Now that a three-day trial against the Trump administration has drawn to a close, a federal judge will decide whether the troops deployed to Los Angeles violated the Posse Comitatus Act barring the military from conducting civilian law enforcement.
The Legal AF channel’s Michael Popok, a national trial lawyer, and I discuss the case’s revelations in this video, where I report Senior U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer’s lopsided grilling of the federal government.
On Wednesday, Judge Breyer outright said he is “troubled” by the implications of the federal government’s legal position.
The Justice Department’s attorney Eric Hamilton refused to state a rule limiting Donald Trump or any other president from sending troops into civilian streets and cited a supposed “exception” to hard-line limits on activities like detaining civilians, controlling traffic or establishing security perimeters. Hamilton also argued that the criminal law has no civilian application.
In light of the Supreme Court’s doctrine of presidential criminal immunity, Breyer said that means any remedy for the Posse Comitatus Act must be: “Too bad. So sad. It's over, and that's the end of the case."
All Rise News will recap the end of trial soon, but catch up on the broad outlines in this video.
Editor’s Note:
Despite wall-to-wall coverage of Trump deploying the D.C. National Guard, fewer news outlets have provided in-depth coverage of a trial to determine the limits of a president’s power to send the military on civilian streets.
That’s a shame for more than one reason: This three-day trial has blown a hole in Trump’s justification for sending troops onto civilian streets. In public, Trump claims the military will be fighting crime, but his lawyers insist in court that the same troops do not participate in civilian law enforcement.
That’s why live coverage like this matters. If you agree, consider becoming a subscriber.
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