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- [00:01]
Ben Meiselas
By the time I hit my 50s, I'd learned a few things, like how
- [00:05]
Michael Popak
family is precious, work can always wait, and 99% of people over 50 already have the virus that causes shingles.
- [00:14]
Ben Meiselas
Not everyone at risk will develop it, but I did.
- [00:18]
Michael Popak
The painful blistering rash disrupted my life for weeks.
- [00:22]
Ben Meiselas
Don't learn about your shingles risk the hard way.
- [00:26]
Michael Popak
Talk to your doctor or pharmacist today. Sponsored by gsk.
- [01:01]
Co-host (possibly a legal or political analyst)
Hey, campers, it's Jan from Toyota this summer. We're headed to Camp Toyota and the fun starts now. We're kicking things off by kicking up mud. Jump in, campers. We're going off roading in a 4Runner. Next we're heading to the hot springs in a RAV4. And finally, park your tundras and Tacomas around the campfire because we're roasting marshmallows. There's dumber start here.
- [01:24]
Michael Popak
Dealer inventory may vary so your participating Toyota dealer for Details, Event Hands June 1st Toyota Let's Go places. We have a lot to discuss on this episode of Legal af. Donald Trump's disastrous trip to China concluded. All he got was utter humiliation and some rose seeds, apparently for the Rose Garden that no longer exists in the White House. I think Xi Jinping was mocking Donald Trump with that gift as Donald Trump departed. I want to talk, though, about all of the conflicts of interest that, that we've seen surrounding this trip. I mean, with the CEOs who were showing up, who were part of Donald Trump's delegation while Donald Trump said he doesn't care one bit about the financial condition of Americans. But we saw Donald Trump's Office of Government Ethics disclosure form about the stock trades that he engaged in the first quarter of 2026, over 3,800 separate stock trades. And we're talking about individual stocks as well, not just exchange traded like trading Nvidia and trading stocks that he was talking about. We'll go over this. We'll explain the ramifications about all of this. We'll go through it in detail. We should talk about some other conflicts of interest like Donald Trump's. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was told, recuse yourself from all of these cases regarding Donald Trump. You were the guy's personal lawyer and he's doing all of these cases in his personal capac against the Department of Justice. There are lots of lingering investigations that remain from before Donald Trump was in office. Donald Trump wants you to exact revenge and retribution on his enemies. You are his personal lawyer. The DOJ can't be functioning as his personal Lawyer and of course, acting Attorney General Blanche ignored it, but claims he's following the requirement that he recuse himself. We'll get into that. We'll talk about Donald Trump's latest plan regarding the case that he filed against the IRS and the Treasury Department back in January of 2026 for an alleged data breach that took place during his first term in 2019. I believe it's one of the most frivolous cases ever filed, if not the most frivolous case ever filed. It's time barred. The government has all of these immunities, yet Donald Trump is trying to do the settlement with himself. Trump as a private plaintiff suing Donald Trump's government, but forcing the taxpayers to pay. He was asking first for $10 billion, and then a federal judge said, I need to know more about this. This seems like collusion. This seems collusive. And I don't have jurisdiction over cases that aren't real cases. The court can't rubber stamp misconduct and collusive settlement agreements between basically the same party on both sides of the v, both the plaintiff and the def. Tell me why this is a real case. And so now what we're learning that Donald Trump has done is he's now going to create what he's referring to as a truth commission. And he's invoked something called the rule of necessity, which is not really a real thing. But he goes, the rule of necessity in common law requires that now I set up a truth commission, and now I'm going to take $1.6 billion, or 1776, I think is the number. He's going to take $1.776 billion. That's the number, and from the taxpayers. And I'm going to give it to the January 6th insurrectionist. I'm going to use it as my slush fund for people who I think were harmed by Biden and who remain loyal to me. And I'm going to give out these. Give out these gifts. And so we'll talk about the conflicts of interest there. And also Donald Trump's biggest priority, while he doesn't care about the financial condition of the American people, as he said, I don't care one bit about the financial condition of the American people. You know, his golden ballrooms, his arches, his. Now we've heard a lot more about taking over the East Potomac public golf courses now, turning it into these Trump golf courses, stuff like that. All of them involve litigation where lots of federal judges are saying, well, you know, you have to let us know what you're doing. Now, Donald, because you ripped down the East Wing of the White House without giving anybody notice, and then you just ran ahead with it and said, oops, now that it's demolished, there's nothing I can do. And we're still seeing, like, bulldozers start to arrive to do the arch, which is right by Arlington Cemetery. I mean, imagine this big, gaudy gold arch blocking the cemetery. I mean, it's so disrespectful also. But Trump keeps trying to, you know, just go and start destroying stuff, basically, the reflecting Pool litigation there. We'll talk about it all in this episode of Legal af. I'm Ben Mysellis, joined by Michael Popak. Popak got a lot to discuss in this episode. Great to see you.
- [06:27]
Co-host (possibly a legal or political analyst)
You too. You too. I'm. I am encouraged by some things that you and I spotted over the last couple of days. Has any president ever accomplished so little, despite so much investment, than Donald Trump's failed diplomatic mission to China? It was supposed to be a trade mission, a business mission. He brought along all these titans of semiconductor and chip and bank companies and left behind Howard Lutnick, who decided, I guess, after his performance during the Epstein scandal not to show up. Melania knew a failing administration when she saw one, so she didn't go either. And all that happened. I never thought that in two days, you could make the head of China, Xi, more powerful in the, in the eyes of the world and the American president less powerful in just 48 hours. But Donald Trump, you know, he likes to talk about himself in historical terms. Yeah, it was the worst diplomatic slash trade mission ever by a president where he accomplished absolutely nothing. Not a deal to stop China's. Through Hong Kong in continued funneling of money, arms, cash, and oil brokerage for the Iranian regime. The number one way Iran stays alive against America are fake and shell companies and brokers in Hong Kong under the watchful eye of the Chinese Communist Party. You want to really shut down the Iranian flow of money, then you shut down Hong Kong and its and its brokers has no intent of doing that. The only thing that was on the mind of the Chinese was, was Taiwan and making them not free, capturing them again. And so that didn't get even discussed or resolved. Russia, Ukraine, no business deals. None except for those seeds, those barren seeds for the rose guard that no longer exists. This was a tour de force of a foreign power in the head of China and weakening Donald Trump. He thought for two days and the surrounding days around it that he'd be able to leave the stench of a failed administration and come back a hero. The exact opposite has happened. He's hobbled tail between his legs right back to the same corruption scandals, failing poll numbers, failing economic numbers, failing midterm predictions as when he left two days ago.
