Trump Suffers Massive Loss as Biggest Case Dismissed

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1:00Michael Popok:We got breaking news. It looks like the Kafkaesque nightmare being visited upon Kilmer Abrego Garcia by the Trump administration may at long last be coming to an end. Judge Crenshaw in the Middle District of Tennessee has just issued a 30-plus page decision dismissing the criminal indictment against Abrego Garcia, finding that the government, the Department of Justice, Todd Blanche, have not rebutted the presumption of vindictive prosecution. And having failed to challenge or meet the evidence that was presented by Abrego Garcia's lawyers, Judge Crenshaw believes he has no choice but to dismiss the indictment for human trafficking or human smuggling in that district.

1:55Michael Popok:having then been released from detention, having now been released from ICE detention by a judge in Maryland. As of right now, Kilmer Abrego Garcia is a free man. Don't put it past the Department of Justice or Donald Trump or immigration to do something else to try to capture him. But for right now, the first vindictive prosecution finding by a judge against the Trump administration has been made by Judge Crenshaw. Let's get to the bottom of it. I'm Michael Popak. You're here on Midas Touch and on Legal AF. We've been waiting patiently for this decision. In fact, I was just on about two hours ago on a Substack Live on Legal AF with Adam Klassfeld of All Rise News, who's also following the story.

2:44Michael Popok:We said, any moment now, judges have exquisite timing. I don't know, Memorial Day, a federal holiday, We're going to get this order soon. And bang, as soon as I got back to my desk, order is out. Let me start at the conclusion and work our way backwards. Kilmer Abrego Garcia, by the way, just to reframe this issue, is an immigrant who came to this country from Venezuela and who Donald Trump and his administration illegally deported in the middle of the night without due process to El Salvador in the torture prison of SICOT, where he got immediately tortured upon arrival. He's married to an American woman.

3:25Michael Popok:He has two American children. He's never been charged with a crime in any country, Venezuela, El Salvador, or here. The government had to admit that he was illegally deported and removed to El Salvador. It made its way to the United States Supreme Court. It took two decisions that he won, Albrego Garcia's lawyers won at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, a decision 9-0 by the United States Supreme Court, multiple decisions by Judge Zinnis in Maryland, all in his favor. He's on a winning streak to have him brought back to the United States. After all of that happened, a retaliatory, vindictive government decided it was time to reopen a closed criminal case and then try to indict him.

4:15Michael Popok:So they went from removing him and not indicting him to indicting him and not removing him. And it is that flip-flop that Judge Crenshaw said, especially with the two meager witnesses that were presented in the courtroom, a special agent, Saud, who got the file like days before the indictment. It was effectively instructed to reopen the case about a traffic stop in 2022, in which Abrego Garcia had a bunch of people in the car. OK, he didn't even get a broken taillight citation for that one. He was basically the agent was told to reopen it. And then the former U.S. attorney, acting U.S. attorney for that district, Middle District, Mr.

4:58Michael Popok:Robert McGuire. You know who didn't testify? And this was a problem for the judge? Todd Blanche. Then the Deputy Attorney General didn't testify. You know who else didn't testify? His assistant, Akash Singh, who is referenced throughout the emails as putting pressure on the Middle District to indict. And yet he didn't show up either. Neither did any of the other evidence. So the judge is not buying it. Let's get to the judge's decision. Page 31, the conclusion, what the government has chosen not to address is as telling as what it has. The government's post-hearing brief, right? He held a trial.

5:35Michael Popok:After the trial, you submit a brief, mentions Todd Blanche once in a parenthetical to McGuire's testimony. It mentions the Supreme Court's ruling once, the one that 9-0 ordered Abrago Garcia to return to the United States. And then in a footnote, it mentions Singh, Akash Singh, the assistant to the DAG, Deputy Attorney General, 11 times, framing him as the recipient of McGuire's updates, but ignoring his close, continuous, substantive oversight. Pressure campaign from Maine Justice in Washington, led by Akash Singh on behalf of Todd Blanche.

6:16Michael Popok:Including a reference to a series of emails. The government does not mention Schrader's recommendation. That was the guy that was inside the U.S. Attorney's Office, Middle District of Tennessee, who resigned. And on the way out, he said we should not be indicting Abrego Garcia. Government doesn't engage with that evidence at all. Doesn't mention Schrader's recommendation against charging Abrego at all. The reopening of the closed Homeland Security investigation is the source of the vindictiveness, says the judge. Blanche's public statements about the investigation and Singh's involvement tied the main justice in Washington to the reopened investigation and the indictment.

