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Ben Meiselis
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Michael Popak
But that's weird.
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Ben Meiselis
You ready?
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Ben Meiselis
I'm Ben Meiselis, joined by Michael Popak. We've got a lot to discuss on today's episode of Legal af. Donald Trump getting called out for lie after lie in a motion he filed to try to stop a judge from blocking the construction of his ballroom that he's obsessed about as the American people are suffering. It's ballrooms, reflecting pools, triumphal arches, golf courses. There was litigation regarding Donald Trump wanting to take over the public golf courses and then lying that he wasn't going to be starting to rip down the trees. Then it looked like they were going to rip down the trees there. There's a lot of litigation on that. While the American people are suffering things like Donald Trump's tariffs against the world. Right. We see inflation continuing to rise because of Trump's tariffs as well as because of Donald Trump's catastrophic war and other horrible policies. Donald Trump lost in yet another federal trade court case involving the new tariffs that he tried to impose after the old tariffs were struck down by the United States Supreme Court for being unlawful. Donald Trump just used another statute unlawfully to try to impose these tariffs. We'll talk about what the ruling was by this panel. A horrible ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court overturning the will of 3 million Virginians who adopted a referendum to do a mid decade redistricting in a Democratic controlled state like Virginia. It was brought to the people of Virginia to actually vote on whether they wanted the maps to be changed in a mid decade redistricting in response to what the Republicans did in the Republican states. Their state legislatures do not bring it to the people. They just change the maps and their right wing MAGA courts uphold it. But in the Virginia case, Virginia had a right wing Supreme Court still, even though their legislature and governor were controlled by Democrats and their right wing Supreme Court said even though the will of the people want that, we're just going to say it violates the Virginia Constitution and we're going to strike it down. I still think there is some hope. Unfortunately not in the courts, but I do think if you look at the trends that are taking place, I think that Democrats will still probably pick up an additional two seats in Virginia. We'll talk about that. Also, Howard Lutnick was supposed to have his deposition taken under oath in the House of Representatives in connection with his connections with Jeffrey Epstein. And then when he arrived, he said he's not sitting under oath, he's not going to have a deposition. He's just going to do an informal transcribed interview, the transcription of which has still not been released. No video, no under oath. It's not a real thing. Another sham by people like Donald Trump and maga Mike, who thinks that in our court system a lawsuit should be Donald Trump suing Donald Trump and then making the taxpayers pay for it. As when Donald Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion and then wants taxpayers to pay him $10 billion. That's where we're at right now. Let's bring in Michael Popak. How are you, Michael Popak? We got a lot to discuss. I know definitely that Virginia Supreme Court case really hit hard in terms of just really bringing bad news. I think it, it reminds me of all those horrific Supreme, United States Supreme Court decisions that just seem so utterly partizan and corrupt and, you know, not, not easy to talk about. But, you know, you and I are equipped and in a surgical way, we'll go over what happened there. And I still think Democrats can pick up, you know, half those seats. But, but, you know, everybody should see the corruption for what it is.
Michael Popak
I agree with you. And I'm going to have Jay Jones back, the attorney general for Virginia. Let me, let me, let's start there for one second. Just a couple of things. I, as I prepared for today's podcast, traveling, as everybody knows, Webby awards are Monday. Thank you very much for your support of Legal af. We won to the two major Webby awards and I'm here to accept it on your behalf. Look for the photos of me holding that hardware and celebrating on your behalf. Virginia, you know, it's an interesting state. It's a blue state, moving from purple to blue. The Supreme Court, including its newly elected or appointed chief justice, many of them are Democrats, but It's still a 4 to 3 Republican split. That's exactly how the court came down 4 to 3 to find that. And this is the galling part, I think this is the part that sticks in your craw and mine and our audience is that Democrats do it the right way. We take votes to the people. You want to redo your map. California, Virginia. We do propositions and referendums and we put them up on a ballot and we do elections. We like elections and we like voting. 3 million people voted by a 3 point majority in favor of having its state house just because of what's going on with Donald Trump, in counter to Donald Trump in terms of undermining the fairness of elections to have the state House redo the map. And Governor Spamberger, who originally was on the sidelines on the issue, came forward and said she's in favor of redoing the maps. And people knew what they were voting for and they went to the polls. Virginia Supreme Court had some concerns about how the referendum was framed or phrased and then but they let the, they let the election go forward, which I think ultimately could be something the United States Supreme Court, who's taking on an emergency application by Virginia, may actually find persuasive that the Amer that the Virginians voted for the map, they're okay. As we know, the Supreme Court's okay with partisan gerrymandering. Red, red and blue gerrymandering. But to your point about, you know, what the Democrats have called dummy mandering of having this backfire texas and its plus 5 may not be plus the 5 seats because of how they've designed them and the overwhelming shift in voter sentiment leading into the midterms wholly against MAGA and Donald Trump could be a two seat pickup. They may want it to be a five seat pickup. Similarly in Virginia it may not be a two or three seat swing. It may be the opposite because of listen to these demographics and these new numbers that just came out. Just two groups that, that are potential drivers for the election. White adults, this is new polling without college degrees that voted for Donald Trump by 34 points over Kamala Harris are now saying that they'll vote for the Republican candidate in their congressional district by just 6 points over the Democrats. That's a 28 point swing in the Democrats favor from just 2024. Similarly, adults, just adult voters in the south, which is where a lot of this redistricting is happening, went from voting for Trump by plus 13 points. That's a lot to now saying that they're five points in favor of the Democratic congressional candidate. That's an 18 point swing. So the demographic, the demographics here, you know when you hear all the top line reporting from mainstream media, like I just saw a chart so that people can put numbers with what we're talking about. Democrats in terms of a projected gain is six, maybe seven seats now depending upon what happens in Maryland, assuming Virginia doesn't get resolved in time, Republicans, they're predicting maybe up to 19 seats. So it would be a 12, could be a 12 seat swing. But we don't play games on paper and we don't do elections on paper. You have to actually go to the polls and with all of the shifts and you and I have talked about it extensively from Hispanic and Hispanic Catholic votes, votes under 30, age under 30, women votes, black voting is just so totally against Donald Trump in double digit numbers as we've seen in all the special elections in America. This dummy mandering that they're busy celebrating right now because whoa, like so it's like celebrating at the practice and then going home with the ball. But the game continues. So yes, we will keep a close eye on the, on the litigation around it because it's important. Virginia taking their emergency appeal to the United States Supreme Court. You know, Alabama taking an emergency appeal to get their map shoved through. Louisiana trying to get their map shoved, shoved through while there's litigation going on and we'll see where it all lands. But at the end of the day we're right back where you and I started mobilization of the vote. And if the Democrats, moderates, socialists and independents and liberals all vote the way we think they're going to do, that change election will even overcome the attempt to steal that which they did not earn an extra 10 seats.
