Trump Loses Another Court Battle over Rule of Law

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0:34Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin, or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber. Tonight, we're actually just going to start like this. President Trump operates in bad faith, meaning he deliberately deceives and defrauds. He leads the government with improper goals, which is a way of saying that apart from policy or ideological differences, which can be vast but are fine, that's part of democracy, bad faith means his core purpose is improper and invalid in his use of authority.

1:18Stay with me because I'm going somewhere. We also start tonight by saying that Trump demands public officials, funded by your tax dollars. He demands they misuse their power and their roles to manipulate the government and its functions. And that ranges from the executive branch agencies, which he is supposed to lead, but not in bad faith, to the judicial branch's courts, which he is supposed to follow their rulings under our constitutional system. Now, there's evidence for the conclusions I just said to you. There are Trump's efforts to steal election, which got him indicted repeatedly, although never put on trial before his reelection ended those cases.

1:55And he was legally presumed innocent, but that's a type of evidence. There's also his explicit public embrace and reward of the violence of January 6th, something he would like to minimize and lie about. But honest Americans, journalists, experts of law will not let him do that. We will remind you that his pardons for those violent convicts and his later attempts to seize taxpayer dollars for MAGA allied convicts, all of that shows his bad faith. And that failed bid to take that money is actually back in the news tonight because the reason I started with this is that each point that I just stated is not just a general summary, not an opinion, not a view or an accusation of bad faith by one person against another.

2:39And you could say, well, everybody's got opinions and views about politics. What I just told you, and what I'm going to show you in more detail is actually the new binding finding of an independent judge that rebukes how Trump's lawyers operated in bad faith for Donald Trump to try to manipulate the government in his now paused, frozen sort of DOA bid to seize that money for criminals. Now, you might remember this project was in the news a lot because it was so brazen that Trump found there was Republican opposition. He had his aides ultimately claiming they would back down from his MAGA convict fund.

3:13The news tonight in that fund that was already, as I mentioned, kind of falling apart is that a judge has now ruled to void the entire effort by Trump to take that over billion dollars from the IRS and get this sort of legal power grab. This is a huge blow to that. The judge finding that the case they used to try to make this happen was brought to manipulate the judicial process, meaning it was not some valid effort to say, hey, maybe we should do this and then judges rule, but it was actually, like other things Trump has done, a wider bad faith manipulation of the courts and his access to them.

3:47This is a federal judge in Florida. The ruling as a matter of what's happening blocks what was already this frozen fund and also now blocks Trump's plot to try to extend some sort of tax immunity and audit protection to himself. And that's not all. the judge referring Trump's lawyers to the bar for possible discipline, which is a big deal. Now, the order that I was kind of summarizing at the top here tonight, it finds that Trump's side acted in bad faith in a matter brought for improper purpose, an attempt to use the court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people affiliated with Trump and to take billions of dollars from American taxpayers.

4:33This is a big deal. This is a judicial finding that, as I mentioned, reinforces what you might already know. You might say, okay, I'm watching the news. I know Trump's lying. I know he acts in bad faith. That's kind of his thing. But this is a judge finding this in a way that has real repercussions, especially for the people around Trump and MAGA who thought they could continue to use these devices, what the judge calls manipulation or seizing funds, to try to arm up a potential future militia force, which is not rhetoric. That's kind of what happened with the Proud Boys and others who were convicted of sedition for Jan 6.

5:10The judge calling out this corruption, it's something that, as I mentioned, was already on the rocks because leaders in both parties, as soon as this brazen deal was announced, started sounding alarms.

5:24This is a corrupt deal. I think it's stupid on stilts. That is the definition, as Thomas Jefferson, I think, once said, of tyranny. It's our job in the Congress, in the Senate, in the House, to hold the executive branch accountable. I don't think it's an appropriate use of money. I call it a payout pot for punks. It's all about weaponizing the tax dollars of the American people to support Donald Trump's private militia. This is a issue that's in politics. So it's notable, as I just showed you, that in politics where there's great disagreement about most things, Trump and especially his whole January 6th convicted sedition and pardons for those people, even on that, you saw Republicans in public saying no, too far.

6:17Imagine what they were telling the White House in private. So the whole thing was questionable. A judge ruling against it now, an independent judge, saying basically this is totally corrupt. And referring Trump's lawyers for the review of possible sanctions. Now, it is rare to see lawyers sanctioned for what we would call standard zealous advocacy back and forth. Indeed, courts require it and operate on it. In very serious issues, you can imagine a murder trial. You've got one side, the government, saying this was murder, and you have the people defending what they say was not murder, right, or if it's convicted, defending murder.

