Welcome to Amicus, a law review with Jim Santel, Civic Media's weekly review and discussion of some of the most significant new stories in the areas of law, government, courts, and the aspiration for justice.
And now, here's your host, Jim Santel.
This is Amicus on the broadcast stations of Civic Media.
My name is Jim Santel.
I am your host on this broadcast this hour and also next hour in the wake of a week that is chock-full as they always seem to be with significant rule of law events in the areas of government.
and the administration of justice.
I thank you for making that all important decision to spend some time with me this weekend reviewing some of those major stories in the areas of rule of law.
I will note at the outset that this particular edition of Amicus a Law Review is prerecorded.
So regrettably, we're not going to be taking callers in this particular installment.
And that means you need to do this.
You need to write down your questions, your inquiries, your comments, your perspectives,
and save them for our next broadcast next weekend when we will, as we typically are, be live here on the broadcast stations of Civic Media.
But we do have a full agenda, a full syllabus, and we've got a lot to cover as a result of that agenda.
Let me tell you a bit about what we're going to be doing in the next two hours.
including, including a lot of focus, as we always do on the United States Supreme Court, because yes, not only are they back in business this week, but they've been entertaining a number of cases among their docket of just over 50 right now.
We're going to focus on two major oral arguments.
These are these opportunities that the parties
typically through their lawyers have, to talk with the justices, to answer the questions of the justices about the merits, and yes, often the demerits of the particular cases in front of the justices.
A number of oral arguments this week, we're going to focus on two of those, in particular, because undeniably, when the decisions on these cases are issued, they will be at or near the top of the list of the most significant opinions issued by the court in this, it's
2025, 2026 term.
We're gonna begin by talking about a guns case once again under the Second Amendment, something coming out of the state of Hawaii, having to do with property rights, having to do with public access, and the meaning once again before the Supreme Court.
about the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.
A guns case looming large just this past week will tell you a bit about how the tea leaves are probably appropriately being read in the wake of that oral argument of just this past week.
We will talk with you then also about the other major oral argument that has stolen appropriately the headlines across America and that is a case involving Lisa Cook.
You know who she is.
she is the governor, one of the governors of the Federal Reserve, and the President of the United States of America, his name is Donald Trump, has attempted to terminate her presence, to fire her from the Federal Reserve.
She has fought back, maintaining, no.
The Federal Reserve as an independent agency is not subject to the whims and the decisions of the presidency of the White House and therefore the president has no authority to terminate her.
That case percolating up and landing in the Supreme Court.
Yes, once again on the emergency shadow docket.
We'll talk about that as well and why that is important as a part of the court's review of the case just this past week.
We'll give you some sense about what the Supreme Court is
is thinking based upon their questions, their inquiries of the petitioner and the respondent.
In that case, here is the anticipation of that.
It looks likely that the Supreme Court is not, not going to grant the president the authority that he is seeking to fire, not just Lisa Cook, but also have greater powers and responsibilities
under what we have generally come to call the Unitary Executive Theory.
We'll talk an awful lot about the Lisa Cook versus Donald Trump case pending before the Supreme Court just this past week.
And then we're going to go back and talk a little bit about another case, another case that was also on the docket of the Supreme Court in the prior term on its emergency docket.
And that had to do with whether or not the Musk team, this group that the President commissioned to attempt
They were unsuccessful in the end, but attempt to identify and realize some efficiencies in government by making cuts across the board.
They did that, but not accomplish a lot of efficiencies in doing so along the way, seeking entrance into the otherwise, other ways, sacrosanct and private records and information of the Social Security Administration.
You may recall that this past summer,
The United States Supreme Court granted the Musk team the capacity to go in and review those documents.
It turns out that in the wake of that, indeed, there have been some alleged
probably likely misuses of the very information, the very information the Supreme Court gave them access to much over the objection of people like Elena Kagan and at least a couple of others in the Supreme Court.
We'll talk about that follow-up news having to do with a Supreme Court decision on the emergency docket, the prediction.
that the decision permitting access would come back to bite America and to bite this administration, to bite all of us.
Why?
Because now it appears that indeed some inappropriate disclosures of that Social Security Administration information has been made.
We'll talk about that.
And then getting back to the Supreme Court.
Yes, it's that time of year when they're beginning to issue opinions.
They've got about
probably 50, maybe as many as 60 by the time they're all done, coming up in June, maybe even into July, major opinions in many areas.
We've talked about a lot of those already, having to do with tariffs, for example, having to do with the Future of the Voting Rights Act, having to do with transgender rights, all those kinds of things.
Those are pending before the Supreme Court, and anticipating decisions on all of those.
Supreme Court, in that time period now, when it's beginning to issue formal opinions, we're going to tell you about a number of those, including a case we talked about a number of weeks ago, case involving Congressman Bost, BOSD, and his attempt to challenge the rules, the regulations, the policies, the practices.
of the state of Illinois in giving some leeway to the counting of absentee mail-in ballots there in Illinois.
The rule has been that if the ballots are postmarked by election day, but are not received by election day, they can be reviewed after that period of time.
And the question was whether or not the congressman, although he was successful in the very race in which presumably some of those absentee ballots were counted after election day, he sought
Belief?
through the federal courts to challenge that rule the state of Illinois will tell you what the supreme court said fairly recently in yes giving giving congressman boss the capacity to sue not making a determination about whether he's right or wrong on the policy but giving him the latitude to go into court and to sue on it we'll talk about that we've got at least three four five or maybe even six other cases to talk about in that area other things that you should know about
Why?
Because it gives you a sense of the breadth, the scope of the kinds of things that your United States Supreme Court is deciding now in 2026 and that it has decided on in years prior will decide in the future.
Among the 60 cases are many that do not see an awful lot of light of day when it comes to journalism in America, not in the headlines, not being reported by our electronic media.
But significant nonetheless, I'm going to give you some sense of what some of those are and doing that in order to invest once again in the notion that the Supreme Court takes on cases big,
small and in between.
And by small, I don't mean insignificant.
I simply mean they do not attract the attention of the majority of Americans, but they are significant nonetheless for the litigants who bring them and significant for the merits of the cases that are therefore decided.
That's where we're going to spend some time in this edition of Amicus, a lot of you telling you a bit about those cases.
This past week, we also saw something extraordinary on Capitol Hill.
That is the return
of special counsel Jack Smith to Capitol Hill, this time in the public domain, appearing in front of the House Judiciary Committee, talking about his intent, his purpose, his goals, the things that he did in prosecuting the two major federal cases against the now president, then private citizen named Donald Trump.
We're gonna talk about what Jack Smith told the congressmen and congresswomen just this past week.
We're going to talk about the reasons why his statements about the legitimacy of those cases and in particular the litigation, the prosecution involving the allegations of insurrection by this president are so important even though the cases themselves did not proceed to trial.
Why?
In the simplest form,
He ran out of time.
We ran out of time.
The justice system ran out of time.
You know the story here.
