it is anything that is reasonably likely to lead to the discovery of potentially admissible evidence. Right, like, and all of that is in fact relevant. Of course it is. So that dispute has not yet been resolved. We don't know if Judge Altman would put his thumb on the scale for Trump. But in the meantime, June 5th was the deadline for Trump to respond to the BBC's motion to dismiss. My blood pressure is ticking up, just thinking about this bit. I know. We talked about it over the weekend. You may surmise that Trump did not file his opposition even after he had already asked for and gotten an extension on the deadline. Instead, he filed a motion for leave to file excess pages on that opposition along with a motion to seal the exhibits to said opposition whenever he manages to get around to filing. Just to make this polusively clear for our non-lawyer listeners, those kinds of requests to modify the form of a filing do not stay the filing deadline. I mean, anybody who has been a civil litigator for more than 10 minutes knows this, right? I cannot imagine what Brito is playing at here. Well, neither could Judge Altman. Here is the minute order he put out this morning. The plaintiffs' response to the defendant's motion to dismiss was due on June 5th, 2026. Rather than timely file his response, the plaintiff filed two 11th hour procedural motions the day his response was due. Neither motion explained why the plaintiff delayed so long in seeking the requested relief or asked that we extend the response deadline pending our adjudication of the motions. And as of this writing, the plaintiff has missed the deadline to file his response. Accordingly, we hereby order that by June 10th, the plaintiff shall file a notice on the docket explaining one, whether we should consider the motion to dismiss unopposed, and two, why we shouldn't sanction the plaintiff's counsel for their apparent disregard of court deadlines. I love all of this, but another little practice tip. If a judge uses the royal we, right? Refers to himself in the first person plural. This is a judge who takes his own authority very seriously. And if you disrespect that authority by blowing off deadlines, ah, they get safe to assume he's gonna go apshit on you even if he kinda wants to be on your side. Yeah, it's really funny because it was a 20 page and he asked for excess pages to go to 30 page. This motion to dismiss was filed in March, right? Like that goes to your whole point. If you cannot manage, they asked for an extension because they're like, we're trying real hard to file this 30 page motion dismiss. Like no friend, if you are not able to manage a motion to dismiss, you are not able to handle litigation of this magnitude. It's just further proof. Two things there. Number one, Ballard Spark could turn around a 30 page motion or opposition in one day. Oh, absolutely. That's what having a big firm does for you. And number two, procedurally what you do here. If this was not just pretext to try and not file on time because they can't file on time, what you would have done is you file that motion to file an over length brief, you file a motion to seal and then at the same time, you file your over length brief with the redactions in it and you send an unredacted copy to chamber. In other words, you can assume for purposes of the docket that the motion is going to be granted, particularly if they're unopposed as they were in this case. But like you can take that, but you don't get to just like hang out and wait and see what the court does. Like no lawyer would behave that way. Yeah, well, except, except that they did. Okay, we will watch this one. I suspect that there will be some fun fireworks, but today is Tuesday, the day that we thank our new subscribers. Yeah, a big thank you to our new subscribers on Patreon at patreon.com slash law and chaos pod. Big thanks to the broke law student. We really appreciate that one. David Telly, Andrew Slaughter, Emily, Jason Feldman, Braden Parrot, Kristen Wibena, Novus, Phil Tremblay, Alyssa Requiem, Peter Dodzik and Frank Schachtner. And on Substack at lawandchaospod.com, thank you to Mark Nielsen, Jonah, M.M. Jackie, Arne J.M.47G, catchy, rolls off the tongue. Elizabeth Alfano Pavadoffa, and thank you to Scott. And if you'd like to join the ranks, you know how to do that, just head on over either to our Substack at lawandchaospod.com or to Patreon at patreon.com slash law and chaos pod. Sign up, give us as little as a buck an episode and you will get all of these episodes ad free. You will get my monthly super nerd ball deep dives. You will get our extended episodes on this one. You'll get all the cool things that we want to give to the people who help us stay on the air. All right, thank you to our new subscribers and we will be back in a hot second to talk about the uploading DOJ unless you are a subscriber, in which case, no ads for you, not today, not ever. So we often talk on this show about the disintegration of the Justice Department under Donald Trump. And we need