Judge Rejects Trump's "Illegal" Troop Deployment

0:00Hey, everybody, it's Rob Lowe here. If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called Literally with Rob Lowe. And basically, it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J. Fox. There are new episodes out every Thursday. So subscribe, please, and listen wherever you get your podcasts. Ever notice how life's best stories don't happen in your living room? They happen on the open road, out on the water, or parked under the stars.

0:42At Progressive, they get that you want to focus on the experience, not worry about the what-ifs. That's why they offer quality insurance designed for your ride, whether that's a boat, RV, or motorcycle. Adventure with confidence. Visit Progressive.com and see how easy it is to protect your favorite way to get away. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Not available in D.C. Prices vary based on how you buy. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber. I'm back with you after the holiday weekend. Our top story tonight right now is about this. These troops in the streets from California to D.C.

1:17And as many people asked across this long summer, how can this be happening in America? How is this legal? And tonight, the answer, fresh from the federal courts, is This is not legal Donald Trump's deployment of troops to patrol Americans is illegal And it smacks of an illicit bid to create Trump's own national police force A police state And that is according to a federal judge And I'm going to walk you through the ruling It's a key setback for Trump's bids to seize unitary powers And wield them against you Against us Against Americans A judge ruling President Trump cannot deploy the National Guard of Marines the way he did in L.A., that it is illegal.

2:05The ruling, of course, follows longstanding precedent, which many experts cited when Trump first put these troops in the streets. We reported that at the time. The ban on soldiers patrolling citizens is well known in this country. Anyone with U.S. military experience or legal experience or any recent interaction with a history textbook, quite frankly, knows the limit. It's under a 19th century law, posse comitatus, and the judge ruled Congress has forbidden the president to use the army for the purpose of executing general laws. That's just a fancy way of saying for law enforcement, except when expressly authorized by the Constitution or an act of Congress.

2:49this ruling against Trump also has some damning evidence how the Trump administration's own training materials note the law barred troops from doing the things Trump wanted them to do. You can see it here. This is a PowerPoint training slide that was included in this ruling against Trump today. And I'm not going to read all of it, but it's bad for the Trump administration because it shows how these very troops under these legal restrictions were warned, the Posse Comitatus Act, PCA, prohibits them from law enforcement functions on Americans, like traffic control or crowd control. And the judge found Trump appears to have an illicit purpose of calling National Guard troops into other cities across the country, thus creating a, quote, national police force with the president as its chief.

3:39Now, that's a warning about the kind of autocratic national police forces that we tend to see in other countries, in less democratic countries. The judge saying no national police force should operate like that in America under Trump or any leader. Not a partisan statement, not a blue or red thing, but that we are not a police state and we're not about to become one when we have actual laws followed and judges overseeing the government. Now, rhetoric about Trump can be intense in politics. And he, of course, did try to seal the 2020 election that he lost. And lately, he's been musing repeatedly about being a, quote, dictator or why some people like some things dictators do.

4:18But this is not politics what I'm telling you about tonight. And this is not Democrats warning about him or trying to make him sound really bad for potentially their own purposes. This is the concern based on the evidence from a measured federal judge. A judge who's noticed that the kind of sweeping police force powers Trump is seeking could also be used to push the military into our elections. Again, not some Democrat doing scare tactics or excuses about losing the last election. This is a judge noting that under what Trump's DOJ is saying right now, they argue that they can have the president send troops basically anywhere to help enforce basically any federal law, which is never how it's been.

5:03You don't have soldiers showing up to audit your taxes, even though, of course, the president oversees the tax laws through the IRS, but not through the military. Pretty basic. So in this new ruling, the judge notes that Trump's DOJ's argument is so extreme, he says, could President Trump assert he's unable to enforce obscure tax laws and then use the federalized National Guard to execute a range of laws? And he brings up specifically, quote, the election laws. This is a ruling about Trump acting illegally. The concern is that he would use military powers not to better enforce election laws illegally.

5:39No, I think it's pretty clear to interfere in the election itself, if he lost, or in the vote counting if he thinks he might lose. And this is not a hypothetical. There's been extensive reporting, the Jan 6 Committee, and our own chart, if you recall, of the 2020 plots Trump tried, some of them indicted. And if you look down there at the black one, which was not indicted because it was abandoned, it was Trump's effort, his exploration of if he could get the military to seize voting machines. He wanted to do this then. In fact, his later convicted lawyer, Sidney Powell, was going to be some kind of election prosecutor in that effort, it was discarded when Giuliani said it went too far.

6:18I repeat, when Giuliani said it went too far. So tonight, judges are sounding the alarm. They are trimming Trump's powers as he vows to appeal the case, which is his legal right. So this goes up to the appeals and the Supreme Court in a process we've seen. And Trump lost this round. But I got to tell you, it's also notable that the administration's approach, seizing powers, threatening to defy courts, then trying to run out the clock, it's still got them. months of troops in the streets of L.A. before this setback today. Remember, that L.A. deployment began back in early June. It's Orwellian. Simply lying to people.