While those cases were pending and going ahead in the federal and, yes, appellate courts.
a new president was elected, his name is Donald Trump, and the government, the Department of Justice in particular, has as a part of its Office of Legal Counsel memorandum a policy that says that you don't prosecute a sitting president, and therefore the cases were effectively abandoned as Donald Trump was coming into office.
But this is Jack Smith's opportunity this past week to explain to members of Congress at their request.
previously behind closed doors now in the public domain.
What it is that animated him to do the prosecutions, how he proceeded on that, we'll talk a little bit about the focus of that hearing that was less on the merits of the cases and more on the process by which they got into and proceeded through the courts before their precipitous end.
An important event in the rule of law history of America, this is as close as we're going to get to a closing argument to a real life prosecution.
It is an imperfect
an incomplete substitute for what would have gone on in the trial, but Jack Smith stating with absolute conviction, unequivocally, that had these cases been presented, in particular the January 6 case, the case would have resulted in a finding of conviction of our current president.
And finally, I'm going to talk about something we haven't chatted about previously, and that is about Journalism in America, the First Amendment giving freedom of the press.
Freedom of speech, obviously, generally.
We'll talk about the search of a journalist's home a couple of weeks ago and what a judge did just this past week in responding to concerns about whether or not the search by your government, by the U.S.
Department of Justice of this journalist's home is in violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution.
All of that, all of that and more is coming up, is coming up on this next to our edition of Amicus.
A lot of you, once again,
I thank you for joining me in our exposition.
Our review of the geography of all these many things, as I often say, I will repeat it again this weekend.
It is a lot and it is all important to understand.
Let's begin again with the Supreme Court and this major case involving firearms on the docket of the United States Supreme Court.
A 2023 law, yes, about two and a half years or so ago, the state of Hawaii is a part of its tradition and we'll get to that.
Required gun owners,
to get permission.
People who are having firearms in their possession have to get permission under this state law in Hawaii before they can carry a firearm onto private property that's otherwise open to the public.
They may say, what are you talking about, Jim?
Why is there something called private property otherwise open to the public?
You know what these are.
These are places like gas stations.
They're plainly owned by people.
They're private property in the sense that the owners of those
Locations own the properties, but they're inviting the public onto them for public purposes.
Things like beach side restaurants, for example.
How about a grocery store?
Again, owned by particular individuals, even a corporation, privately owned, but inviting you onto the property.
What are the circumstances under which you can carry a gun onto those properties?
We'll tell you what the Supreme Court wrestled with just this past week here.
as Amicus, hold our review, continues after this.
My name is Jim Santel and this is Amica Sallaraview on the broadcast stations of Civic Media.
I thank you once again for joining me this hour, perhaps next hour as well as we once again examine what's going on in the rule of law in America in 2026.
We are starting as we often do with our United States Supreme Court.
They've got in front of them yet another guns case.
They have decided lots of cases involving guns in the past.
We have talked about them here on that broadcast, on this broadcast.
You recall that among the major cases issued by the Supreme Court a number of years ago was a case involving Bruin, New York State Rifle and Pistol Association versus Bruin.
one of the petitioners there alleging, alleging that in New York State, the restrictions on gun ownership and gun use were unconstitutional under the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
A 2022 landmark grueling in this case called Bruin, the majority expanded the right to carry guns outside the home.
Beyond what it established previously in another case called Heller and beyond that beyond that did this they established a new policy a new test so to speak now called the Bruin test which requires that courts as they address whether or not particular restrictions on gun rights to own to operate to transfer to sell guns Analyzing those restrictions
determining whether or not those restrictions those laws align with what's called history and tradition.
Bruin written by Clarence Thomas.
This is the history and tradition test that has been much much bandied about and is once again before the Supreme Court this past week in connection with this case involving an
a hawaii law the 2023 law once again says this that if you are a firearms owner and you want to go on to a particular kind of property that is privately owned but publicly operated you have to get permission
from that property owner to do so.
Things like, as I said before, gas stations or a grocery store, a beachside restaurant, for example, all those kinds of things.
And the question is whether that law that restricts the access of gun owners to those kinds of properties, absent getting permission to come on, whether that's constitutional or not.
Several gun owners there in Hawaii, in a gun rights group,
sued over this law saying you know what it's in violation of the Second Amendment
It's in violation because it makes it a crime for gun owners to bring their guns into places like shopping malls or coffee shops or gas stations or other privately owned businesses without getting first the permission, the authorization of the owner.
They say that's an illegitimate and inappropriate unconstitutional restriction on the Second Amendment right to carry.
And once again, they maintain under the Bruin test,
that that is contrary to the history and the tradition of our nation.
A lawyer for Hawaii that is representing the law itself said no, that the law fit exactly within the history and the tradition of both the islands and the rest of the country.
And so we have the fight about what history and tradition means inside this particular Hawaiian law.
Now, beyond the particulars of this case, it also sets up an interesting fight, not only about history and tradition under Bruin, under the Second Amendment, but also property rights, and arguably the property rights, the ownership rights of those people who own these places who want to say no.
I, as a property owner, would like to restrict access.
of people who are carrying weapons, and I should have that right as a property owner.
You can see how that might arguably conflict with the rights of those who would allege under Bruin and under the Second Amendment that no, those property rights to make those restrictions, to make decisions, to grant permission or not to gun owners to come onto the property, those may run afoul of the history and tradition
of the Second Amendment.
So it's an interesting property rights versus gun rights issues.
It is also significant to focus a little bit upon the substance of the law.
Several of the courts' conservative justices raised doubts about the historical evidence presented by Hawaii's lawyers to support the gun law.
They said, you know, we don't think that there is an awful lot of history and tradition that would give these private property owners the right to deny access by gun owners.
That included, according to the records and the annals, which you can hear of this oral argument, interesting, in 1865, Louisiana law that the challengers asserted was one of the
the so-called black codes.
in our nation's history.
Those were restrictive laws that are passed principally by southern states in the wake of the Civil War that limited firearms carrying by formerly enslaved people, now citizens of the United States of America.
So you've got Justice Samolito, who's a part of this conversation about what the history and tradition is and is not.
He asserts that the Hawaii's law regulates, or rather,
relegates the second amendment to a second class status.
Second class status is what he talked about, and he said this, is it not the height of irony to cite a law?
Again, he's talking about this particular black code law.
provided by, offered by, Hawaii's lawyers.
He says this is not the height of irony to cite a law that was enacted for exactly the purpose of preventing someone from exercising the Second Amendment right to cite this as an example of what the Second Amendment protects.
And Justice Alito then asking that as a lawyer for the state.
And the state, of course, responds to that in kind, saying, no, indeed, there is history and tradition here.
And for that reason, the law should stand.
Katanji Brown Jackson to Kenji Brown Jackson and other members of the Supreme Court, also much a part of this very vigorous conversation.
She suggests that these laws to the Hawaii law are rooted in the nation's history and tradition.
She supports what Hawaii's lawyers are saying.
And she goes on to say,
that the real issue here, and the real problem here, is what was articulated in Bruin.
What justices...
the majority back in Bruin articulated.