to do just like a mini roundup of stories from the past week illustrating how everything goes to shit when you turn an institution that was dedicated to competence and justice and you turn it into a new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, into a political arm of the White House, which the only function is to hurt the president's enemies and protect his friends. Like, yes, of course, prosecutors are not your friend. I'm not saying like, Comey is my homie or all of the things that we embarrassing shit that we said in other eras, right? The DOJ was not a perfect agency, but it wasn't this. So let's illustrate this with a clip from Oral Argument in the DC circuit last week over the ballroom case because I think this is kind of a perfect illustration of how far we have fallen. The connection that one has. The government decided very quickly and bulldozed the Statue of Liberty, the people who, ancestors, that was the first thing they saw coming to this country, but the government moved too fast. Nothing can be done. I think that's right, it has. Okay, that is Yakov Roth, a highly experienced lawyer who's been practicing law long enough that he clerked for justice and an inscalate. This is not one of the newbies that they throw to the wolves, right? And Roth has to get up there and pretend that it would be A-okay for Trump to tear down the Statue of Liberty. This is what working for Donald Trump will do to you. And it's not just Trump's dingus personal lawyers who are facing professional repercussions for the stupid things that they say and do in court. Remember, we said we had an update in the dispute over the Rhode Island Hospital Medical Records case. That's the one where Judge Mary McElroy in Rhode Island quashed the DOJ subpoena for hospital records for children in Rhode Island after the DOJ secretly went to a court in Texas to enforce its administrative subpoena. So on May 14th, Judge McElroy issued an order quashing the subpoena and reading the attorneys on that case for filth. She said, DOJ has proven unworthy of trust at every point in this case. It is misrepresented and withheld information to both this court and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, its representatives have under oath misrepresented salient facts. And she said, this reckless disregard for the duty of candor owed to a federal court is appalling. And which it is. Yeah, and that language is reminiscent of the language used by Judge April Perry in Chicago about the DOJ's conduct in the Broadview Six case. Right, that was right before Judge Perry said, hey, let's set up a briefing schedule to talk about sanctions. So here in Rhode Island, Judge McElroy put out an order last week saying, because of the representations made to this court by the respondents attorneys, as well as the findings of the court in its order of May 14th, this matter is referred for further proceedings under Rhode Island District Court Local Rule 210B. I cannot believe. I actually know what Rhode Island District Court Local Rule 210B is. I do, because we talked about it in episode 228. That was the case in which Assistant US Attorney Kevin Bolin, who is the head of the Civil Division at the US Attorney's Office for Rhode Island, deliberately hid the fact that a habeas petitioner was wanted for murder from Judge Melissa Dubose. So when Judge Dubose then ordered that petitioner released without knowing that rather critical piece of information, DHS, she suspects having set her up, turned around and tweeted out her name and smeared her as soft on crime. Which is a pretty clear cut lack of candor to the court by Bolin, who is, by the way, an experienced lawyer, like Jacob Roth. Bolin practiced he was a white shoe lawyer in Boston for years before going to work for the DOJ. So he knows better. Yeah. And in Rhode Island, unlike most states where attorney discipline matters are handled entirely separately by the state bar, Rhode Island allows judges to investigate attorneys themselves. So Judge Dubose referred Bolin for investigation under the aforementioned rule 210B and Chief Judge John McConnell appointed a special counsel to investigate the matter that is ongoing. That's what we talked about two weeks ago. That's how we know. Right. And now Judge McElroy just referred this whole shit show where Justice Department lawyers lied to her face under that same rule. Yeah, I can see this one getting ugly real fast. Remember, the Justice Department is currently taking the position that only it can investigate government lawyers for misconduct. They say that state bars are powerless to police federal employees, which is very much not the law. But if the federal judges in Rhode Island start appointing special counsels to investigate the conduct of lawyers for main justice, this is going to blow up right quick. I mean, look, this is already a dumpster fire. The DOJ lied, lied in court to get itself in front of Judge O'Connor in Texas. And now you have basically dueling court orders. But if the district court