Stephen Miller Brings Trump Crusade to the Courts

of discriminating against white business owners. Joining me is Bloomberg Legal reporter Eric Larson tell us who Stephen Miller is for those who may not know so. Stephen Miller is a conservative political operative who served as a senior White House aide to Donald Trump UM and also was a

speechwriter for the president's UM. He is known as the sort of the architect of some of Trump's most anti immigrant policies, things like the Muslim ban and the family separation policies and some of those really divisive policies that really riled up a lot of Democrats. Did he start America First Legal? He did. It was just started in April UM. He did so with the blessing of Donald Trump, who issued a press release praising his effort and the

opening of America First Legal. So it is he's leading it, uh, and he's doing so with several other former Trump administration officials who have joined him in the effort, including a former acting US Attorney General Whittaker, and some other folks. He's not a lawyer, right, No, he's not a lawyer, but he he has a former Justice Department lawyer during the Trump administration, Gene Hamilton's who was known for working

on a lot of immigration UM policies under Trump. UM is one of the lead lawyers at America First Legal. So they are established right wing legal advocacy groups such as Alliance Defending Freedom and Judicial Watch. So why another group, Well, that's a good question. Some folks that I spoke with in the conservative nonprofit group there said that even though there are these other groups that they still feel like they're outguns by UM left leaning organizations like the American

Civil Liberties Union. You know, they want to see something that rises to that level. Even though America First Legal has just started earlier this year. That's how they kind of already wanted to be seen as really going after the Biden administration on a range of policies the same way that the A. C. L. You did um during the Trump administration. So what are some of the aims or maybe I should say targets of the group. They're

pretty wide ranging. Started out with lawsuits against the administration challenging racial equity programs that had been built into the Pandemic Relief bill that had earmarked billions of dollars to be prioritized toward miority owned restaurants in one provision and minority owned farms and ranches in another. And he sued filed separate lawsuits over both of those and actually one injunctions preliminary injunctions against the administration in those cases which

are still pending. But he's also sued over the Biden administrations returned to policies that banned discrimination against people based on sexual orientation or gender identity in healthcare and housing and alike. UM. And you know that's just the beginning. There are several other aspects of the administration that he seems to be eyeing, based on the press releases they've been putting out and the Freedom of Information Act requests

that they've been filing and highlighting on their website. You said they had scored victories. These are cases where they can pick the judge or at least the courthouse that will be hearing the case. Yes, they've been filing suits in Texas where they can, but also UM in Washington d C. Federal Court UM. In the two cases where they did get these preliminary injunctions injunctions, granted those were

in Texas UM. It was a Republican appointed judge who did that, But not all of their cases are before UM Republican appointed judges, but so far they've had pretty good luck with those. In the suits they have filed in Texas. Another case where they didn't get an injunction UM, but they did get a preliminary ruling UM where the judge you know, seemed to praise or side with what they were saying about the Biden administration's handling of undocumented

migrant children at the border. UM. That was another one of the first lawsuits that a fl filed, accusing the Biden administration of allowing undocumented migrant children in housing in the US even though they might have COVID nineteen was his argument that it was a health violation and the judge in that case, UM said that that, uh, he agreed essentially with that case. In that case, did they

do it in conjunction with the Texas Attorney General? They did, And the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a very outspoken Republican of course, who has challenged Biden on a range of issues. Um, and it is very critical of the administration on his own right, Um, you know, filed that lawsuit. It's challenges provisions of the Migrant Protection Protocol, which was the Trump policies that Biden tried to walk away from

and is having trouble doing so. And so a f l. One of their first clients was the state of Texas, which in a way isn't too surprising because they're extremely ideologically aligned. Eric tell us more about Miller's suit challenging

pandemic aid earmarked for minority owned farms. America First Legal filed a couple of lawsuits over provideds of built the massive stimulus built passed by Congress and included a few equity programs in it that tried to essentially right some wrongs that have been done previously by prioritizing some money for minority owned restaurants as well as minority owned farms

and branches. And in these two lawsuits, Stephen Miller's group claims that it's discrimination, racial discrimination against white people that he says is banned by the Civil Rights Act, which is kind of interesting that he's you know, the complaint itself was actually fairly short, but it included some language and references that you would normally see in a suit

alleging racial discrimination against racial minorities. So it's kind of turning it around and using it sort of against these minorities interests, UM, which really wasn't lost on the people, uh, some of the people who I interviewed for the story. UM. I interviewed the John Boyd is the president and founder of the National Black Farmers Association. He filed a motion