Ben Meiselis
Talk about this. Let's stick on this issue right now because let's talk about the Supreme Court writ that Virginia is now taking out. They're going to the United States Supreme Court. Talk to us about that POPAC and what they're arguing there to the United States Supreme Court. You know, is this supremacy clause issue where the United States Supreme Court can actually step in is what the Virginia Supreme Court saying is that, look, we understand the United States Supreme Court has allowed partisan gerrymandering generally, but we're allowed to as a commonwealth of Virginia still enact more restrictive if the federal government allows no restrictions on partisan. Is this right wing Virginia Supreme Court saying this isn't a constitutional supremacy clause issue, this is a right wing Supreme Court knocking the Virginia legislature on procedural technicalities about rushing a mid decade redistricting and Virginia Supreme Court taking a restrictive view, not overriding, you know what I'm saying, overriding these supremacy clauses.
Michael Popak
I think you, I think you've outlined it well. It's a, it's going to be a tough road to hoe for the state of Virginia. There are, there is an opportunity to go to the United States Supreme Court on voting on fundamental voting rights. The problem is if you're doing an equal protection argument or 15th amendment argument or you're trying to use the now gutted, I mean gutted Voting Rights act which they just completely anesthetized and chloroformed two weeks ago in the Calais decision. I'm talking about the United States Supreme Court. That's a tremendous amount of turbulence and headwind to be heading into with your emergency application by Virginia. They got to do it for sure. But you know, we see where the Maga 6 is on the Supreme Court when it comes to voting. And even the ones, even this Supreme Court, you know, I've been involved and I know you have too with election cases in Florida and other places. And generally, you know, you use all these, all this vernacular, you know, like oh, the votes are sacrosanct and the will of the people shall not be denied. It sounds all great except this United States Supreme Court in a prior iteration in 2000 had no problem stopping vote counting in a state like Florida and handing the election five to four over to George W. Bush over Al Gore. So there's already Precedent where they reject the will of the people. Because if they really cared in 2000, they would have said, keep counting, we got to get. If people voted, they are entitled to have their votes counted. This is a Supreme Court that just three days ago in Sam Alito, joined by five others of his brethren, said to the Louisianan Louisianans who voted, oh, 83,000 people voted already on a map that, no, throw those in the trash. I mean, they didn't quite say that, but, but 83, 000 people voted in Louisiana. And the Supreme Court's like, well, I don't know. If they want to do new maps, they can do new maps. And so what happened to the old votes? So they just don't seem to have the, the respect for voting the way I would expect a United States Supreme Court to have in the past. So I'm not, I think we have to, you know, we don't blow smoke or sunshine on this show. I'm not overly confident in their ability to overcome all of the things you outline and the ones I did about at the United States Supreme Court to get even though the will of the people. The only thing that's different is it's not the people's fault that maybe something happened in the legislature in terms of the referendum, the format of it or the rules of it, and to, and to rip away votes that have already been cast. You know, where they've already said we're okay with partisan gerrymandering, I do see a path to victory. I just think it's very narrow.