in Rhode Island starts appointing outside lawyers to knock on the Justice Department's door in DC and demand to interview people, this is going to, this is going to be a knockdown, drag out fight. Yeah, because they will not comply with those orders. No, absolutely not. Yeah. OK, one more story in our recurring segment that the Justice Department is on fire. This was a doozy from New York Times reporter Devlin Barrett that he published this morning. It's captioned, how the drive to find a conspiracy against Trump rocked the Justice Department. And it is about parallel efforts at the DOJ and the FBI to extract revenge on Trump's enemies and prove all of his insane conspiracy theories were actually true. Obviously, James Comey features prominently in this story since he's at the intersection of so many of these conspiracy theories. Like he's in Russia, he's in Hillary Clinton's emails, he's in Mike Flynn. Right, he's on the beach taking pictures of seashells. And look, we know about these prosecutions. They have been widely reported. This story, though, looks at them less as cases of a prosecutor with a target in search of a crime and more as a broader conspiracy theory getting bounced around the country in search of a prosecutor willing to bend the law and betray his professional ethics to treat it like a crime in charge. So the article starts with Kashmitell discovering what he described on Joe Rogan's podcast as burn bags of incriminating evidence. This conspiracy theory has been widely debunked that the department doesn't have to keep every copy of every piece of paper. And they obviously had the documents stored electronically. There was nothing that was not duplicated there. And nothing was hidden, right? But Patel marched down to Todd Gilbert, the newly-installed US attorney in the Western District of Virginia, and said, I want you to indict James Comey for all of this burn bag stuff, and also for lying to Congress. And also please indict CIA director John Brennan, because I'm pretty sure he lied to Congress too. And Gilbert was like, dude, I don't have jurisdiction over testimony to Congress in DC, what are you talking about? And these burn bag things aren't a crime. And also Todd Blanche, Jesus Christ, can you help me out here? Because I'm not supposed to be taking orders from the FBI director. After which they then moved to the Eastern District of Virginia. And we all know what happened there. We, you and I have talked about this on the show a lot. That was when the competent US attorney, Eric Sebert, said, there's nothing to charge. So the Trump administration fired him and shoved in Lindsay Halligan, who did, to fairness to her, give them the indictments of both Comey and New York Attorney General, Leticia James, but not for long. Yeah. So one thing that comes through in this article is how Todd Blanche is trying real hard not to leave any of his own fingerprints on this mess. The article says that he sends in his enforcers, many of whom have zero prosecutorial experience to lean on US attorneys in the States to indict these cases. Yeah, let's say the names here, right? This is Akash Singh, Christopher James DeLorenz, and Diego Pastana. They are well known inside the Department of Justice as Blanche's bros. These goons are dispatched to lean on US attorneys to bring these politically motivated cases. Singh's involvement in the Abrego Garcia case in Tennessee led to it getting dismissed for vindictive prosecution, right? Singh called up the district attorney and demanded a timeframe and daily updates and to see drafts of the indictment. And the prosecutor had to go into court and say, oh, no, I was just keeping the Department of Justice in the loop. The communications were all one way. That's what he actually said at that hearing. And the preside, look, we're all lawyers here. The presiding judge is a lot like, we all know that the person who sets the deadline is either the client or your boss. So it seems highly likely to me the Comey case is gonna go the exact same way, right? Like this article shows this enormous pressure from Blanche's office to charge Comey with the idiotic seashells case, despite the fact that the Secret Service and the FBI and every single lawyer who looked at it said that it was not charged, it was ridiculous. And look, the reason I'm going through this at this level of detail is that in general, it is insanely hard to kick loose evidence of prosecutorial misconduct. But Todd Blanche was nice enough to put all of this at issue on national television, right? He went on Meet the Press and said, rest assured that the career assistant US attorneys in North Carolina, the career FBI agents, the career Secret Service agents that investigated this case, didn't just look at this Instagram post and walk away, rest assured it's not just the Instagram post that leads somebody to get indicted, right? And Patel did the same thing, Rakesh Patel, at the press conference made reference to this deep investigative work over 11 months by law enforcement, which