Trump Gets Absolutely Shamed in Fed Court by GOP Judge

0:00Michael Popok:I've been doing this a long time. And when a federal judge says that a Trump administration official, Carrie Lake, is dripping with indifference, that's not a good start for an order if you're the Trump administration. We've got a new order by Judge Lampert, who is a Republican in D.C., who has ruled against the Trump administration and has ruled to stop their reduction in force, their firing of more than 500 more employees of the Voice of America, finding that they have violated the court's orders. He chastises the Trump administration. He goes out of his way in a scathing rebuke of Carrie Lake that I think you'll find fascinating.

0:40Michael Popok:And then he also does some criticism of the United States Supreme Court, all in one order. And I'm going to cover it right here on the Midas Touch Network and Legal AF. All right, let's get to it. There's been litigation for at least the last six months in front of Judge Royce Lampert in D.C. about the destruction of Voice of America. That had been a diplomatic arm of the executive branch, but funded by Congress, to spread democracy and its values around the world. It requires programming in places of significant interest, like in North Korea, Russia, China, Africa, the Arab world, and the rest.

1:23Michael Popok:And right now, as they went into this hearing, the only programming, the only broadcasting that Voice of America is doing is one 15-minute program in one Arab dialect, one 15-minute program, I'm talking a day, in another Arab dialect, and that's it. 30 minutes a day, only two dialects, nothing in North Korea, nothing in Russia, nothing in Africa, nothing in China. And that is all in violation of Judge Lampert's preliminary injunction as upheld by the appellate court. Let me dive right in, start at the back and work my way forward. I think there's three pages of this 17-page order, which I am going to post on Legal AF Substack so that you can read it in its entirety.

2:14Michael Popok:But let me start at the back how Judge Lampert ends his decision to block the reduction in force to eliminate yet another 500 employees. The court must offer an observation on the concerning disrespect the defendants have shown towards the court's orders since the entry of their preliminary injunction in April. The defendants here are Carrie Lake and the Trump administration. This is on page 18. It is the court's view that the defendant's disregard for its earlier orders to produce information would more than support a trial on civil contempt. For the moment, the court focuses on the example most germane to the current proceedings.

2:55Michael Popok:The court's July 30 order granting the motion to show clause ordered the defendants to produce all documents about future rifts, reductions in force. The defendant's response suggested that they were in discussions considering the possibility of one or more future reductions in force of employees. Then, at the August 25th hearing, counsel for the defendants speculated that maybe, eventually, there is a RIF, and that there was uncertainty as to how many employees would be subject to it. Again, the defendants gave the impression no decision on a reduction in force had been made. Yet, just hours after that hearing, the defendants initiated the RIF at issue in this case.

3:37Michael Popok:Given the timing of those events, it strains credulity to think that the RIF was uncertain or a mere possibility as the defendants repeatedly represented to this court. The defendants' obfuscation of this court's request for information regarding whether their RIF plans comported with the preliminary injunction has wasted precious judicial time and resources and readily support contempt proceedings. That said, the plaintiffs have not requested such proceedings and the court declines to pursue them sui sponte. That means bring your motion plaintiffs and I would entertain contempt proceedings. I'm not going to do it on my own, but I'm telling you that I've observed contumacious conduct in my courtroom.

4:22Michael Popok:The judge ends his order this way. However, its deference to the plaintiffs with respect to further proceedings should not be mistaken for lenience toward the defendant's egregious erstwhile conduct. It gets worse or it gets better. Here's what he here's what Judge Lampert says on page 10 over to page 11. And let me just frame this for a minute. Donald Trump comes in with an executive order to effectively defund and destroy the Voice of America and other entities that are under a parent company we call U.S. Agency for Global Media. Voice of America being one part of it. He recognized, however, that there were statutory obligations that needed to be complied with.

5:15Michael Popok:But he's even violated those, leading the plaintiffs to run into court to get a court order, preliminary injunction, which they obtained. That went up on appeal. Part of the preliminary injunction was upheld. Part of it was reversed or stayed. And now we're back in court. And this judge has been patient. For the last six months, he's been getting the runny or runaround in the monkey business, legal terms, from the Trump administration about their firing. They've already fired 1 ,200 people. Now they're firing another 500 people. They're not doing programming in five or six major regions of the world.

