My name is Jim Santel, and yes, I am your host once again for our weekly weekend review, our analysis.
our examination, our exploration of all things related to the administration of justice and the rule of law, the operation of government.
So pleased that you have once again chose to spend some time in examination with me of some of those major issues in those areas that affect our lives and our livelihoods.
As always, our focus is on the rule of law and justice and government and no exception this week's broadcast.
We've been spending a lot of time recently talking about the United
State Supreme Court.
No exception in this broadcast, this podcast, although because the Supreme Court has now concluded, at least for a while, most of its oral arguments on the 30 or so cases that it presently has in stock at.
We're not going to be chatting about those merits decisions, those merits cases, but a couple of other things have been going on in the Supreme Court just this past week in the areas of immigration.
And yes, of course, politics as we anticipate the midterm elections coming up very soon in America, including right here in Wisconsin.
Couple of things happening coming out of the Supreme Court that are different in nature, the things we don't normally anticipate.
And then we're going to talk about a couple of district court judges, again, in two different districts, having to do once again with immigration and politics, two different judges, two different districts, those topics paralleled in the district courts.
as opposed to the Supreme Court.
All of that happening here on Amicus, a lot of you on the broadcast stations of civic media.
Again, let's get right to it.
Let's talk first about an unanticipated but not unprecedented alliance that we saw this past week coming out of the United States Supreme Court.
The alliance between Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch.
Joining forces, if you will, these joining comments with respect to the government's prosecution of an illegal immigrant, marking again an unusual alliance here, but not unprecedented, not unknown in the past.
We know that both of the justices in a statement, not a dissent, but a statement expressed some concerns about the decision by the U.S.
Department of Justice to prosecute a Mexican national twice, two times, raising double jeopardy issues.
as the justices commented, for being found unlawfully in this country, in the United States of America, even after a federal court prohibited that person from leaving the United States, and in particular the Eastern District of Oklahoma.
Where does this all come about?
Well, it turns out that the Supreme Court, as it continues to review cases and places things on its docket for this present term, the 2026, 2027 term, routinely every week has
saying no to most cases that are coming up.
And that's what they did in this case involving a petitioner named Jesus Herrera Salazar.
Mr. Jesus Herrera Salazar raising double jeopardy issues with respect to his prosecution coming before the Supreme Court.
The justices of the Supreme Court deciding not to take his case on that and some related grounds, instead saying no, we're not granting a writ of search Herrera, which again, as you know well,
is the Latin, it's the legal term for yes, we'll take a look at this.
Mr. Jesus Herrera, Salazar, not being given that review by the Supreme Court, but along the way.
We have Neil Gorsuch and Sonia Sotomayor issuing what basically is a joint statement, again, not a dissent.
They're agreeing with the decision not to take the case, but noting, noting in this separate statement, which is something we haven't talked a lot about here on Amicus, a lot of you, and identifying particularly some of their concerns about what the government is doing.
So they're not disagreeing, so not a dissent here without the court is doing, but really giving some instructions, some advice to the government, to the United States Department of Justice.
pretty much asking the question, what are you doing here, even in the midst of a case that we're not going to be handling, identifying some serious constitutional problems with the government's actions?
So what is it exactly that the
Court is looking at here.
What did Sonia Sotomayor say that Neil Gorsuch has joined in as well?
She says, from the moment he was released from custody, Mr. Jesus Herrera Salazar, after serving his first term of imprisonment, was presented with a Hobson's choice, basically a difficult, impossible choice.
In the government's eyes, whether Herrera Salazar remained in the Eastern District of Oklahoma or left the United States in either case,
he would be breaking the law.
And that's what, again, Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch are focusing on and saying, this is impossible.
The two justices question there for how the government could punish someone for remaining in the country, in the United States of America, after effectively at the same time, same language, same mouth, if you will, prohibiting him from leaving.
And the Paris Joint Statement describes the situation as a constitutional absurdity, a constitutional absurdity.
Now, this is not the first time that Sotomayor and Gorsuch have jointly questioned some things that the government and others have done.
In November of 2024, the two of them
questioned and scratched their heads about whether homeowners should be compensated when police destroy some private property while carrying out law enforcement operations.
A few months after that, they again got together, they issued another joint statement raising similar concerns about warrantless misdemeanor arrests.
