Boat Strikes, Impeachment Threats & Immigration Judges

in a closed door session. Lawmakers and legal experts have questioned whether a war crime was committed, and two Congressional panels have opened inquiries to determine whether Bradley or Secretary of Defense Pete Hegsith might be culpable for orders they issued during the operation. After the briefing, Hind said, the admiral confirmed that there had not been a kill them all order as reported, and that there was not an order to grant no quarter.

So having said that, look, you know, the United States has convened grand juries for murder on the high seas going back to the War of eighteen twelve, and there's a federal statute prohibiting precisely what occurred, you know, murder on the High Seas. Now, of course, Trump himself is immune from any criminal liability thanks to the Supreme Court's decision over a summer ago, and you know, Trump versus

United States. But it seems to mean that nobody else is immune from that kind of a charge and the other and who's going to pursue it. I don't think the Attorney General of the United States is going to differ from the White House's version of events or their own legal reasoning.

Tribunal for or crimes in Tokyo. Those trials, and even in US law when the Army under General MacArthur prosecuted generally Yamashta, nobody ever alleged that he was the trigger puller or gave an order for his troops to massacre thousands of innocent Filipinos. Is the United States liberated the island they prosecuted, and for failing to control as troops and for creating the environment where it would be made possible.

The only thing in a real rule of law setting that would save Hegsath is if he preferred uc him j charges against the individual who gave the order. But I don't think that's going to happen. I think they're all banking on protection from Republican allies in the House and Senate, in their favorite go to media sources, and then ultimately presidential pardons, which have now been given to Honduran drug dealers.

of agreement among nations that that is occurring. And on top of that, you have to be able to show that what you're doing is consistent proportionality wise to the crime involved. And the problem with that second aspect of it, the proportionality aspect, is that the United States Coast Guard, which most often does not use that kind of lethal force, does an excellent job of stopping kilo upon keilo upon kilo of cocaine coming into the United States. They don't

catch at all. So you know, the argument that this is lawful is sort of stretching the realism of law into the alice in Wonderland of law.

United States. I don't see any action going against him on that one. At the end of the day, Unfortunately, all it is likely to do is to create a historic legacy on the character of Hegseth himself. But it also erodes trust within the department, because if you're a uniform warfighter, you need to have trust in your chain of command, and this certainly erodes it.

of them making a correct statement of the law. I think that you know that that concern is real based on this belicosity that's come out of the White House, and that belicosity includes the use of the federalized National Guard in our cities.

the United States. It was before the United States was created. It was Oliver Cromwell using his new Model Army to pressure Parliament to take votes the way that he wanted them to take votes, including the execution of Charles the First. We built a constitution to prevent the very thing that apparently the FBI's leadership seems to now think is plausible seditious conspiracy. Look to me, if it was a high crime or misdemeanor, it's the attempt to cower members of

Congress from exercising their free speech rights. It's not the exercise of those free speech rights themselves.

I know there are people who say, well, what about Van Lane, but the Landingham was no longer in Congress, and even that episode has been condemned today. So no, I mean this. You know, every time you and I speak about the administration, I say, look, they're pushed the envelope.

But on this particular case, this truly is it's beyond absurd, It's truly an affront to the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the ability of members of Congress to represent their constituents on the very fundamental positions that a majority of

their constituents elected them to do. Again, it goes back to the pre revolutionary days, the mentality of Cromwell and the rule of the major generals and the dictatorship of the mid sixteen hundreds in Britain, the very thing we had a revolution against.