6:56Unconstitutional. Illegal act. His mess. We're trying to clean it up. We're going to have troops everywhere. We're not going to let this happen to our country. There's a protocol. There's a process. He didn't care about that. What are the troops in L.A. to do? And that is unclear to pretty much everybody at this time. I, in partnership with Governor Gavin Newsom, are suing President Trump. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next. Democracy is next. Other states were next, including later our Capitol. You could like Gavin Newsom or not. You could think he's standing up strong or showboating.

7:33But the things he said then, having clashed with Trump and dealt with him, have been borne out. And legally, this round goes to Newsom. He's fought harder than some of these D.C. Democrats. You have to put an MIA out to find Chuck Schumer a lot of these weeks. The governors are stepping up. But let's be clear about the facts. When judges rule against Trump this way, this long since June, many are still using the old rules and timelines that do effectively reward Trump for abusing power in the meantime. As a matter of practical impact, I'm not telling you how it could be or should be. I'm telling you how it is, best we can see from the evidence.

8:16Practically, today shows that Trump, according to this judge, was illegal, is trying to build a police state that's not allowed, and blatantly violated these limits on troops in the streets. But it also shows how the Steve Bannon playbook of flooding the zone, moving fast, and testing who will keep up or stop anything in real time is also still working. And the president is not exactly chastened for his use of these powers in D.C. or L.A. or elsewhere. He is now threatening to send troops to, yep, other places like Chicago. So this is serious. The courts are finding that Trump's goal is not cutting crime.

8:56it's a personalized police state which other leaders have used to try to steal elections and end democracy. It's not a Harris October talking point. It's what judges are finding. And Trump's talking about crime but the whole point is not whether there is sometimes terrible crime in our country, like in Chicago this weekend, there definitely was. But that as I told you at the top of the news tonight, our laws restrict soldiers trained for war, armed for war, from using that war training on our own people, on you. If this weren't actually happening, it would seem unnecessary to stay, to state this.

9:40You might turn on the news and think, why are they constitution-splaining to me? Of course, the guys in the camo to fight over there aren't supposed to be over here in my neighborhood pointing weapons of war at random civilians. Of course not. And yet here we are. As for the threat to go elsewhere, the Democratic governor of Illinois responding today. First, I want to address the president's unhinged remarks a few minutes ago, begging me to call him. No, I will not call the president, asking him to send troops to Chicago, to Chicagoans. What you can do is look out for your communities and your neighbors.

10:21Know your rights. film things that you see happening in your neighborhoods. Authoritarians thrive on your silence. Be loud. Authoritarians thrive, says a governor. Be loud, he says to the citizens. Citizens who have spent months in L.A. watching camouflaged soldiers walk around, which is what's happening still today in our capital. No police state, say the judges, but are they saying it as loud as the governor says we need, and are they saying it fast enough? I'm joined by Andrew Weissman, former FBI general counsel and mobile probe prosecutor and political science professor, Christina Greer. Welcome to both of you, Andrew.

11:02Your thoughts. So my thought today is sort of twofold. One is right now in Brazil, a former president is on trial for engaging, allegedly, in an insurrection. He lost the election. He said he won. And we like to think of ourselves as exceptional and we're at the vanguard and our legal system is at the very top of the world in terms of the rule of law. That's not true. The rule of law is functioning in Brazil. It's notable that Donald Trump has been taking Brazil to task precisely because they are holding their former president to the rule of law. It is refreshing to see Judge Breyer in California do the same today.

11:54And I thought there was another part of the opinion that was refreshing. he used the testimony of former, actually of current military people who testified, who understood that they were not allowed to violate the Posse Comitatus Act. Right. And then the full, then the, the trainings we saw. Exactly. And they said that what we were being asked to do, we were not supposed to do. We understood, we understood that if we were called in, we had a limited role. We were not supposed to engage in law enforcement that is against the law. It was so notable that this is the government's own witnesses were saying this when the government lawyer's position was, oh, the Posse Comitatus Act is an irrelevancy.

12:38The president can do whatever he wants. And it was so heartening to see that the law enforcement people who are on the stand were like, no, that's not how we were trained. That's not something we're supposed to do. We're not supposed to be functioning as law enforcement in our own country. What does it tell you that the judge was so concerned that this is the outlines of a police state? Absolutely. That's not an op-ed. It's not an angry podcast. It's a judge looking at what the evidence is. You hit the nail on the head when you talked about he gave example after example of saying, if you allow this, just think of the various hypotheticals of what he's going to be allowed to do.

