Freshman Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) would like for people to believe he's the smartest man in the room at all times, and he's not shy about trying to prove the supposed point within the first few minutes of any gathering that involves a captive audience.
He's especially fond of touting his purported legal expertise, something we've seen happen at numerous Congressional hearings where he likes to lecture people on the legal definitions of the terms they use, which oftentimes results in him getting schooled in return by witnesses and committee colleagues alike as to the actual facts on any given topic.
Sadly for Goldman - and luckily for us - he once again fell into the same pattern Thursday during a House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs hearing where the issue under discussion was "The Consequences of Catch and Release at the Border."
The witnesses on hand for the hearing were Jessica Vaughan, who is the policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies, former ICE chief of staff Jason Houser, and Matt O'Brien, who is the Immigration Reform Law Institute's Director of Investigations.
O'Brien, as it turns out, is also a former immigration judge, appointed by then-Attorney General Bill Barr in 2020 to the Arlington Immigration Court.
His CV on law and illegal immigration is quite extensive, something it appears Goldman either was unaware of or was unimpressed with (or both) as he aggressively questioned O'Brien during the hearing.
In one particular exchange which is making the rounds on social media, Goldman asked O'Brien about the statement he made that President Joe Biden has the authority to unilaterally shut down the border.
"Under what authority do you refer to?" Goldman inquired.
"As I said, Section 1182F of the Immigration and Nationality Act which was the statutory provision that was at issue in Trump v. Hawaii," O'Brien answered. "It's a provision that allows the president by proclamation to temporarily suspend the admission of certain classes of aliens into the United States."
Goldman's response was to ask "So why didn't Donald Trump use that?" apparently not realizing that O'Brien had just cited the very case that proved Trump did in fact try to use it.
"He...he did, that's why the Trump v. Hawaii case went all the way to the Supreme Court," O'Brien noted.
For the record, in 2018 the Supreme Court ruled in Trump's favor.
Stammering, Goldman then asked O'Brien, "But then what happened - why was it relied on in Title 42?"
O'Brien stated that "there was a pandemic [going] on. Title 42 is pitched at a very different set of circumstances. It's specifically at a public health crisis. 1182F is pitched at a general power to manage the border in confrontation of a crisis."
As the tweet indicates, Goldman's attempt at tripping up O'Brien clearly did not go according to plan:
Rep. Dan Goldman tried to trip up a former immigration judge.
— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) February 15, 2024
Spoiler: It did not go as planned. pic.twitter.com/01BNhXkv5D
The especially remarkable thing about Goldman's line of questioning is that the ruling in the case cited by O'Brien (otherwise known as the "travel ban case") is considered by some legal experts to be a landmark ruling on presidential powers and immigration law, which makes it all the more embarrassing that Goldman the legal expert apparently knew nothing about it.
I don't know which was better, that it was Goldman who got tripped up or that he inadvertently torpedoed his own (implied) argument about Biden supposedly not having the authority to shut down the border, but we were so glad to be here to document Goldman getting owned either way.
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