And what Clarence Thomas in particular said about it, the real problem is the history and tradition test.
When we come back, I'll tell you more about what she said and about how the overall the Supreme Court seemed to be going when it comes to this guns case before it this past week.
You're an amicus, Allah review.
This is amicus a law review.
My name is Jim Santel We are once again talking all about the United States Supreme Court and another major guns cases case on the docket of the Supreme Court just this past week Katanji Brown Jackson supporting the Hawaii law on the basis that it is in fact consistent with the court's history and tradition and she goes on to say once again inviting what she has done before a a welcoming an invitation
to revisit the very standard itself and saying, maybe, maybe the standard is no good.
She says, to the extent that we have a test that relates to historical regulation, throwback to history, but all the history of regulation is not taken into account, I think there might be something wrong with the test, she says.
Again, using this as another opportunity to attack the Bruin test that looks backwards in time, history and tradition.
and a lawyer for the Trump administration, named Sarah Harris.
She's in the deputy's list of general.
She's in this list of general's office.
She says that Hawaii's law would gut ruin the history and tradition test.
She said it would allow a ban on everyone licensed to carry from doing so at retail establishments or other private properties open to the public.
absent the owner's expressed consent.
She called Hawaii's rule a novel law that offends our history and tradition.
There once again, the debate is joined.
Again, all of this, all of this coming in the midst of the Supreme Court's continuing focus on gun cases.
It is at least one of two Second Amendment cases.
The justices are hearing in this term
understanding how it is that the Second Amendment applies in these practical ways.
In March, in March, in just a couple of months from now, the justices are going to consider another case.
The case is called Himani, H-E-M-A-N-I.
It focuses on a challenge to a federal law that bans gun possession.
Bands gun possession by people who use or are addicted to illegal drugs don't you may see gee I've heard of that before and yes indeed you have this is the federal law that was invoked in the criminal prosecutions of Hunter Biden it makes it prohibits the possession by anyone of fighter arms who are using or addicted to illegal drugs the question is whether or not that is an infringement
of Second Amendment rights.
Does that comport with the history and tradition of America?
In 2023, back in Hawaii, the legislature there revisited the state's gun laws and they did a lot of things.
They impose certain restrictions on concealed carry of handguns, the law banning concealed weapons in sensitive places like parks and beaches and restaurants, schools that serve alcohol.
The legislature also imposing criminal penalties for carrying a concealed weapon onto private property without permission and thus the challenge here.
Violators face potential criminal misdemeanor charges.
The law requires property owners to give explicit consent.
decaring weapons, either by quote, an unambiguous written or verbal authorization, or by the posting of clear and conspicuous language.
And that is why you get these signs, this signage at various spots that talks about whether or not guns are permitted.
The attorney general of the state of Hawaii, her name is Annie Lopez, she wrote a brief to the court.
And she said that the law is an effort to vindicate both the right to bear arms, which she acknowledges, and property owners' rights.
This other major issue that is in play here, an undisputed right to choose whether to permit armed entry onto properties in the state of Hawaii.
And all of this comes in the wake of a longstanding history in Hawaii.
It has always had some of the most restrictive gun laws in our nation, and it is known for rarely granting concealed carry permits.
In court filings, in fact, including a lot of amicus filings, officials traced their gun laws to the very unique history of our 50th state.
They noted that its former traditions as a kingdom
animate and move forward a lot of the legislative action in this area.
They point in particular to an 1833 law that was in place during the reign of King Kamehameha, the third, that prohibited any person or persons from possessing
deadly weapons.
What happened in this particular case is that a federal trial court temporarily paused most of the state's laws in this area, bought the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, overturned that, and the matter then landed before the United States Supreme Court.
A huge number of amicus briefs, friend of the court briefs.
filed with the Supreme Court in connection with this litigation.
Gun rights advocates obviously are saying that Hawaii's been trying to get around the court's Second Amendment rulings, including Bruin, and supporters of Hawaii's law plainly saying that if the court...
overturns the hawaii law it will make way for more gun violence talking not only about property rights but also about safety and security supreme court has before it now another case involving guns and the implication of the second amendment we will hear more about this when they decide that case presumably sometime between now and june if not
a bit later than that.
Supreme Court also had in the stock at this past week a major case, and this is the one that really did grab the headlines during the course of the week.
This is the one involving the Unitary Executive Theory, and yes, this is the case involving Lisa Cook.
You know her because she is the Federal Reserve Governor.
whom President Trump had sought to fire based upon an accusation of mortgage fraud.
Said she's engaged in mortgage fraud and therefore she should no longer be on the Federal Reserve, the governor there on that independent agency.
Now this once again raises this issue of independence of agencies created by the United States Congress and We're going to talk now about the takeaways from the oral argument Including two hours of very lively argument in which in the end the Supreme Court seemed to be very skeptical of the president's position that there was due cause there was cause to terminate Ms.
Cook
Even though she has been charged with a crime, even though the predicate for doing so is is razor thin, almost non-existent, almost certainly prompting the Supreme Court when this case is done to send it back to the lower courts.
also underscoring the problems with the case that, yes, is before the Supreme Court based upon what the shadow docket.
A premature presentation of the merits the Supreme Court seemed to be indicating in the oral argument before a fully developed record could be had.
As a part of this, a very interesting exchange between Katanji Brown Jackson and John Sauer.
You know who John Sauer is.
He is the Solicitor General.
What you're going to hear now is a two-minute
excerpt from the exchange between Katanji Brown Jackson and John Sauer in which she lays out and John Sauer attempts to describe the merits and the demerits of this particular position before the United States Supreme Court.
Max is going to play that for you right now.
What I'm trying to understand is how does reading the statute
to give the president broad discretion, which you've said many times, with respect to his removability of these governors.
How does that further the aims of the statute?
It directly furthers the aim of protecting them for removal from policy disagreement, which would be the key
protection.
No, but you've conceded that the aim is actually broader.
The aim is to ensure
that this institution is not being pressured by the executive branch, by the president, with respect to its determinations, that people can't just be fired because the president wants them to.
And so what I'm now asking is if we read for cause to ultimately reduce to, the president can pick some fact that has nothing to do with their actual tenure in office, something that happened way before and use that and say that's cause and it's not reviewable and he doesn't have to show any evidence and doesn't have to give the person a hearing.
Basically the president is just making
the determination that Congress apparently didn't want him to have the power to make because they put fore cause in the statute.
So how do you reconcile your vision of presidential discretion with a statute that was clearly designed to limit the president's discretion in this regard?
It was designed to limit the president's discretion just as far as the plain text of the statute goes.
The statute was a hard-fought compromise between two influential and insistent camps, as Justice Alito recently wrote.
One of them thought there should be complete presidential control of the Federal Reserve.
The other thought it should essentially be a private entity.
They met in the middle with a removal standard that protects governors from removal.
But it only protects them insofar as the president's determination
about cause is reviewable and based on actual evidence that has been established.
It doesn't protect them if the president can just make it up.