13:20Just think about him now saying, oh, there's a crime problem so I can send in the military. There will always be a crime problem. There is a crime problem in every red state and blue state, in every part of this country, and nothing is going to eradicate it so that there is never a crime problem. Right, like the judge said, there's a tax evasion problem. Exactly. Are you going to have troops running through everybody's, you know, home offices? Exactly. So he's saying that can't be, that ruse cannot be the trigger, no pun intended, to allow this. And if Congress is going to say it's OK, they have to do it explicitly.

13:54And so far, they have said, no, you cannot do it. And even law enforcement understood it. That's how extreme the Trump administration position was, that they were saying things that essentially the troops understood was not allowed. Professor Greer? Oh, Ari, I mean, first, we have a president who said, you know, paying taxes is essentially for suckers. So I think the through line of sending military to collect taxes is frightening. But for someone who does not pay his taxes, it's very telling. I do worry, though, you know, Donald Trump is on his revenge tour, clearly targeting black mayors. Luckily, we do have, you know, Governor Newsom, Governor Pritzker, Governor Moore is stepping up.

14:37But to your point, Ari, the way you laid it out, you know, Steve Bannon said we're going to throw so much at the American people. They won't be able to keep up. You know, we know that in D.C. you've got 12 people circling one person with, you know, a busted taillight and we don't even know where they're whisked off to. I think far too many Americans don't understand the real threat that we are currently in. I don't think that a lot of Americans are doing the heavy lifting with members of their own family to make sure that when 2026 comes around, if there is an election, which we are dangerously close to a big if, making sure that their relatives don't believe the propaganda, which is, you know, we're this crime riddled country filled with, you know, quote unquote, illegal immigrants coming in every day, as the president said, three million a day.

15:24I think that there's a lot of heavy lifting that needs to be done on an individual basis, not just on an institutional basis. And, you know, with our elected leaders, where, as you said, where is Chuck Schumer? Where is Hakeem Jeffries? You know, these strongly worded letters are getting very tiresome for a lot of Democrats who need and want a lot more from elected leaders in Washington, D.C. and, you know, in states around the country. And as a political scientist, you study and measure these different dynamics. What do you see in the judges? They go home tonight and say, oh, it was hard to do.

15:58Military cases, they don't love those type of cases. I think Andrew and I could both tell you that. They say, but we stood up. And Bannon high fives someone, I'm using him as an example, and says, we got two and a half free months of that. I mean, is that an issue in whether judges have caught up to how things work now? I think, you know, the beauty and the curse of American democracy is that things don't move quickly. You know, we're not supposed to turn around, you know, the Titanic in a bathtub because, you know, provinces that are easily won are easily lost, as Machiavelli tells us. So we want to make sure that, you know, our institutions are strong and that they hold.

16:31But in the meantime, in between time, we've seen, you know, an elected leader who does not care about the rule of law, even when it is so clearly laid out. I mean, this is what George Washington warned us about in his farewell address. This is sort of the moment that the Constitution kind of lays out and a lot of the Federalist Papers sort of walk us through sort of early scenarios of what if we ever had a president who was like this? And part of the issue is that, all right, over time, we've expanded the role of the presidency and the bureaucracy so that we have amassed more power. Each president amasses more power and they aren't willing to give it up.

17:03We've never had someone who has a personal vendetta against the American people and a hyper partisanship that is really draconian to a way where I don't know if we'll be able to undo some of the damage that this particular president has done, especially just in the short term and his second term these past few months. Yeah. Christina Greer, thank you. Andrew sticks around. We have some breaking news coming out of Washington. Congress is saying they're now releasing over 30 ,000 of the DOJ records on the Epstein case. This is part of the transparency that has been going and going and going. We're getting it now in 90 seconds.

17:41I'll be back with you and Maya Wiley. Hey, everybody. It's Rob Lowe here. If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called Literally with Rob Lowe. And basically, it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J. Fox. There are new episodes out every Thursday. So subscribe, please, and listen wherever you get your podcasts. I like things my way, my coffee, my schedule, and my treatment. So I talked to my doctor about self-injecting with the Vivgard Hytrulo Pre-Filled Syringe, which contains F-Gartigamide Alpha and Hyaluronidase QVFC.

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19:27We're following breaking news out of Washington. Congressional Republicans, using one of the oversight committees, have now released over 30 ,000 pages of Epstein-related records, which they say they got from the DOJ. Now, this is a big deal, because if you go back to the middle of the summer, Trump and his allies were claiming they wanted this story done and over and not coming back in the fall when Congress reconvenes. On the other hand, we're just sifting through these now. Some of the materials are obviously not new and thus not really effectuating some great new insight. For example, we can see in the early summary of the records, it includes the DOJ Maxwell interview, which, if you watch the news, has been out for some time.