was not credible at the time that he said, obviously those were lies. But since you had the DOJ and the FBI putting these claims out on the public record, now it is a lot more likely that James Comey is gonna be able to get discovery about those claims, like prove it, back it up, show me those 11 months of investigation. Right, so this is a terrific article, we'll link to it in the show notes, but TLDR, the Trump administration will happily fire every competent person in the building if it means they can get an indictment of James Comey even for just a little while. All right, we're gonna take a quick ad break and we will be right back to talk about the UFC at the White House, kill me. ["The White House Theme Song"] And we're back. Next Sunday is June 14th, that's President Trump's 250th birthday or something. Do you have plans to celebrate, Liz? I do, I'm going to a new restaurant around the corner for me, but I will not be celebrating Donald Trump's birthday. Well, Trump has plans, he wants to watch a UFC fight, but he don't wanna pay $9 for a Paramount Plus subscription like a common Schmo, right? He wants the fight, which has been dubbed UFC Freedom 250 Bold Eagle, whatever, right? He wants that to take place in his backyard. Presumably you have seen the pictures two weeks ago, a private company run by President Trump's good friend Dana White, in which, by the way, Trump just happens to own stock, started constructing this giant monstrosity called the Claw on the South Lawn of the White House. Then I'll launch the biggest crime wave in history towards the biggest merger of evil of all time. Okay, not that claw. This one is a giant steel thing that's 92 feet tall, 154 feet wide, it weighs 600 tons. It's gonna sit above a regulation 87 foot UFC octagon for the exciting lightweight title bout between Ilya Toporia and interim title holder Justin Gath. I mean, I believe you. Okay. Ricky Vaughn, Willie Hayes. I never heard him most of them. Mitchell Freedman. What is this, guys? Yeah, I don't know who those guys are. We talked last week about how the Trump name in brand is becoming toxic everywhere. It's not just the Kennedy Center in the Washington Opera. Everyone, including C&C Music Factory and Martina McBride and Millie Vanilly or Fab Morban really bailed on Trump's plan for the July concert and this one is no different. According to Forbes, a whole host of celebrities flatly turned on the chance to go to UFC 250, including Adam Sandler, Jason Statham, Guy Ritchie, Jared Leto. Skeletor. Okay, Mario Lopez, the actor who was not Zach on Save By The Bell, Dwayne The Rock, Johnson. Okay. The Rock is on the board of the company that owns UFC. I know, people are always saying he's gonna run for president, he's not gonna run for president. Also Tom Brady. He's Cliff Trump. Tom Brady said he's not going. No comment. Even ProChamp YouTube or Aiden Ross said, nah, I'd rather just watch it home with my dad. Isn't he the one that gave Trump like a Lexus or something or maybe, oh, it was like a customized Rolls Royce. This is ridiculous. And I hate that I know these things. I love that you know them. I wanna add Joe Rogan is going to announce the fight and even he sounds, let's say, somewhat less than enthusiastic about it. I'm excited. It sounds crazy. I know it's gonna be very high security and high stress and weird to have a fight at the White House in the middle of a war. But I would hope the war will be sorted out by June, but quite honestly, I'm not confident that that's gonna be the case. No. Yeah. So that would be weird. Having this very high profile event where everybody's in one place at one time right there. I hadn't thought of that. Yeah. So you're not excited to be there? Well, that seems like you're asking for. Holy shit. I hadn't thought of that at all. How could you not think of that? Well, because I'm not gonna be there. You're the one that has to think of it. I was just like, this is a great lineup. I look forward to the fights. Yeah. You know, Liz, I never thought I would say on the air Joe Rogan speaks for all of us, but here we are. Okay. So no one wants to go to Trump's birthday party. No surprise. But Liz, is it legal for Donald Trump to let the UFC build the claw on the White House law? No. No, it is not. If I at least like eight different laws. Okay. First, the White House and its grounds are public property. They are administered by the National Park Service. NPS's organic statute, 40 USC section 8106, says that a building or structure shall not be erected on any park or public grounds of the federal government in the District of Columbia without express authority of Congress. Congress has not authorized the construction of the claw. And it's definitely a building or structure. It's three stories taller than the White House itself. And here's Trump on TikTok, suggesting he's never gonna take it down. And you don't know that in Paris, France, the Eiffel Tower, 1889 it was built, it was supposed to be taken down immediately after the World's