Trump Files Amicus Brief to Force Biden to Stop Selling Border Wall Material
Trump alleges the sale could “constitute criminal fraud.”
The Daily Wire reported that President-elect Donald filed an amicus brief in the U.S. District Court – Southern District of Texas to stop President Joe Biden’s administration from selling border wall material.
“The outgoing Biden Administration’s reported ‘fire sales’ of border-wall materials to private parties raise grave concerns about the legality of Defendants’ conduct and their compliance with this Court’s permanent injunction in this case,” according to the filing. “The Court should order an immediate stop of all such sales and perform a searching examination of the Government’s conduct—by ordering formal discovery if necessary—to ensure compliance with the Constitution, the law, and the Court’s orders.”
Trump alleges the sale could “constitute criminal fraud.”
“Further, if officials in the current Administration are acting ultra vires and deliberately selling off border-wall materials at a major financial loss to the Government to obstruct the prowall policy of Congress and President Trump, such conduct likely constitutes a criminal act, such as a conspiracy to defraud the United States under 18 U.S.C. § 371,” writes John Sauer, the lawyer who authored the brief for Trump. “At the very least, the reported conduct raises troubling concerns of potentially criminal behavior.”
Ultra vires means “beyond the powers.” In other words, Trump has accused the Biden administration of overreaching and exceeding its authority.
18 U.S.C. § 371 is “Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States.” The section says:
If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
If, however, the offense, the commission of which is the object of the conspiracy, is a misdemeanor only, the punishment for such conspiracy shall not exceed the maximum punishment provided for such misdemeanor.
“It raises the concern that government officials may be, in fact, selling off border-wall materials at rock-bottom prices—and thus imposing significant, artificial financial losses on the Government—for the purpose of obstructing both Congress’s and the incoming President’s proborder-barrier policy,” Sauer explains. “If so, such conduct would appear to both ‘cheat the government out of property or money’ and ‘interfere with or obstruct … lawful government functions by deceit, craft or trickery,’ id.—a double violation of the statute committed at a single stroke.”
On December 12, The Daily Wire revealed the Biden administration selling border wall material dirt cheap on an auction site. Bundles of material started at $5.
“On December 17, 2024, President Trump stated that he has received reports that the Biden Administration is selling border-wall materials at ‘five cents on the dollar,’ and that this is ‘almost a criminal act.’ Pinedo, supra,” writes Sauer. “He highlighted reporting that purchasers of the materials, who acquired them at a steep discount, are now offering to sell the materials back to the Trump Administration for ‘hundreds of times more’ than they spent on them.”
Trump also wants Biden to stop selling the material because he made border security a priority during his campaign.
The president-elect wants to continue building the border wall. Biden knows this, too.
“During the recent campaign and Presidential transition, President Trump has reaffirmed his support for building a system of border barriers at the southwestern border as a crucial tool for checking the influx of illegal immigration,” stresses Sauer. “Building the border wall is the clear and emphatic policy of the incoming Trump Administration.”
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said the state would buy pieces of the border wall and return it to Trump:
.@GovAbbott and I spoke last night about purchasing “wall” material President Biden is auctioning off. The Governor had already instructed the @TFCtx [Texas Facilities Commission], which oversees Texas’ border wall construction, to look at what Biden was selling.
The Texas Facilities Commission told us today that the material for sale was mostly junk, with most panels covered in concrete and rust. There were a few panels that might be usable but not worth the cost of shipping to Texas from Arizona.
In short, this was a Biden ruse to gain favor with the radical left open border crowd, showing Biden was fighting President Trump to the bitter end.
Rest assured, if they sell any panels that make economic sense, we will buy them and give them to President Trump when he takes office.
Governor Abbott, the state legislature, and I all stand ready to help President Trump quickly secure our southern border.
.@GovAbbott and I spoke last night about purchasing "wall" material President Biden is auctioning off. The Governor had already instructed the @TFCtx, which oversees Texas’ border wall construction, to look at what Biden was selling.
The Texas Facilities Commission told us today…
— Dan Patrick (@DanPatrick) December 13, 2024
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Comments
At some point SCOTUS may have to reach to these pardons.
It seems that the furtherance of a premeditated crime spree would not have been envisioned by the founders in creating the Presidential Pardon and such pardons are unconstitutional and therefore void.
These aren’t “presidential pardons” so much as “unknown staffer pardons” since Biden is technically non compos mentis. It was generous of the founders to extend that right to randos.
We can suspect that, but we don’t actually know it to be true. Biden has good and bad days, so how could one prove that the pardons didn’t happen on a good day? Maybe when he had just woken up from a nap, an aide gave him the list of proposed pardons and suggested that he should approve them all, and he did so. That would be enough to make them all legal.
I hate to see Trump filing lawsuits –
However – the complete disregard of any law by the Biden adminstration should be subject to both criminal and civil action.
Just to clear, A lawsuit should have been filed to stop the Biden adminstration activity. Just that its inappropriate for trump to do and there is a question as to whether he has “standing” . At least standing as of the date of filing.