- [09:10]
Michael Popak
So I want to read for you some what I think is some just spot on analysis right here, Popak. And then let's get into some of these conflicts of interest. First you have the former ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns under the Biden administration. Here's what he said. I thought it was a mistake for President Trump to do this. You didn't see Xi Jinping reciprocate that kind of elaborate over the top praise for Donald Trump. He stuck to his issues. I thought it made us look weak as a country. You have John Simpson saying Donald Trump allowed himself to be outplayed in China. According to the academic author Peter Frankapen, from accepting a lower seat beside Xi Jinping to showing gratitude and respect to him, Trump acted like the humble number two. Just what Xi wanted him to portray. Poor preparation, lack of expertise, the total conviction that business deals are the way to do foreign policy all play a part in what will go down one day. As a set piece to how not to do a summit, Phillips o' Brien writes, it's amazing how little the press is willing to dissect US Decline under Trump. The US Got no help with Iran, was scolded on Taiwan, says it got a small Boeing deal China has not confirmed. And Trump appeased on Chinese students microchips. Also Chinese ownership of US Farms. Xi even insulted US Power to Donald Trump's face. He said the US Is a declining power. And Donald Trump said yes, yes we are, but I make it hot. Trump said that publicly and as Philip o' Brien says, yet it's being reported as a modest successful event by American corporate media. It was a strategic failure by the US and marks a notable moment of US Declined. That's just the reality. That's just the truth. I mean, just take a look at the, this is really bad. And as we talk about Donald Trump stock trading now, you look at this data, I mean you're looking at the 10 year treasury yields, you know, that's at like 4.55% right now. The 30 year treasury yield 5.12, the highest level since the run up to the global financial crisis. As Jonathan Weissman says, the impact on federal debt payments will be horrific if this holds. I mean, it's quite literally unsustainable if these numbers are there for even a few more weeks. I mean it leads to global depressions and global calamity. And I'm not just saying that to fear monger. That's just the reality of the situation. And of course, as Donald Trump returned to the United States on Friday, close to $2 trillion in wealth and the stock market, Donald Trump loves to talk about was wiped out. Because all of the deals and everything that Donald Trump promised to create, what they call the euphoria on the market that all went away. And people said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So no deal on the Strait of Hormuz, no deal with semiconductors. Not only no deal with the semiconductor chips. China said, we don't want your H200 chips. Trump brought the head of Nvidia to say, you want our H2 hundreds. This is the highly classified, coveted semiconductor that in the past, the US Would never give any details of it to China yet alone license the technology. You want to know why China said no? Because they've got it already. They have their own companies that do it. And you know where they got a lot of that technology from? Trump. Trump gave the technology to the uae. He gave it out to all of these people who in my opinion, he was doing these quid pro quo deals with. And if you go back to legal AF and Midas touch reporting back when Donald Trump did that Middle east trip last year, what was that like last May or so? And he went to all of those, you know, Arab countries we were talking about, he's given the semiconductors, given the H2 hundreds to the UAE. They invested in Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial, his crypto business, and he gave away our most coveted technology. Now they claim, ah, that's not a quid pro quo. It's not just two different deals. You think China didn't get it from them? You think China didn't get it from other people who Donald Trump has haphazardly shared it to? Shared it with? That's my opinion, opinion. And then, you know, here was, let me read you, this is what is what Elizabeth Warren said after Donald Trump's these, this Office of Government Ethics financial disclosure form came out for quarter one. Just one quarter.
- [13:50]
Co-host (possibly a legal or political analyst)
Okay.
- [13:50]
Michael Popak
And in Q1 of 2026, Trump made 3,800 stock trades and individual stocks. And I'll go through them in a second with you. But as Warren says, Trump brought the Nvidia CEO on his trip to China to lobby Xi to buy advanced AI chips, even though it would create a US national security threat. It turns out Trump also bought millions in Nvidia stock. The Trump's corruption is a national security disaster. To which Eric Trump says, all of our assets are invested in a blind trust by the largest financial institutions in broad market indexes. To suggest that individual stocks are being bought or sold at the discretion of any member of the Trump family would be a lie and blatantly false. Using a silly example, if you buy the Schwab 1000, you will get some exposure to Nvidia as well as A1 as well as 1,000 other US companies, large and mid cap stocks. It's completely disingenuous to represent anything to the contrary. Please be better than this. I mean, I think people know what exchange traded funds are, these ETFs that buy a lot of stocks on the market. But that's not what happened here. In the first quarter, Trump bought as much as 5 million in companies like Nvidia, Oracle, Microsoft, Boeing, Costco. I mean there's a whole list of these. Netflix, Palantir. He did buy ETFs, these exchange traded funds. Like he did buy the Vanguard etf, which by the way has intel in it, which the government invested in. And intel stocks have soared. So like the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF doesn't disclose all of the stocks that are under that. But you know, individual Amazon, individual Microsoft, we're talking about 220 million to 700 million securities transactions in Q1 alone. And if you look at the, where, where these trades were mostly being made, a lot of them was taking place at the dip during the war. When the war started is when you saw a large volume of trades taking place. Popoc, when you were deputy gc, when you held top title, you were, you were before your litigator, you were, you were a Wall street litigator also. And so, you know, like this is your area. Yeah. And I mean to see this stuff, I mean this is where the SEC and others would normally step in. And here we're seeing, you know, this, this flagrant, this, this flagrant breach of trust play out. And then you know, we're seeing on Capitol Hill where they're talking about stock bans which isn't passing. They have this watered down bill. There should be all members should be banned from trading stocks. But all of these, these, these drafts of the legislation that are being circulated by the Republicans all have exemptions from Trump. They all have executive branch exemptions as I saw it. What do you make of all this Popo?
- [16:52]
Co-host (possibly a legal or political analyst)
Yeah, let me, let me see if I can tie it together. You know, from my vantage point of having worked for a Large financial services firm. It was one that was owned by Howard Lutnick. What they're doing, it's obvious, is that the oligarchs and billionaires who were brought into the government or are just tethered to the government like Elon Musk, Donald Trump himself, the Trump family have decided that they are going to profit on the policy decisions that are supposed to be made only for the benefit of the American people. There's a reason that our founding fathers and framers were worried about a bribe taking, corrupted chief executive. That's why we have the presidential emoluments clause. That's why there's a new lawsuit filed in my backyard in Miami to stop the transfer of a $300 million fair market value parcel of land to Donald Trump and his family to build a hotel convention center complex. Oh, by the way, side gig, it may have a library in it. Because the founding fathers were worried about, because they had the experience from the colonies and from the early states of governors taking bribes in order to approve certain bills being passed or other things. And so our founding fathers and framers who were wealthy, were worried about the corrupting influence of money on the person occupying the White House. Hence two versions of an emoluments clause. An emolument, we use that term a lot, but let's make it a teachable moment. An emolument defined as something, as a benefit, a gift, a profit that's given to somebody in return for their, because of their public service role. And we ban states and the United States from giving Donald Trump or any president anything other than his salary for his term, 400 grand or whatever it is as US president. But Donald Trump has done an end run around that along with everybody in his government, despite the fact that they allegedly signed ethics, ethics agreements. Remember, they were fighting that in the transition period led by Howard Lutnick as the co chair of the transition. They didn't really want to sign these ethics because we have a president who is trading on insider knowledge of his own policies, which are failing America, failing the American voter, failing the American consumer every day. So says the polls, when your polling numbers are down around your ankles or down around the 20s, plus or minus, with a margin of error on how you're handling the economy and the suffering of America being ignored by you and your policies, then you follow the money. You and I have always said, we've always were taught in our careers, if you can't figure out a conduct or behavior and you want a logical explanation for why it's Happening. Follow the money. So if you follow the money, Trump is making decisions not necessarily to benefit the American people as a public servant should, but so that he can stock trade on it, and other people in his administration are doing another version of it. Caner Fitzgerald, the company that I used to work for, left five years ago, is up 30% since their daddy became the Commerce Secretary. Okay. Because even if you're not getting insider information, you can track the policies if you have a good analyst and somebody who's watching, and you can predict based on the same press conferences and press release releases that you and I cover every day about where the, the administration is going next. And you can bet on it. See, Wall Street's all. It's all a casino. It's all a casino run by human beings, brokers and traders and institutional investors who basically, how they feel in the morning is more important, and rumors and pumping up of stock is more important than the underlying fundamentals of a company like earnings or EBITDA or things that normally you would invest on. And so even if a portion of Donald Trump's money is in some sort of blind trust, the operator of that trust is watching the Trump administration and is taking advantage of what appears to be erratic behavior. But at the end of the day, is nothing but a cohesive plan to line the pockets of Donald Trump and his family in everything that he does. So if you can't figure out how does this policy help the American people, and we'll be talking about a number of them today, from ballrooms to arches to, to libraries and the rest. It doesn't. It doesn't. That's not the reason that he is making that decision or taking on that fight or policy or taking on Congress or diverting money to a slush fund to pay his cronies from January6. That's not the reason. It's not public service. It is avarice and greed and on full display. You know, the reporting that you kicked off with, he's late by months in reporting the positions in stocks that he has taken. And now we learn through Elizabeth Warren. Of course, when you look at, I don't know if we have the picture, but if you look at the picture of everybody in the photo op who went with him on the tour to China on the, on the, on the mission, and you see Nvidia and MasterCard and Micron and Boeing and Cargill and all these other companies, right? And Apple and Elon Musk. You know, all you have to do is then compare it to his, his or his Children's stock portfolio who are under no obligation to reveal that to the public because he didn't make that same mistake the second time. He didn't bring these people into the government like Jared and Ivanka. He left them out as, quote, unquote, private citizens. And then. So where are we, where are we going with all this? You've got a Congress that has a job to do. Not right, right this minute when it's being controlled by a very slender margin by MAGA and Mike Johnson. But again, another incentive to mobilize the vote for our viewers to take back control of the House and the Senate. It so that there are real oversight committee hearings with Democrats holding the gavels to go over the corruption on full display. Because right now, Donald Trump thinks he's like Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie Catch me if you can. And he's slippery as an eel because he knows that the Congress for at least another seven or 12 months is in his corner. But that can change overnight. And that's what you and I, the community that you built with Midas, we built on legal af. That's what we're all about at this moment, is harnessing the human power, the human capital of our audience and channeling it at voting. And if that happens and people vote in their interests and we get the 7 to 10 to 20 million people who sat out the last election back then, the House. Forget this attempt to remap and map and remap that you keep hearing about till your eyes roll back in your head in red states. Forget about the 10 seats they're gonna steal, gonna win the house by 40 seats, gonna win the Senate as well. As Donald Trump demonstrates that his is a racist party that wants to X out black and other minority power in this country. And that's why you and I get together, you know, twice a week or once a week here on the Saturday version of this show.