In both cases, like in this present matter involving immigration, much in the focus not only of this administration, but of all America these days, the court declines
trying to hear those appeals decided not to hear the cases themselves.
But nonetheless, the two justices, as does any justice, they have the right to do this.
The two justices highlighted these constitutional questions that they believe deserved attention, calling the attention of all of us to what they described as the absurdity of what the U.S.
Department of Justice is doing here.
So where does this come from?
Herrera Salazar, again, a Mexican national.
He's previously removed from the United States.
He was indicted in 20
six years ago for being found in the country following deportation that in and of itself is a violation of federal immigration law.
That's part of our basic statutes prohibiting someone from being here after being found subject to and removed from our nation.
He pleaded guilty at that time.
He served a prison sentence.
He was placed on supervised release.
during which he was expressly prohibited from leaving the eastern district of Oklahoma without authorization.
There is the rub.
Well, under those restrictions, Raer Salazar was stopped by police in a place called Heavenier, Oklahoma, and he was subsequently charged again under the same federal immigration statute prohibiting, here we go once again, previously deported individuals from being unlawfully present.
found in the United States.
A jury then convicted Herrera Salazar resulting in another prison sentence and additional supervised release.
You can see the problem here obvious to anyone of any political persuasion and obvious to these two justices.
The second prosecution prompted Herrera Salazar to challenge that conviction again on double jeopardy grounds.
Yes indeed.
Arguing that the government was effectively punishing him twice.
The same continued
period of unlawful presence.
The U.S.
Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, the lower court, the appeals court, interestingly rejected that argument, concluding that the offense itself is completed, again, lingo from the language of the law, completed when authorities discover a person's unlawful presence, and that a subsequent discovery, even in the case like this, can support a separate prosecution.
Well, that's what the appeals court determined.
And that's the determination that will stand because, again, the Supreme Court is not going to overturn that.
But Gorsuch and Sotomayor both said, that's kind of crazy.
They pointed to a Supreme Court precedent establishing that prosecutors cannot evade double jeopardy prosecutions by dividing one continuous crime into separate periods.
And it makes some good sense, right?
Their concern in the end, as I read all this, was not whether Herrera Salazar had violated immigration law in the
for his place he had, no doubt the jury's determinations were appropriate, but whether the government could repeatedly prosecute him for remaining here in the country without evidence of a separate unlawful reentry.
It never left, and yet he gets prosecuted twice.
The justices also taking this opportunity to note
that Herrera Salazar's supervised release conditions restricted him from leaving the district, from leaving Oklahoma at all, meaning that the government again was effectively preventing him from ending the conduct for which it later prosecuted him again.
Not difficult to see the absurdity of that, so Major warned that under the government's interpretation, prosecutors theoretically could have brought separate charges against this defendant.
against Herrera Salazar for each day he remained in prison following his first conviction.
That, I think, virtually everybody, including these justices, were regarded as manifest injustice.
The statement was issued despite the justice agreement that the court's decision, the lower court decision, would not be reviewed.
Sotomayor explained that Herrera Salazar had already been removed from the United States, and she expressed hope in this same statement.
that the unusual circumstances that the United States Department of Justice in doing all this and prompted would not arise again.
And that's the reason for a statement.
There is your legal instruction today, law school here on Amicus, a lot of you.
A statement being this opportunity for the justices to say, okay, we've decided this in a certain manner, but beyond that,
We're not liking what we're seeing.
Stop this.
Knock it off.
Don't do it again.
Rather than dissenting from the court's refusal to hear the appeal, the two of them here issued this statement with a capital S, respecting the denial of Sir Sirarai to publicly identify these constitutional concerns and to urge lower courts under the same circumstances.
Don't do the same thing.
Knock it off.
Stop doing this.
And again, the Justice Department should take this as a clear admonition that what they have done with respect to Mr. Herrera Salazar should not be repeated anywhere in the United States of America, even though the 10th Circuit decision here continues to be in place.
That's your odd, peculiar, but not unprecedented Supreme Court thing that happened this past week.
Let's go back to another matter that has bedeviled the Supreme Court, lower courts, appeals courts, and political people across the nation and requires once again an awful lot of head scratching, not only an understanding
all the things that have happened here, but also where this stands right now.
We spent a lot of time last week talking about this matter involving political ads and the costs of them and who gets special consideration when it comes to the costs of television and radio ads.
Remember this discussion?
It is not easy.
It's a lot, as I often say, it is not easy to follow.