20:05With all of this swirling around on Congress's first day back, I want to bring in Maya Wiley, former SCNY civil prosecutor. Andrew Weissman, legal eagle, is still here. Maya, something is happening, but that something may be nothing. When you look at this, some of the items, of course, as mentioned, are not new. And thus, it raises the question whether the Oversight Committee is trying to do a thing or just look like it's doing a thing. On the other hand, Trump would rather that none of this was being talked about. He's asked for that. So how do you view this sort of pseudo transparency? Well, first of all, what took him so long?

20:43Second of all, remember that the news that we had already seen today was that there was a very strong possibility that Congress would push to get these released anyway, and that there were already some key Republicans, including ones that support Donald Trump, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, saying she'd sign on. she'd agree that they need to move this out of committee and really get action on the Jeffrey Epstein's files. And that's because the base itself, as we've talked about before, Ari, wants to see them. It was something that was a commitment. And just to slow you down, I'll let you continue.

21:23You're sort of reminding everyone, and some people are coming back from summer holidays and better topics than this. You're reminding everyone that the pressure was coming up through Congress because of this discharge petition that basically that Mike Johnson was losing control of this decision either way. That's correct. And discharge petitions, this sounds very formal, but all it really means is when leadership isn't moving, when something's not moving through committee, it's been sitting around for a long time, it is possible for the members of Congress to simply say, look, there are enough of us that want it out there that we're just going to skip the line here and push it and have it done.

22:00And that's why I'm saying we had people like Marjorie, we had a Republican, Representative Massey from Kentucky saying, I want to see them out. And Marjorie Taylor Greene signing on. They only needed three more Republican votes for the discharge. And that's important to note because the way I see this is their hands were forced. Andrew, I don't do math in public, but this is the way that I look at this. You mentioned that they released today roughly 30 ,000 documents, but the government has said to a federal judge that they have 300 gigabytes of documents pursuant to the investigation they did into Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein.

22:45This is a pimple on an elephant. I mean, this is a grain of sand on the beach, whatever metaphor you want to use. I mean, talk about death by a thousand cuts. I mean, this is such a non-event in terms of if you actually want to have transparency, where are the 300 gigabytes of documents? You can redact names of victims and certain personal identifying information, but this is not transparency. Maya, why are we still talking about this today? Johnson famously adjourned Congress early to just try to get some time and space away from this, and now it's the first thing roaring back. And I'm going to play in a moment.

23:32Everyone's expecting this press conference tomorrow where we're going to hear from more of the Epstein victims. But so why are we back to this? Well, you know, first of all, I think Andrew said it well. This is not just about what is true transparency and the fact that it hasn't gone away because Donald Trump himself and his own his own leaders made this a major issue for their base. Their base isn't going away. And I think you at least showed an image of Haley Jackson's interview with survivors who are coming forward or very angry. It's very clear that the American public is saying, why are you hiding it?

24:14You know, the why question is a big one and it's not going to go away because as a community of folks across the political spectrum are making clear, it's like there's this is just too big. There are too many victims. There's too much that has been said in public about what exists and it isn't going to go away. That's been clear for a long time. And certainly that's why we see this, the committee releasing what it's released. At the end of the day, it's about what the Department of Justice is going to release and what Donald Trump is going to allow, which is why the fight's going to continue. Yeah, those Epstein victims speaking tomorrow through a bipartisan organized presentation.

24:54You mentioned NBC's Hallie Jackson. Brand new interview. We're going to see that new piece of some of that right now. Show of hands. Did any of you hear from the Justice Department before they released that memo, that two page memo earlier this summer? no hands were any of you told that todd blanche would be speaking with gillaine maxwell prior to that interview over the course of two days no no were any of you told about the prison transfer that no no were any of you do any of you feel that the doj has communicated with you enough this year no no have any of you had any communication with the doj no nobody in this room has heard at all from the Department of Justice?

25:38No. Is that surprising to you? No. No. It should be. It should be. It should be. It's their job. This is the center of this whole entire case. They are the center. Why would you? Ghislaine Maxwell, let's get this right before the narrative changes. And I believe that so strongly that that is the intent of her. She's trying to rewrite history. And it was almost like she was given that platform to do that. And that is not acceptable on any terms. Andrew, it is so striking that after all of this, Maxwell is the one who's benefited. She's the convicted co-conspirator of Epstein. And we hear from these victims about a Trump DOJ that doesn't even make a showing of consulting them.

26:33So as Maya and I know, having been in the Department of Justice, those people who just saw, that's why you are in the department. You are there to vindicate their rights as best you can. This is such an indictment of this administration. It may be more than this administration in terms of the length in which they were not sufficiently accorded their victim rights, which, by the way, is another congressional statute that you have to comply with. But as somebody who is in law enforcement, that is a heartbreaking interview in terms of what the government's obligation is to victims and what you understand your role is and what you're supposed to be doing for them.