Weaponizing The Law

Do us a favor and arrest a Member of Congress for telling people what their constitutional rights are. Go ahead and try it thug. https://t.co/9C5wP11wih

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) February 18, 2025

Homan is a former cop who imagines he’s a legal expert (he insisted on a CNN interview that he knew immigration law, and that crossing the border without a passport was a crime. It isn’t.) and now A Man To Be Reckoned With because Trump made him the fall guy for Trump’s grandiose (but empty) promises. 

This is why you fight these cowards.

The moment you stand up to them, they crumble.

Homan has nothing. The Fourth Amendment is clear and I am well within my duties to educate people of their rights.

He can threaten me with jail & call names all he wants. He’s got nothing else. https://t.co/XzUfeP634P

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 18, 2025

It will also be the making of AOC.*

It seems to me that if Musk has proof that millions of social security checks have gone out illegally to dead people, he should be presenting that evidence in front of a grand jury under oath tomorrow instead of shitposting it on social media. When can we do this under oath?

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) February 18, 2025

Speaking of legal matters…

Fraud is proven in a court of law. Outside of that, allegations of fraud are libelous (not strictly; that, too, has to be established in a court of law).

Musk has nothing but lies and empty allegations. So far he says the fired employees were guilty of incompetence. But the government has yet to present that evidence in court. The government doesn’t even know what’s going on:

The legal team for the order pointed to reports over the dangers of Department of Energy employees who oversee the nuclear waste in Los Alamos, New Mexico as an example. They mentioned that thousands of government employees were let go on Friday. 

Chutkan asked whether the government's legal team could confirm — and they said they didn't know. It was a fact that legal analysts watching the case unfold were shocked by. 

"I have not been able to look into that independently or confirm that," the government lawyer said, according to Just Security and MSNBC's Adam Klasfeld. 

"The firing of thousands of federal employees is not a small or common thing. You haven’t been able to confirm that?" Klasfeld quoted Chutkan responding "incredulously." 

Lawfare's Roger Parloff recorded Chutkan's concerns that DOGE's actions "have been unpredictable and scattershot." She commented that it's unclear if that is by design or a nature of the situation. 

"That's why I'm asking: will there be terminations? Where? When?" Chutkan said, according to Parloff. 

The government was forced to say they'd get back to her on that.

The Keystone Kops were better organized.

How do you begin to combat this volume of misinformation? She claims "tens of millions of deceased people" are getting social security payments; but the database they are misreading showed 13 people aged 112 got payments in 2015 — and at least two of them were in fact alive then. https://t.co/Dnj6QwLNQW

— Robert Mackey (@RobertMackey) February 18, 2025

Making them present evidence of fraud in open court would be a good start.

Levi: DOGE is complicated… Please, Elon and all of your team, please don't let everybody fall through the cracks as we are doing what is necessary.. There are good people, people that voted for Donald Trump who are losing their job. We got to make sure that we don't leave those… pic.twitter.com/NqpVP2lipN

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 18, 2025

Government is complicated. DOGE is small children playing with dynamite. 🧨 

CNN: We have some breaking news for you. The acting head of the social security administration has resigned. Their departure comes after she refused to provide DOGE staffers access to sensitive information. pic.twitter.com/eA16DGXWaD

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 18, 2025

I rest my case.

*Homan also undercuts the argument that “illegal immigrants” are not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” If that’s correct, they have no rights and AOC is offering empty and lawless hope. Which would hardly be actionable. 

Can’t cut that baloney so thinly it has only one side.