Trump Contempt Hearing Blows Up….

0:00Michael Popok:Terrible week legally and politically for Donald Trump and his administration, and it couldn't happen to a worse president. And capping it off, a major hearing involving 10 judges of the D.C. Federal Appellate Court. And the only thing that was on the agenda that day was whether Chief Judge Jeb Boesberg is going to be able to continue his criminal investigation and referral for prosecution of people in the Trump administration not named Donald Trump. We're looking at you, Todd Blanche, Attorney General. We're looking at you, Emil Bovee, former member of the Department of Justice, now a Third Circuit Court of Appeals judge.

0:37Michael Popok:We're looking at you, Kristi Noem, Department of Homeland Security's former head. And what broke out during the hearing was there seemed to be an immediate consensus of the majority, if not supermajority, of that 10-judge panel that they had to back Chief Judge Jeb Bosberg's contempt proceedings. They weren't going to overturn it. They were going to return it to him to find out who gave the order to fly those planes to El Salvador with 200 men aboard without due process and put them in a torture prison in El Salvador over the cackling laugh of Christine Noem. That proceeding, that criminal investigation was stopped in its tracks by two judges alone of the same court, two Trump-appointed judges, Judge Walker, Judge Rayo.

1:29Michael Popok:But now it's before the entirety of the en banc panel, all 10 out of 11, if you will, of the same court to issue a new ruling. the men represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and League Alert, the Department of Justice represented by a guy named Brett Shumate, who is on the losing end of every major case involving Donald Trump. He lost the birthright citizenship case. He lost the tariffs case. And he's about to lose this case about another criminal case against the Trump administration. I'm Michael Popak. You're on the Midas Touch Network and Legal AF. And for those that are interested, the full three-hour hearing, I'll put the link in notes, is up on Legal AF YouTube channel.

2:11Michael Popok:We had it up this week. It was running in competition with Jack Smith's testimony. Another terrible moment for the Trump administration politically and legally. Let's return to Chief Judge Jeb Bozberg. Donald Trump's attacked him on social media and said he's a Marxist, a leftist. He should be impeached. He's nothing of the kind. He's a moderate Republican. He's friends with people on the United States Supreme Court. And he does a great job. and he found after an evidentiary hearing that the Trump administration, Tristey, Noem, and others had violated his order to ground those planes and not fly them to El Salvador.

2:47Michael Popok:They sent in another, one of those crash test stubbies, one of those piñatas of the moment, a guy named Drew Ensign, to effectively lie to the judge or not have any information about the planes. Don't know where the planes are, judge. Don't know if they're fueling or not fueling. They may, I'm trying to reach somebody, judge. Yeah, as the planes are flying to El Salvador. ACLU smartly ran into court on an emergency basis. Judge issued an oral temporary restraining order. You ground those planes at about 1.38 in the afternoon back in April. Sorry, March, March 15th of last year. But they kept flying the planes.

3:25Michael Popok:So the judge pulled everybody together and said, looks like my orders have been violated. I'm going to take up a contempt investigation. Find out who did it. and they quickly threw Kristi Noem under the bus. So Kristi Noem did it alone by herself. What about Emil Bovee? And as he was considering the criminal case, the criminal contempt case against Trump administration, new information came out. A whistleblower who quit or was fired by the Department of Justice, a guy named Erez Riveni, very highly respected prosecutor, had been there for three administrations, 15 years. He ended up being the head of the criminal, of the immigration litigation unit of the Department of Justice.

4:07Michael Popok:And he said in a 20-page single-space letter and on 60 Minutes that Emil Bovee, Donald Trump's former criminal defense lawyer, partnered with Todd Blanche in a law firm, and now at that moment being appointed to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia as a judge, having never been a judge before. He told the Department of Justice lawyers assembled in a room that if a judge asks them, where are the people or what due process was used or are they on planes or where are they located, you are to look the judge in the eye and say, fuck off. How do I know that happened? Because Eris Reveni is a very trustworthy guy.