Ben Meiselis
Yeah, look, nothing happened though in the legislature that is any more untoward than what we're seeing in the right wing legislatures. And I would argue, in fact, I would exactly, I would argue by far it was less because at every step of the way it was done transparently to then bring this to a public referendum. When we start talking about these expedited gerrymanderings, they're always going to be messy. Frankly. None of it should be taking place anywhere. Democrats are against partisan gerrymandering and Democrats have consistently in the House and the Senate put forward legislation to ban partisan gerrymandering, to ban corporate money in elections. And time and time again, the MAGA Republicans or their Tea Party predecessors vote it down and block it and they keep this practice. So if you keep this practice, the rules of the game before Trump and all of this was you do your 10 year census and then you do your redistricting and then there were other rules to the game under the Voting Rights act that it can't be like racist maps. But then outside of that, you can do political gerrymandering. And those were the rules you now, under the Supreme Court's Calais ruling, you can do racist maps. As long as you just say, I'm not a racist, then you can do a racist map. And so I showed videos at the end of the last week. For example, in Tennessee, where you would have Republican legislatures who were making the new map to get rid of the one Democratic seat, they would literally say, I don't know how many black people there are in Memphis. And so, because if they admit that they're aware of the racial composition, then they could run afoul of the Supreme Court's Calais decision. If they just simply say, I don't know what the composition of black and white people are in a city like Memphis or in a county, you know, that has a majority black population, then they get away with it. So you would have these legislators be cross examined. So are you aware that in Memphis there's a majority black population? And they would say, I don't know that, I don't know, I never heard of that before. And then the person cross examining them, you know, would say, you don't know that there's more black people in Memphis than say, I don't, I don't even see race. I don't even know. So that's the game that they're playing right now. And they're saying it's political, it's not, has nothing to do with race. So, so my view, before you leave,
Michael Popak
before you leave, let me give you another. So people understand another exact version of what you just said is happening in Alabama, which is up at the Supreme Court too. They're arguing, for instance, that, that, that the panhandle of Alabama, you know, we call, we jokingly refer to it as the redneck Riviera, but the panhandle of Alabama, coastal Alabama, in their view, needs to stay together to vote for one representative. So they, they cracked the. All of the black, all of the black representation, all the black voters and, and spread them out to get them out of that district and sprinkled them so they have absolutely no place to have any representation at all. Just because we need to have the coastal Alabamans making decisions about who the representative is. Are you kidding me? Like you said, this is just an excuse, a racist cover up that the Supreme Court is complicit in.
Ben Meiselis
And do you know who knew that this should not take place and who was calling this out? You know who? Democrats and Republicans in 1965, when the voting Rights act was passed on a bipartisan basis in 1965, lawmakers in Congress actually worked together and got legislation done and they knew these things shouldn't happen. So this is what I often teach my law students. And it's not a partisan thing because it was bipartisan legislation, which is here we are in 2026 where you have all of these courts striking down bipartisan legislation from 1965 that dealt with racism. And in 2026 it's going pre1965 and fr. Going back way before then even as well to some of the most racist and dark days of our country. I'll just leave us with this on this segment too, which is ultimately, as I said, if you're going to go down this path though, where we're doing mid decade redistricting and the gerrymandering that's taking place, which I don't want to exist, then everybody should be able to do it. If that's the rules for now, then in Virginia you should do it. In New York you should do it in, in Illinois you should do it, in Maryland you should do it. And then everybody does it and we see where it goes and it's not going to get us anywhere good. And then hopefully on a bipartisan basis, we stop this stupid practice. We stop it because it's a cancer and it's bad and we should have let. But if those are the rules. But what pisses me the hell off is that, okay, you're doing it in Alabama and this why? Because you're MAGA states and then in a Democratic state you do it and now you can't do it. There's and that to me is where you want to talk about rigging the game, where these MAGA freaking whiners, oh, it's rigged, it's rigged, it's rigged. No, you are the people who rig everything and they're like, oh yeah, we stopped the gerrymander in Virginia. You're out there doing the most racist and disgusting gerrymanders in Tennessee, in Alabama, in Louisiana and all of these states and you're spiking the football like now. You're the people who are against gerrymandering. Shut up with that hypocrisy. And that's why I do think that we'll have this wave election just because I think people are fed up with being treated like they're dumb shits by actually the dumbest shit party right now, this MAGA cancer that needs to be called out at every step of the way, we're going to take our first quick break of the show. A reminder. If you or a friend or anybody you know has been injured in an accident based on the negligence of others personal injury case, reach out to the Popac law Firm. You can call or text the Popoc Law Firm or you can go to the website of the Popoc Law Firm. It's a free. Call 877 popoc or go to thepopocfirm.com call or text 877 popocaf or visit thepopocfirm.com also make sure you subscribe to the legal AF YouTube channel and the legal AF substack. Let's get those to continue to remain at the top of their charts, especially this weekend. Heading into Monday for the big Webby award ceremony. Right. Let's take our first quick break of the show. We'll be right back.