That a sampling of the back and forth between justices on the Supreme Court and John Sauer, who's attempting fairly desperately to try to defend this statute, establishing the Federal Reserve, establishing the powers.
of the Federal Reserve and the powers of the President.
Yes, to appoint governors of the Federal Reserve, but limiting in that same language the capacity of the President to terminate.
governor on this independent agency.
That's what you were hearing.
Let's unpack a lot of the instruction that Katanji Brown Jackson just gave us, just gave to the entire country about why the president's position terminating Lisa Cook is so very problematic.
You heard Katanji Brown Jackson implicitly have not explicitly talked about the problem with due
process.
And asking John Sauer there and in later questioning, what's the basis upon which this was done?
John Sauer, the Solicitor General of the United States of America, said that Ms.
Cook is not entitled to any particular kind of due process.
And in fact, he said that she had received notice of the president's intentions by what?
By social media.
That's the notice was given to her when the president said,
Cook must resign now, three exclamation points, and 30 minutes, he wrote that, 30 minutes after the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency had said himself on social media that he was referring allegations about Cook's banking records to the Justice Department.
So the position of your Department of Justice, the Solicitor General, is that due process comes when the president posts something on social media saying that a governor of the Federal Reserve
should be terminated.
Plainly, meeting with a huge amount of skepticism, not just by Katanji Brown Jackson, but by other members of the Supreme Court, Paul Clement, who is representing Cook, said due process requires notification of the charges against her, and that is fundamental.
A hearing during which she could tell her side of the story and a decision maker with an open mind, he said that the president's rush to judgment here
evidence in his social media post violated those rights.
And although the case again will be decided on a number of different grounds, it appears that one of them is the flimsiness of the record.
When it comes to due process, one of the many reasons why the Supreme Court will almost certainly send this case back to a lower court to figure out what kind of a hearing Ms.
Cook is properly entitled to.
Katenchy Brown Jackson also talked about federal independence, independence of the Fed in particular, the Federal Reserve Board set up by the Congress to be independent.
The central bank no longer retains its autonomy would be the position
in support of Ms.
Cook, if indeed, if indeed, the president is able to make these kinds of determinations and terminations of governors.
The Fed, again, responsible for setting interest rates and doing all kinds of other financial things, should be free of political meddling because the president should not, according to its very commission, be able to remove an officer of the Federal Reserve
without some particular reason.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in particular seizing upon the independence of the Fed, this secondary issue in suggesting that the administration position is unsupported.
When we come back, I'll tell you what Justice Brett Kavanaugh said about this, also indicating where he and others are going in resolving this issue here on the broadcast.
you
This is Amicus.
A lot of you.
My name is Jim Santel on the broadcast stations of Civic Media.
We are talking about these major oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court just this past week.
Perhaps at the top of the list, getting a lot of attention, is this oral argument about whether the president has the capacity to fire a governor of the Federal Reserve, in particular Lisa Cook, which he has attempted to do the Supreme Court in earlier proceedings on what, yes, is, again, an emergency docket application, has permitted her to stay in that position.
And so she is still there to this day.
And as a result of that, the issue continues to be whether the lower courts should be reviewing this in a way that gives some due process to this decision to terminate her and also animates more this issue of the independence of the Federal Reserve itself.
Brett Kavanaugh seizing on that particular problem with the administration's position by seemingly being concerned about the implications
of allowing Ms.
Cook to be removed under these very, very simple and arbitrary circumstances.
He told the solicitor general that his position that the president's determination could not be subjected
to judicial review or challenge would weaken if not shatter the independence of the Federal Reserve that we just discussed.
That's an associate justice who plainly is concerned about the independence of this agency that would be compromised if the President is given this unfettered authority to make these decisions to terminate Ms.
Cook and presumably
anyone else.
Now we know as well there are other attempts underway by this administration to affect governors and members of the Federal Reserve.
We know that according to all reporting, according to Jerome Powell himself, who is the Fed chair, he is under investigation.
by the Department of Justice, apparently over testimony that he gave to Congress about some renovations that are underway at the headquarters of the Federal Reserve there in Washington, DC.
Interestingly, he also attended Wednesday's oral arguments about these various issues.
and his presence was certainly noted by the Supreme Court justices along the way, then also getting to the statute, the statute that Katanji Brown Jackson talked about, defining cause, saying that a governor of the Federal Reserve can only be removed
for cause, for cause.
So one of the central issues, in addition to all these others, is what constitutes cause?
And the Supreme Court wrestling with that as well, what is the legal justification given by the president to remove someone like Ms.
Cook?
What cause means, interestingly, has never been specifically defined in part why?
Because of the unprecedented nature of this, because no president has ever before tried to remove a policymaker at
the Federal Reserve.
Now, most legal experts out there have maintained that the word cause has to mean something like gross misconduct or a dereliction of duty while carrying out the responsibilities of the particular assignment and right from the start.
The majority of the justices seem to be very skeptical of whether the allegation made against Lisa Cook could support the threshold meaning of cause.
They seem to cast doubt on the argument made by John Sauer of what cause means, and it could not be questioned by a judicial branch, including the Supreme Court, including lower courts as well.
Justice, the Chief Justice, John Roberts,
Joining this asked John Sauer if it made a difference whether an inaccurate notation on Lisa Cook's mortgage document That is the basis allegedly for her mortgage fraud.
It's untried.
It's Uncharged was an inadvertent mistake or a devious way to get a better interest rate again suggesting
that this cause issue is going to be problematic for him as well.
The justices also focused a lot on the fact that the alleged fraud that the Trump administration is placing in the foot of Ms.
Cook was committed allegedly, if at all, long before she joined the Federal Reserve back in 2022 and has nothing to do with her present duties as governor.
What is cause all about?
And then if that's not enough,
For you up to this point all these problems identified by the justices Indicating they're not accepting the position of the president on this major power issue the Supreme Court majority seemed also aware that it had taken this case prematurely rushed basis in Yes, once again the shadow docket of the court I mentioned already that previously inside that docket the Supreme Court had permitted the
A petitioner here, Ms.
Cook, to remain in office, to remain there in office while the allegations here about her, about all these issues related to the independence of the Fed, about defining cause, about due process, while all of that goes forward, including the development of a clear factual record, which is what typically all of these emergency applications lack.
And that seemed to push most of the justices toward extraordinary caution here.
They've again already permitted her to stay in the job.
They did not seem eager to change her status now.
Other question for the justices.
is straightforward.
What should we do next?
Should we send this back to the lower courts?
Probably that's what we're going to do.
Why to develop more of a record on this?
What is the basis?
What is the fore cause basis to terminate?
What is the premise of this allegation about mortgage fraud?
Tell us more about that.
And before that comes back, develop a record.
And isn't that indeed the entire problem or one of the problems attended upon the emergency?
We've talked about that so very much.
It was once again on display when members of the Supreme Court expressly and in other ways expressed frustration about the fact that this case is in front of them without a sufficient record.
Raise her thin if they're at all almost certainly sending this back, not giving the president what he wants, but requiring
lower courts to take a look at this before it at some point down the road comes back again.