- [25:06]
Michael Popak
You know, the one thing I'll also point out the corollary to Canner Fitzgerald seeing the flows of the market better because Lutnik's the Commerce Secretary. In addition, let's just face it, lots of people would want to do business in order to try to gain favors, whether it's explicit, implied, or just hopeful that it will happen. When you have the head of the Commerce secretary as a very transactional person, more people are going to want to do business with your kids, who you put basically as your puppets to run can or Fitzgerald, because those kids aren't qualified to run that company. I mean, people know who's really, you know, people will form opinions, I should say, of who's really still running the show and what's going on there. That's my opinion, of course. Let's do this. We'll come back. We have a lot to discuss along the lines of you mentioned Congress, and Congress, under Republicans have turned Congress into the Duma, the Russian Duma. It's a rubber stamp for Donald Trump. It's not a co equal branch of government anymore. And so when Donald Trump proposes, I'm going to resolve the lawsuit that I filed against the United states government for $1.776 billion, and I'm going to create a commission to give funds to the January 6th insurrectionist. And it's a slush fund for anyone who I claim was harmed by Biden. So your end run around Congress is you're going to sue your own departments and then use taxpayer dollars to create commissions that are the province of Article 1 to then just dole out money. That's something that would require legislation and it would never be passed. And so in a normal time, without an authoritarian dictator and with a functioning Congress, Congress would say, no, you can't do that. That's illegal. What are you talking about? But under maga, Mike Magamike will go down in history as one of the most pathetic weasels that there are. It's a legal term, pathetic weasels. We'll break down what's going on with the irs. We'll break down with that IRS case. We'll break down the ballroom case and the Reflecting Pool case and all of those cases and the Arch case. All the American people just are like, can we have health care? Can we have gas prices that we can, like, afford, please? Like, can we just, like, get paid for, like, our jobs and, like, be able to, like, live decent life before
- [27:34]
Co-host (possibly a legal or political analyst)
you take your break, there's an old line when you try to get away from your troubles, like, and take a flight the way that Donald Trump and his whole contingency of enablers did to go to China. Your troubles land on the flight right behind you. So right back, two days after China, he's right back. You can't. You can't run fast enough from the stench of a failed presidency. That's what the American people want to signal to Donald Trump on his return.
- [28:06]
Michael Popak
What he wants to do is take that stench and then spray it on who's ever next. Before it was Biden, who knows it'll be in the future? And then you just say, I had the plan. We were never hotter we were never better. And then when the person needs to now fix what you broke, you blame it on that person. Then you go through this cycle. But hopefully with the Midas Touch network and with the robust position of independent media, we can get out of this cycle because we can call it out because corporate news is complicit in that cycle. And hopefully we break that cycle. We've broken a lot of these bad cycles, but we're going to, we're going to do our best just to get out the truth. That's, that's all that matters here. All right, let's take our first quick break of the show. I want to remind everybody, if you or somebody know has been injured and we're a car accident, trucking accident. If you've been injured by the negligence of a third party, let's say a company or somebody else working for a company, and you think you may have a lawsuit and you need a lawyer, reach out to the POPOC firm. They're representing a lot of people who listen and watch this show. Call or text 877 popak AF or visit thepopoc firm.com that's 877 popoc AF or visit the popoc firm.com also make sure you subscribe to the legal AF substack and subscribe to the legal AF YouTube channel. Let's keep growing those channels. We'll be right back after our first quick break of the show.
- [29:28]
Co-host (possibly a legal or political analyst)
I am so excited to tell you about our sponsor, Avocado Green Mattress. Their certified organic mattresses are specifically designed to relieve pressure points, support your body the way it needs, and help you actually get the deep restorative sleep you've been missing. Every mattress is made with thoughtfully sourced materials and built with real care. Avocado focuses on thoughtful craftsmanship, creating products that feel intentionally made rather than mass produced. Their mattresses are designed to provide both comfort and proper support, helping your body stay aligned while still feeling cozy. Avocado products are made, not manufactured, and thoughtfully crafted with real materials to deliver lasting comfort and support. Go to avocadogreenmattress.com LegalAF to check out their mattress and furniture sale. That's avocadogreenmattpress.com LegalAF avocadogreenmattrush.com LegalAF sure, you've got weight loss goals, but hitting them isn't easy. That's where weight loss by HIMSS comes in. Offering access to an affordable range of FDA approved GLP1 medications, including the Wegovy pill at its lowest price ever and the WeGovy pen with WeGovy at hims you can lose up to 20% or more of your body weight when combined with diet and exercise. It helps regulate your appetite so you eat less. And it's the first and only GLP1 available in a pill, so no needles needed. Everything happens online. You'll connect with a licensed provider to see if treatment is right for you and if prescribed, your medication is delivered right to your door. No insurance necessary. Plus, HIMSS supports you beyond medication with 24.7care team messaging and personalized plans, including lifestyle tools like meal plans, recipes and fitness content to help you stay on track. Ready to reach your goals? Visit himss.com legalaf to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you that's H I M S.com legalaf himss. Based on advertised cash price for 30 days, supply of medication only, membership required, fee not included, and billed separately. Weight loss by HIMSS is not available in all 50 states. Wegovy is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk as To get started and learn more, including important safety information, WeGovy clinical study information and restrictions, visit HIMSS.com welcome
- [32:05]
Michael Popak
back to Legal AF. Thank you to all of our Our Sponsors Our sponsors help support this show, so support our sponsors. Discount codes are in the description below. Also, make sure you subscribe to the Legal AF substack and Legal AF YouTube channel. So ABC reported at the end of the week the following Donald Trump is expected to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. Like, okay, great. In exchange, what for the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration. Like the J6 insurrectionist, like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and other MAGA people who claim that Biden harmed them more Catherine Folders reports the following I'm told the potential commission tasked with approving payouts to Trump allies will likely be called the President Donald J. Trump Truth and Justice Commission, and the total amount available in the fund will be $1.776 billion. More in this story about the internal debate in the months leading up to this proposed settlement in the IRS case and how officials discussed utilizing a centuries old common law principle called the rule of necessity. Let's just bring in Michael Popak right away. The rule of necessity. Let's just be very clear. That's not really an old common law principle. That's not like a real thing that you go, hey, when in doubt, just call it the rule of necessity. If it's needed, say the rule of necessity says we don't have to follow the law. Come on, that's the dumbest thing ever. This isn't a real thing. Frankly, it's deeply problematic that a news organization like ABC would like, say, the centuries old principle, the rule of necessity. I mean, maybe you should basically say it's, it's an absurd fiction to say that a rule of necessity. I'm sure the concept exists, like, conceptually, but the rule of necessity doesn't vitiate the rule of law. You know, and then they're like, they've been talking about this commission for months now. No, they have not. Judge Kathleen Williams in the Southern District of Florida when she got this lawsuit of Trump suing Trump basically, and forcing the taxpayers to pay him. Trump suing his own IRS and Treasury Department alleging a data leak of his tax documents back in 2019, also when he was in office, which, by the way, I believe is time barred. I believe there's a ton of immunities. This case is as frivolous as it can be. There were 7,500, 7,500 other people who were involved in the Data league. Do they. Should it be a class action and all 7, 500 people get $10 billion? Is that, is that the precedent that should be set right here? This case would go nowhere if there was actually a DOJ that filed a motion to dismiss. It would be dismissed in a second by the judge. But the judge is like, this seems collusive, and Trump's bragging that he won the case before it already began. So the judge said, I want to see paperwork and so about why this is a real case and not some, like, collusive, fraudulent thing. You want me to rubber stab? So then what does the Trump regime do? Aha. We'll just dismiss the case and we'll create a commission. And rather than going to Congress to give a billion dollars or $5 billion because it's taxpayer money, we'll just create a commission by dismissing a fake lawsuit, and then we'll give billions of taxpayer dollars to the insurrectionist popac. I can't even believe what I said is a thing.