It's convoluted.
But the upshot, the result of what happened between the time of our last disposition, which we'll talk about again in just a moment, is that the Trump administration won in yet another emergency application, another one of these shadow docket orders, the Supreme Court handling the Trump administration, yet another victory.
This one's seven to two win in an escalating fight over discounted political advertising.
And that, of course, happening right before the midterm elections.
You may recall, once again, that in all of these kinds of cases where we have these unsigned orders, we've got no specific statements about why this is happening, this case, Federal Communications Commission versus Brown, the justices here blocking and here, once again, goes the convoluted nature of all this, a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that would require the FCC
to resolve a challenge to its political advertising policy within 48 hours.
Following all that, well, it's not easy to follow.
The dispute itself concerns, as we said before, what's called the FCC's lowest unit charge, I think called the Yo Lowest Unit Charge.
That's a rule that requires broadcasters to offer favorable advertising rates during the weeks immediately before an election.
That's why it's so timely.
That's why we're taking some time
on this broadcast podcast talking about all of this.
We know it's so serious when four Democratic candidates who know who they are, Sherrod Brown and John Ossoff and Roy Cooper and Kristen McDonald, all involved in hotly contested races, challenge the federal communication guidance in this area, extending those particular discounted rates beyond candidates, beyond the individual people who are running to include political parties.
that are engaged in coordinating spending and some joint fundraising committees.
The Supreme Court, again this past week, says the Fourth Circuit went too far.
They overturned the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals when it ordered the agency, the FCC, to make a final decision immediately within a couple of days.
The court writes again in this very limited order that the Fourth Circuit's decision to issue an extraordinary writ
was inappropriate under the circumstances.
We continue to examine these kinds of things here on Amicus, a lot of you, which as you know, is our weekly podcast, our weekly broadcast, accessible not only on the weekends, but also throughout the week on the
political side of the aisle here on Amicus, a law review, but also on civic media.
Again, delighted that you're a part of our discussion about this.
Now, once again, what do you need to know to understand why this is important?
Well, it's a Trump win.
It's undeniably a win for the conservative side of the House, but more importantly, inside the legal side of things, federal law gives legally qualified political candidates access, as we talked last week, to a broadcaster's lowest unit charge.
is that phrase once again, during the 45 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election.
And so that's where we are right now.
Back in the springtime, the FCC issued this guidance saying that that same discount would now apply to political parties, not just individuals in coordinated political activity and these joint fundraising committees.
And that's when those candidates, I just mentioned, challenged that interpretation.
arguing, as they did, that the Congress reserved that discount rate for the candidates themselves should not be extended furthers, and their lawyers asked the full FCC to review that guidance.
And it was while that was going on.
Again, the difficulty of all of this happening in the midst of a shadow docket, lots of things happening in lots of courts.
It's while that administrative action, if you will, was going on that the candidates also went to the Forest Circuit Court of Appeals and a divided Forest Circuit sided with the candidates and set aside that FCC guidance, holding that the statute limits the lowest charge to the candidates alone cannot be expanded.
The Supreme Court, you may recall, we talked about this before, stepped in in early September, stayed that ruling, said the Fourth Circuit lacked jurisdiction because of where these candidates were.
That was the Supreme Court's decision then, this now the Supreme Court's second intervention in this dispute.
the justices staying the force to get ruling that had struck down the FCC guidance.
The Supreme Court said the Communications Act appeared to require the full FCC to decide the candidates administrative challenge before, before they could seek this review in federal court.
And because these candidates, their names once again, Brown and Ossoff and Cooper and McDonald went to court while their application remained pending at the FCC.
Again, a lot of convoluted stuff going on here.
The court, the Supreme
Court said the Fourth Circuit likely lacked the statutory jurisdiction to hear this challenge.
Also noting along the way that the appeals court, the Fourth Circuit position, conflicted.
It was in disagreement with virtually every other appeals court that had considered this issue.
In fact, in early October, about a month after this matter all began to percolate up the same Fourth Circuit panel to order the FCC to resolve the candidate's application by October 9th.
giving the agency just 48 hours to issue a final decision.
That's what prompted a lot of this urgency focus and the emergency applications and the merits review of all this as well.
The Supreme Court, again, hearing again from the FCC, this time justices said that the appeals court had improperly interfered with the agency's deliberations.