4:44Michael Popok:And then Eris Reveni was cross-examined by Senator Adam Schiff of California on the Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing or confirmation hearing when he was up for Third Circuit Court of Appeals judge. And here's that exchange.

5:25Maybe they should consider telling the court, f*** you. It seems to me that would be something you'd remember unless that's the kind of thing you say frequently. Well, I've certainly said things encouraging litigators at the department to fight hard for valid positions that we have to take in defense of our clients. And have you frequently suggested that they say f*** you and ignore court orders? Is that also something you frequently do such you might not remember doing it on this occasion? No. And as I explained, I have never directed. Did you or did you not make those comments during that meeting?

5:58Which comments, Senator? You really need me to repeat it. Did you suggest, as Mr. Ruvani wrote, that DOJ would need to consider telling the courts, f*** you and ignore any such court order? I did not suggest that there would be any need to consider ignoring court orders. At the point of that meeting, there were no court orders to discuss. Well, did you suggest telling the courts, f*** you in any manner? I don't recall. You just don't remember that.

6:28Michael Popok:And that all made its way to Judge Boesberg, who eventually, back in April, we reported on it, on Legal AF and Midas Touch. He eventually said, I found probable cause that there's been a criminal contempt violations of my order. They jumped up and down and said, judge, your order was oral. And then by the time it was written, an hour or two later, the plane's already through or had already flown on. It's ambiguous. We don't know who's in charge. It's not our fault. Dog ate our homework and all that. Who can who can forget, though? And I'm sure it ended up in the judge's mind. Kristi Noem in one of her tighty whitey cosplay outfits standing in front of a bunch of shaved head men in a prison in El Salvador and bragging about it.

7:14Michael Popok:Play that clip.

7:44kit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.

7:48Michael Popok:Right. That's what the ACLU did. They ran into court on an emergency basis when they found out that their clients had been shaved, shackled, thrown on a on a transport plane and were being fueled for takeoff. Oh, I can't get enough of our cat Chanel. She acts like she owns the whole house and the rest of us are like work for her. But her litter box, that's the one part of her kingdom I could do without. This podcast is sponsored by Boxy. The last time my wife and I used Boxy Pro Deep Clean for Chanel, I appreciated how simple it was. Scoop, top off with fresh Boxy, done. No full litter changes.

8:25Michael Popok:Boxy says it's the last cat litter you'll switch to and the best cat litter money can buy. The pro stands for probiotics in the litter that gobble up odor-causing bacteria and keep the box continuously odor-free. Not 10 days, not 20 days, infinite amount of days. And there are no fake scents to give Chanel another reason to avoid the box. Save up to 40 % during Boxxy's biggest offers of the season, including Amazon Prime Big Deal Days, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, by heading to boxycat.com, B-O-X-I-E-C-A-T.com, backslash legal AF. That's up to 40 % off at boxycat.com slash legal AF. So this ends up at the appellate court and a three judge panel, two Trumpers, Judge Walker and Judge Rayo, rule in favor of Donald Trump and said, oh, the order was ambiguous.

9:26The judge didn't have the right to interfere with the executive branch and so on and so on. OK.

9:33Michael Popok:And then something interesting happened. of the United States Supreme Court throughout Judge Boesberg order, not because it was substantively wrong, but on a technicality, procedural issue. They found he didn't have jurisdiction because at the moment, that case could only have been brought where the men were last located before they left for El Salvador, which was Texas. So it had to be individual writs of habeas corpus petitions filed in Texas. But that doesn't mean that that happened several months later. At the moment that order was in place, the government had to comply with the order or be subject to contempt proceedings.

10:11Michael Popok:Otherwise, a judge's orders are not worth the paper they're written on or not written on. And the fact that an order later gets reversed on appeal or vacated is of no moment. You can't say, well, I think you're going to get it reversed, so F you, I'm not going to comply with the order, which is effectively what they did, because that would be just anarchy and chaos. So the ACLU, again, I'm going to have Lee Golernt, the lead lawyer for the ACLU on these issues, on the immigration litigation, on with me this week on Legal AF YouTube channel. Watch for it. So they had an oral, sorry, lead petitions for the men to get an en banc hearing to have the entirety of that bench, that DC federal appellate court, hear the case.

