‘POLITICAL DISASTER’: Dems are walking into a ‘legal trap,’ attorney says

At the end of the day, this government is going to shrink. This president was elected to reduce the size of government. He's allowed to do that. These employees want this deal. Their own unions are opposing something they want, but it's not a scam. The government is bound by this deal. He is allowed to have Musk working through the White House. They have Treasury people and other officials now part of DOJ. Congress has a parallel DOJ committee. The IGs are doing their own investigation along the same lines. All of that is permissible. That was legal expert Jonathan Turley saying that President Trump is allowed to shrink the federal government. As a federal judge in Massachusetts hands Trump a victory on his federal worker buyout plan. That judge ruling that the union challenging the Trump buyout had no standing, meaning basically that none of their workers were even involved. In addition to that, the court itself had no authority. Basically, that this is just a frivolous lawsuit put up by obstructionist Democrats waging lawfare. Joining us now for reaction, former House Judiciary Chief Counsel under Clinton and Attorney Julian Epstein. Julian, it's great to have you on this subject tonight. Wow, there are a lot of cases outstanding, and we're following a lot of different aspects of it here. But the constitutional crisis that the Democrats are screaming about is really the one that they are creating, which is that they're creating more lawfare. For example, that Boston judge, Judge O'Toole, really looked at this and realized without any jurisdiction, without participants actually litigating in this particular case, he would look like a fool to block President Trump's buyout. Well, Jackie, thanks for having me. It's great to be with you. There is no constitutional crisis, and President Trump made it clear that he'll abide by whatever court decisions come down. So there is no constitutional crisis. And moreover, Trump is likely to win on all the major issues. Trump, as the chief executive of the executive branch, has the right to go in and audit and access payments, and he has his right to have his designee do that in Elon Musk. So the access to the payment systems is perfectly constitutional. He has the right to rescind or to slow down federal payments, so long as they are not earmarked. He has the right to do workforce reductions within limits. Now, there may be challenges on second-order issues. I can imagine a judge saying that if Musk gets access to payment systems, he has to ensure that privacy information isn't leaked to the public. That's perfectly reasonable. I can see there being issues relating to lower-level civil service employees in terms of what protections they may have through the Merit Systems Protection Board. But these are secondary issues. For the most part, Trump has all of the authority he is going to need. And to the extent that some of these issues have not been decided and go to the Supreme Court, you're going to see happen exactly what happened in the ballot access, Trump's ballot issue in Colorado, and the immunity decisions, which the Supreme Court has made it very, very clear that they do not regard the bureaucratic state as a fourth branch of government. They believe that it is an Article II executive branch within the Article II executive branch powers, and they will come down on the side of Trump. So, the Democrats, from a legal point of view, Jackie, are walking into a legal trap where they're going to lose this issue and they're going to be embarrassed. And politically, this is a disaster for them. The public is on the side of Trump here, not the Democrats. I think you're right, and I think they're just trying to slow things down, but that's not even happening. Some of these judges are ruling pretty quickly. Julian, we really appreciate your time tonight. Thank you, and have a wonderful weekend. Thanks for having me, Jackie.