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Opening Arguments

Small DoJ Energy

Opening Arguments

Opening Arguments Media LLC

Atheist, Law, Politics, News, Harvard, Supremecourt, Legal, Opinion, Liberal

4.33.7K Ratings

🗓️ 20 February 2026

⏱️ 54 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

OA1237 - The U.S. Department of Justice is not sending their best these days. From the problematic indictments of journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for their coverage of the protest of a church in Minnesota whose pastor runs the local ICE field office to the unexpected dismissal of Mohsen Mohdawi’s deportation proceedings to a bizarre argument (and more good news) in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s custody proceedings, we are continuing to see what happens when authoritarian lawyering meets actual federal judges applying actual federal law to the facts and parties before them. 

Finally, in today’s footnote: can you sue your ex for telling millions of people about your enormous penis? We debate whether a former football player’s claims are giving BDE or legal shrinkage.

  1. Federal indictment of Nakima Levy Armstrong, Don Lemon, Georgia Fort, et al in connection with January 18, 2026 protest at Cities Church

  1. DOJ Office of Civil Rights memo re: FACE Act charging policy (Jan 24, 2025)

  1. The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (“FACE”) Act, 18 USC 248

  1. Petitioner’s 28(j) letter in Mahdawi v. Trump with copy of the Immigration Judge’s order terminating Mohsen Mahdawi’s removal proceedings attached (Feb. 17, 2026)

  1. Judge Xinis’s order preventing Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s re-detention by ICE (Feb. 17, 2026)

  2. Complaint in Kalil v. Kalil, filed Jan. 6, 2026

  3. Excerpts from Rev. Jesse Jackson’s “Keep Hope Alive” speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention

Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do!

Transcript

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0:00.0

Department of Justice was claiming that it had to rush this,

0:03.6

it had to get this emergency thing filed because of national security.

0:07.0

They said that they believed that people were going to start storming churches.

0:17.6

Our judges have now said there is no presumption of regularity from the Department of Justice,

0:21.5

that we're getting to the point that we can't assume that things are being done,

0:24.0

that business is not as usual, that things are wrong.

0:32.5

Hello and welcome to opening arguments.

0:33.9

This is episode 1237.

0:35.3

I'm Thomas Thad, over there's real life immigration attorney, Matt Cameron. How you doing, Matt? I'm really happy not to be talking about the Epstein files. We had a great time talking about the Epstein files, as we always do, but that's a lot of Epstein. That makes one of us because I feel like there's no end to the amount I want to talk about the Epstein files. We need to make sure it never goes away. Just never goes away in terms of Trump and any sort of consequences. Who knows if he'll ever have any? But yeah, I'm glad we're on it. There's always going to be more. Oh, yeah, plenty more. We're not ending this. Just could have a break. But today we've got a lot of stuff to talk about. What's on the agenda? I know that we've kind of had a lot of stuff pending while we've been talking about Epstein. Well, I really want to talk about the Don Lemon arrest along with Georgia Fort, another independent journalist, and just the entire scene that went down in the Minneapolis church and kind of how that's been reported and what's going on there. And also kind of take you through the face act, which is what they're being charged under because this is really not what it's for at all.

1:29.4

The face act.

1:30.4

Yeah.

1:30.6

I don't know what that is.

1:32.4

Yeah. It has nothing to do with, well, it has something to do with what happened here, but it's not what it was passed for, as we'll find out. I want to give you some good news out of the Kilmer Brigger Garcia case this week, as well as Modew, who was arrested at a naturalization interview we talked about last year. These are all kind of the big marquee cases along with Ramesa Osterk and Tomakmud Khalil. We talked last week about the good news from the Austerk case. This stuff is all falling apart for the government in all kinds of ways. And it's, I think it's really worth noting

2:01.1

these milestones. Some good news here. For sure. And then we've got just a BDE kind of a footnote.

2:06.8

I'm not going to run this prize yet. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's pretty literally that. Oh, all right.

2:13.5

About litigation over penis size. Oh, if it, I imagine, does it have to do with the ski jumping?

2:21.3

I know.

2:22.8

Completely different.

2:24.2

It's quite a week for.

2:25.3

Pieness, quite a week for penises, yeah.

2:27.9

It's penis week.

2:28.7

I forgot about that.

...

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