Fair. And then they said, you know, we sort of like it. Let's leave it up a little bit longer. And then they said, let's leave it up longer and longer and longer. Well, they never took it down. And you know, we're building something in front of the White House that's quite attractive to a lot of people. It's gonna have the big UFC fight on June 14th. And I'm looking at it and maybe we'll never ever take it down. Okay. Good, good, good case. Second, if you don't buy that one, the National Park Service's own regulations prohibited. This is 36 CFR section 7.96. This contains the overarching reg for the entire national capital region, which you know, that includes all of Northern Virginia. It includes the four Maryland counties that border DC. This is a sweeping regulation. And subsection G of that reg says that all sports events, that's the language, are special events that require a permit, okay? And then subsection G3, little one says, no permit may be issued authorizing special events, right, including sports events, except for the ellipse and except for the annual commemorative wreath-laying ceremonies relating to the statues in Lafayette Park, right? You may not do it on the lawn. So that regulation is the reason why Trump's infamous January 6 rally was held on the ellipse and not the White House South Lawn because the National Capital Park Service is flatly prohibited by its own regs from issuing permits like that. But there is a temporary exception for, quote, events planned, organized, and executed by executive departments and agencies for the celebration of the 250th anniversary of American independence. And that is a loophole that everyone is kind of winking at in connection with this fight. That's why it's called UFC Freedom 250. But the fight is not on July 4. It's on Trump's birthday, not America's. And more importantly, it is not an event that is planned, organized, and executed by the executive branch. It is planned, organized, executed, and as we're getting into for the extreme profit of the UFC, it was authorized by the executive branch. But that does not qualify, right? Like the reg is meant to allow the government to put on parades without, you know, shoot off fireworks or whatever, not to build a giant 600-ton sculpture on the White House law. So the lawsuit also points out that UFC president Dana White has publicly admitted this event was Trump's idea. And while July 4 is on a Saturday, Trump's birthday is on a Sunday, and USC hasn't scheduled a Sunday night fight in nearly seven years. Yeah, it's all a lie, right? And just to, even if it did apply, this America 250 loophole does not waive the environmental regulations as well. You still have to do the environmental assessment. And Trump just disregarded that. And by the way, not helping them is that the UFC itself has already publicly pledged to spend at least $700,000 to repair the damage they admitted they have already done to the White House law. So, okay, this is multiply illegal on all the valences. But Liz, assume that Trump is just trolling libs like you and me with the idea that they're gonna leave up the claw. Like it's the Eiffel Tower, okay? I don't think that he is, right? Like, if that's the case, if this is all really gonna come down, then like, where's the heart? Where's the grift? Why is this a problem? I mean, are you seriously asking me if there's a grift? It's a Donald Trump joint. Of course, there's like massive grift. So as with the proposed ballroom, Trump says that the entire thing is funded by private donations. And as with the ballroom, it's definitely bullshit. But even if it were completely paid for by other people, not the taxpayers, it's still a massive corrupt boondoggle, right? It's leveraging public property that belongs to all of us for the sole benefit of Trump and his billionaire pals. UFC is selling seats on the White House law for a million and a half dollars. That is $1.5 million a piece. And their officers have publicly called it the greatest earned marketing tool of all time, a once in a generation moment. So they're saying, we're getting all this free advertising isn't this great for us. And they are. UFC's parent company is publicly traded. So they've disclosed how much they've spent on this thing. It's $60 million, which is a lot. I'll give it to them. But remember, one and a half million dollars a seat. So all they have to do is sell 40 seats and they're at break even. And Dana White has been gifted 1,500 seats to sell. Plus the UFC, the octagon or whatever the hell it is, is covered with ads for crypto companies and stuff. They are going to make so much money off of this thing. And UFC just sold seven years of broadcast rights to Paramount Skydance for $7.7 billion. So if you want to watch Willie Hayes by Mitchell Friedman in the title fight, you have to buy a Paramount Plus subscription. Okay, so it's obvious I was setting you up. It's a Trump joint that's corrupt. But the big question, can we stop it? Maybe. On Sunday, two plaintiffs, Susan Douglas and