The court says now that a writ of mandamus, which is the order directing the lower court to act,
is a drastic and extraordinary remedy.
The Fourth Circuit should not be doing this, and the Communications Act requires the FCC to act on applications, but does not require it to do so within a particular timeframe.
Again, the FCC saying that the Fourth Circuit, again, wrong directing the FCC to decide within a certain period of time.
The commission, the court said, the Supreme Court said, may exercise its discretion to set its own procedures and schedule far
far ahead as it wants to, as it resolves these particular applications.
The majority, again, just this past week, seven to two, said they're forcing the FCC to issue a final decision within this limited time period of 48 hours, while its deliberative process was still underway, crossed constitutional boundaries.
The Supreme Court saying, and here's your big takeaway,
Our system of separation of powers does not allow the judiciary to meddle, interestingly, meddle in the workings of a coordinate branch of government in this manner.
While the Supreme Court certainly has done so in many other circumstances here, they're deciding that they do not have the capacity to meddle here.
The decision, what does it mean?
What is the big takeaway of all this back and forth in and out of the courts, in and out of the Supreme Court?
Writs for petitions of a mere emergency action.
Decision basically means that the FCC does not have to resolve this dispute on the Fourth Circuit's accelerated timetable.
Basically take whatever time you need FCC.
It also means for all Americans that the agency's current interpretation of political advertising rules remains in place for now.
That's particularly significant, again, because the November 3rd midterms are looming very close and political parties and these joint fundraising committees can continue receiving discounted broadcast advertising rates.
along with the candidates themselves, even while this legal fight continues.
What is the practical implication of that?
You've got it.
You know it exactly.
It means you're going to see more and more TV and radio advertisements.
Why?
Because the rates across the board for Democrats and Republicans are now at the same level.
And so more of those we've talked before about the different ways in which there are donations made the Democrats typically.
not exclusively, but typically having greater numbers of donors in smaller amounts, Republicans having fewer numbers of voters and donors in larger amounts.
And so this basically levels that playing field, if you will, but plainly it gives an advantage in terms of now advertising rates.
for the Republicans in these days and weeks right before the midterm elections, the National Republican Congressional Committee, other Republican groups are backing the FCC interpretation, plainly in support of what the Supreme Court has done, and the Democrats and their entities saying that, like the candidates themselves, the FCC's interpretation should not be extended beyond the individual candidates, should stage us as it is.
This litigation will continue.
We do not have a final disposition, believe it or not.
The distinction means that this wider legal question, which is ultimately going to be resolved by lower courts and ultimately the Supreme Court remains unresolved.
But as of now, going into this time of the midterm elections,
the level playing field when it comes to these advertisements.
And that again, that again is our summary as we often do here on Amicus, a law review on these broadcast and broadcast stations of civic media.
Delighted that you are part of our discussion or exploration of these things, wonky though they are, difficult sometimes as they are to follow, hopefully our exposition of why they're meaningful, especially now, Supreme Court deciding these matters.
While the shadows, again, leaning back, leaning forward to the midterm elections are significant.
That going on again as the midterms approach in just a couple of weeks here.
That happening before the Supreme Court, those cases involving immigration, involving politics and advertising.
Let's leave the Supreme Court, but stay inside the federal judiciary for a while and talk about some other things that are going on at the district court levels.
And we know what district courts do.
These are the courts of first impression.
Why is it important for us to focus on them?
Well, these are the places where when any of these cases.
come from, this is where they come from.
They percolate up from the lower courts.
These are the trial courts.
There are 93 of them throughout the nation.
There are many more district judges, many district judges in each of those 93 districts around the country.
And the judges have the responsibility for presiding over administering these cases.
in those matters that are assigned randomly to them.
And we've talked a lot about what federal district court judges do.
And my view that federal district court judges are among the heroes at this time, not for their politics, not for their partisan views, but because they're standing up to the unconstitutional orders almost exclusively
issued by this administration.
And almost unanimously, whether you're a Republican appointed, a Democratic appointed, almost always federal district court judges across the board are finding that many of these things that the president has been doing are unconstitutional standing, standing up for our Constitution, not politics, but the ways in which our government 239 years of it has been working and should continue to work.
Well, one of the things that district court judges can do is they can enter
motions to dismiss cases even early on, even after they are filed, even before they've gone to trial.
And here's what's happened in two cases.
cases coming out of Washington DC and New York in particular, both of them in the federal courts.