6:58And so there's a lot of back and forth there where you could say, oh, you know, you went really far to defend this murderer. You're allowed to do that. If you go to law school or civics courses, there's a lot of talk about how much protection there is for that adversarial system. If you watch this show regularly, you may know I happen to be a lawyer, and lawyers talk about how you need to really protect that. You don't want to criminalize or dissuade zealous advocacy of all kinds of positions. But that doesn't mean you can lie in court or manipulate the system. There has to be an outer edge. And this judge is saying Trump's lawyers may have crossed it.

7:32As for Trump's DOJ, the government itself, the judge notes, their conduct is equally untenable. The DOJ tasked with enforcing U.S. law has remained absent and silent from this case, which the judge is saying perverts the enforcement of law. This rebuke comes as the embattled acting AG, Todd Blanche, who was trying to sell this now pretty much aborted fund, heads into a confirmation hearing this very week. Blanche spearheaded the settlement and was quite dodgy, even when it was under attack, about backing off it. Because, as I told you, the judge said it's untenable. The Republicans said it's a no-go.

8:07And yet he still was dodgy in backing off. We are not moving forward with the fund, period. Not moving forward ever. Correct. Oh, there's no more fund then. Is there any way that you could put this in writing? I'm not committing to putting anything in writing. I'm going to set it over and over again.

8:29Blanche fighting an uphill battle. He also has ethics complaints. He's lost this fund that he was hatching, and any good lawyer or sort of strategic person will tell you, you don't want headlines like this, and why do something that costs a lot gets you criticized if it also loses, meaning even by the narrow standard of serving Trump, he lost. As for his reputation, well, he's already lost that. He's got an unprecedented number of DOJ vets arguing against his stewardship of DOJ and promotion to be permanent attorney general because of the bad faith I'm telling you about. This is different than saying you never liked Trump, or you disagreed with his ideas, or you even find him loathsome, as an increasing share of Americans do.

9:12He's got the lowest approval of any second-term president since we've been measuring. This goes to something deeper, the corruption, the rot, and the bad faith as adjudicated by an independent judge as we continue to figure out what America's going to do with someone who, if the courts didn't stop him, would be stealing your taxpayer dollars and handing it to convicts, like some sort of reverse case doomsday scenario of how to subvert law and order and make the country literally less safe. I want to bring in Governor Dean, former DNC chair, and Maya Wiley, a former civil prosecutor with the SDNY, CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

9:51Maya, I set this up deliberately because anyone who's watched Donald Trump could say, liar, bad faith, duh. But here, it's liar, bad faith, trouble for the lawyers, a rebuke of this DOJ under the acting A.G. Blanche, and an actual step that could stop the bad faith things. Your view of why this could matter. Well, you said it very well, Ari, and let me just say it could matter because we're talking about the courts providing a ground to sanction attorneys for the government. But to your point, Todd Blanche, the guy who's been doing this as an audition, literally for the top job to be the lawyer of We the People.

10:42One of the things that's so striking about what this judge is setting out in the opinion is exactly this point about this is not the job. This is not the job description, and this is not the oath of office. Essentially, you are literally, we are watching attorneys be a vehicle for something no one of us would ever do. I mean, Ari, when would you ever be both the plaintiff and the defendant? When would you ever say, I'm gonna let my defense attorney also be the attorney for the plaintiff? You would never do that. That's exactly what's happening here. And to your point, it's happening here both in creating a slush fund for the political advances Donald Trump as a politician wants to make to what I call his foot soldiers, potentially, people who are not keeping us safe, but making us less safe.

11:35He's trying to use the Department of Justice as a vehicle. And Todd Blanche is auditioning for the role by being whatever Donald Trump needs him to be, even if it makes the rest of us less safe. And the immunity thing is outrageous, like literally outrageous. How would we ever say that private citizen Trump or his children can't even be investigated for making money and not reporting or engaging in tax evasion, even well out of office? And this would have nothing to do with being president, but this gets slid in. You know, it is outrageous, but it's also an example of how Todd Blanch is really evidencing something that we're seeing too much in our government.

12:20And it is so critical for a court to call it out and say, no, you don't. By the way, if you do, we will do everything in our power to ensure you pay the price. And that's called oversight. That's called accountability and the transparency of this opinion and of the process is deeply important to the American public. Very, very clearly put. Governor Dean, I have many questions, but I'll let you take your opening shot at what could be a significant ruling here if it holds. Yeah, I mean, thinking about the bigger picture, all systems of our government are broken. We have a guy who's probably the most corrupt president in the history of the country in the presidency.