Paul Romano filed a lawsuit seeking injunctive relief to stop this exercise. It's fundamentally an administrative procedure acclaim and the merits are strong. Obviously this wasn't in conformity with any underlying regulations. But as with all of these other cases that challenge Trump's misuse of public funds and public property, the question is, who has standing? Do these plaintiffs have standing today? Do these plaintiffs have standing to stop it? Yeah, and we're gonna talk about them as individuals. But I wanna say that the general rule here that Trump is taking advantage of is one that's built on the backs of left-leaning court decisions over the past 80 years. Like courts have uniformly said that this concept of taxpayer standing is by and large not a thing. And mostly the way that that's come about is because courts have said that when crackpot right-wing anti-tax zealots have tried to go into court and stop the government from doing things right on the theory that that wastes their tax dollars. And courts have said, no man, get out of here. And like, those are good decisions. But as with so much of Trump's second term, we did not expect a government that was just gonna shovel tax dollars out the door to Trump's buddies. Like I kind of naively thought that no one would reelect an obvious con artist as president. We got met that wrong there. Yeah, that one's on me. Anyway, the upshot is the well-established law of standing is that to be a plaintiff, to allege an article three controversy in federal court, you must have a specific concrete injury beyond just, I don't want the government to waste my tax dollars on this thing. So, okay, let's talk about the plaintiffs here. The first one is Susan Douglas. She alleges aesthetic standing. That's, we've talked about that with respect to the ballroom. Douglas is 70, she's lived in DC all her adult life. She plans and organizes public protests on the National Mall and in front of the White House. And here's what she said in her motion for a restraining order. For the June 14 protest, she, that is Douglas, and other activists intend to display caricature style paper mache figures of President Trump, Defense Secretary Heg Seth, and other administration figures inside of bamboo cage. Alongside that display, they plan to erect a sign reading the only cage we need. I like her already. Yeah, so the other plaintiff is Paul Romano, also a DC resident and a retiree. He's a Vietnam War vet and a former Department of Defense cop who escorted intelligence personnel in Afghanistan. And now he's an Uber driver in semi-retirement. Yeah, and he too alleges aesthetic standing. And in the complaint, Romano says that he, quote, finds the claw aesthetically and symbolically disgusting, which, uh, me too, brother. Yeah, in addition to aesthetic standing, Romano alleges dignitary and emotional standing. That's because the UFC 250 way and is supposed to take place at the Lincoln Memorial. And Romano says you're going to disturb the tranquility of the nearby Vietnam Veterans Memorial and undermine the solemn dignified monument to the country's greatest president. So here's what he says. Salomon moving are not descriptors that would ever be applied to a UFC weigh-in because fighters traditionally face off just inches from one another after weighing in. Weigh-ins tend to be raucous, profane, and sometimes violent affairs. For instance, just a few weeks ago, the UFC 328 weigh-in, fighter Sean Strickland called his opponent, comes out to my son of a whore and a bitch. OK, so good plaintiff, but I have to say, for that emotional standing, the motion cites to just one case. It is a 2025 decision from Judge Sukhnan. And actually, we've talked about it. It's captioned, Henkel versus Department of Education. And that case involved intentional inflection of emotional distress from the Department of Education, having misreported Henkel's credit scores. They accidentally doubled her student loan. And the court said, Judge Sukhnan, it said that Henkel's injuries were, quote, analogous to victims of defamation. So I guess what I'm saying is, I think both of these theories are a stretch from a standing perspective. The violation of the law is real. As you mentioned, Liz, we've talked about aesthetic injury before. That is a real theory of standing. There are cases. But this is not demolishing the east wing of the White House. This is not polluting the Potomac, right? This is a big, ugly building. But again, assuming that Trump is trolling, is a big, ugly building that's coming down in a week? Yeah, I have a couple of problems with this. I mean, first of all, why the hell did you guys wait so long? Yeah. You knew this was coming. And that there's functionally no time to make this happen. What are we, like, five days out or something? It's not, you know, and two of those are weekend days. That you've, I think that they probably waited too long. But as compared to the ballroom, like, I'm not sure. I mean, aesthetic standing feels a little squishy to lawyers. I