Let's talk about them.
They once again involve the same issues, one in immigration, one in politics, both fascinating cases, both matters in the public interest and in the public domain generally.
Let's talk about what a judge did, a federal judge.
named Ramon Reyes in Brooklyn.
That's New York.
That's Manhattan.
That is the Southern District of New York, a federal judge dismissing a lawsuit.
This particular lawsuit brought in that district by the Trump administration to block, to stop New York City that was trying to limit cooperation.
and was limiting cooperation by some laws that the city had passed.
The municipality had passed limiting cooperation between the municipality and law enforcement and federal immigration enforcement.
Obviously ICE, Homeland Security, the Justice Department, a fight as we have seen in many cities in many places between the federal government and state authorities.
And this particular judge, again, U.S.
District Judge Ramon Reyes in Brooklyn finding that the government lacked a valid basis to sue.
You're out of luck, the Trump administration is told by this judge, saying the Trump administration cannot challenge this city law that restricts the police, the local police.
from detaining immigrants at the request of federal immigration authorities.
What did the case prompt?
Well, an awful lot of political response, as you can well imagine.
Municipal authorities are hailing this as an appropriate affirmation of municipal authority and state authority.
Again, the judge saying that the city can, in fact, limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
The mayor there, Zoran Mondami, as you well know,
He says the federal government came to court seeking to force New York City to turn its public servants into deportation agents and divert our municipal resources toward carrying out ICE's cruel agenda.
Today, they lost.
Again, that's not what the judge says.
That's what the mayor Mondami says in New York City.
Last year in July, the Trump administration filed a lawsuit in the Federal District Court in Brooklyn claiming that the city's police violated and the policies that they were pursuing violated the supremacy clause of the Constitution, supremacist clause, as you know, basically giving federal law precedence over state laws.
And the Trump administration is saying that that clause in the Constitution means that the state and the city laws, again, limiting cooperation with federal immigration.
have to fall inconsistent with the Constitution, and the Judge Reyes rejected that argument.
He said that the federal government cannot force local governments to assist with immigration enforcement, something that other judges around the country have also found.
The mayor once again, Mamdani, said in his statement, our local laws make New York City safer.
They allow us to focus our resources on protecting and serving our communities and ensuring that every New Yorker can turn to their city government
without fear that asking for help.
will make them a target for deportation.
He's underscoring there what's often argued in court in these cases that the very battle, if you will, between municipal and federal law requires that people in the local municipalities surrender to the authorities in a way that would expose them to federal prosecution and cuts off their tidy municipalities in the same ruling.
The same ruling, again, Judge Ramon Reyes in Brooklyn
also supported the validity of the city laws that did some other things, supporting the municipal laws there in New York.
They restrict local authorities from sharing release states.
In other words, you can't release to the federal government the dates on which particular detainees will be released.
And the law also, according to the judge, also supports the restricting information about the whereabouts to the custody information about those immigration laws.
Why?
Because federal law does not require state and local governments to share that information.
And that, again, according to the judge, is saying not only, not only do you not have to cooperate, but you don't have to provide this other information that would help a federal law enforcement in presumably identifying, apprehending, and detaining people in state custody.
Don't have to share release states, their whereabouts, or other custodial information about those immigrants because
federal law does not require it.
The ruling comes, as you know, in the wake of other significant things going on right there in Manhattan, in the Bronx in particular.
You know well, by virtue of your reading the news and consuming it.
An ICE officer just last week shot a man in New York City in the Bronx Marble Hill neighborhood.
Department of Homeland Security said the 28 year old man entered the country illegally and had a prior criminal conviction of grand larceny.
along with multiple prioress for assault and robbery and possession of drugs.
And again, the Mayor Mamdani said, as he often does in these cases, this is an incredibly serious situation.
The two matters there, the shooting here, related by virtue of the fact that they're immigration, but one does not affect the other, and the other does not affect the first of those, but indicating, once again, the authority of federal district court judges here in Manhattan, in the Bronx in particular, in the Southern District of New York, to dismiss this lawsuit that the Trump administration brought attacking what we know as, or they call, sanctuary laws in sanctuary cities.
The judge here is saying you can't do it.
federal law does not require that the cities provide you with that information, so once again the Trump administration loses.
Federal District Court Judge in Washington DC, again another district in our nation's capital, also throws out another quite dissimilar lawsuit, but once again underscoring the significance of what district court judges can do.
