Arizona AG Kris Mayes Exclusive Interview on Legal Battle Against Trump and Musk’s 'Coup'
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The lawsuits are here. One, two, three, four, at least five major lawsuits that are being filed by state attorney generals throughout the country. Five filed by the state attorney general of Arizona, Arizona Attorney General Chris Mays. Let's welcome her onto the Midas Touch show. Attorney General Mays, five lawsuits. Tell us generally what these are about, these lawsuits against Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
Yeah, thanks for having me. The state AGs have filed multiple lawsuits against the Trump administration and Doge and Elon Musk for a number of different reasons. We filed against his executive order on birthright citizenship, which is obviously unconstitutional and violates the 14th Amendment. We now have two lawsuits against Doge, essentially. One when Doge infiltrated the Treasury Department. We have one alleging that Elon Musk and President Trump are violating the Appointments Clause of the Constitution. We've fought back and filed a lawsuit to stop the federal funding freeze that would have devastated basically all of our states. By freezing federal funding, we got a TRO against Trump in essentially all of these cases. Almost all of these cases, we have gotten a TRO to stop him.
And essentially what's going on, and I've said this before, I'll say it again, this is a coup. This is a coup by Donald Trump against our Constitution, against our way of governing ourselves. because they are violating over and over and over again, not only the separation of powers, but also violating the court orders that we are getting. We have multiple federal judges who are saying to Donald Trump and Elon Musk, stop this now, and yet we believe they're violating those orders.
So what do you do when there's a coup that is violating the structure, the express language, the spirit, all of that of the Constitution? And we pro-democracy law and order people are playing by the rules. They're not playing by the rules. And they're the federal government and they run the Department of Justice. So if a federal judge orders them in contempt, what are they just going to pardon their people? I mean, how do you combat a situation where, as in your words, a lawless coup is taking place?
Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. It's something that the AGs, I'll tell you, are discussing. I mean, first of all, let's just take a step back, Ben, and think about just how unprecedented this is. This is a territory and waters we have never been in before as a country. And I think we've never been in a more dangerous place. than we are today, at least since the Civil War. And I truly believe that. And that's why I'm using language like this is a coup. You know, we're going to see where this goes. We're going to continue to prosecute these cases. I think it's going to be up to federal judges to take the next step if they believe that their orders are being violated. There's civil contempt. There's criminal contempt potentially.
And as you know, a lot of these cases are going to win their way, find their way all the way to the United States Supreme Court. And the United States Supreme Court is going to have to decide whether they are in favor of America or not. Do they believe in the separation of powers or not? Are they gonna stand up for our constitution or not? But I'll tell your listeners that the AGs of this country, the democratic AGs of the country have every intention of continuing to stand up for our constitution and for America. And we will not stop fighting until we make sure that that happens. And I think we have a duty to all the previous generations who fought and died for this very Constitution to stand up for it. And we're going to do that.
And we also have as a duty as the top law enforcement officers of each of our states, we each took an oath of office that said we will protect the Constitution of Arizona or Michigan or California, and we will protect the Constitution of the United States.
One of the aspects of fighting in the context of litigation after a lawsuit is filed, after a TRO is or isn't granted, you get into the discovery phase and document requests, depositions, interrogatories. Can you tell us a little bit about that? I know a lot of people who speak to us say, why isn't Elon Musk being deposed? We want to see him subpoenaed. He's running around.
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Ben Meiselas 5 min
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