- [35:53]
Co-host (possibly a legal or political analyst)
You know why? It's not going to go any. Well, we're going to see what happens with Judge Williams, who I know well in Miami. How did all this start? Donald Trump, at the top of his administration, filed a federal tort claim act against his own government, seeking $10 billion from the internal Revenue Service having nothing to do with Joe Biden. This disconnect that, as you said, does not get covered properly or criticized by news media. Linear news media is a flagrant here. Biden had nothing to do with the leak. There was a leaker within the Internal Revenue Service who frankly did a. Did a service because the tax returns that we were fighting over should have been revealed by Donald Trump as a candidate. Trump, every time he ran for office, he's the only presidential candidate in the modern era to have not voluntarily released his tax returns. And every time he was challenged on it, he said, well, I'm under an audit. He was under an audit every year, which is not a good thing by the then Internal Revenue Service. Even before Joe Biden, he was under audit by the Trump. Trump Internal Revenue Service the first term. And there's nothing that says if you're under an audit, you can't release your returns. Turns out the leaker leaked it to ProPublica in the new York Times, who did a whole Pulitzer Prize winning report about the fact that Donald Trump doesn't pay taxes. Donald Trump and his family pay almost nothing in taxes on billions of dollars of revenue. And that's the thing he wanted to hide from the American people. So the leak happened. Was he damaged? I don't know. Damaged by having to reveal that he doesn't pay taxes. I don't understand the damage. So that leads to a lawsuit after they don't get a resolution with the Internal Revenue Service because it turns out internally they're struggling. Like, how do we settle a claim with the guy who's our boss? And that is the focus that Judge Williams had in her orders in the last couple of weeks, where she said, look, in order for me to have jurisdiction as a federal judge, there has to be what we call adversariness, which is just a highfalutin term for the parties on either side of the V have to be at each other's throats, have to be adversary. Can't come here. If one is colluding with the other or one is in a dominant power position to control the other. It would be like a parent corporation suing its wholly owned subsidiary. They owe me money. Or, you know, in order to have a fig leaf to cover up for a phony settlement. See, in order for a settlement to be real and to be in good faith and be enforceable, there has to be an exchange of consideration. A party giving up a legitimate claim in return for cash. Okay, the doesn't have to be equal. It just has to be what we call a peppercorn exchange. Right. We learned that at law school. Value on either side That's a legitimate settlement off of a case that's been filed in federal court. I'll tell you what federal judges don't like. They don't like to be used as a pawn. They don't like to be used by parties who are really in cahoots with each other to try to use a federal courthouse and a federal judge for their nefarious purpose of claiming that they're entering into a settlement on a lawsuit that never should have been filed. And so the judge said, you know what I want to HEAR from you IRS and you TRUMP, on the 20th of May coming up, about why you're not. This is not a, what appears to me to be a collusive lawsuit with no adversary party. You're both on the side. It's Trump v. Trump, except it's not a divorce. So I want you guys to discuss that in briefing with me. But I don't trust you. I mean, this is my interpretation. So I want to get three stellar rock star judges and former judges, former solicitor generals and current top litigators to write me a brief, an amici brief, an amicus brief informing me of how they see it. So she, she appointed the former Solicitor general who argued dozens and dozens of cases, Don Varilli, the former federal judge, John Gleason, and Fay and, and Faye, Faye Gay of Celinda Gay in New York. And they filed on the 14th their brief, which didn't come out and say there's no adversary process here, it's a fake lawsuit, but gave the judge the tools to make that conclusion for herself. Seeing that we then have the announcement, Trump freaks out. We gotta do something with the lawsuit. We gotta hurry up and quote, unquote, settle. What are you settling? Because if you don't have a legitimate lawsuit, all you're doing is stealing from the treasury, stealing from the taxpayer, violating Article 1 of the Constitution, the purse string power of Congress, Article 2. You don't have the power as the power of the presidency, right. And a separation of powers, the rest of that. So they come up with this, we need a victims compensation fund. Now there is reporting that one of the people that's behind this is a guy named Mike McCluskey, who people may remember was the gun toting lawyer in St. Louis along with his wife during Black Lives Matter. Remember that as, as the Black Lives Matters protesters peacefully walked by his gated community. He and his wife were out there with like their guns and he got convicted of a crime, eventually pardoned by a Republican and lost his bar license for A period of time. But now his big thing for his law Firm is representing Jan 6 insurrectionist. He's got hundreds of them and he's been pushing for a victim compensation fund to give them money for having attacked the Capitol. I mean, I almost vomit when I read the rewrite of history being led by right wing media. I was reading in the New York Post, I was catching up on something. I caught Miranda Devine, who's a podcaster who works for Rupert Murdoch. And in her paragraph about Jan6, she said it was unarmed protesters, most of which did not end up breaking into the Capitol like stop, stop. Watch. Read the Jan6 report. Read the indictments at the time announced by the Department of Justice. Watch the footage. Watch the pitched battle medieval style on the western terrace and the blood that literally spilled on the steps of the court of the of the Capitol. And then come back and tell me about the unarmed people that were there for a day in the park. But that's how MAGA talks about JAD6. They're victims. They are the vic. They are political victims. We're not the people that went peacefully to the Ellipse to listen to Donald Trump's insurrectionist speech giving were not the ones that were indicted and convicted. The ones that attacked the Capitol were the ones that were. And so Trump comes up with, we're gonna. I'll drop my 10 billion dollar suit that would have went to him personally. I'll set up a fund which now you've, you've so artfully reminded everybody. He always loves these. I'm going to send everybody a check for 1776. Where's that check by the way? I'm still waiting for that refund check from the tariffs. 1,000,001, 1,776, whatever it's be going to to be. And that's going to be led by a commission that Trump's going to appoint on his own without any power from Congress, using funds that Congress allocated, not even to the Internal Revenue Service, to the Department of Justice for victim compensation funding. I'm like, okay, how did the DOJ end up the one that's going to have to spend the money, our taxpayer dollars and where is the congressional authority to do any of that? That Congress can create an executive agency. President can't create an executive agency or a commission. So somebody came up. I can only imagine who it was. I have some thoughts with the rule of necessity. Okay? The rule of necessity is when there because of a conflict of interest among a judicial panel or otherwise that and there needs to be an arbitral panel. There needs to be a dispute resolver or a commission or something to look into something. But there's conflicts everywhere. You just got to set it up anyway. It's the rule of necessity, because somebody's got to do it. That is different than a victim compensation slush fund set up by Donald Trump to reward his cronies and to continue to rewrite and put another layer of bullshit varnish on top of the John Six history to make them into victims that actually get cash, like Ashley Babbitt's family or Michael Flynn. Now, he says, I am personally not going to take any money from the 1.76 whatever billion dollars. But in his lawsuit, for all of it, you've got the Trump organization entities, 17, 18 of them, Eric Trump, Don Jr. So the family's going to line up to the trough and take all of the money. Which brings us right back to Judge Williams. So they think they're going to dismiss this case before the 20th and just have the judge sign off on the order of dismissal. Not so fast. If I'm Judge Williams and if you're listening, here's the blueprint. You need to hold an evidentiary hearing, much like Judge Ho did in New York when they