to intervene in one of those cases. Than he he won that permission, and he says that it's just flat out discrimination, that that the real discrimination here is with Stephen Miller's lawsuit. UM, that they're trying to pretend that there was never any discrimination in the past and therefore there should be no measures taken now to fix it

in the present. Did a f L respond to this, I see that their website says it's committed to fighting for all Americans, regardless of race, color, religion, or creed. That's correct. I included that in my story because unfortunately they didn't respond to repeated requests for comments. I reached out to them numerous times by phone and email, also

to their PR firm, and they just didn't respond. Although they do make regular appearances on on Fox News and news Max and O A n UM where they spread this message, and of course it's we have to remember that this is a nonprofit and they're actively raising money at all times. Do most of their cases focus on immigration,

you know, I really don't think so. I think that that, UM, you know, is an obvious interest of Stephen Miller, and they do have one or two cases related to that, But really they're looking at the whole universe of conservative concerns UM, you know, gender identity, UM, LGBT rights, even critical race theory, UM. Some of the Freedom of Information Act requests that they've filed or demanding, you know, information from the Biden administration about why they stopped investigating the

source of COVID nineteen UM. You know, they even sued Biden for forcing Russ Vott off of that naval board UM, and he's a he's a member of af L, one of the directors. Uh. So there's really just a really wide range of UM legal issues that they're looking at here, and it's not just immigration. Do we know how much funding they have and who is funding them? We don't, you know. I would have definitely loved to have asked them that question to find out UM, but it's too early.

It's they're too new to have any UM filings, so we really just haven't have no way of knowing. Unfortunately, because we're a new organization, they seem to have a lot of litigation going on, right. I mean, it's you know, anything is possible. Of course, we know one person who has plenty of money, that's Donald Trump. They always could have gotten some from from him, but that's just speculation. But they are doing a lot of real work and

that does cost a lot of money. UM, so one can assume that they at least have something that they started out with. Is Trump a visible supporter of the group, He is UM only in that Uh. The very first press release that went out in April, UM quoted President Trump praising Stephen Miller by name and saying that the left was out funding us in courts us being the right, and that we needed something like a fl to counter that movement and to to take the Biden administration to court.

Trump spelled that all out and said that Stephen Miller was the guy to do it. You write that prevailing in court might not be the primary reason for the group, Yeah, that was That was one theory from someone I spoke with. You know, they see the names involved, they see there's quite a bit of evidence of people in Trump's orbit. It's sort of now that he's out of office, finding ways to sort of cash in using his name and

tapping into his huge support Um. You know, he has millions of supporters all around the country, and a lot of them are very angry, and a lot of them are really despised the left. And if you say and the right things, do the right things, you can really capture their attention and get them to open their wallets.

So there's some you know, some cynicism around that. Of course, they probably would say the same thing about people on the left and the A C. L U. Do you get any sense that what they're doing, the cases that they're bringing are any different from those of Alliance Defending

Freedom or Judicial Watch. I would say that they seem to be signaling that they're going to be a lot more active than those groups, and that they're going to be looking at a much wider range of issues, and that they're going to be really focused on the issues that in particular, really seem to concern the far farther rights individuals. So whereas you might see some of those more established groups might be focusing more on you know,

different policies than maybe aren't quite so controversial. Uh, I don't think that's going to be a concern of a f L. So did anyone you spoke to think that this was a short term endeavor that possibly it won't last pass when Trump will decide whether or not to run. Someone I spoke to said that it's possible that they're just looking for, you know, a paycheck and waiting to see what happens in and maybe um they'll be you know, back in power and get bigger jobs in the administration

or something like that. But even if they were able to do that, even if Steven Miller, you know, made a triumphant return to the White House, I wouldn't be surprised if they found some way to keep America First Legal, you know, still going and doing what it what it does. Um, but right now they need a booking man and that's Biden, and he's in office. If that changes, who knows. It seems like their cases are anti anti abortion, anti immigrant, anti l g B t Q, that they're fighting against

other people's rights. That's the big difference between what the a c l YOU did and what America First Legal is doing. Of course, the a c l U was raising the alarm about concerns that rights would be taken away, and in fact that was the case. That is what the Trump administration tried to do. A f L is focused on the concerns of really mostly you know, white people, straight white men in particular. That seems to be their their good Thanks Eric. That's Bloomberg Legal reporter Eric Larson.