6:58Michael Popok:In fact, here's a clip that the judge used as presumptive evidence of the presumption of vindictiveness. Here's Laura Ingraham interviewing Todd Blanche. Play the clip. And a judge in Maryland and many members of Congress, we had a senator fly down to meet with him, questioned that decision and said, oh, no, he's just a family man. And so we said, OK, we'll look into it. And when we started looking into it and we have great law enforcement officers and prosecutors who started studying this man and investigating him. And what we found is that we were right. We were right. He is a criminal who should be deported.

7:40And at the end of the day, we have a responsibility to protect the American people and to keep our country safe. And so he was indicted.

7:50Michael Popok:Judge continues. After the indictment became reality, the government ignores McGuire's testimony. That's the guy that took over as U.S. attorney. That main justice caused Abrego's return to the United States as the District of Maryland had long required. The government's rebuttal to the presumption of vindictiveness does not engage with that evidence. As a matter of logic, the government cannot rebut a presumption that it does not even address in evidence supporting the presumption. The court does not reach its conclusion lightly. The objective evidence here shows that absent Abrego's successful lawsuit challenging his removal to El Salvador, the government would not have brought this prosecution.

8:34Michael Popok:He then goes on to quote then Attorney General Robert H. Jackson, who wrote famously once, and this is how the judge started his opinion as well, that he cautioned that when, quote, the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass or select some group of unpopular persons and then looks for defense, that is the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power. This is a treatise written, a chapter written by Robert H. Jackson called The Federal Prosecutor from 1940. Judge concludes the evidence before this court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power. I'm going to post this on Legal AF Substack for you to read.

9:23Michael Popok:The judge also goes through a very telling timeline. You know, I've done this for a long time, 35 years. Sometimes the power of just a timeline and the momentum of a timeline demonstrates, even without having any argumentative words around it, any persuasive words around it, just the timeline could make your point. And the judge does that in a series of timelines from the beginning to the end. And when I think anybody that just reads the timeline comes away with, oh, yeah, this was vindictive prosecution to get back at Abrego Garcia because he was winning on the civil and civil liberties side of his case.

10:02Michael Popok:And that's what the judge concluded. Now, what's going to happen next? What else? Donald Trump, who has put the entire weight of Homeland Security, the border czar, Department of Justice, first Pam Bondi, then Todd Blanche, and everything on the slender shoulders of Abrego Garcia, is not going to give up. That's why we called it Kafkaesque. He's going to continue. And so I'm sure there's going to be an appeal to the, I think it's the Sixth Circuit that sits over Tennessee. Then it's going to come up back to the United States Supreme Court. But with one caveat, you know, the judges, the justices of the Supreme Court already ruled that Abrego Garcia on a similar matter 9-0 and ordered and supported Judge Zinnis' decision that the government facilitate his return.

10:55Now, for several months, the government said, we can't.

10:58Michael Popok:It's in the sovereign hands of El Salvador. We have no control over that. Who knows what's going to happen next? And then it turned out a lot of that was a lie, that the El Salvadorans were telling other people, including the UN, the Americans control the jail and control everything that happens with people that they detained there, that they were effectively, they were just U.S. detainees that happened to be in the jail. be in El Salvador, for which the United States paid six or seven million dollars. So I'm not sure there's votes to support Donald Trump continuing to abuse one poor man to make some sort of point long gone.

11:38Michael Popok:Things have also changed for Donald Trump since he last went after and abused Ebrego Garcia, namely the polling numbers. In the beginning, Trump could be like, well, I wonder if my migration and immigration policies of rounding up and deporting two or three million people and having 10 ,000 lawsuits about violations of due process. I wonder if that's working with the American people. And it isn't. Look at the new polling numbers that came out today and all in the last week. 60, 65 percent of Americans at least disapprove of the president and his administration. 70 percent disapprove of his migration policy.

12:18Michael Popok:You want to go with Hispanics and how they view in the United States, Hispanic Americans and how they view the presidency. It's up to 75 percent. So things have changed politically. The winds have changed. The question is, is Donald Trump going to get that message and decide this is not worth a battle any longer? We'll see. I'm sure they'll file the notice of appeal. We'll report on it right here on Legal AF and on Midas Touch Network. Take a minute, support what we do. Come over to Legal AF YouTube channel, hit the free subscribe button. So until my next report, I'm Michael Popak.