All of that before the United States Supreme Court just this past week.
And as our second hour begins, we're going to talk about another footnote on the Supreme Court's emergency docket, having to do with a social security administration and an emergency application decision it made last year as we continue here on Amicus, a law review.
Welcome to Amicus, a law review with Jim Santel, Civic Media's weekly review and discussion of some of the most significant new stories in the areas of law.
government, courts, and the aspiration for justice.
And now, here's your host, Jim Santel.
This is Amicus, a law review.
My name is Jim Santel, your host for this, the second hour of our weekend broadcast.
We are this weekend pre-recording this show.
And for that reason, I need all of you listeners to write down your questions, your inquiries, your comments and perspectives and save those for the next broadcast next weekend.
We'll once again be live this weekend talking all about these major decisions coming out from the Supreme Court.
Eventually,
This past week, in the wake of two oral arguments, one of them having to do with guns matters under the Second Amendment, a case coming out of Hawaii pitting property rights against gun rights.
We'll see what the Supreme Court does in that case.
And then also this major case having to do with the authority of the president to terminate a governor of the Federal Reserve.
Her name is Lisa Cook.
and the Supreme Court signaling fairly clearly that they're not buying with the President and the Solicitor General were selling this past week, indicating almost certainly that they're frustrated with the lack of a complete record on this case, frustrated with the failure of the government, the Solicitor General, to properly appreciate the independence of the Federal Reserve.
frustrated with the fact that there did not seem to be due process given to Ms Cook in connection with or attempted firing and also frustrated by the fact that once again this is a case brought through the emergency docket and so the prediction here we'll see what they do is likely to send these cases this particular matter back to the lower court
to make decisions about the process that needs to go forward as that case proceeds.
It raises the specter, once again, of problems with the emergency docket.
And indeed, there is another development.
It fell far short of the major headlines this past week, but it is significant to note because it underscores exactly what the dissenters
in these many 20 or more cases involving the emergency docket have been crying about appropriately and warning about appropriately ever since this has been underway for the past year or so.
You may recall in great detail a review of one of the cases that was on the emergency docket of the Supreme Court in the summer of last year and it had to do with whether or not the Musk team, this group of people organized by by Elon Musk, given authority by the president,
arguably to go in and identify waste, fraud, and abuse.
They didn't do that, but they also did other things along the way that have now come to light just in the wake of the past week's reporting.
One of the things that the United States Supreme Court did was they permitted the Musk team to go into the Social Security Administration and to review records
As a part of its commission, you may recall that on the emergency docket, the Chief Justice himself wrote a one sentence result.
He said, there's nothing that prevents the Social Security Administration from permitting access of the mosque team to this otherwise confidential information so that they can do their work.
period.
That's what the Supreme Court said in the emergency docket, and presumably then the Moss team went in.
You may recall well that there were some scathing, scathing dissents, one in particular, authored by, by Elena Kagan, who appropriately noted how wildly inconsistent this is, not only with the commission of the Social Security Administration, information there meant to be sacrosanct,
Private, not accessible by anyone.
It is your private information, not just about your social security number and administration of social security accounts, but also carrying with it a lot of healthcare information, medical information.
All of that then given access.
given access by the Supreme Court through the mosque team.
And Elena Kagan, among others, decried this as a horrific decision that exposes the private information of all Americans.
to public disclosure.
What happened?
Well, it turns out she was right.
Some reporting that confirmed out of the courts, but reporting on some allegations about what at least two members of the Musk team have done, two members of the team working at the Social Security Administration, presumably after giving Supreme Court okay to go in secretly in touch, apparently, with an advocacy group seeking to overturn election
results in certain states.
One of these two apparently signed an agreement that may have involved using social security data to match with state voter rolls.
And how do we know that?
We know that because a top justice department, department official this past week said that the social security administration has referred both of these musk team people for potential
violations of the Hatch Act.
Hatch Act, as you know, it bars government employees from using their official positions for political purposes.
That's what the initial reporting is.
The reporting, again, in court by this top official, her name is Elizabeth Shapiro.
reports that there were some corrections to be made and some testimony by top social security officials during last year's legal battles over this very access issues.
And they revealed that the Musk team members shared data on an unapproved third-party server.
and may beyond that have actually accessed private information that has specifically been ruled off limits by a court at the time.
Lots of violations now indicated by the Justice Department itself.
Ms.
Shapiro telling the world, telling all of us that the case of the two Musk team members appeared to undermine a previous assertion
by the Social Security Administration that the work was intended to detect fraud, waste, and abuse.
That's the thing that was said to the Supreme Court in justification of the access.
And beyond that, they were there to modernize the agency's technology.
Ms.
Shapiro wrote that the SSA believed those statements to be accurate at the time they were made.
And they are still largely, largely accurate, she said.
But at this time, there is no evidence that these particular employees
side of the involved members of the MUST team were aware of the communications with the advocacy groups, nor were they aware of the VOTA data agreement.
And again, unclear exactly where this is going, but the Department of Justice identifying two of these people who may in fact have done exactly what Elena Kagan feared.
Exactly what Elena Kagan was warning against, inappropriate, inappropriate, and unauthorized disclosures, illegal disclosures,
of your information in this case for political purposes, thus raising concerns about Hatch Act violations.
That, once again, is a problem when you do not get a complete exposition of these cases before the Supreme Court as it makes these decisions.
In this case,
authorization given by the Chief Justice in one sentence, permitting the Musk team to do its work at the Social Security Administration.
Work it has done.
And we will hear more about the violations of the limited restrictions on them as this matter proceeds.
The Department of Justice confirming concerns about what the uses of this information have been a concern for all Americans.
Now the Supreme Court
In addition to taking on these oral arguments has also issued already about seven different decisions and it is important for us to recognize that these cases again
Come June, come July will be about 10, 12 in number that are hugely important.
But there are other matters that are the Supreme Court is also taking up among the 50 now approaching 60 cases on its docket.
I want to give you some sense of the significance of those beginning with one of those that we have talked about before.
You may recall, you may recall well, this case involving a congressman in Illinois who was challenging the rule of Illinois.
that allows mail-in ballots to be counted up to 14 days after an election.
Now, interesting, the congressman himself was successful in his attempt to remain in the United States Congress, but the Supreme Court on Wednesday apparently sided with him.
and has indicated to him that he can indeed sue the state of Illinois that allow these mail-in ballots to be counted up to 14 days after election day.
The question, again, important to underscore is not, is not whether or not the rule itself, the policy, the practice of Illinois in permitting the ballots to be counted after election day, whether that is constitutional or legal, but whether or not this particular congressman
has the right to sue at all.
Whether a political candidate has the right to challenge the rules governing the counting of those votes,
in the candidate selection.
And the majority of the court found that the answer to that was yes.
The justices, interestingly, have already heard, because this may sound familiar to you, they will hear a more significant case involving the legality of late arriving mail-in ballots later this year.