It made headlines when Left Parness and Igor Frewman were arrested in boarding a plane with one way tickets to Europe. Prosecutors claimed the pair had made donations to American politicians to advance the interests of Ukrainian officials. Now Frewman has pleaded guilty and Parness's trial seems to have morphed into something different altogether. The government's case has almost nothing to do with Ukraine and instead focuses on political contributions allegedly

intended to help launch a cannabis business. Joining me is Bloomberg Legal reporter Christian Berthelson. So Christian, tell us what charges Partners is facing at trial. Yeah, So that's what a strange one. You know, left Partners and his business associating Frewman were charged two years ago. And you know, they were involved in Rudy Giuliani's efforts to dig up

to her on Joe Biden in Ukraine. And this was sort of a subtext to the whole first impeachment trial of Donald Trump and the quid pro quo he was seeking in Ukraine to get damaging information about the Bidens prior to the election. Levin and Igor were working with

Juliani to try and facilitate that. They were actually arrested with one way tickets to leave the country getting on an airplane in Washington, d C. The government alleged that they had been working for Ukrainian officials to advance their interests in the United States and that they were played a role in the firing of the then U s Ambassador in Ukraine, Mariovanovitch. All of those allegations were then sort of quietly dropped from the case about a year ago.

Mr Freman pleaded guilty. Mr Parnass just started trial yesterday, but the charges against him now involved allegedly illegal campaign donations he made to try and advance a cannabis business in Nevada, California and elsewhere. So it's a very different case than what prosecutors said it was when they charged it two years ago. Is Ferman going to testify for the prosecution. No, so two of the defendants in that case, there was four defendants, two of them have pleaded guilty.

Neither one of them pleaded guilty with the cooperation agreement, so they are not expected to become government witnesses during the trial. Is there going to be a lot of mention of former President Trump or Rudy Giuliani. One would have thought that given the way the case was charged two years ago, But no, as we get to our trial, one of the prosecutors told the judge last week that Mr Trump and Mr Giuliani are going to be peripheral figures at best. Do you know why this case took

such a turn. At the prosecutors when they dropped that allegation from the case, offered no explanation as to why they were doing it. They said they were streamlining certain factual assertions and they left it at that, and they have declined to say anything beyond that. So that is really not much of an answer, uh, and sort of

leaves it open to speculation as to why. You know, they do have the the evidence in the campaign finance charges and that's an easier case to bring, and potentially what they could have done is sort of just wanted to charge and try an easier case rather than getting into issues that the defense could have raised about, you know, doing something on behalf of the president and whether that then became acceptable. I don't know. I don't think anyone knows outside of the office why they decided to do

it that way. And what's parnesses defense. So the campaign charges involved funds that came from a Russian investor in the cannabis business and that were then used to donate to certain state politicians around the country. His defense is that there was no conspiracy to do that, and the funds that were donated and come from the Russian businessman. There are two defendants. Are their defenses united? Are they

working together? They're actually not working together, which has been an interesting development and only become clear in the last week or so that the other defendant, andre Ka Kushkin, basically says that he was a victim of love Parnoff and that this entire scheme with the campaign donations was really just a scheme to get money out of Mr Kakushion and his Russian investor. And in fact, of the million dollars that came from Russia, a little over one

hundred thousand of it actually was donated to politicians. The rest was diverted to other purposes. Let's turn to one of the witnesses who will testify at the trial, Adam Laxalt, who's running for US Senate in Nevada. I believe, so why is he testifying at this trial? That's correct, He's

expected to testify today. He's kind of an interesting figure because he was as attorney general and running for governor of Nevada when he received donation from Mr Parnass and he of course then went on to become a co chair of Trump's reelection campaign in Nevada and fanned a lot of the voter fraud allegations that Mr Trump was making in an effort to overturn the results into Vada.

The prosecutors have asked the judge to keep the questioning away from that issue, but the defense wants to raise it because they think it goes to his credibility as a witness. Coming up next on the Bloomberg Law Show, I'll continue this conversation with Bloomberg Legal reporter Christian Bertelson, and we'll talk about the new U S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. You're listening to Bloomberg

Law with June Grasso from Bloomberg Radio. The U S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York is the most high profile of the ninety three offices around the country, known for police Wall Street and prosecuting high profile cases involving terrorism, organized crime, and public corruption. Damian Williams is the first black person to be in charge of the Southern District in its two thirty two year

history and one of the youngest. I've been talking to Bloomberg Legal reporter Christian Berthelsson, so tell us about his background well, if he's born in New York, New York City, grew up in Atlanta, his parents are immigrants, he's quite success story. Harvard undergrad, you know, law school, clerked for Merrick Garland on the DC Appeals Court UH and Marrick

Garlands of course, now the Attorney General. He has been a U S attorney for think about ten years and was elevated first from being a ligned prosecutor to the co chief of the Securities Unit, and from there to head of the entire office, as last week confirmed by the Senate after being nominated earlier this year by President Biden. Would you say that he's been the star of the U. S.