A federal judge this past week
rejecting a lawsuit from a fellow named John Brennan.
You know him.
He is the former CIA director, John Brennan.
He sought to force the Justice Department.
He wanted to compel the Justice Department to preserve certain investigative records so that this former CIA director, who is plainly under focus under investigation, has been the target of a lot of activity by this Department of Justice, although not yet charged, might down the road.
if that charge does come forward so that he might challenge any eventual criminal case against him.
as selective and malicious prosecution.
John Brennan saying, you know, judge, even though I haven't been charged yet, it is highly likely given all the things that have been going on, the subpoenas being issued, the focus, the information that I have been given, providing me a strong belief that I may in fact be indicted sometime soon.
I'm directing you now.
I'm asking you to direct the Department of Justice now to preserve any information they may have.
tell them that they cannot destroy anything so that when I am charged, if I'm charged, I can raise these defenses, which we have talked about before, selective prosecution, malicious prosecution, and you need to do that now, Judge, he said, so that down the road when I'm charged, you don't go back and the government cannot say, well, we destroyed all that information.
A lawyer for the plaintiff here, John Brennan, conceded during the arguments that the request for this court order was unusual, atypical.
not completely unprecedented, but said it was necessary.
Again, given what he described as the Justice Department's pattern of vindictiveness, those are his words, and its pursuit of Brennan for many months now, its recent track record of erasing or failing to preserve these very important communications and records in other matters in which they've come back and said, we know we'll have that, we destroyed it, it's too late.
The lawsuit, once again, by John Brennan.
Contents that the records would demonstrate that any prosecution of him, again, he's been under investigation for a long time, is a product of some political vendetta.
And that plainly has support out there, at least in the media, if not in court yet, by virtue of the president's statements about John Brennan and the vendetta.
and the statements that the president has made about John Brennan, the former CIA director.
U.S.
District Court Judge Gia Cobb, COBB, we've talked about her before.
and I text with many other matters, denied Brennan's request, basically shutting down this lawsuit.
She said his arguments at this point anywhere were too speculative.
We don't know enough about this, she said.
And the former CIA directorate had not yet proven and then established to a legal sufficiently basis that the Justice Department was failing to preserve those records in anticipation of a future malicious prosecution argument.
This is what the judge, Judge Cobb, wrote in dismissing the lawsuit.
She said, Brennan's allegations that he is being targeted by the Trump administration, not because of his conduct, but because he opposed the current president are deeply concerning.
She acknowledges in her written order that his concerns are not unfounded.
She knows that's the case.
It's the reason why he's doing this extraordinary lawsuit.
If he was eventually able to prove those allegations true, that would certainly suggest that his potential prosecution is vindictive.
But she goes on to say this, but even taking all of Brennan's allegations to be truthful at this stage, the injury he alleges is simply too attenuated from the actions he seeks to enjoin.
to warrant a finding of standing here.
Let me read that again.
But even taking all of Brennan's allegations be truthful.
That is, he's probably facing prosecution.
He knows this is coming.
The injury he alleges at this point is simply too attenuated, too unclear, too extended from the actions he seeks to enjoin to warrant a judicial finding of standing that he has suffered harm at this point.
The lawyers for Brennan, again, in a statement that they've issued, said that Cobb's decision addressed a technical matter, again, of this legal standing, this notion that you've got to be injured in some way, and was not based upon their other core argument, which is still out there.
that as they said, the Justice Department is using the criminal justice system to target and investigate him for politically vindictive reasons.
That's what the lawyers for, Brennan, have said.
They say the government has refused to offer assurances.
They've gone to them and said, please preserve these records.
Government Department of Justice refusing to acknowledge that it has an obligation to preserve these records and communications that would one day reveal the motivations behind its investigations of Director Brennan and show presumably some support for this notion of a vindictive prosecution.
And the lawyers going on to say that with this lawsuit, effectively, even though it's been dismissed, the plaintiff here has served notice on the government that its conduct and its document preservation
policies will be carefully scrutinized in the event of any future indictment.
That reporting going on here in an Amicus Law Review broadcast, a podcast of civic media on the broadcast and podcast stations of civic media as we continue to identify these situations where once again the Supreme Court and in these cases
local district court judges, the federal judges around the country are resolving these cases, some of which not all of which will end up at a higher appeals courts and a courts plainly beyond that.