13:00We have an ineffective Congress, which is out of touch with where the American people are. And we have a court system which is corrupt at the top. So the real problem is we want something that I think Republicans and Democrats can agree on, term limits, term limits for the Supreme Court, term limits for the Congress on both the Senate and the House side. The problem is inside the Beltway is too cushy for people. They preserve their seats at the expense of the American people. And they're not all bad people, but I always like to say, basically, Washington is middle school on steroids. They work hard, they're smart, and it's all about them all the time.

13:41And so even the Democrats, I think, are out of touch. That's why you're seeing the people from DSA and all these young people taking seats. And I frankly hope that they're a little to my left, but I hope that more of them do that because we have got a big generational problem. It's time for my generation to step aside and to have 30-year-olds who actually care about the future of the country. And there are not a hell of a lot of people in Washington who think seriously about the future of the country. There are some who I admire, but there are virtually none. I mean, the one I liked the best was Thomas Massey, even though his politics was appalling to me, but at least he stood up for what he believed in.

14:16And there's so little of that in the Republican Party today. I think they're going to get wiped out, assuming we can have an honest election, and Trump is doing everything he can to attack that election. Right. And you just - As is Todd Blanch. Yeah. And you drew the connective tissue there that you need you'd still need to have the election that is the accountability. Go ahead, Maya, please. Yeah, well, the connection to, I think, this incredibly important point about power is that we're watching the same power being used from the Department of Justice to persecute people who are organizing people to be able to vote.

14:50I mean, we saw that with Southern Poverty Law Center, which is a story civil rights organization that also helps people vote but goes after the Ku Klux Klan, gets a indictment, even though it had had a working relationship with the Department of Justice and the FBI over a number of years. Todd Blanche has to retract statements that were not factually accurate about whether or not they were working with the FBI. But this is, again, the opposite of the groups that were probably and people who are probably going to get paid out of the slush fund. Right. This is an effort to persecute, to say, don't trust the people who are trying to help you participate in a democratic process.

15:31think of them as the enemy, and then they roll into Ohio and paper the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. Again, registering Black people to vote suddenly looks like it's something that deserves a Department of Justice investigation. We are watching in real time, not just this disgusting deal that happened that is just both graft, but also an effort to take the reins of government and use it to trump's political advantage. But it's also weaponized, thanks to Blanche and others, to actually come for the rest of us, to literally say we can persecute you by prosecuting you because we just don't like what you are doing, because we don't like who you're helping to vote or how you're helping them to vote or what you're doing to ensure there's no gerrymandering or anything else that's about a democratic process.

16:27That's the tyranny. That's also the red line that actually no Republican should want to see cross because you don't want any party doing that. As you say, some even see it that way. I mean, we saw even the Senate leader of the Republicans go against Trump on the issue we're discussing, the fund, as well as the voting midterm plot that Trump wanted. I want to show also how the judge ripped apart the abuse of the both sides of the case thing that Maya mentioned. So we have a quick break, 90 seconds. We'll get into that next.

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18:26That's code podcast at gruns.co. Back with Howard and Maya on a big lost day for the Trump DOJ and the effort to sort of seize taxpayer funds. The kind of immunity that Trump was trying to give himself as if he didn't get enough from the Supreme Court was coming out of a case that Maya pointed out was, you know, fraudulent basically to begin with. Many people kind of felt that way. It was so brazen. No one's really tried it this way. I want to read, though, from a summary of this new ruling, noting that the judge held Trump's$10 billion lawsuit against the IRS was manufactured to justify its settlement.

19:05So it's not a real case of controversy. I think we have this from Politico. Exactly. Multi-billion dollar so-called anti-webization fund for political allies, shield from IRS scrutiny. Maya, why does that matter that other presidents didn't try this because they didn't try to shake down the government blatantly for money this way, even though they weren't all perfect, and that this is now called out in court as a fake case to begin with? Because other presidents of both parties understood that this is an abuse of power and should be considered unlawful and that shouldn't pass the sniff test. It's that simple.

19:46You can't say I'm going to use my power as a president for my own personal gain. And I'm going to do it brazenly by telling people who I control, I'll bring the lawsuit and then I'm suing myself. So then you do what I want you to do, which is line my pockets, protect my graft and ensure that I have a slush fund to pay off anyone I want to pay off. Yeah. Governor Dean, the politics of this at a base level are when corruption wins, and you can look at other countries, it becomes more common. When corruption is too costly or loses, there's still some people doing it in the same way that some people are always going to be a part of the criminal element.