Attorney's Office? Certainly. I mean, you know, the Southern District Use Attorney's Office has a reputation as being one of the most elite offices in the country, partially because of you being here in New York and being sort of the law enforcement overseer of Wall Street, and within the office, the Securities Unit is viewed as the most high profile unit. So Mr Williams was a line prosecutor in the unit following the financial crisis and did some of the offices

most high profile cases. They included the conviction of the guilty plea of a sitting US congressman for insider trading, other cases against hedge funds for insider trading and mismarking other forms of security spraud, and another big case involving the circulation of non public, highly sensitive information from government agencies to hedge funds that inform their trading ahead of major decision enoucements. So he's taking over at a time

when there's been some controversies. Yes, well, you know, the past four years under the Trump administration were challenging for

the Southern District. They included the unceremonious firings of two U S attorneys during that period, and uh, you know, a fair amount of meddling from main Justice in the Affairs and District, the pardoning of defendants who were convicted by this office, including Steve Bannon, Mr. Trump's sometimes political advisor, And there have also been miss steps by the office itself.

There have been multiple cases in recent years where the office was found to have withheld important, potentially exculpatory information from defense lawyers for defendants that were being prosecuted by the office, and it has been castigated by judges in this district for not playing fair. So there is a fair amount of work to do in rebuilding the reputation of this office, both with the public and with the

judges who who oversee the cases they bring. Is he stepping into a role in an office where there's a morale problem. Yes, People who have left the office say that the lawyers who are there have have been having morale issues, partly, you know, the same way everyone has with this pandemic and through remote work. But the hits to the office's reputation from the evidentiary issues everyone has taken hard, and the meddling that came from the Trump

administration has also weighed on morale there. So yes, you know, people say that the new U. S. Attorney has a fair amount of work to do in trying to restore that office to its prior. The Southern district known for prosecuting Wall Street crimes, financial securities fraud. During the Trump administration, those crimes are not giving the same attention. Any indication

what he's going to focus on not really. Uh, you know, there's no public hearings for the U. S. Attorney nominees, so he hasn't had a any kind of public airing of you know, his record or or what he sees as the office's mission. You know, obviously he has been talking to former leaders of the office, former senior officials, their friends, colleagues in the months since his nomination as he sort of puts together ideas for how he wants

to lead and what he wants to focus on. But the people who have had those conversations with him have not wanted to go into great detail about them and feel like he should be given room to set those priorities and announce those things himself. He just started in the job on Sunday, so he hasn't himself held any public events yet to articulate that either tell us what my profile cases there are in the office right now

that he's going to be overseen. Well, as you were saying, enforcement of white collar of financial type crimes did all precipitously during the Trump administration. Part of that is because you know, those types of cases tend to come up when you have downturns in the market or downturns in the economy, and that hasn't been the case in the last four years. So there is a bit of a cyclical ebb to it. However, you could also infer that it just was not a priority of the prior administration

to bring those kinds of cases. So I think you could expect to see an effort to bring more of those. You know, this office works particularly closely with the SEC, and Gary Gensler, the new SEC chief, has identified areas

that he sees as right for a greater enforcement. One thing that he has focused on is insider trading by corporate executives outside of established ten be five plans where CEOs have pre established plans to sell equity that they accumulate their companies, but you'll occasionally see them either changing their plans or trading outside of their plans, and sometimes if that is time to market moving information. That's something

the SEC wants to focus on more. And typically the way that works is that you know, the SEC will bring its strongest cases where there is evidence of criminality to the Southern District and they do those cases jointly. So you could expect to see cases like that. So

the ones that are in the work. H Jollim Maxwell Jeffrey Epstein alleged wrangler of underage girls that's charged and is coming to trial this fall there was a recently charged case corporate case involving an electric vehicle company and whether that was misrepresenting its results to the market. But there's kind of a dearth right now in big cases with a lot of public attention to them. Thanks Christian. That's Bloomberg Legal reporter Christian BERTHELSUN and that's it for

this edition of the Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you can always get the latest legal news on our Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at www dot Bloomberg dot com, slash podcast Slash Law, and remember to join us weeknights at ten pm Wall Street Time for the Bloomberg Law Show. I'm June Basso, and you're listening to Bloomberg