tried to dismiss the indictment against Mayor Adams. She needs to get to the bottom of whether she had been had and the federal court used by the Trump administration for this unholy creation of an unconstitutional fund. So if I'm her, I bring in the lawyers who she has inherent authority to discipline, I bring in the parties, and I say, look, I see you have a settlement. I see you've submitted a voluntary dismissal order. I'm not going to allow the dismissal order until I get to the bottom of what happened and why this happened. Now they're going to say, well, you don't have to judge. You've been questioning your jurisdiction. Right, but I haven't issued an order denying my jurisdiction yet. And I think the court has been used and they don't like it. Look, I've been involved with federal court proceedings where because of business deal deals and business terms, the parties resolve something, and the federal judge or magistrate judge felt like they were a pawn in a commercial transaction, even though that was not our intent. And we had some explaining to do about why the lawsuit is being dismissed at that moment. Same thing here. So I think we're gonna have to have some fact finding with Judge Williams about this, and then you and I are gonna spend the rest of the summer talking about the lawsuits that are Spawned from this decision. Because if Trump thinks he's gonna start handing out money without a federal court oversight over it brought by a public interest group, Democracy Forward, Democracy docket, Mark Elias, Norm Isen, we can name them, American Civil Liberties Union, all of them, the attorneys general are going to move to stop this fund from being created, funded, distributed, because it violates the Constitution and the powers of the presidency, period. So this is going to spawn a cottage industry. You and I are going to be doing lots of videos and lots of podcasting. The attempts at federal courts to stop this. It's going to go up to the United States Supreme Court probably next term. But this is how Donald Trump's going to try to save face, because he's got to dismiss that case in front of Judge Williams. He's trying to make lemon out of lemonades. But it's unconstitutional.
- [48:12]
Michael Popak
Yeah. And on the one hand, yes, saving face because he brought this lawsuit. On the other hand, when a door is shut because our law doesn't allow certain things, a collusive lawsuit, what Trump does is go, aha. But the law never said that I can't just start settling cases of my cases with myself outside of a court. So why do we even need a court in the first place? And these are things that, frankly, our founders and our legislatures didn't fathom. And I think there was also not fathoming that you would then have a Congress that would just go along with it, because the way to stop it is you would have Congress asserting itself right now to block this stuff and to pass laws that say, you can't do this, you can't do this right away. Close the gap right away. I mean, you think during the Biden administration, you had, in a bipartisan basis, legislation that said, you know, any president can't withdraw from NATO without going through certain hoops and require a 2 3rd vote of the United States Senate. Trump's still going to try to test that, but you would immediately go in and any loophole that exists, you'd create a law to block this and. Because no one would think, okay, could you fathom Obama's going to settle a lawsuit against Obama and then create a commission and then give the money out to friends. He got criticized because he wore a, A suit color, a brown suit.
- [49:48]
Co-host (possibly a legal or political analyst)
Right?
- [49:49]
Michael Popak
Yeah. Whatever the suit was, that, that, you know, so no one even thought. And, and now it's like, oh, he's, he's gonna do that. This ain't three dimensional chess. The guy's just violating the law and he's Violating our Constitution. And we have to. And we have to call it out.
- [50:03]
Co-host (possibly a legal or political analyst)
Now.
- [50:04]
Michael Popak
I think strategically, Popak, even though I agree the issue of an evidentiary hearing is if you don't have jurisdiction, how do you do an evidentiary hearing? But I think, Judge Williams, under the auspices of subject matter jurisdiction and jurisdictional discovery, I think you can order evidentiary hearing regarding jurisdictional discovery. I acknowledge we're not getting into the merits of any of this. I'm just trying to understand how this was brought to me so I could determine jurisdiction the same way there's briefing on. So I would do. If, if. If I were one of these firms advising her, I would say do in order to show cause. Ray, Jurisdictional issues that require evidentiary hearing, make it clear that you're not getting onto the merits and things where you would have jurisdiction. Make it clear that it's about, you know, the procedure. And then, and then, you know, I mean, the reality is, you know, who should be called in as a witness? Trump. Trump, in his personal capacity, should. If this was any normal situation, a federal judge would not hesitate to call in the plaintiff. The name plaintiff. Get into my court right now. Let's. I want you under oath, get the court reporter, put the person on that.
- [51:19]
Co-host (possibly a legal or political analyst)
That's.
- [51:20]
Michael Popak
That's what.
- [51:20]
Co-host (possibly a legal or political analyst)
Normally, the only thing I disagree with on that. The only thing I disagree with is even if there's no jurisdiction, the federal judge has inherent authority to ensure that the courtroom is respected and that the federal. The federal courts are not abused. So even if you tried to file something and it's. And it turns out there's no jurisdiction, you can still be sanctioned for bad faith filing. You can still be sanctioned by the judge. That's why I think she calls an evidentiary hearing order to show cause or otherwise to bring the parties in and said, explain to me what happened here. Explain to me. You know, I. This is what it. Because this is what it looks like to me. You file a lawsuit, I say, I don't think there's adversariness between the two parties. I think this is a bullshit lawsuit. I set up a briefing schedule. I get the amicus briefs, you announce a settlement, ignoring the lawsuit. It looks like I got used. Tell me why I'm wrong. She has the right to say that whether there's technical jurisdiction over the subject matter or not, you don't get to abuse the. I mean, this is where Trump's failings. You don't get to abuse the federal court system at your whim.
- [52:25]
Michael Popak
Yeah, then he's gonna Go, oh, it's so unfair. Could you believe it? And Obama appointed judge is going after me. Wham, wham, wham, wham, wham. You know, it's that loser behavior. To tie this into our first segment that was on full display, which Xi Jinping, the guy's a loser, Trump's a loser. You know, this country elected a loser, a con artist loser masquerading as like a strong man who can fix problems, who can never even fix his own problems. And his whole life has been one problem after another, one bankruptcy after another. When we come back, I want to talk about this Golden Ballroom filing. I want to talk a little bit about the Arch. Then I want to get into conflicts of interest around Blanche. And then let's talk about, let's talk a little bit about the Supreme Court, what they did in Virginia briefly. We should acknowledge that once again, the Supreme Court that would always do this principle, the Purcell principle. We're not going to disturb what's going on. The voters voted. No one should overturn it. Now until the next, you know, all of their principles are all bs. Their frameworks are all bs. They just going to decide. What they're going to decide is basically what they're going to do. And they're going to use frameworks like sociopaths in arguments to reach the conclusion by acting like they're weighing interests. But at the end of the day, the only interest they care about is turning the United States into their fascist theocracy. It's the reality. All right, let's take our last quick break of the show. A reminder, if you or somebody knows been injured in an auto accident, trucking accident caused by the negligence of others. If you know someone maybe tragically was catastrophically injured or killed in an accident, reach out to Popak. You trust him, you listen to him. He's got a law firm. He's helping legal A efforts. Call 877- POPAK AF or go to ThePopoc firm.com one more time, 877- POPAK or visit the popoc firm.com don't be shy. They have lawyers across the country and the consultation, of course, is free. Also, make sure you subscribe to the Legal AF sub stack and the Legal AF YouTube channel. Just search Legal AF on YouTube. Search Legal AF on Substack. Subscribe to both. All right, let's take our last quick break of the show.
