Federal judge blocks Trump's election order, former prosecutor explains what's next

[0:00] A reaction now to the nope heard around the country. [0:03] A federal judge Thursday saying the Constitution does not grant the president any specific powers over elections [0:10] after striking down key parts of President Trump's executive order restricting mail-in voting. [0:15] Trump wanted to create state-by-state citizenship lists within the Department of Homeland Security. [0:21] Despite the ruling, though, he pressed the issue last night. [0:23] We want proof of citizenship, and we want no mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, and military deployment or travel. [0:35] It would be very judicious. [0:40] Look what's happening in California where the ballots still aren't in. [0:43] They're still not—can you believe it? [0:46] Weeks afterwards, you know what's happening? They're cheating. [0:49] Join me now, Brendan Ballew, former federal prosecutor and CEO of the Public Integrity Project. [0:55] Welcome, my friend. Good to see you. [0:56] So the judge is ruling it's in response to a lawsuit brought by 23 states and Washington, D.C. [1:02] How big of a deal is this to the president's effort to unilaterally change elections in America? [1:08] Well, if the president had gotten his way, this would have been a fundamental reshaping of how elections happen in this country. [1:14] So historically, elections are administered by the states. [1:17] The Congress has very little role, and the president has functionally no role in the administration of elections, with limited exceptions here. [1:25] What the president was proposing to do was to have a, quote-unquote, confirmed citizen list that would be developed by the federal government, and then the Postal Service would be allowed to check mail-in ballots, potentially, to see whether the names match those on the list, allowing the executive branch functionally to pick and choose which ballots it wanted counted. [1:46] Obviously, that would have been an extraordinary change in how elections work in America, and I think it's unsurprising, but it's very gratifying that the judge here confirmed what should be obvious to just about everyone, which is this dramatically exceeded the statutory authorities of the president. [2:04] So the executive order on mail-in voting, that has faced multiple legal challenges, but a judge in Washington, D.C. recently ruled that because the order had not been carried out yet, she couldn't rule against it yet. [2:20] Why was this case different? [2:22] Well, you know, part of it was the factual findings. [2:25] So Judge Nichols in D.D.C. said that there had been no implementing regulation by the Postal Service, so there wasn't really anything to decide on yet. [2:33] What I think the judge in Massachusetts rightly determined was that states are already burdened by compliance costs by regulation like this, even if there isn't an implementing regulation by the Postal Service. [2:46] So, for instance, if you have a five-year document retention policy, as you pointed out, you have to start retaining those documents right away. [2:52] That poses a cost to states. [2:55] And so part of it is just two judges seeing this in a slightly different way. [2:58] Part of it may be that the facts developed a little bit further, showing how much this was going to actually burden the states right away. [3:06] But, Brendan, is the question now how fast this will end up in front of the Supreme Court? [3:12] It's a great question. [3:13] You know, the Massachusetts decision is in the First Circuit. [3:16] The First Circuit has historically been pretty skeptical of the presidential overreach actions by this administration. [3:22] And so I would be surprised if the district court judge's opinion got overturned there. [3:27] The Supreme Court obviously is a different story and has expressed and worked enormously hard to advantage the president and the Republican Party when it comes to elections. [3:39] You know, part of this may be logistical that they're going on summer break pretty soon. [3:43] So I don't know if they're going to be able to rule on this or get to the merits very quickly. [3:46] But this does seem like the kind of thing that the Supreme Court might be interested in. [3:51] Yeah. [3:52] So your organization was behind a lawsuit that was brought by attorney and former TV host and former colleague, friend of mine, Katie Fang, [4:00] that compelled a federal judge to order the DOJ to produce more of the redacted Epstein files or explain why materials were withheld. [4:09] And those files include FBI interviews with a woman who accused President Donald Trump of sexually abusing her when she was a teenager after Epstein allegedly introduced them. [4:20] Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche must also remove redactions from documents discussing alleged co-conspirators and from emails with Epstein in which the senders and recipients identities are obscured. [4:33] So share with us. [4:34] Talk about the argument here. [4:36] What was it? [4:36] The argument was that the administration was just obviously, blatantly violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act. [4:44] And that was shown by the fact that when we brought the suit on behalf of Katie Fang, who was really courageous in bringing this case, [4:50] that the administration didn't even try to defend itself by arguing that it was following the law. [4:55] It didn't even try to argue that it was actually in compliance with the statute. [5:00] And so, you know, this is a really gratifying preliminary injunction. [5:03] I'll say, you know, you mentioned a couple of the kinds of documents that now need to be disclosed shortly, you know, the names or identities of potential perpetrators, documents related to Donald Trump. [5:13] But I'll say two things that are really important here. [5:16] One is the Department of Justice categorically did not review non-English language documents in an investigation that spanned multiple countries. [5:24] They just decided not to do it. [5:25] And the other thing that's important is they decided not to explain any of the hundreds of thousands or millions of redactions that they did make and that they were required to explain by law. [5:35] So Judge Sullivan has directed them to actually follow the law and explain their redactions. [5:40] And that's going to help the public understand whether these redactions, all these redactions are appropriate or inappropriate. [5:47] OK, lots more to come on this, it sounds like. [5:50] So we'll have you back to talk about it. [5:51] Thank you.