Michael Popak
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Ben Meiselis
Welcome back to legal af. Thank you to our sponsors. Our sponsors help support the show. Support the sponsors links in the description below. Two topics I want to cover on this segment. Michael Popak, number one, Howard Lutnick not sitting for a deposition after he was going to be subpoenaed for a deposition. Then he goes, I'll voluntarily show up for the deposition. And then turned it into some informal transcribed interview thing. I'll show you some clips in a moment of what James Comer had to say and what Ro Khanna had to say to give you the perspectives of how they're playing this on MAGA World and what Democrats are saying about it separately. Then let's talk about this litigation regarding. I think the thing that's most important for Donald Trump right now is building this golden ballroom. We also learned in the reconciliation bill that Mag is pushing through that actually $1 billion of taxpayer money is now going to be spent on, quote, East Wing modernization, which refers to the ballroom. Although Trump's like, that's not for the ballroom. That's for the security of the ballroom. $1 billion. What are you even talking about, man? We always knew that this whole thing was a major grift and a major scam from the outset. But if you remember, after the alleged incident in the White House correspondence dinner, it looked like a truth social post was converted into like a motion. And it was like, it was like the National Historic Trust has TDS Trump derangement syndrome. And they shouldn't be called the National Historic Historic Trust because they're not really the historic trust and they're bad people and they're mean. And, and the military and our CIA told them before they filed, you can file this. And then they just disregard what the CIA and military said. And the National Historic Trust responded and said, we know what are you talking about? When the military never contacted us before we filed and said, don't file the lawsuit. You can't make up things in federal court. Like if you want to post these weird things on your social media platform, but you can't just go into a federal court and say, the military told us not to file something because it's a national security threat. And that never happened. You can just make things up and federal court, like, I know that we've been reduced now with this Trump DOJ to complete and utter garbage. But that complete and utter garbage shouldn't be like just so this is a whole new depths of complete and utter garbage. So let's talk Letnic first Popo, I want to show you two things and then I want to get your reaction to it. The first I want to show you is what James Comer, MAGA Republican, said as so I'll set the scene really quick. Howard Lutnick shows up earlier in the week for a deposition. Obviously, we know Lutnick was on Epstein island with his kids and his friends kids. And then when he went on a New York Post episode, New York Post podcast, you know, before, he said he never spoke TO EPSTEIN After 2005, the guy was so creepy that he knew that Epstein was doing bad things and he was a blackmailer and he could never be around Epstein. And so I never saw him ever again. Epstein files come out. Lutnick's in them. Not just in them. Brought his kids to the island and brought his friends kids to the island. Like an island where kids are sexually assaulted. So it's at a very minimum raises serious questions about your judgment that you're bringing your kids to the island when you also said that you knew the guy was doing bad things in 2005, that you would thereafter bring little kids to the island or children to the island or teenagers or whatever, you know, kids down. So what James. So James Comer comes running out to try because, you know, they don't release the transcript. They're not doing this. Set it up. Lutnick shows up. Lutnick says, I'm not sitting for a video. No video. No under oath. This is an informal interview. James Comer, the MAGA Republican who controls the House Oversight Committee, he's like, yeah, those are the rules. We ain't doing gotcha. We ain't doing depositions anymore. We're just doing interviews. Not under oath. Take away the camera. No. No one to swear him in, but just you could ask him some informal questions. You remember back, what was it like two months ago when Bondi showed up for the informal interview and Democrats walked out? It's like, this isn't a deposit. No, you're subpoenaed. And by the way, this is exactly what they want to do for Bondi on May 29. They don't want to do depositions. They don't want to do video. They want to do a transcription so you don't get to see how they look or what's actually going on. Then they don't release the transcription for, like, weeks. And then people, you know, and they hope that people just kind of forget about it. That's the plan with Lutnick, that's the plan with Bondi. And then they run out of the room, you know, and like, Comer and he tries to, like, frame the narrative, like, no, there's nothing wrong here. Nothing to see here. Here's what James Comer said. He runs out of the room while this transcription transcribed, informal thing has taken place. He runs out to speak to the press and try to spit it here, play this clip.
James Comer
Feel compelled to have to come out and clean up and correct some of the statements that the Democrats made. I couldn't believe as I was getting updates of what they were saying. And I hope that when you get the transcripts, you fact check them on what they say. This is a habit of the Democrats on this committee coming out, telling you all stuff that was said that was not said. The only cover up that I seen on the Oversight Committee is the COVID up of the Democrats trying to cover up our investigations of the Metro Police Department lying about crime statistics and the COVID up of the Minnesota fraud by Tim Waltz and Keith Ellison and the COVID up of the hospice fraud in California. So what? We asked some very substantive questions the first hour. The Democrats during their hour repeated the exact same questions. Because there's only so many questions you can ask Howard Lutnick, who lived, had a property next door to Epstein in New York, but talked to him three times over a decade. Three interactions over a decade. He was on the island with his family, with his wife and kids. Six people in his family and six people. People in his friend's family for lunch for two hours. And he has admitted that.
Ben Meiselis
All right, then I'll show you what Rona said. Democratic Congressmember, let's play this clip.
Ro Khanna
We know why that interview was not videotaped. If Donald Trump had seen the video transcript, he would have fired Howard Lutnick. It was really embarrassing. He was asked very straightforward questions about whether he regretted misleading the American people. I mean, he said that he would never see Epstein again in 2005. And everyone knows that he took his wife and kids to see Epstein in 2012. And yet it was just contortions and lies and no acknowledgment that he misled the American public. And if you saw the exchanges that my colleagues had with him, you would see he made a farce of the English language. I mean, he was trying to define I as if saying that what he really meant is that he would not see Epstein alone, but be totally fine with having his wife and kids kids see Epstein. It made no sense. And then, then he's raised even more serious concerns about the investigation. He originally had said that Epstein engaged in blackmail and recorded videotapes. Now he's saying, well, he was wrong. He was just speculating. And Epstein actually didn't engage in blackmailing. This raises the question of what the COVID up is.