That's the second case in which they'll address the very issue that the congressman will now be able to litigate in the federal court in Illinois.
The upcoming case for this
Supreme Court is going to test rules in Mississippi, obviously another state that does allow the counting of ballots received after Election Day.
And so this particular case, this particular matter,
which is called Boss B.O.S.T.
after the name of the congressman versus the Illinois State Board of Elections gives candidates in his posture, in his position, the capacity to go ahead and sue to challenge the rules of states.
The Chief Justice in deciding this, he's rights for the majority, said the Constitution requires a legal challenger to have a personal stake in a case in order to sue.
And the Chief Justice found that this representative, his name is Boss B.O.S.T.,
the Illinois congressman who challenged these state selection rules.
Clearly, the Chief Justice said, had that kind of stake in the outcome, Boston argued again that the campaign, his campaign, would incur some costs, some extra costs, to monitor the counting of these late arriving ballots.
That's the harm, that's the standing that he alleged.
The Chief Justice agreeing with him, he says he's a candidate for office and a candidate has a personal stake in the rules that govern the counting of votes in this election.
This case again among several that are being brought again involving the processing of ballots.
Interestingly, the court's other conservatives joined the chief in the outcome, but Amy Coney Barrett, who was joined by Justice Elena Kagan, wrote separately that they would have found for the congressmen for slightly different reasons.
And so you've got an interesting majority here, the two other so-called liberals on the court, Katanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, dissented.
and they would have said no.
Under these circumstances, no standing, no capacity to sue in this particular circumstance.
You've got a seven to two ruling here, permitting, again, litigants, presumably most of them, former candidates, maybe successful, maybe not, to sue states for laws that they feel impose additional burdens upon their campaigns.
This is significant, again, not only because the other case coming out of Mississippi having to test once again the counting of ballots after election day joins that other case.
We talked about a great length.
Another elections case.
This is the one Louisiana versus Calais.
This is the huge case involving the future of the Voting Rights Act.
They heard the oral argument back in the fall in the first part of this term.
And it seems that the Supreme Court, when it comes to resolving that case, may be inclined to swing big on this, as they have done in the past, and find that section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is not constitutional.
That this issue related to the permissible use of race as a basis for challenging drawing lines, racial discrimination, may in fact be discarded.
by the Supreme Court in Louisiana versus Calais.
That case argued and now awaiting decision about the future of the Voting Rights Act of 1964.
When we come back, I'll tell you about some other Supreme Court cases also decided in recent times as the broadcast continues.
My name is Jim Santel, and this is Amicus, a lot of you.
I thank you once again for joining me this weekend.
We're doing a bit of a survey, a small survey, and also a survey of some of the other non-headline cases that the Supreme Court has already decided, about seven on its docket.
We are still awaiting some of those big ticket items out there, including, yes, the future of the Voting Rights Act.
We've got that major case involving, among other things, tariffs, and the President's authority to impose tariffs on
under a statute appearing there that the Supreme Court may well clip the President's wings, at least with respect to his invocation of the particular statute there.
Many other cases awaiting decision before the Supreme Court.
They have conducted oral arguments in many of them.
Many more oral arguments still forthcoming.
And we'll continue to report on those.
Here are some other cases, other cases that give you some sense about the breadth, the scope of the kinds of things.
that the Supreme Court decides on a regular basis.
Let's talk about Burke versus Choi.
The justices looking at whether a Delaware law requiring medical malpractice plaintiffs, people going into court, charging medical malpractice in a civil case, have to file what's called an affidavit of merit.
Does that apply in a federal case?
alleging medical malpractice.
The court said it does not.
You don't have to file an affidavit of merit as a predicate to filing your lawsuit in a federal court, saying that the federal rules of civil procedural control and that state rules and procedures do not.
an affidavit of merit not required in medical malpractice cases brought in the federal federal court, just as Katangi Brown Jackson files a concurring opinion in that.
A case involving these players, Coney Island auto parts versus Burton, case centering on whether a company could challenge a judgment as void, as illegitimate, as no longer in place years later,
or whether it waited too long to do so.
The court unanimously, once again, nine to zero ruled that even claims arguing a judgment is void, must be filed.
Must be filed timely.
You can't wait, can't sit on your hands within, quote, a reasonable time under federal rules.
You have to act reasonably promptly.
You can't wait forever and ever.
Coney Island auto parts versus Burton, just as Sonia Sotomayor filed an opinion concurring in the judgment.
And again, all Supreme Court justices agreeing with that result.
Here's another one.
Ellenberg versus United States.
Justices, the members of the Supreme Court considering whether court ordered monetary restitution.
Restitution, again, given in a criminal case, presumably to attempt to make victims of crimes whole.
Typically, typically, a restitution order entered requiring the payment of monetary amounts to victims of crime.
Justice is determining whether or not court ordered monetary restitution as a part of a sentencing judgment under a federal law counts as criminal punishment.
And you might think, well, gee, it certainly sounds like it does, but it has to do with whether or not the Constitution's ex-post facto clause is indeed invoked.
The justices unanimously agreed that it does, meaning that restitution is subject to the Constitution's limits on retroactive criminal punishment, a lot to unpack there.
It is important when it comes to the administration of the criminal law,
The anticipation, of course, is that there will be more cases coming out in the criminal practice area as well.
Let's talk about a couple of more of these cases among the seven or so that the Supreme Court has decided.
Again, they're in the weeds.
They're very particular, but it's significant to note, once again, the breadth and the scope of what the Supreme Court decides.
A unanimous decision.
In a case called Case versus Montana, affirming the judgment of the Montana Supreme Court, remember once again that the decisions of the highest courts of our states can be appealed to the United States Supreme Court.
We've seen that happen a number of times right here in Wisconsin, specifically when it comes to voting and other issues related to the electoral process.
Supreme Court holding that an officer may enter a home without a warrant.
An officer can go into a home without a warrant if he has, quote, an objectively reasonable basis for believing that an occupant of that home already inside is seriously injured or imminently threatened with such an injury.
That makes sense, right?
It is certainly one of the exceptions, if you will, to the warrant requirement, the consent requirement, of which we've talked a lot when it comes to the work of federal officers and in particular ICE when it comes to Minnesota.
and Minneapolis.
Justice Elena Kagan there delivering the opinion of the court again on this emergency aid exception allowing law enforcement officers to enter a home without a warrant still requiring probable cause but when the officer objectively finds that there is likely some serious bodily injury or some imminent threat.
of death being faced by somebody inside under those circumstances makes sense, right?
That an officer would be able to go in without a warrant.
And finally this one.
Barnett versus United States case concerning the double jeopardy clause we talked about the exposed facto clause before now we've got the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment and a particular statute under the federal criminal code 924 C and J unanimous decision once again 9 to 0 the Supreme Court reversed in part and remanded the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the second circuit again the Supreme Court saying the second circuit in part got this
wrong.
The Supreme Court holding that Congress did not authorize, did not authorize convictions under two separate statutes of 924-18 U.S.
at 924-C and J for one particular factual act.
That happens to violate both provisions.