And that's the Supreme Court itself.
We've got two cases here just in the past week or so when lower courts, very different situations early on have dismissed a case, one of them again against the Trump administration, judgment against the Trump administration, dismissing his lawsuit.
against what he regards as the sanctuary laws of New York, and another one, different judge, different jurisdiction, tossing John Brennan's document preservation lawsuit against the Justice Department.
Interesting, not only jurisdictional matters, but also situations involving the authority of judges, the authority of judges to administer cases long before they get to the Supreme Court.
all these kinds of things, a part of the docket and a part of the history that eventually makes its way to the Supreme Court.
As we begin to conclude this episode, this installment of Amicus a Law Review, let me comment on something else that has happened just this past week.
And that is the Trump administration once again suing a state over its voter rolls, again, going back to this issue of voting.
The lawsuit that the Trump administration filed just this past week suing the state of California and a particular Los Angeles County official seeks to temporarily block the state from counting mail ballots submitted by voters it suspects are non-citizens.
Now that sounds an awful lot like what the administration has done.
The lawsuit again temporarily trying to block the state of California for counting mail ballots.
of voters that it claims are likely non-citizens.
Yet another attempt, again, as the midterms approach, the lawsuit, according to the complaint, would apply to about 20,000 people in the state that the administration that Donald Trump has said are likely
This is the description of them, likely non-citizens.
It's plainly a very long shot given the lack of success of other similar cases.
But it once again opens sort of a new front, a new aspect in the administration's continuing legal battles with local election officials just weeks before November 3rd comes around.
Over the past 18 months, here's the history for you, which you have to know as well.
The Trump administration has sued California and other states many times.
and is resoundingly lost in court.
That includes right here in the state of Wisconsin.
And the federal district court judges that have resolved these cases have said, no, you don't have the capacity to do this.
Once again, matters related to the times, places, circumstances of voting are exclusively according to the Constitution, the matters of state authorities and state responsibilities.
Nonetheless, nonetheless, the administration can need us to do this.
This time probably recognizing they're being beaten up in these other cases, they're not winning at all.
The Justice Department is trying what appears to be sort of a new strategy, seeking here a court order prevent the counting of votes from the 20,000 people in the state of California identified by the Department of Homeland Security.
until their citizenship status can be determined.
Basically, perhaps proposing that they be put in some sort of a provisional ballot type circumstances and preventing the counting of those votes, about 20,000 people according to the lawsuit until their citizenship.
status can be determined.
The attorney general, you know him, his name is Todd Blanche.
He said in a statement that California had received, as he described it, ample warning.
You're on notice, he said.
Been given an opportunity, he said, to self-correct its records and be requested to segregate the suspected illegal belts for the upcoming election.
when I just say that California has refused to comply and intends to facilitate non-citizens in voting, which is a violation of federal law.
Again, repeating these claims that have been going on for months and weeks, always unsuccessful in the federal courts.
Nonetheless, our Attorney General adopting a little bit different approach here saying, well, at least put them to one side until we can determine whether or not 20,000 people
and their votes should be counted.
Similar past claims of illegal voters have fallen apart.
Under scrutiny, we know that there is no strong record, not a real record at all of voter fraud.
Last month, you may recall election officials as we reported here on Amicus, a law review.
So they examined a list provided by Homeland Security officials of 185 people, 185 names of supposed non-citizens who had been improperly registered to vote.
What did Nevada find out?
They found that every person on that list identified by the government by Homeland Security was a lawful citizen.
So once again, this is a fruitless and pointless endeavor.
Nonetheless, we've got a new lawsuit now pending in California.
And the authorities on the other side who are attempting to ensure integrity here have said things that this is again, raising problems because it suggests to the American public that indeed the voting counting here will not be proper and authoritative.
And when noting the history of this, past claims of non-citizen voting in other states, the opponents to this lawsuit have been bound to be
inflated, rife with errors, and simply unsupported.
Also noting about six million ballots have already been cast by early voting in different states.
The process up to now has been going very smoothly.
That happening again in the district court, just starting a district court action there in California.
And that concludes this installment of Amicus a Law Review.
And future installments will continue to report on these important things in the courts and outside of the courts having to do yes with immigration.
but especially voting as we anticipate November 3rd and this important day in the livelihood, the life, the rule of law and the administration of justice in our nation.
Thanks for joining me, everybody.