Wednesday morning. Cruise isn't alone. Republicans have filed a wave of impeachment resolutions this year against judges they disagree with, despite the fact that only fifteen judges have faced impeachment since eighteen oh five and none since twenty ten. More than fifty retired federal judges appointed by presidents of both parties are warning that using impeachment as a tool for political retaliation against judges is a dangerous violation of constitutional

norms and judicial independence. My guest is retired federal appellate Judge Paul Michelle, who is on the DC Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Michelle, why do you think Republicans are continuing to call for the impeachment of federal judges when it's so highly highly unlikely that a judge would be impeached, So why go through this effort?

independent of both the Congress and the executive branch. It's worked well for nearly two hundred and fifty years, and there's no basis that makes any sense for departing from that tradition and those precedents. Now. I think the Republican members who are participating in this kind of a campaign are just reacting to pressure from the administration and worries

about reelection and contributions and the like. But that's not a good excuse because they know full well that disagreement with a ruling by a judge is not a proper

ground for impeachment or removal from office. It's not even close to a proper ground, because the Constitution itself spells out explicitly what the proper grounds are, and as you know, the phrase is treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors, and clearly a judicial ruling applying the law as best the judge can is none of those things, and therefore not even close to being a candidate for impeachment, much

less trial in the US Senate. So I think it's basically an exercise and intimidation, a publicity stunt, and not a serious effort, and it's not responsible. And worse than that, it's harmful to the country because it shakes the confidence of all American citizens in the independence and rectitude of the courts. And everybody in the end depends on the courts to protect their rights. So everybody has a stake

in this, not just rich people or big corporations. Every individual citizen is threatened if the court's rule under political coercion rather than the steady precedents of statutes and higher court rulings. So this is really a very big deal, a very big turning point for the country. And for two centuries and more we haven't had this. We've only had a total of thirteen judges impeached and about seven were convicted at Senate trial, and in every case it

was for plainly serious crimes like outright money bribery. Sorry to say that a judge was guilty of such conduct, but a few have been over the two hundred years. But this is totally different. This has nothing to do with high crimes. This is high politics.

Esther Sallas. Her son answered the door. She was obviously the target of the assassin, but the son happen to answer the door and was shot and killed. Judge Sallas's husband was critically wounded. Fortunately the judge herself was not. But the whole thing was a horror show. And so when today's judges get pizzas in the name of Daniel Anderley, it's a message they know Daniel Anderley was the murdered son of a fellow judge, And judges tell us that they knew when they took the job and of course

all judges are volunteers. No one has to be a judge. It's a high honor. And you know you're going to be unpopular with a lot of peace. That's in the nature of the job. You know you'll be criticized in the media. You know that there will be parties who will be very unhappy with your rulings. Sometimes both parties are unhappy, always one party, the losing party, is extremely unhappy, and often there is criticism from many other people. Judges all know that they accept that what they can't accept

is serious threats. So, for example, when the swat team shows up at a judge's house at midnight based on a malicious false report of a shooting in progress, it scares the devil out of the whole family and upsets the judge. So it's not just pizza deliveries, it's also

swat teams. It's also vicious death threats, phone calls, text messages, and even that children of some judges have been harassed on their way to school by fanatical individuals who've been inflamed by extreme rhetoric on social media, including some of it coming from high government officials and members of the Congress, which is just despicable and very unfortunate. We've never had that before in this country and we shouldn't tolerate it.

qualified lawyer of great experience. He's an absolutely superb advocate and was the leading solicitor for the state of Texas before he became a senator. He was a White House lawyer before that, and you know the rest of his biography. He knows better. He knows these are not impeachable offenses. He knows it clearly, So I can only guess that he's acting for other motives not to apply the law

of impeachment. Again, whether it's the hearings threatened by Chairman Cruise of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Courts, or whether it's somebody in the White House or the Justice Department, these threatening verbal attacks cause real danger to judges that the Marshal Service has bedded and declared that there are hundreds of serious threats, just crank threats. We're used to crank threats, that's not so serious, but serious threats and dangers.