- [54:33]
Co-host (possibly a legal or political analyst)
My cat Chanel, she runs the house. I just pay the mortgage and scoop litter. So when I found something that fixes that worst part of having a cat, I paid attention. This podcast is sponsored by Boxy. Boxy is the last cat litter you'll switch to and their Boxy Pro Deep Clean. It's the best cat litter money can buy. The Pro and Boxy Pro stands for probiotics which Boxy puts right in the litter that gobble up odor causing bacteria and keeps the box continuously odor free. Yes, continuously. Not for 10 days or 20 days. Infinite days of continual odor freeness. And your cat won't smell anything either. As in no fake scents, which gives him or her one less reason to avoid the box. I've used Boxypro Deep Clean recently and I can actually vouch that this works. Our place smells better, scooping is easier and Chanel took to it right away. Plus with Boxy you do not need to do full litter changes, you just scoop, top it off with fresh Boxy litter and that's it. If you're tired of switching litters looking for the one, get 30% off your boxy. Order@boxycat.com legalaf and use code legalaf that's B O X I e c a t.com legal legalaf and make sure you use my code legalaf so they know I sent you. Here's a brain teaser. Have you ever thought about how easy it is to break into normal zipper luggage? Your bag is constantly out of your sight while traveling and most zipper suitcases can literally be pierced and re zipped without you noticing. That's why I've been loving Noble. Their all in one carry on is completely zipperless. It uses this secure latch lock system that closes like a safe so you actually feel better when your bag's out of sight. And they packed it with smart travel features too. A built in charging port, a front laptop pocket that makes TSA easier, smooth 360 degree wheels and honestly my favorite part, a flip out cup holder built right into the suitcase. Plus, over 500,000 suitcases sold and more than 12,000 flight attendants and pilots already use Noble. Noble gives you real travel, peace of mind, security, design and convenience all in one. Head to nobletravel.com for up to 46% off your entire order. That's n o b l travel.com for up to 46% OFF. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you.
- [57:05]
Michael Popak
Welcome back to Legal af. Thank you to all of our sponsors. Our sponsors support the show. Support our sponsors discount codes in the description below. Also subscribe to the Legal AF YouTube channel. The Legal AF substack and popox firm. If you are interested in reaching out, it's in the description below as well. Never really thought I'd be talking about massive litigation because a president of the United States wants to build golden ballrooms, take over golf courses in dc, build triumphal arches so that it's the biggest arch in the world, bigger than Pyongyang's arch. Never thought there would be the concept of this to begin with. And then that this is. There's a lot of litigation over this. This is a major priority of Donald Trump. As noted in the first segment, Donald Trump said multiple times, I don't care about the financial situation of Americans, not one bit. Then Brett Baer showed him those words and said, hey, you know, you're getting a lot of pushback on this and you want to clarify or give it more context. No, Trump's like, perfect words. I don't care about people's financial condition. I don't care about it one bit. That's not what I think about in the office of the presidency. It should be like the main thing that you think about in the office of the presidency. But he's focused on triumphal arches and on ballrooms. And so even as there are lawsuits that are blocking the construction of these things, Trump just goes ahead and he brings out, like, bulldozers and he brings out cranes and he just starts doing it. And then. So you have to go to court and you have to say, hey, he's doing a judge. And the judge says, stop doing it. He goes, I'll stop doing it. Then he keeps on doing it, and the judge is like, all right, stop doing. He's like, all right, I'll stop doing it. And he keeps on doing it. I'll just show you right here what went down yesterday, where you had Democratic Congress member Huffman, who was cross examining Doug Burgum, the Interior Secretary who testified this past week in Congress. And Burgum said, we're not doing anything with the arch. Don't worry, we're going to come to you first. Okay? You don't have nothing to worry about with the arch. There's an approval process. Stop being hyperbolic and saying we're doing. Stop it. Here, play this clip.
- [59:15]
Ben Meiselas
Hey, I'm here at Memorial Circle, about a mile from the White House, just over this bridge from Arlington Cemetery. In fact, you can see Arlington right there. And what's going on behind me is an attraction atrocity, frankly. We see construction activity that is clearly part of the attempt to build what Donald Trump intends to be the largest arch in the world here looming over arlington Cemetery, where 400,000 of our fallen war heroes are buried. So, look, there's a group of veterans families that have gone to court to stop this project. I left an amicus brief with members of Congress in support of their litigation, and Judge Chutkan in that case made it very clear to the administration that she didn't want to wake up one morning to see bulldozers actually breaking ground. Well, this isn't a bulldozer behind me. It's an industrial drilling rig. There's other equipment mobilized over here, but ground is being broken. And what is even more upsetting in many ways is that yesterday in the Natural Resources Committee, I asked Secretary Burgum, under oath, about this project, and he swore there isn't a project, not even a proposal, no final agency action, just a discussion about a possible arch.
- [60:40]
Michael Popak
There's a discussion about it. I wouldn't say there's not a proposal.
- [60:44]
Ben Meiselas
So clearly we're being snookered here, folks.
- [60:47]
Michael Popak
Yeah. And so what the Trump regime will say, we said no bulldozers. We didn't say industrial drilling rigs. I mean, that's their whole M.O. treating us all like we're stupid. We said no bulldozers, Judge.
- [61:03]
Co-host (possibly a legal or political analyst)
That's what.
- [61:04]
Michael Popak
So if the judge doesn't specifically say bulldozers, industrial drilling rigs, any machinery whatsoever, that's what the Trump regime does. And in the past, in every law, in every contract, including the Constitution, the ultimate contract, there's an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. You don't have to put in a contract. Right. If you're doing a deal with somebody else, you don't have to put in the deal. Oh, and by the way, you're not going to slap me in the face every time you see me. Right? Because if you're doing a deal, you don't think you need the language with an anti slapping you in the face clause. Right. Except Donald Trump will slap you in the face or sucker punch you and go, oh, you didn't put the anti sucker punch clause in there. And it's like, well, we did a deal together where we were going to build something. I would think implied in that is a covenant that you're not going to punch me in the face and then go into my bank account and loot my atm. Oh, well, there was no I can't loot your ATM account clause in there. And this never would fly. And the fact that this is now what's being represented at the Justice Department at the highest level by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that this is what the Trump regime is. This is worse than Pam Bondi. Look at this legal filing on the ballroom that the Trump regime just did. Reply in support of defendants motion for indicative ruling dissolving the court's injunction. What does it even mean? I mean, I've heard these words before, but you want an indicative ruling for the judge to reconsider the order blocking the ballroom, even though the judge's order is stayed or paused and you're able to build it pending a ruling by the court of Appeals. And so there's actually no B1. An indicative rule. What are you even talking about? But look how it's even written. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, which again, is not a government agency of any type, never once denies that this lawsuit is motivated by an irrational desire to stop anything associated with Donald Trump. Even Democrats have labeled this Trump Derangement Syndrome, or tds. Plaintiffs insist this suit must move forward despite the three assassination attempts against Trump in less than two years. And then it goes on to say over here, as Secret Service has stated, fixed structure constructed using threat resistant materials, including missile resistant steel columns, military grade venting, drone proof ceilings, and bullet ballistic and blast proof glass will form a fortified structural buffer protecting the main White House and West Wing. The project, which includes a state of the art hospital and medical facilities, top secret military installations, bomb shelters, structures and equipment, protected partitioning and other features is fully designed to protect the President. So where the federal judge said, hey, the ballroom structure itself, that the ballroom, the place where you want to do your balls, your tea parties, your banquets, your Xi Jinping little children clapping at you thing. Yeah. You need congressional approval for that. Okay. If you want to use some discretionary funds and build the security features and deal with like the bunker underneath, and that's national security. I'm not going to meddle with national security. By the way, the Trump regime doesn't have the funds for that. That's why they want Congress to appropriate a billion dollars for East Wing modernization of your taxpayer dollars. So if you're keeping track, 1.776 billion to the January 6th insurrection is 1 billion for the ballroom that Trump said private money was going to pay for. And so Donald Trump's plan is just like I said before, you never had a you can't steal from my ATM clause. Oh, that's an industrial drilling rig, not a bulldozer. You know, Donald Trump goes, oh, this is national security. The ballroom is a shield. That's how it's going to stop them. Without the ballroom, a ballistic missile will hit me. This stops it from the west wing. It's a shield for me. And it's like, just stop. And everything with them is a con. Every damn thing is a fraud. And then you scroll down and you say, whose name is on this? Todd Blake. Who signed this ridiculous thing? Todd Blanche and another associate attorney general. But Todd Blanche, his name's on there. So, Popak, I'm going to have you close out the show and I know you've got a lot to discuss, and I'm going to see you do a little weave and tie it all together. Those cases, Todd Blanche and the fact that he should be recusing himself from all of this. And then lastly, bonus points if you get in Virginia and the United states supreme court. Pop. 10 minutes if you choose to accept the assignment.