Michael Popak
Popak, I'll take it full disclosure. I used to work for Howard Lutnick. I don't have any insider knowledge about his relationship with Epstein, but I do know the man. And let me give you my own perspective of what, what we're watching here. This was a self created catastrophe for, for Howard Lutnick because he decided to try to get out in front of the story. He decided to go on the Rupert Murdoch owned New York Post podcast. He decided to lie to the American people about his business, social, charitable relationships with Epstein, who he shared a wall with, his words, because they have adjoining tony townhouses up on the Upper east side of New York. And or if he wanted to go on that podcast, which is where this is all coming from, sometimes it's not the crime, it's the COVID up. And if you're covering up something that leads people to question your judgment, your ethics, and that's where we're at. Had he not gone on the Miranda Divine podcast, you and I would probably not be talking about this right now, except in the context of him having to first explain himself for all of the documents that came spilling out of the half production of the Epstein files, which included photographs which I'm going to show you one in A moment. And then you watch Howard Lutnick trying to contort himself in ways that is beyond human comprehension. English words don't mean what they say. Emails are to be ignored. Photos are to be ignored. All because he wants to get as far away from Epstein as possible. Here are the facts. Six, seven months ago, he went on the podcast. He said that Epstein was gross after he saw a massage table where a dining room table should have been in the townhouse. That he got weirdly close to him. Epstein did during a conversation. And he said, I will never be in a room alone with that person ever again, socially, business or otherwise. That was his statement. The problem is that the Epstein files revealed a number of connections. They were in business together in a company called Adfin, where they were both investors. And they would have known that they were both investors. This is all after you're doing the timeline. 2009, Epstein is convicted of a child abuse based crime publicly in Palm Beach County. Child. Child prostitution. You know, that's out there in own in 09. Okay? Everything I'm telling you about is after 09. So whether he knew he was running a child sex trafficking ring or was doing it from his adjoining wall in the townhouse next door is sort of irrelevant because he also said he thought he was the greatest black blackmailer in the world. Lutnick about Epstein. And so they have a. Howard is celebrated by a Jewish charity one year in 2014, 2015, and his office goes and gets a $50,000 donation from Epstein. Okay? He's transiting through the Caribbean with another family on a rented chartered yacht, and he feels he has to go and have lunch with him on an island where the assistants start listing the ages, as you said, of the children. Now, when he was caught, he said, oh, I found out that Epstein found out that I was in the Caribbean. And I found it very un. This is Howard Lutnick. I found it very unsettling that he knew that I was in the Caribbean. So unsettling that you went to the island for the lunch. And let's put up a photo that was in the Epstein production by the Department of Justice. And I'll let the American people tell us and our audience tell me whether he looks unsettled in this photo. Does he look unsettled there with a smile on his face with Epstein in the foreground? No. So this is the problem. And this is why the Democrats reported that a very sweaty. This is their words, a very sweaty. Howard Lutnick was dishonest during his testimony. Now, we made Much as we should on Lutnick getting out from under swearing in. But that doesn't stop a criminal investigation. If he lied, it's not under a statute we call 18 USC 1001. 1001 does not require that there be a sworn statement under oath. It's not per se, a perjury statute. Let me read you the statute. 18 USC section 1001 says that whoever in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative or judicial branch knowingly and willfully makes any materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation commits a crime punishable for up to. Up to five years, doesn't have to be sworn in. So that might have been, that might have been a way for him to avoid perjury. But even Comey, even Comer, you had that one clip he came out after. Comer also had another clip that I played in a hot take where he said, if he lied, you know, we've got crime on the books for that. And, well, that's not a ringing endorsement. If he lied, we're going to go after him. But this, again is an example of somebody in the inner sanctum of Donald Trump with a connectivity to a now indicted and convicted child sex trafficker trying to figure out a way not to level with the American people. This would have been very easily handled. All you had to say was, I live next door to the guy. I had an uncomfortable situation with him. However, I once was on his island. I once asked his. My office asked his office for a charitable donation. And when there was a museum near our homes that was building something that may have obstructed our view, I thought it'd be a good idea for us to join together. I did not know that he was a child sex trafficker at the time, and any suggestion to the contrary is false. That's all he had to say. But no, they just so blithe fully lie on podcasts run by Stephen Miller's wife or by Rupert Murdoch. You know, these safe spaces where they feel they can say anything at any moment and no one's gonna catch em. Thank God for Midas Touch. Thank God for Legal AF and the Focus and drill down on these issues. Again, I don't know if he has any untoward relationship with Epstein, but then why are you lying to the American people about whatever the relationship was?
Ben Meiselis
And you are the Commerce Secretary. We're gonna talk in the next segment about Trump's tariffs against the world. We're gonna where now, as a result of a major violation of the law with the IPA, tariffs there's now about $166 billion or more owed in refunds, which should be paid to the American people, which are owed to, not the foreign countries, because they ain't the one who get hit with the tariff. The American companies who paid the tariffs, who are now asking for refunds and who are entitled to it, and those sadly won't get passed on to the consumers, and they absolutely should, because ended up being paid by the consumers, which ends up kind of being a little bit of a windfall for the corporations at the expense of the consumers. But the government has to now pay that back. But you know, who's in charge of this tariff regime? Yes, you have the trade representative who's involved in it, but the Commerce Secretary plays a significant part as well when it deals with things like the refund regime and international trade relationships, you know, more generally speaking. And people with far less connections to Epstein than Lutnick in other countries have immediately either been fired or forced to resign. And the reality is, is that the fact that Lutnick lies all the time, all the time, all the time, raises lots of red flags that he did know these things about Epstein, that he wasn't ignorant, that he may have known all of these things, but still went to the island and brought his family, because at the worst side of the spectrum, really, really bad things at other sides of the spectrum, he thought it was cool to hang around someone's island despite the fact that the guy was convicted of heinous and despicable acts. But wherever he falls in that spectrum, that combined with the lie, should indeed be disqualifying. But I'll talk about something here quickly, though, and this is how I'll relate it to this next topic. Well, one thing I'll mention this is what they want to do with Bondi also, though, right? And then they want to be like, well, Bill Clinton and Hillary. Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton sat for depositions under oath. And James Comer was the person who said, we can't do informal interviews. Those aren't binding. Those don't have any force and effect. We can't just do informal. Because Clinton said, look, let's do an informal transcription first, and then if you think there's more, then we'll sit for a deposition. But let's start basically with what Lutnick just did, and Republicans rejected it. No way. Comer said, we ain't doing that. You have to sit for a dep. So they sat for a deposition, and they did it. And this kind of goes back to the first segment that we talked about as well, it's like, okay, you wanted this whole game of this, that and the other. And now when Democrats are like, okay, well, now we're going to play by the Republican set of rules. Heads I win, tails you lose. The Clintons have to sit for a deposition even though Hillary Clinton's not even mentioned in the file.