As you know, Justice Kavanaugh had a would be assassin armed on his block prowling around looking for Justice Kavanaugh and that individuals recently convicted and sentenced. So the dangers are really quite real.

ramped up dramatically in the last ten months. And ultimately, judges, however courageous and committed they are, and I think they are both to a man to a woman, who were not perfect. But we are devoted to the country. That's why instead of making a lot of money a big fancy law firm or corporation, we became judges at far far lower salaries. It's an honor to serve the people. I did it for twenty two years. I loved every day of it, and all the judges talk about it

that way. But ultimately, judges too are human, and if they feel like their family members are terrified and their children are being harassed, and there are death threats coming in that the Marshall Service evaluates as serious, at some point humans are going to have a stress point of failure, just like a wing on an airplane. You know, enough stress and you can break anything, particularly when it's elongated

over time. And that's what we're seeing here. So, yeah, they're holding up fine now, but can we be assured they'll continue to hold up fine if this pressure campaign, which keeps escalating, goes on and on and on, and the Article three coalition of which I'm a part. As you know, it's an arm of Keep our Republic of pre Existing Check charitable Civics education organization that's been in operation for about five years. The coalition is new just

this year. It has fifty two retired judges, both trial and impellate as members, and incidentally, about half of them were appointed by Republican administrations and the other half by Democratic administration, so it's totally balanced, and it's really non political because it's a group of people devoted to the rule of law, not the rule of any one man

or woman. So this is a very dramatic moment for the country to come to grips with, and I'm very hopeful that the unbroken tradition and precedent of two hundred and fifty years will will carry forward and be honored by everybody in power now and hopefully the really vicious rhetoric, really inflammatory rhetoric, people being called leftist lunatics and people

who hate America and rogue judges or activist judges. If a judge is ruling on the basis of personal politics, that would be fair to say that's an activist judge. You could also say it's a completely improper judge, betraying their oath. But if a judge rules against an administration because of a statute, it's the job of the judge

to interpret the statute and apply it. And if the judge finds that the administration's action is contrary to law, the judge is obligated to so rule and to impose remedies, including injunctions. That's not being activists, that's not being rogue. It's actually just a judge doing the normal thing that judges do every single day. That's actually their job. So instead of being castigated, they should be respected. You don't have to agree with them, you don't have to like them,

you don't have to like their ruling. You can criticize them, including in strong terms in public, and that's a constitutional right of everybody. But to foment violence against is just beyond any reasonable line.

The administration has targeted judges during or at the end of their two year probationary periods, as well as some who had sat on the bench for years. The administration is also installing military lawyers and immigration courts after eliminating

certain requirements for temporary immigration judges. Former immigration judges have said the firings are aggravating existing case backs that have clogged the immigration court system and created years long wait times for foreign citizens to get decisions in their cases. Some of those let go, like other terminated employees across the federal government, learned of their dismissals in brief notices stating the Attorney General had determined under Article two authority

that their continued employment wasn't in the nation's interest. Joining me is immigration expert Leon Fresco, a partner at Holland and Knight. He was the head of the Office of Civil Immigration Litigation in the Obama administration. Leon, why are they firing immigration judges? Doesn't that slow down the process?

Is is they think that they can't build that structure out if there are too many sympathetic immigration judges in the structure, because then too many immigration judges will grant asylum or grant some other form of relief like cancelation of removal, or they'll allow people to refer their claims to USCIS because they'll have a qualifying family member who

can save them from deportation. And they don't want any of that discretion that immigration judges have to save people in particular cases from deportation to be exercised in favor of the foreign national. And so you'll actually see this if you go on Twitter. Is that the way the administration currently describes what used to be known as an immigration judge, they call them a deportation judge. And they say, sign up to become a deportation judge. Apply to become

a deportation judge. And so that is quite a new because you wouldn't have you know, suppose you see this every now and then in states and localities where people run for elected judge positions and they can't run and say, hey, I'm going to be a hanging judge, vote for me. You can't say that that's the kind of thing that will get you disqualified in every case moving forward. If you said you were running as a hanging judge. But here they're saying, sign up to be a deportation judge.