can understand it. I think that, as you said, analogizing it to the ballroom case, the plaintiff there, Allison Hoagland, is an eminent historian. She leads walks that talk about the White House. The White House is the subject of many things, books that she has written. She's an architectural historian. She's been on the national track. She is not just two people who are super offended by this. And I think that there could indeed have been good plaintiffs. I worry that these are not the best plaintiffs. And that there, I think that there could have been an aesthetic challenge to this, you know, based on aesthetic standing. But I don't think this is the one. And I certainly think filed at this late date. It's got low chance of success. I agree with you on the timing. There is. And I agree with you on your overall assessment. And I think the fact that it is not a permanent structure makes it really hard to fit within either of those here. There is one final argument that at least caught my attention. Give me a little optimism here. And that is procedural injuries. And so here's the theory. The plaintiffs say that if the administration, if the UFC fight was properly permitted, then the administration would have had to have undertaken that environmental review. That environmental review that the regs in turn have a public notice and comment period. And both Douglas and Romano, not only say that they would have testified at that notice and comment that didn't take place, but they did, in fact, testify in opposition to Trump's proposed 9 billion foot tall arch, you know, the like Arcta Tramp thing. And so their argument is, because the Park Service didn't conduct that review, they were denied that opportunity to testify. And I don't know if that's going to work, but that does strike me as a cognizable discrete harm, right? Like they were entitled to participate in the process, and they were denied that opportunity. Again, these were claims that could have been brought two months ago, right? So the case has been assigned to Judge Ahmed Mada in DC. It's to be briefed by Wednesday with a hearing on the preliminary injunction scheduled for Thursday. So we will know if this is going forward or not, presumably by the time we go to air on Friday. Yeah, and look, we've talked about Judge Mada a lot. I think he is destined for the DC Circuit, perhaps higher. He is incredibly thoughtful. Absolutely amazing. I should disclose a personal contact. I really is a former partner of mine. But this is, in some sense, I think, a good draw for the government, right? Because he is a thoughtful and serious. And I know that when he rules against the administration, they're going to smear him up and down. But rather like Judge Ana Reyes, right? Like he's not going to put his thumb on the scale because he hates Trump. He's going to do what the law requires. Right, he is not one of the old goats like Judge Leon. I don't give a shit. I'll just knock. I mean, I'm old. I don't care, which I love that guy, which is weird to say. But you know what, before we go, even if I don't think that this lawsuit is going to succeed, and I don't, I think it still matters, right? Putting all of this stuff on the record, it still matters. Throwing sand in the gears for this administration and for Trump's absolute corrupt cash grab still matters. And on that score, I mean, I may have said that I didn't think these plaintiffs were great plaintiffs, but you got to give it up to them. Standing up to this government is putting yourself in harm's way. These are people who care and who are going to take a lot of flack and they did it. So more power to them. I think what they're doing is good and important, even if it doesn't stop this vulgar desecration of the White House. Here, here. OK, if you're a subscriber, stick around because we're going to talk about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deciding what are the good religions that the Defense Department will be recognizing here on out. You'll never guess which one. Yeah, I mean, it's a little more surprising than that. So stick around if you're a subscriber at patreon.com slash lawandchaospot or lawandchaospot.com. That will be a fun bonus. It is right up Andrew Torres' alley. And if not, we will be back on Thursday with written content and on Friday with another show. Thanks, guys. Law and Chaos Podcast is production of Razor to Media, LLC is intended solely as entertainment, does not constitute legal advice, and does not form an attorney-client relationship. This show is research and written by Liz Dye and produced by Bryce Blank and Engel. Law and Chaos Podcast, operate Razor to Media, LLC, all rights reserved. The world moves fast. You work day, even faster, pitching products, drafting reports, analyzing data. Microsoft 365 Co-Pilot is your AI assistant for work, built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft 365 apps you use. Helping you quickly write, analyze, create, and summarize. 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