- [66:02]
Co-host (possibly a legal or political analyst)
I'm in. I'm in. Ms. Okay, here we go. Let's start with Todd Blanche. Todd Blanch has been blowing kisses to Donald Trump as if he was Marilyn Monroe and JFK in Madison Square Garden from almost the moment he got the job. He's also worried about his own ticket, his own bar license. And so Todd Blanche was told over a year ago by the ethicist Joe Tyrell, who's now been fired. We wonder why Pam Bonnie was firing the ethicist. Now we know why. Because he told Blanche under no uncertain terms that he needs to recuse himself, put up a compliance wall between himself at the Department of Justice when he was deputy Attorney General and anything related to Donald Trump personally. And yet all we've watched is Todd Blanche during his tryout to be the Attorney general as being involved with the grand conspiracy prosecution of Donald Trump's political enemies back in 2017, going after the CIA director, going after the attorney general, going after senators and FBI directors and the rest. There hasn't been a thing he's recused himself from. And Emil Bovey, the same thing, although he's now safely ensconced at the Third Circuit Court of Appeals for now. And so when you watch Todd Blanche watch a conflicted man who is violating almost daily in public the rules of ethics of my and Ben's profession about what you can and can't do. You can't switch sides in the middle of a baseball game. I mean, unless you've been traded, you can't, you can't flip flop that way. Be the personal criminal defense lawyer for Donald Trump and then be his and be our Attorney General on matters involving Donald Trump. Blanche is also worried about his own ticket, his own license. So he continues to try to go after licensing and bar associations like the DC Bar with a new lawsuit to try to stop them from regulating the conduct of Department of Justice lawyers like himself. Why? Because he watched what happened to the first wave of lawyers in Trump 1, the ones that were fined, indicted, convicted, disbarred, or all five of those things. He doesn't want it to happen to him. So they're going after the new lawsuit, the D.C. bar, in order to claim that they are under the Department of Justice, wasting our money and abusing the rule of law. Claiming that they're a left wing organization. No, they're a bar regulator that regulates your conduct. And just to show you the, the charade that's being perpetrated, they had no problem with the DC Bar when Pam Bondi's brother ran to be the president of it and lost. But since he lost, now the DC Bar is the enemy, just like the lawyers and the law firms are the enemy. See, they're about to lose again at the D.C. court of Appeals in a three judge panel about their continued attacks to put out of business major law firms in America that have the temerity of representing clients against the Trump administration or against Trump's interests or hired people that Donald Trump didn't like and try to get rid of 50% of their revenue by taking away their national security clearance. Right. And so that looks like, based on an oral argument that just went down, that looks like Trump's going to get slapped back once again for having gone after those law firms. He's going after law schools and American Bar association for trying to take away their ability to be the credentialing authority for law schools. Why? Wants to make more uncredentialed MAGA lawyers and less diverse lawyers. Best thing that ever happened to somebody that went to law school, best thing that ever happened to anybody in any profession is to be surrounded by an intelligent, diverse population. Okay? Period. On the bench, off the bench, in the law firm, in the law schools, in the press pool, you name it. Only good things happen from diversity. But not to Donald Trump. That's a four letter word. So this is all being led by a conflicted, literally conflicted, Todd Blanch. Which brings us to the lawsuits that his Department of Justice is defending. Right. Because every time an organization pushes back against Donald Trump's capture of public property, to scar it with his name, to violate all of the national historic and congressional rules and environmental rules surrounding these public projects, as Donald Trump, knowing that he's what we're watching is a man who knows he's on life support and that his days are literally numbered between now and the midterms. And so a short termer on a short track tries to do maximum destruction, to rewrite history in real time. So the only goals that Donald Trump have, which is why he revealed that moment of telling the truth, telling the American people he doesn't care about them, which is, which should be ad number one through 1,000 at the midterms for the Democrats is just running that over and over and over again. And then running the statistics of doubled fuel prices, doubled food prices, millions and tens of millions of people thrown off of health care because of the, the Obama subsidies being canceled and all the other kitchen table politics and checkbook politics that matter to people. Just run that as an ad. 30 seconds and you're done. So knowing all of that and knowing he's about to be put out of business and become, I mean, wait till he's powerless after the midterms if we're right about our calculation and watch what he does then now he's still, he's still relevant. He becomes completely irrelevant once the Senate and the House are controlled by the other party. And so he's busy now both as a distraction method and to pump up his ego and to step on the news cycle, another poor news cycle. And going after these public buildings, trying to put his name on it, whether it's the Kennedy center or let's in the middle of the night, knock over the east wing without permission and put up a golden ballroom. And then say everybody since Washington has wanted a golden ballroom. And then say, no, what I really needed for it is to protect my bunker underneath the ballroom. The ballrooms are relevant. It's, it's just the structure to collapse on top of the bunker. I mean, again, as Yousef, you said makes absolutely. It's all word salad. Kamala Harris used to get attacked for word salads. I don't even understand any of this and nobody does. And one of the things that one of our collaborators on Legal IAF said to me recently in our audience Sky Paramount was we have to go after these types of events. The attempt to take over of the golf courses, you know, the nation's first black integrated golf course, the takeover of the ballroom, the pool. Painting a tiny ball blue, you know, which doesn't fix the problem of a leaky, leaky millions of gallons of water leaking out of this pool. The algae problem is not being resolved by a paint job. So you have to go in there and you've got to use your Freedom of Information act lawsuits, and you got to do the injunction lawsuits and the temporary restraining orders. But that's just a way to distract from his undermining of democratic principles and the right to vote. And that's what we have to keep our eye on, which I think we do a really good job on here with our audience. You know, people powered the harnessing of human power, which is the only thing we have at a democracy and is the thing that the founders and framers knew was our emergency button break last moment was the vote. We might have to suffer in between elections with criminal presidencies, but we had the ability to flush the toilet at the midterms in the general election. And so these lawsuits that we've talked about, you know, this phony filing with Judge Leon about the ballroom on a case that's already up on appeal where he has no jurisdiction, speaking of judges with no jurisdiction, as a press release to appease the president. So much conduct being done by the Department of Justice just to appease Donald Trump. You know, while we watch that, leave it to our illustrious collaborators and friends and those that we admire in public interest groups, the naacp, the aclu, Democracy Forward Democracy docket, Mark Elias and the rest as they go after these and stop them in their tracks and make them change course. I just interviewed Attorney General Rob Bond of California, moments after J.D. vance's press conference about we're going to cut off $1.7 billion worth of aid for people in hospice in California because they're not taking fraud seriously. And we know what he's going to do next. Going to be a lawsuit filed and they're going to capitulate and fold the way they've done over hundreds of billions of dollars. That's the dirty secret of this administration. All they want is the headline and they chase the headline. And then when that goes awry, they walk away from the lawsuit. They fund the thing that they were trying to make a political score, a cheap political point over while people suffer and they walk away. And that is what we've learned from Trump always chickens out. He does it in the lawsuits, too, through his Department of Justice. And so switching from all of those arc de triumph and pools, and we're going to leave it to the federal judges who have fighter jet focus on these cases and will ultimately make the right decisions and have confidence that those that we support on this channel and this network are on it.