Michael Popak
So on May, May, on May 29, when Bondi finally comes in, what do you think is going to happen?
Ben Meiselis
I think it's going to be the same thing. Just going to be no video trans. I think that the Republicans are willing to take the hit. They think it'll be more devastating to see her on video than anything because she'll fold the Dow 50,000. You know, people are going to see that and it will be devastating.
Michael Popak
They know we love the video.
Ben Meiselis
They will be devastating. You know, so they're going to, basically, they're just going to ride out from now into the midterms where the COVID up. Where the COVID up. And then what Comer was saying, can we talk about the real Minnesota Somalians? Could we talk about the corruption in the police department of what the guy's even talking about? No, we don't want UFO file. We want the Epstein files. We want to know what the hell is happening when Donald Trump's close bud Epstein, you know, and, and, and, and this whole Epstein class is all over this thing. That's what we want to know. When, when you all were the people saying you, you weaponize the files to go after your political enemies, most of whom are not in the files or not in the files in ways that you are all in the files and you are all the ones who are leading the Epstein class, the people who were using this stuff to go after other people. That's what the American people know went down. Let's take our last quick break of the show. We'll, we'll talk about in this next, this next segment. We'll talk a little bit briefly about the ballroom. I'll take that Popoc, you'll take Tariffs against the World. We'll go from there. And oh, by the way, Happy Mother's Day, everybody. We should have said at the outset of this, but, you know, technically it's tomorrow, but it's Mother's Day weekend. It's a whole weekend thing and we want to give a shout out to our mom. We want to give a shout out to all the moms out there. We want to give a shout out to the grandmas out there. We want to give a shout out to everyone and the the Midas mighty Legal AF Moms y' all are the best. You're the the true backbone. Don't tell anyone else we said this might as might illegal have moms. The true backbone is you. We all we all know that. We all know that. All right, last quick break of the show. A reminder. Make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel Michael Popo's YouTube channel Legal AF. Subscribe to the Substack the Legal AF substack and make sure if you or someone you know has been injured in a car accident auto accident caused by the negligence of a company or if you know someone who's been involved in tragically in a catastrophic injury, call or text 877-popoc or visit thepopocfirm.com Consultation is free available 247 877, popocaf or visit thepopocfirm dot com Popox firm representing a lot of listeners and viewers of the Midas Touch Network and Legal af. Don't be shy, call the Popoc firm today. All right, let's take our last quick break of the show.
Michael Popak
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Ben Meiselis
Welcome back to Legal af. Michael Popak Ben Meisel is here on a Mother's Day episode of Legal af. Two topics we got to cover here. Number one, I want to cover the ballroom litigation. Just because you can see Donald Trump completely becoming unglued as a result of this ballroom litigation, you also can see why nobody wants to work at the DOJ right now. Saw a report this week that the DOJ is now offering $25,000 signing bonuses if you work at the DOJ. This is how they're trying to basically convince people to work at the DOJ because nobody wants to work there. I'll just give you a perspective from a law professor as I teach at a pretty, pretty good law school in this country. The DOJ used to be one of the most working at the DOJ at the end of law school was one of the most highly sought after jobs and you would take pay cuts to work at the DOJ to get trial experience, to work with some of the best lawyers. Then later you may go into private practice or you can become a judge. But working at the doj, they would receive thousands and thousands of applications and it would be the most selective process imaginable to work at the doj. So the fact that now you have to, you know, try to say, well, we're going to offer you $25,000 more, that's not really going to Work because someone who's going to be working in the private sector, who could get those DOJ jobs, you know, was going to be making, you know, at a good private sector job out of law school, 180 in the low end to 220, 230 with, with by the time they get their bonus at the end of the year now at some of the top law firms. And so all you're going to be attracting at the DOJ by giving people $25,000 bonuses are lawyers who are, you know, who probably are not going to be the types of lawyers who would normally be applying to the doj. But anyway, and you see why if at any given time, Donald Trump's going to basically make you file a social media post and make that a filing before a federal judge, regardless of the veracity, regardless of how ridiculous it looks. So you may remember after the White House correspondent's alleged incident, Donald Trump seemed like he was the one who posted it himself. Like it was like a truth social post. It was like the Trump derangement syndrome of the National Historic Trust that they filed this motion and they shouldn't be called the Historic Trust. And they're very bad people and they're very mean. Like, I'm not like, literally, I'm like kind of quoting from it. These are very bad and mean people. And they didn't listen to our great military. And our military and our CIA called them and said, do not do this lawsuit before because you're going to hurt our national security. And they ignored it because they suffer tds. And I'm reading this thing and I'm like, what the hell is this filing? What am I even reading right here? This is some crazy, gobbledy whatever. And they resend. The National Historic Trust responded and they said, you know, this is, not only is this, like inappropriate and bizarre, but it's all lies. And this, you can't, you shouldn't be able to just make up things in federal court. Like, we were never contacted by the military before we filed the lawsuit. This is what they say. The historic preservation. The defendants claim that the National Trust was asked by the United States military not to bring this suit because of the top secret nature of the important facility being built. The statement is false. The military did not request that the National Trust not file the suit. It's like, what are we doing here, man? Again, I don't care whether you're