10:59Michael Popok:And if they grant that petition, that throws away the three-judge panel ruling. You got to have a majority vote. There's 11 members of that DC panel. They got the majority. And if you get the majority on a grant of a petition for rehearing, you're probably going to get an order that you want. They're probably going to reverse what the lower panel, the other panel did. So they had the big oral argument yesterday. Again, we had it up on Legal AF YouTube channel. And let's just say they got roasted by the judges. I mean, roasted. Let me play some clips from a combination of Judge Pillard, Judge Millett, and Judge Childs, who go after shoemate like nobody's business.

11:44Michael Popok:Play the combined clip. Thanks for the question, Your Honor. What's different is that the government identified the decision maker. That was what was at issue in the prior mandamus proceeding. A number of judges on this court said it was acceptable for the district court to ask for that information. The government then provided that information, identified Secretary Noem as the decision maker. But do we have to just accept what you say? That you just say that there's a particular decision maker who put forward that they were responsible for an activity and the district court judge is supposed to just accept that at face value?

12:16The district court said there's been a lot of new information in the meantime. The only information that he's identified is the additional whistleblower report, which the district court has described as cementing his belief that there was a willful violation of the TRO. And if that's the case, the district court then gets to say, the government doesn't get to come back and say, here's the person we think is the only one you could possibly consider to be in contempt of the court. And of course, we don't believe she was in contempt of the court for the reasons you've explained. But the district court, inherent authority to determine whether a contempt of its orders has occurred doesn't have to take, as Judge Child said, you pushing one person forward at face value.

13:02The district court gets to say who else was involved since you all have said this was a chain of information passed up. Constitution does not change the standard for a referral under Rule 42. However, given the fact that the district court is going beyond its proper role in investigating a crime that did not occur. Is there a separation of powers problem if the executive branch has a unique authority to undertake actions that either are contumacious or potentially contumacious of court orders that no one else in the country is allowed to do? Is that a separation of powers question too, prevents courts from performing their functions?

13:45I don't think they're, if I'm understanding the question, the government can't violate court orders and neither can any other party, I think. So there's no difference here. If there's no difference, then there's not a separation of powers problem because the separation of powers is going to run two ways here. It's not a one-way street in favor of the executive branch. The Supreme Court's been crystal clear that the contempt power is an inherent power of the courts necessary for them to function.

14:11Michael Popok:Yeah. Here's what's going to happen. That appellate court, I think either six to four or seven to three is going to rule that the other panel was wrong. Judge Bosberg was right. He has the right to start back up his criminal case against the Trump administration and take it wherever it leads. You know, it wasn't just about whether he can do it. It was about who he can focus on. As a last gasp effort, Shoemate, the lawyer for the Department of Justice, tried to argue, but they got to focus only on Kristi Noem. Oh, yeah. No. The judges said no. Wherever the facts lead. Other people in the chain were involved.

14:50Michael Popok:That means you, Todd Blanche. That means you, Emil Bovee. Now, you know that the DOJ is going to take an appeal. The government's going to take an appeal to the Supreme Court. We'll have to see how that plays out. and then Bozberg, though, will have time to make that referral to the Department of Justice. When the Department of Justice doesn't appoint a special or independent counsel, which they're not going to do, I think the judge has the inherent authority and power under statutes also to appoint his own independent counsel that reports to him independently, but reports under him to prosecute, to investigate, and to report to the court.

15:30Michael Popok:That's the next step here, subject to what the United States Supreme Court does about it. Terrible week for Donald Trump. He loses at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals about his Jan 6th fund. Jack Smith proves to the American people just before the election that he is a criminal, that Donald Trump is a criminal in a four or five hour hearing. And now this panel is about to allow a criminal investigation to continue against the Trump administration. And we are here for it. You're on Legal AF YouTube and the Midas Touch YouTube channel. Take a minute, come over to Legal AF YouTube channel and hit the free subscribe button.

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