- [76:32]
Michael Popak
Right.
- [76:33]
Co-host (possibly a legal or political analyst)
It's not just Ben and me doing the report on it. It's the lawyers Filing immediately the lawsuits, to stop it, to supervise it, to provide judicial oversight over it. And that is where 90% or 95% or more of justice is done at the district court level and at the appellate court level, just above it, period. Very few cases, even with the shadow docket, end up at the United States Supreme Court. I'm not diminishing the importance of the cases that make it to the supreme court. Let's say 100 cases during the year, and they are some of the most fundamental about civil rights, civil liberties, you know, women's rights, voting rights. Yes, but justice is done at this level. Most of justice is done at that level. Which brings us to the United States Supreme Court. Two rulings that came out in the last couple of days as we led into legal af. One of them is on voting maps, a series of decisions on voting maps where they are using the Maga 6 are using fictitious legal doctrines which they are inconsistently applying depending upon whether a Republican or Democratic principle is at stake, to undermine people's votes. So they're allowing unconstitutional, in my view, violations of Voting Rights act racist maps to be used in Alabama, in Louisiana, in Missouri, even though we're only either just a month or two from a primary or voting has already started throwing away the Purcell principle or Purcell doctrine that used to have the Supreme Court, say, a year away from an election. We're too close. We can't make it a political question and interfere. And now it's like, you want to use a racist map. How much time do we have? People voted already. That's fine, go ahead. And that series of decisions then led to them ruling against Virginia, which was one of only two states that took it to the people about whether the maps in their states for congressional districting should be changed. All the red states that we covered, that was all state legislatures listening to some governor or some brow beating from Donald Trump and saying, yes, sir, can I have another? Where do I sign? That wasn't the people of the state. That was the state House succumbing to Donald Trump, whereas the Democrats in California and Virginia ran it as a referendum or a proposition for the voters to vote on. And so the One in Virginia, 3 million people said, redo the maps. And they knew what the maps were going to look like because they were publicized ten to one Democrat.
- [79:17]
Michael Popak
Oh, no.
- [79:18]
Co-host (possibly a legal or political analyst)
Gerrymandering. It's rigged. Why so many Democratic seats? I don't know. Why so many Republican seats? And so it goes to a Supreme Court who could have overturned a 4 to 3, you know, MAGA ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court. Note to the governor, Governor Spamberger, make some changes in the Virginia Supreme Court makeup. Why don't you add a few more justices of your own creation. That'll probably help. But back to the Supreme Court, they were like, well, we're not going to block, we're not going to block the decision by the lower court. The highest court of Virginia spoke and it's too close to the election now applying the principle against the Democrats. And we'll, we'll deal with that before the general election. Come back to us on a proper appeal. We knew that was coming. And the other thing that I thought was important to our audience is the, is the ruling on mifepristone, which is the one of two abortion drugs used for medication abortions in America, which is the way that 60% or more of American women make that most personal decision about their reproductive rights. No more personal and private decision about whether you're going to carry a pregnancy to term than that. And this supreme court with only two dissenters, so 7:2 is going to allow mife bristone to be shipped through mail order, through telehealth. You know, you get somebody on the phone to guide you instead of being in a doctor's office for the foreseeable future. Another year, year and a half until the regular appeal comes back up from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. It's the second time since 2023, 2024, they've allowed mifepristone to continue to be sold even in states that ban abortion while they get around to the merits of the appeal. So that is an encouraging sign. Now, there is a way to analyze that. Lisa Graves, who knows the Roberts court like the back of her hand and is with me on Legal af. We have a video up right now called Unprecedented, our podcast about the Supreme Court up this morning. And she said this is all Roberts trying to avoid making abortion an activating issue and a mobilizing issue at the midterms. This is not him ultimately going to side with women potentially. This is just kicking the can over the midterms so it doesn't fire up the Democratic base and women and people who support women to go back against Trump administration and make it political. That is a, I think, a very accurate description of what we just watched. Not that the Democrats need any more enthusiasm. The gap in polling between Democrats who said, when can we vote? We are so ready. They are at the starting line of like this marathon race and they've been there for 17 months and they're ready for that tape to be pulled back in the race to start to get to the court, to get to the election ballot box and pull the lever, okay? Whereas the Republicans are like, eh, many of them are saying, that's not the guy, that's not the policies I voted for. Because the very fragile coalition that voted for Donald Trump have now abandoned him and he can't get them back. The Hispanic vote, the under 30 vote, the podcaster vote, the women vote, the independent vote, who are all interested in one issue and one issue only, affordability, have now abandoned him by double digits in the polls, never to be recovered in time, let alone at all. And with that, and with that, you have an enthusiasm gap where Republicans and independents that voted for Trump but want their vote back are just like, yeah, I'm not going to the polls. And that's okay. That's as good as converting them into Democratic votes. And that is what the Republicans are so worried about. They think they can wallpaper over it with money, money, money and raise money. But we've seen in our own existence that money just can't get you elected if the fundamentals of electorability and popularity are not present. Kamala Harris spent a billion dollars to get elected. And how'd that go? Not well. So that's a wrap on Ballroom Pool, Arc de Triomphe or Trump, Virginia Supreme Court and an extra bonus on Mifepristone here on Legal af. What do I get for that? A cookie. In any event, I'm glad that you're here. I'm going to do the wrap here for Legal af. Thank you for supporting our show. I'm fresh off of last weekend's Webby Awards ceremony where we swept all the hardware for Legal af the podcast, bringing home both, both best news podcasts trophies. They really are trophies. When I get them, I'll show them one for by the Academy, the Academy Award, and the other by the audience, the People's Voice Award and Intersection. My podcast on Tuesday nights where I sort of ride solo, got the best new news podcast, best People's Voice award. So thank you for that. That just shows you that you are as committed to us as we are to you. There's so many ways to support what we do here. The podcast itself, still growing after six years, still needs more views and more Downloads and more 5 star reviews. Come over to Apple and Spotify and go hit those buttons there, become a member. We read all of the comments. Then on the on the shoulders of that base of Legal AF, the podcast sits Legal AF, the YouTube channel that I curate. I've got a dozen contributors. It's got 12 new videos a day. A day at the intersection of law and politics. Take a minute, hit the free subscribe button if you think you are a subscriber already. I assure you you're probably not because we're getting 40 million views a month. We've got a million 1.12 million subscribers. We got a gap. I get 10% of our viewership and we're going to be really on the heels of our brothers on Minus Touch. And there's the sibling rivalry coming out. So help us over on Legal AF YouTube channel. And then we've got the sub stack. If you don't know about Substack, find out about it. Come join legal af sub stack. We got another 9 to 10 pieces of original content. There's at the intersection of law and politics, including my live reports every day. You don't want to miss it. A whole new community on Legal AF substack and of course support our sponsors without which we're not able to do what we do without, you know, without outside investors, you know, on Legal AF and the rest. So we really do appreciate everybody being here. Great show tonight. Thanks for your comments and support. So until our next show which is going to be here, follow the programming guide Monday a new Legal AF Live version. We call it Monday Night Live. Why not Monday night live legal AF 5pm eastern time on the legal AF YouTube channel. Another new piece of content for you on Legal AF YouTube channel. Wednesdays Midweek with Karen Freeman, Ignifolo and me. Saturdays just like now, Ben Meiselas and me on Legal af. So until our next reports, shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal A effers.
- [87:01]
Ben Meiselas
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Michael Popak
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Michael Popak
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Michael Popak
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Michael Popak
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