In other words, one particular event that happens to run afoul of both elements of 924C.
So one act that violates both provisions should lead to only one conviction.
That's the rule, Katanji Brown Jackson delivering the opinion of the court.
In that case, Barrett v. United States.
of America.
All cases argued, and now among the seven that the Supreme Court has issued, we anticipate as we often note that in the times ahead, presumably in the weeks just ahead, some major decisions coming down, and certainly before the 200th anniversary of our nation in July of this year, when we come back more about the rule of law in America.
This is amicus a law review my name is Jim Santel your host for these last two segments of our weekend broadcast We've spent most of our broadcast this weekend talking as we often do about the United States Supreme Court these oral arguments that it is having on a regular basis and Some of the decisions already issued by the Supreme Court in areas that may not always cross your
headlines as you read the morning newspapers and view electronic media but are significant nonetheless in all those ways that animate the rule of law in America.
It is significant to note as well that when it comes to these oral arguments we've discussed on a routine basis here on the broadcast you can hear not just excerpts but you can hear the sometimes our long arguments
of the Supreme Court by going online and pulling down the
the online application for oral arguments inside the United States Supreme Court.
They're all recorded.
You can pull them up and you can listen to them.
You can also listen to them live if you know about the particular scheduling of an oral argument.
This broadcast, we played for you a bit, a small sample of Katanji Brown Jackson's questioning of this list or general.
You can hear that and you can hear all the rest of that by going online.
Supreme Court look at the official site
find the particular folder, pull it down that talks about oral arguments, find the particular case, and you can hear the justices engaged in these oral arguments.
It is fascinating, it is educational.
Yes, it sometimes requires a lot of time to get through everything, but you can do that while you're also multitasking, perhaps doing other things, and also learning all about how the justices engage with attorneys who are appearing in front of them.
Let's move across the parking lot from the United States Supreme Court there on Capitol Hill over to the Capitol building where there was some other major news in the legislative branch of our government just this past week.
You know what this is.
This is the return of special counsel Jack Smith to Capitol Hill.
You may recall that a number of weeks ago he met in private with members of the United States Congress talking about his decisions to prosecute the
now president, Donald Trump, while he was in his personal individual capacity on those two cases, one of them alleging election interference, alleging insurrection with respect to the January 6th events, that major prosecution that he brought through a grand jury alleging the president along with other co-conspirators
conspiring to overturn the election and engaging in violations of federal law by doing that.
He also was responsible for leading the team that was prosecuting the then private citizen, Donald Trump.
for having taken from the White House while he was still president and bringing to at least his location there in Mar-a-Lago a great number of boxes of confidential documents, national security issues, other things to which he was not entitled.
That's the so-called documents case, that one pending in Florida, the insurrection case pending in the District of Columbia.
And we know what happened in both of those cases, both of them proceeding a pace with respect to the
documents case you know that the case appeared in front of the district court judge her name is Eileen Cannon and in the end she found sort of incredibly that the
Prosecutor himself, Jack Smith, had been improperly appointed.
A case that was then appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
And matters related to that still pending in front of Eileen Cannon, as we'll get to.
But that was happening.
That was happening even while the president, the president president, Donald Trump, was being elected once again to the White House.
The case involving Donald Trump, private citizen.
at the time, charging him with election interference and insurrection, also preceding a pace in a federal district court in the District of Columbia.
All of that, proceeding to a jury trial, while the President
is being elected.
And as a result of this election, in the last moments of the Biden administration, both of those cases dismissed.
The one case then pending in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Eileen Cannon's decision to terminate the case previously based upon the perceived, the identified
Again, a spurious concept that Jack Smith was not properly authorized.
And then also going ahead in the federal district court in the District of Columbia, both of those stopped.
Why?
Because of the internal memorandum of the U.S.
Department of Justice saying that you cannot proceed with the prosecution of a sitting president.
Both of those cases dismissed in those two forums.
before Donald Trump took the oath of office about a year or so ago.
And so we never had a trial on either one of those cases.
We know that there are reports written about both of them.
And we know that the reports about both of them have been the subject
of a lot of review.
The report with respect to the prosecution of Donald Trump related to the January 6th events again has been released and is also now the subject of an awful lot of questioning by Congress people, men and women of the prosecutor and this past week following his behind closed doors appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Jack Smith, the prosecutor once again.
who twice was responsible for the prosecution of Donald Trump, defended that investigation.
that proceeded with respect to the January 6th allegations, he was not able again to defend the prosecution with respect to the Mar-a-Lago documents.
Why?
Because that issue is still in litigation before Eileen Cannon.
She has a date of February 24th to make a decision on that, but his testimony, Jack Smith's testimony, focusing principally upon the big rule of law issues that he was
animated by in prosecuting both cases.
Both of them, both of them sternly defended by Jack Smith.
He said this, he said, no one should be above the law in this country.
And the law required that he, meaning Donald Trump, be held to account.
So that is what I did.
He said in his testimony that he was never they would never allow to deliver in a courtroom again It could be that that that he would have been doing that had Time not run out had there been a different result in the election of November of 2024 but but
Jack Smith said, flatly, unequivocally, that had those cases gone to trial, in particular the January 6 case, Donald Trump would have shown to have been engaged in criminal activity that undermined democracy and the rule of law.
He said unequivocally that we would have been able to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, to a jury that would have unanimously found that our current president violated the law
in both of these cases, including the one about which he provided an awful lot more information.
The investigation by Jack Smith described in detail by him providing reasons for doing what the
Prosecutors and investigators have done describing for the members of the House Judiciary Committee, the basis for his pursuing this investigation, not as he maintained premised upon politics, but rather upon what the rule of law required.
That, of course, subject to an awful lot of questioning by members of the Judiciary Committee, including Jim Jordan, and he, of course, is the chair of the House Judiciary Committee.
He said that Jack Smith and the Smith team had interfered in the democratic process and took a very different view.
took a very different view of the things that motivated Jack Smith in doing all of this.
He said that the team interfered in the democratic process by seeking to muzzle a candidate for high office and going on about the significant problems that he saw in the Jack Smith investigation.
In fact, the lawmakers there, including this particular chairman,
of the committee, provided no evidence to support that claim.
They spent much of their time during the course of this extensive examination rehashing these political arguments and focusing upon and grilling Jack Smith about his decision to seek a court order for metadata about these phone calls.
You know well about this issue.
It calls that Mr. Trump and his allies made to nine Republican lawmakers as they sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Calls that were taking place quite literally as January 6th was underway.
An awful lot of focus upon the legitimacy of that.
And Jack Smith rightly explaining the reason why any good and competent prosecutor would have done that.
Why?
You are piecing together.
What has happened in these relevant periods of time while the country and the capital is under attack is it's significant to know what calls are being made both to public officials and private officials contemporaneous with these goings on the riot the attack the insurrection at the capital of course it is and That is the reason why any decent good competent professional prosecutor would have sought
these basically these telephone records to confirm who it is who the president is talking to where are calls being made who are the recipients of those calls these are not wiretaps these are not tapping the conversations themselves but developing a record about who is talking with whom all of that all of that jack smith defended clearly unequivocally as a part of the good and decent and professional
prosecution investigation of any case, in particular, Representative Brandon Gill, he's from Texas, pressed.