And I don't know, sort of strategically, if that is going to be helpful if there's a future challenge to the manner in which people who applied to become deportation judges ended up making rulings in cases. So I just find that very fascinating.

their experiences. They're trying to find people with less experience so they can train them and give sort of a patterned this is how you decide everything, and because they haven't seen it, they will say, okay, so this is

the pattern. The issue is quite Interestingly, I've worked with a lot of members of the military who have come from the Judge Advocate General's office and other places, who go either to the Department of Justice or the immigration court, and it turns out a lot of them end up being just as sympathetic as any as anyone else, because people are human beings that they're super complicated and you can't just stereotype anybody or put them into any sort

of bucket, and so all of these efforts, yes, you might be able to weigh it in oneicular way or another, but all of these efforts surprisingly will still yield sympathetic decisions in some cases because people are still human beings, and this is all an enterprise about humanity. At the end of the day. It's not about numbers, it's not about money, it's not about anything else. There's human beings in a court standing in front of you telling you their story. And it's just very hard, no matter who

you are. Every day, if you're just going to just say the port, the port to port, the port, that just weighs on you if you know in your mind you're doing it in a way that's not fair to the law or consistent to the facts, and so I just think a lot of these efforts I understand where if you're doing it from the standpoint of the administration, you want to at least get people who aren't inclined to say yes every single time, because you're trying to

create a more rigorous enforcement regime. So you don't want to have people who start with yes and begrudgingly go to know. You might want people who start with no and begrudgingly get the yes, But that's the best that anybody's going to be able to do in a situation like this. There's not going to be one hundred judges who are hired that all deport every single person in front of them, because that's just not the way these things tend to work.

present a complaint in the federal court. That would work very similarly to an indictment in the sense that you've got to file it, you've got to have down then a trial, you've got to have that whole process, and you have to basically say, had we known this fact, we would have refused the case. That's basically what you have to show in that and so that's very intensive. You're talking about on any particular denaturalization case, hundreds of hours of total government work in terms of manpower in

order to get that done. And so they do want to do that, but when we're talking about tens of thousands of people, they don't have the infrastructure in place to do that. So what they have to do is try to find cases that are sort of powerful cases where bold messages are sent about people who made misrepresentations in the process, because then that will yield the response perhaps that they might want of people then taking matters in their own hands and leaving because they're worried that

they will get denaturalized. But in terms of having tens of thousands of denaturalizations, the problem is with that. You need lawyers from the Department of Justice who do those cases. You need obviously the federal courts to schedule those cases, you need the Department of Homeland Security to have people to investigate those cases, and so that infrastructure is there at most for twenty five hundred to five thousand cases a year, which would be, by the way, an exponential

the higher record than has ever been done before. Usually we're talking about several hundred cases a year. So if you did five thousand the naturalization cases, that would be leaps and bounds above the highest that's ever been done. But the point being that's what you would maybe try to accomplish if you were in the Trump administration.

that kind of thing. And so what do they do if you're deported, You can't just come back into the United States. So they make up a new person that they are. And so they say, you know, yes, I may have been John Smith when I was deported, but now I'm Jerry Jones. And so you know, they don't tell you that they were John Smith. They just return

as Jerry Jones in that situation. So there was about three hundred of those cases that were done during the Obama administration, which was considered it a lot, but still is it the kind of thing I'm talking about, which is that if they did five thousand, let's say, it would be a massive improvement over three hundred.

in the state. Here's Bloomberg New Supreme Court reporter Greg Store with more on that decision.

by using race too much. And then the second thing the Supreme Court said is that normally, in these racial gerrymandering cases, courts require somebody who's challenging a map to produce an alternative map that would have accomplished the state's goals in this case, drawing more Republican friendly seat without using race so much so, the lower court did not require that in this case, and the Supreme Court said

that was a problem. So those were preliminary decisions by the Supreme Court, but they strongly suggest that they think the lower court got it wrong. And then the second half of it is that the Supreme Court in the past has said that federal courts need to be really careful about issuing rulings that change the election rules for states on the eve of an election. And because the candidate filing deadline is next week in Texas, we for the sake of Texas, are pretty much on the eve of the election.