5:52Michael Popok:They're doing literally 30 minutes of programming, giant middle finger every day. And that's it. Even with Judge Lampert's injunction in place. So now we run into this courtroom and this particular hearing. When you're buried in credit card and loan debt, it's human nature to put it off and say, I'll deal with it later. If that's you, here's a hidden fact that debt strategy experts had done with debt shared with me. They discovered a little-known strategy that works in your favor to dramatically reduce or even erase your debt altogether. Here's the key. They aggressively engage everyone you owe money to in September.

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6:58Michael Popok:Here's what Judge Lampert said about how we got here. Page 10. The defendants thumb their nose at Congress's commands and give responses that are dripping with indifference to their statutory obligations. Now he goes after Carrie Lake. Defendant Lake, for example, admits that she has not given it a lot of thought, whether the continent of Africa, where the Voice of America have ceased all operations, is a significant region of the world within the meaning of the statute. Defendant Lake does consider South and Central America to be significant regions of the world, yet she concedes that the only programming relevant to developments in Central America concerns Cuba and that Voice of America currently produces no programming for or about South America.

7:50Michael Popok:When asked in her deposition which countries in Asia lack adequate sources of free information, Defendant confesses that she did not have an opinion on the question. Opinion. She know the answer to the question. These responses are the height of arbitrariness. Then he goes after the United States Supreme Court. Now, we've talked a lot on Midas Touch and on Legal AF about the lower courts demonstrating their frustration with the United States Supreme Court, failing to give them proper guidance. When you have the shadow or emergency docket, where dozens of these cases, Donald Trump has one, that's where they're coming from, which has a skeletal record.

8:35Michael Popok:It's an emergency application, only two briefs to the court instead of three, no oral argument, and no real opinion. Supreme Court is supposed to operate with written opinions, 50, 60, 80, 100 pages, so that judges know how to apply in future cases, how to use it as precedent. On the one hand, the Supreme Court wants their one-paragraph rulings and emergency applications to be, quote unquote, precedent that needs to be followed. But how do you follow it if the facts haven't been analyzed, the law hasn't been analyzed, there's no, what we call the gravamen of the opinion is not present. How we got there, the logic behind the opinion is not present.

9:20Michael Popok:So how do you apply it? Here's what Judge Lampert joining a growing chorus of lower court judges and appellate judges who are frustrated with the United States Supreme Court. Here's how Judge Lampert puts it. The defendants, the Trump administration, point to two state posture cases in the Supreme Court that stopped rifts at the Department of Education and six other agencies. So by emergency application, the Trump administration was able to continue to destroy the Department of Education and six other agencies by getting a shadow docket ruling from the Supreme Court, one paragraph in length. In doing so, the defendants invite this court to infer from those orders a blanket rule favoring rifts in this posture.

10:07Michael Popok:The court, of course, accords the utmost respect to the Supreme Court's state posture rulings. Yet any appellate decision cannot provide precedential guidance without a statement of reasons from which the court can analogize to the present facts. In other words, what am I supposed to do with one paragraph? To follow the defendant's lead would, in effect, countenance letting the government fill in the blanks of the Supreme Court's emergency rulings, relinquishing the basic judicial task of deciding what the law is. And to infer an ironclad prohibition against preliminarily enjoining reductions in force pending further litigation would disregard the essence of equitable relief.

10:50Michael Popok:Equity is allergic to rigidity. Although courts of equity must be governed by rules, it must be on a case-by-case basis. Rarely is this truer than in crafting an enforcement of a preliminary injunction. Nor does this court believe the Supreme Court expects district courts to do otherwise. A little free criticism of the Supreme Court buried inside of Judge Lampert's decision. What's going to happen next? An appeal to the D.C. Federal Court of Appeals, and then some sort of, I assume, emergency application to the United States Supreme Court. We'll follow it all right here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF.

11:28Michael Popok:I'm Michael Popok. Slide over to Legal AF YouTube channel and help us continue to grow there. Hit the free subscribe button and I will post this order, this opinion by Judge Lampert in Legal AF Substack. Think about becoming a member and a paid member of Substack. Got amazing content there you can't find anywhere else. So until my next report, I'm Michael Popok.

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