Mr. Smith, on this decision to seek a non-disclosure order that prevented the lawmakers from knowing about the records request, these telephone toll requests, and Representative Gill was particularly concerned, apparently, that the Jack Smiths team sought such an order for former Speaker Kevin McCarthy's records, all this coming out during the course of this testimony.
The order said that there were grounds to believe that telling McCarthy would result, and this is from the court order,
would result in flight from prosecution, and most importantly, destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses, and serious jeopardy to the investigation.
That's the reason why not only did Jack Smith seek
this court order, granted by an independent judicial officer that kept him, that it appropriately shielded this information from members of Congress because you do not want to discredit the investigation itself.
Again, back and forth on that examination of that.
And another Republican during the course of this examination, his name is Lance Gooden.
He's from Texas as well.
Also, question the validity of Jack Smith's
swearing in after he was appointed to oversee the investigations of Donald Trump.
And again, we're back in connection with that line of inquiry to determine whether or not the swearing in was appropriate, the appointment was appropriate, and other matters related to legitimacy of that.
All of that, all of that happening on Capitol Hill this past week as Jack Smith
Attempts to do what is plainly an imperfect and incomplete trial of this evidence.
The information he would have presented in court had he permitted to go ahead and try this case to a jury.
His conclusion once again that a jury hearing the compelling evidence that he would have presented that the
At that time, President and then a private individual, Donald Trump, had engaged in a conspiracy to overthrow the nation and to interfere with the counting of electoral votes on that day was not only compelling, but was evidence that had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the president had indeed engaged in that criminal conduct.
Many have asked, well, gee, why is it that others were not also indicted?
They were identified as co-conspirators.
Jack Smith himself and members of his team have also been the subject of not just criticism by our president, but allegations of acting inappropriately.
Jack Smith defending all of that this past week on Capitol Hill.
When we come back, we'll talk about another court decision having to do the First Amendment as Amicus, a law review, continues.
My name is Jim Santel, and this is Amica Salarview, the final segment of our two hour broadcast this weekend.
We're focusing, as we often do, on the Constitution of the United States of America.
And on the First Amendment, you know what it says, Congress shall make no law, respecting an establishment of religion, prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.
or the right of the people peaceably to assemble or to petition the government for address of grievances, words that speak volumes to us in these times of challenge in our nation.
Let's talk about that particular portion of it.
that provides a safe haven and a protection for members of our press doing their jobs.
We know that about 10 days or so ago, FBI agents searched the home of Washington Post reporter.
Her name is Anna Natanson.
And she is a Washington Post reporter who spent years looking at the Trump administration, first term and now second term, its effort most recently to fire federal workers and redirect much of the workforce toward enforcing his agenda.
She's done a lot of work in this area.
Many of those employees shared with her their anger, their frustration, and their fear with the changes being made by this administration.
And so about 10 days or so ago, the news broke that with the authorization of presumably of a federal district court judge or magistrate, some FBI agents had searched her home as a part of investigation into a government contractor's handling of classified material.
We'll get to that in just a moment.
And the significance of this cannot be overstated.
It is exceedingly rare.
It's almost un...
known, although it does happen from time to time, even involving instances of classified disclosures for federal agents to search a reporter's home.
That's how important the First Amendment protection of the press has been.
Inside the Department of Justice, in order to do this, if you feel as a part of your investigation that it is necessary to
get into the records, the information, the conduct, if you will, of a reporter and search a reporter's home.
You have to get special authorization.
Presumably, the FBI did that before seeking this particular search warrant.
In fact, there's a 1980 law that generally bars search warrants for reporters' work materials unless the reporters themselves, in this case, Hannah Natanson,
has engaged herself in some criminal activity, unless the reporters are suspected of committing a crime related to those materials.
It is significant that in the wake of the execution of this warrant, they went in, they took all kinds of things from Ms.
Natanson's home.
During the course of the response to that, Matt Murray, who's the executive editor of the Washington Post, said that neither Ms.
Natanson or the paper was the focus of the investigation.
That's why this is so important.
He said, nonetheless, this extraordinary aggressive action is deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concerns about the constitutional protections for our work.
He's talking about the First Amendment and noting significantly that Ms.
Natanson is not a focus
of the investigation, 1980 law barring search warrants for reporters work materials unless they themselves are targets.
Seemingly suggesting that right off the bat there was a problem with this.
Now where does this all come from?
Well,
Court documents indicate that the law enforcement officer is here.
The FBI was investigating Aurelio Perez-Lagones.
He is a system administrator in Maryland.
Apparently, it's a top secret security clearance, has been accused of gaining access to and taking home some classified intelligence reports that were found in his lunchbox and the basement, according to the FBI affidavit.
It supports this warrant.
Lugonis' job meant he had access to sensitive information, and court papers show that in recent months investigators suspected Lugonis of illegally mishandling some classified information about an unidentified country.
An official has said that when agents moved in to arrest Lugonis, he was messaging the reporter
and that investigator has found classified material in that chat.
Now, Ms.
Natanson has plainly contributed to several articles recently.
about the campaign with respect to Venezuela, including, including as we've reported here in this broadcast, the recent capture of Nicolas Maduro and his spouse, one article cited some government documents describing a diplomatic meeting at the Vatican.
So that's the predicate for all of this.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the search was executed at the request of the Pentagon to look for evidence at the home of a journalist who, as you said, was obtaining and reporting
classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor.
So that's what happened about 10 days or so ago.
And we've got an update on all this, which is significant in connection with First Amendment concerns, a federal judge, a magistrate judge in particular.
His name is William Porter.
He is in the United States District Court in the District of Columbia.
ordered the government not to review the materials it seized during that search of Ms.
Natanson's home, the Washington Post reporter, just about 10 days or so ago.
This, of course, in direct response to a filing by the Washington Post in the court arguing that the seizures violated the First Amendment and demanding the return of anything that the FBI got as a result of this warrant.
The magistrate judge was responding plainly to an argument made by the Washington Post.
Here's what the Washington Post said.
He said, the seizure chills speech.
Cripple's reporting and inflicts irreparable harm.
Every day the government keeps its hands unprotected in materials.
That's what the Washington Post said.
Judge Porter agreed.
He wrote that the Post and the reporter Hannah Natanson had shown good cause to maintain the status quo while the issues were being sorted out in court.
In other words, let's have a greater review of this before
We permit the government to have access to these documents.
That is what will now proceed based upon this decision by Magistrate Judge William Porter saying the government cannot get access, who cannot look at, cannot review these materials until there is a further examination of what's going on here.
All of that happening in the courts?
in the United States District Court in Washington, D.C.
and other courts, plainly around the nation.
We'll continue to report on those as Amicus Allora View continues in the weeks and months ahead.
Have a good weekend, everybody.