Trump filed an amicus brief to an existing lawsuit filed by the Attorneys General of Texas and Missouri, so his standing is irrelevant.
But this brings up an interesting question that DW asked me that I could not answer: it’s pretty clear why Texas has standing in this lawsuit, but what skin does Missouri have in the game?
The material belongs to The United States and used tax money to pay for it so maybe every state has standing? At the least the wall would help stop illegal alien migration to Missouri so they have a stake in getting the wall built.
Missouri asserted standing on the grounds that, it claims, 0.6% of illegal aliens end up in Missouri. The district court didn’t believe that, and dismissed Missouri for lack of standing, but the majority on the appeals court said Missouri doesn’t need standing, since Texas undoubtedly has it. “[T]he presence of one party with standing is sufficient to satisfy Article III’s case-or-controversy requirement.” Rumsfeld v. F. for Acad. & Institutional Rts., Inc., 547 U.S. 47, 53 n.2 (2006)
Many more days to go before Biden sleeps,
and many more days to go before Biden sleeps.
If the federal government is SHUT DOWN, then that might go a long way to stopping Traitor Joe and his junta from doing things like intentionally dumping border wall parts at less-than-scrap prices (probably to connected friends of theirs, on top of it all).
BUILD THE WALL! Trump shouted at hundreds of campaign rallies, but then when he was President, with Republican control of the the Senate and House, he never built the wall. But like everything else which Trump failed to do, it is always the fault of someone else. He never takes responsibility for anything.
In the end Trumps did build part of the wall. All that comes from JR are lies.
Trump learned a great deal about how corrosive the Beltway, and this time he is going to kick a lot of Dem tail, get in line for your turn.
You seem to forget the lawfare that continuously interrupted with the construction of the wall. I get a kick out of liberals (idiots) who interfered with Trump’s agenda and are now blaming him for what he didn’t accomplish.
Next up: Trump is stymied by the courts in his attempts to deport millions of illegal invaders, he will then be blamed by the same people who intefered with him for the failure. Mark my words.
More mush from the wimp.
Is there a single post you’ve made that isn’t a hot TDS mess?
Trump owns you, boyo. Lock, stock, and barrel.
Maybe one of these days the good professor will deign to blacklist you.
Why doesn’t Trump just come out and publicly state that any such wall transactions will be carefully reviewed. Even if there is no illegality, “the process is the punishment” will not be lost on many people.
Or buy them at auction himself, and donate them back.
I thought the governor of TX said he was going to buy all the materials himself and donate them to the feds when Trump is POTUS?
Accuse buyers of being part of the conspiracy. Maybe deposit them on the other side wall. at the middle of segment of existing wall.
Where is the lawsuit to stop biden’s looting of the treasury on the way out (i.e. union, tuition, Ukraine, etc giveaways)?
In this stunt and myriad other corrupt giveaways, the vile Dhimmi-crats show themselves — not for the first time — to be common and brazen thieves in an organized crime outfit.
Question: IMO Biden is not remotely “there”. Could a pardon be challenged on the grounds that someone besides the President had to be issuing it?
O’Keefe Media Group: SHOCKING UNDERCOVER VIDEO: ‘Joe Biden is Dead;’ National Security Council Advisor Inside the White House Details Biden “Can’t Say a Sentence.”
That’s an interesting question. He would have to be declared incompetent I think for that to happen.
If the material is being sold at auction, as is being reported, then whatever it fetches is by definition its fair value. Thus the claim that it’s being being sold at any kind of discount, let alone at “five cents on the dollar”, is impossible.
Some days, you wake up and ask the universe, “what obtuse, stupid shit can I say today?”, don‘t you?
I guess you do. Because what you just wrote was obtuse stupid shit, particularly if you actually think things have inherent value, so that a thing can be worth more than it can fetch in the open market.
What the governent actually doing is selling them below market price to an auction site which then auctions them off. So yes, they are selling them at below market price, Milhouse.
Bullshit. The report linked says explicitly that “The Biden administration is using its final weeks to haul a massive amount of border wall materials away from the southern border to be sold off in a government auction“.
This post too says “On December 12, The Daily Wire revealed the Biden administration selling border wall material dirt cheap on an auction site.” The Daily Wire actually doesn’t say that. “Dirt cheap” is just this poster’s addition. But it too says that it’s the administration, not a private company, that is selling the stuff on the auction site. Therefore it’s literally impossible for it to be going “dirt cheap”.
Yup, there’s Milhouse, trying to pretend black is white and getting run over at the zebra crossing.
You’re the one with a sensitive part caught in an inconvenient place. The government is selling the goods at auction, so by definition it is getting the fair market value.
if you choose to ignore what is actually happening even after it’s presented to you then you are just acting as a low rent troll.
If you choose to misrepresent the truth and make things up, that’s on you.
It was sold cheap to a government and military surplus private company. That company is auctioning it. It’s auction prices have nothing to do with the government, why are you incapable of admitting that you are wrong?
That is not true, at least according to both this post and the article it is based on.
The government is auctioning the material, which means the auction proceeds go to the government.
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