Democrat, Republican, independent. This is just some weird, weird stuff. And also, the National Historic Trust points out, you know, the, the east wing's still being built right now. The way your honor structured the order, you've allowed him to make an appeal to the D.C. circuit and construction's continuing. So he's out there whining about, we need you to make some indicative ruling. Because right now Donald Trump's life has been placed in peril because the east wing has been blocked. So Trump is not able to sleep at night and his life is in jeopardy. And the National Historic Trust goes. What are you talking. They're building it. They're building it. Even though you blocked it, you've allowed him to make the appeal before it's fully blocked. So what's he whining about? What's happening? What are we talking about? It can be blocked in the future if he loses his appeal, but you've allowed him to appeal it, and now it's with the DC Circuit. Because you all remember the DC Circuit was basically saying, look, you just have to clarify your order. Judge, the district court judge, because obviously the security features underneath, if there's actual national security that can't be blocked is what the D.C. circuit said. But if it's like a ballroom, that's for, like, tea, like, parties. I don't know. You know, that requires congressional approval. So can you make that clarification? In which case the judge did, and now it's back up on appeal, and then Trump is like, the whole ballroom is national security. How do you think. How do you think I'm going to be protected from drones and missile attacks? Ballroom, I kid you not. That's what he said. But anyway, enough of that. That's why we're there. Popa, can you talk to us a little bit about what's going on on the, on the, on the tariff case?
Michael Popak
Yeah, absolutely. It was a good, good rendition of the ball. What's going on with the ballroom? And it'll be in the hands of the DC Appellate court, which is where it should be. This was just a PR move, as you said, a social media screed posing as a fake motion to the lower court judge when the whole thing should just be resolved by. The appellate court has already set a briefing schedule. That's why it made no sense except for their attempt to step on a news cycle for whatever was going on poorly for them at that given moment, probably in the Iranian war. Which brings us to the tariff. Second time, Donald Trump's attempt to unconstitutionally impose tariffs ultimately on the American people have been struck down by a court. It's always the same court. We joke that Ben and I, in Six years before this year mentioned the Internet, the court of international Trade, exactly zero times. Because it just, you know, it's a specialty court. It has to do with, with tariffs and trade and customs and duties. And, you know, those things are interesting, but not really right down the middle of our, of our bailiwick of what we cover at the intersection of law and politics. Until Donald Trump decided to make crushing the hopes and dreams of the American people through tariffs and destroy our global relationships the centerpiece of his administration, which led first to him imposing, remember that 200 tariffs on allies and enemies alike, raising tariffs that had historically been set at about 10 or 12% to 20 and 30%, wrecking global relationships, undermining trade, leading to the sputtering out of the American economy and global economy, all before the Iranian war did the same thing as it relates to energy prices and the energy markets and that double whammy of bad tariffs and the burden it places economically on the American voter, the American citizen and the energy markets being undermined and prices going up, doubling and tripling. That has put the American voter in a vice of Donald Trump's making. And he just continues, because of his narcissism and his refusal to admit defeat, he continues to squeeze both ends of the vice, making it almost impossible to live in America. Or as the chairman of Heinz Kraft, Kraft Heinz, you know, no more American company than that said America, Americans are out of money at the end of the month. There's too much month at the end of the month for Americans. And when you have that and McDonald's saying consumer confidence is so terrible, they're going to have to take a account of that for future earnings and future financial performance. That should have been a signal to Donald Trump after the Supreme Court did him a favor in determining that his 200 tariffs under the International Economic Emergency Powers act were unconstitutional and were a violation of the statute that was that created them, everybody from the Wall Street Journal to Legal AF said take the loss. It'll actually help Americans and their economy. It may bail you out from your failed policies. Oh, no. He immediately couldn't take no for an answer and started to issue new tariffs under this rarely used for good reason, 1974 Trade Act Section 122. But that, and I've had Oregon's Attorney General on to talk about it because they brought the case to the Court of International Trade in New York, a three judge panel. And the only way that you can use the delegated power of Congress, because it has to come from Congress, because they have the Authority, and the sole Authority under Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution to impose tariffs. They can delegate through express language, through statutes, to the presidency, certain aspects of that, but they have to do it expressly and not ambiguously. So 1974 rolls around. What's going on then? We had our other criminal president in Nixon. Nixon started to impose tariffs because we had what's called a balance of payment problem. Sounds a lot like balance of trade, but it's not. Balance of payment has to do with our monetary system around the world and the fluctuation in prices among global currency. You know, the, the EU dollar, so to speak, the pound, the US Dollar, the Brazilian real, the peso, the Japanese yen, and how they fluctuate after. You have to go back to the year after World War II ended, 1945, the governments of the world, the Allies, primarily decided they needed to have more global trade, easier trade, more efficient trade. They had to deal with their currency fluctuations. So they met at a place called Bretton Woods. It's called the Bretton woods system or the Bretton Woods Accord. They set up the International Monetary Fund, they set up the World bank, and eventually America got off the gold standard because we used to have a system where every US Dollar was tied to a gold brick in the reserve, usually at Fort Knox or other places. When we got off the gold standard