20:30Can you speak to that deterrence? Do you think the courts are finally perhaps after delay helping draw that line? I think it's bold partisanship in the courts. If you get right-wing people in certain circuits, Trump gets what he wants. And that was designed. That's been a 20-year effort on the part of the right wing with billionaires participating in recruiting right-wing judges and ramming them through as often as the leader of the Republican Party did in the Senate. it. And so they've manipulated the judicial system. You get the results that they want. But there are some very good judges and thoughtful judges, including some Trump has appointed, must have gotten through his screen somehow because he doesn't believe in competent people.

21:16He only believes in obedient people. So I don't give up on the judiciary, but I do think it's broken because the Supreme Court has invented these crackpot theories like unitary presidency and all this stuff to basically let Trump do whatever he wants. They're just making this stuff up. And that's what they got put there to do over the years. Yeah, really striking. Howard, Maya, my thanks to both of you on this important story up ahead. Trump promised a short war that hasn't worked out. We have the latest from Iran. Rubio also finding he's eating his words. But next we go to the heat on the Trump-allied billionaires who are trying to take control of CNN.

21:55We actually have a special guest leading the lawsuit that could try to stop that merger.

22:05Tonight we're turning to new pressure on the MAGA media mogul who has spent a lot cozying up to Trump and wants to control CNN and a lot of the other things you see on your airwaves. This is a big issue around free speech and business and who controls what in our democracy. There are now several Democratic-led states that are formally suing to try to block that big merger we've been covering, where the Ellison family basically puts down about$110 billion to get the massive conglomerate Warner Brothers, which includes HBO, CNN, and a lot of other stuff, movies, you name it. This case is now arguing that the deal would create an unlawful merger, that it would be just too big and anti-consumer, that it would harm movie theaters, cable distributors, and audiences.

22:49Now, this is the deal that would give the Ellisons basically control of several streaming services, including HBO Max, a bunch of cable channels, two movie studios, CNN has mentioned. So there are First Amendment questions. Ellison has control of CBS News, where there's been clashes, you remember, over its political independence. Stephen Colbert, 60 Minutes. CNN might get the CBS treatment once this whole merger closes. Ellison reportedly told Trump there would be sweeping changes to the network that he would like. Trump has also been quite public and calling for. You have some good companies bidding on it.

23:28I think the people that have run CNN for the last long period of time are in disgrace. I think it's imperative that CNN be so. The fake news like CNN, like the New York Times and like others have abused our people. Wait a minute, be quiet. Have abused our people so badly and you should be ashamed of yourself. CNN does such false reporting, But now they have new ownership, so maybe it'll straighten it out. I doubt it. But it's hard to straighten garbage out. Thank you for calling in. We're trying to have CNN go on a normal path, and we'll do that. Well, I'm on a normal path right here, sir, and I appreciate your time.

24:05And thank you for calling in. That's what it looks like, to be clear. The president, like anybody else, can criticize the media, including us, all he wants. That's what the First Amendment protects. But when you heard him quite publicly talk about whether the ownership would change and the ownership are people that have been very close to him, that raises larger questions. He is directly referencing the Ellisons might make these places more Trump-friendly. And then there's a money trail. Ellison spending, supporting MAGA projects, throwing a party for Trump while he controls the regulatory approval over the merger.

24:42DOJ leaders actually surprised some of the independent, nonpartisan sort of long-term staff who thought that there might be issues here, and they didn't even get an opportunity to object. Now, Paramount says this lawsuit that I'm reporting on tonight distorts antitrust law and is based on a misrepresentation of competition. Also, we should note that Paramount and CBS leaders say they are not trying to do anything at the behest of Trump or the government, that any editorial changes are their independent judgments. And it is certainly true that apart from antitrust issues, people buy media companies all the time and can make changes.

25:18That's okay. The question legally is whether there was quid pro quo or these many media targets that you see here, including cancellations and going after Kimmel and abusing government power and lawsuits amount to something that goes beyond the First Amendment's protection of free speech with no government interference. We've tried to set this conversation up quite fairly, high stakes, and we're joined by Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, one of the 12 Attorney General on the suit I mentioned. Welcome. Thank you very much. Good afternoon or good evening to you. Good evening. Depends where we are.

25:55On the West Coast, still good afternoon. You're arguing not that this is just unfair or might change the editorial, but there's something unlawful about merging this much editorial and media. Why is that? Yeah, certainly. And that's been the case, frankly, with all the lawsuits my colleagues and I abroad, and that's that there's always an unlawful component to it, which is why our victory record is 85 or 90 percent. Such is going to be the case here as well. Look, in layman's terms, or the bottom line is we have two big companies here, a movie company, TV companies that are trying to become one.