and it was just paper money being printed by the Americans, then we had fluctuation in pricing. And the fear under the 1974 act is that at a moment when Americans were paying for goods that they had contracted for, that the dollar was worth less or the opposing foreign currency was worth more. That's a balance of payment issue where you contract at one price, but because your currency has fluctuated down, let's say you got to come up with more money. And that puts America's economy at a disadvantage depending upon the value of its currency. So you allow a president, by way of this 1974 act, under the circumstances of their being a balance of payment problem, which we haven't had in 60 years, impose a short term tariff up to 10% for, for a certain period of time. Trump's like, what do I. You just see a meeting with his economic advisors. What do I got? What can I do on tariffs? Oh, you could do 122 tariffs. What are those? Oh, that's when there's a balance of payment. How can we argue there's a balance of payment? Oh, we could say balance of trade is balance of payment. Balance of trade is something else. Balance of trade is I'm in our, in our case, we're buying more foreign goods than the foreign countries are buying from us. And there is a, it's not even that huge by the way. There's a relatively small balance of trade issue which is not necessarily a bad thing because you know, it depends on what you're making. And we need global markets to buy more from us anyway. So that's only goods. We also make services. We make consulting firms and law firms and banks and financial services and AI consultancy firms and cryptocurrency. These aren't goods and we actually have a surplus in service. We have a slight deficit in goods and a surplus in service. So in any event, we don't have what is required under 122. This goes up with a case brought by importers because as Ben said earlier, those are the ones that are paying the price. American importers and the state of Oregon and a three judge panel at this very specialty court ruled once again that Trump got it wrong, that this, that the very unique circumstances that 122 was created in 1974 do not exist now at all. As a result, the two to one they have killed the tariffs. Trump now would have to take an appeal to a specialty appellate court, the Federal Circuit Appellate Court in Washington for another three judge panel. If he loses there, which is what happened the last time around with tariffs, he could ask for the entirety of the appellate panel, about 15 or 20 judges to rule, then ultimately it's going to end up right back at the United States Supreme Court where frankly he should do no better than he did when he lost six to three about the International Economic Emergency Powers act tariffs because they were unconstitutional, because Article 1 Section 8 is a power of Congress, none of the president and they are in violation of the statute because that statute didn't allow tariffs either. So I think, and Trump probably knows it, that if this is doing a round trip return to the United States Supreme Court, he's going to lose again on tariffs. What does that mean for the American people? Look, under the IPA tariffs he collected 180 billion with a B dollars from American importers. Some of them, some of them have said if they ever get a refund and they're all in the process of getting refunds, that they will pass it back to the American people like FedEx and UPS said oh well, the customer paid the extra fee in shipping, we'll refund them. But others have not said that. Others haven't said, oh yeah, we're going to make the price of Cereal less now because we're not paying as much in tariffs. So it's up to the, it's up to a trust with American business, which is sorely lacking, to give back money to the American people. And so you take that off the board. The only reason Donald Trump wanted that is to try to plug the hole for the trillions of dollars of tax revenue loss because he gave rich people tax breaks. So he had that giant hole. He tried to say, yeah, but look at me. Between Doge and all the cost savings and Elon Musk and tariffs, we're going to plug that hole and make a roaring American economy. None of that has happened as we lead to round out our show, as we lead back to the midterms. And when you plug in all of these data points into the modeling that's been very successful in predicting outcome for elections like the midterms, and you put in the fact that only 23% of the American people believe that Donald Trump's doing a good job with the economy, 77% think he's horrendous. That means a lot of Republicans. When you have those numbers, job numbers, inflation numbers, consumer confidence numbers, where they are right now, and you plug all that in. If Donald Trump doesn't lose 40 to 50 seats in the House come the midterms, it would be shocking. Even with these extra 10 seats that the Republicans are trying to steal through remapping, the Democrats should be able to gain 40ish seats. What does that mean? You only need 218 seats in the House to run it. We're only four. The Democrats are only four short right now, so we're going to have 40 more. So the four we need to get into control and an additional 30 plus. So all of all the anxiety, and I know there's a lot of anxiety over the remapping. If voting happens in the, in the amounts and volume that we believe they will, and we're going to be on our audience to help get the vote mobilized. Registration and you can, you can register to vote. You can help people register to vote in states that you don't live in. Okay, you can help if you're like a red dot in a, in a blue state, you're like, well, I'm sorry, if you're a blue dot in a red state, you're like, my vote doesn't count, or vice versa. You can go help in the battleground states where we need you and help with registration. You know, it's not going to be enough just to pull the lever yourself. You're going to have to motivate two to three to five other people to vote with you and vote. And if that happens and the 7 or 8 or 10 or 20 million people, whatever the number is, return to the electorate and vote at the midterms. We won't have to worry. It'll solve a multitude of sins about this remapping. So there, every senator, governor, congressperson or attorney general or author that I've had on to interview in the last month have all said the exact same thing. The only thing that matters right now is voting and mobilizing the vote. And if we can do that, then at the end, at midterms, we're talking about an entirely new constitutional order of checks and balances, trying to root out corruption as the party now in power does two things, impeachment proceedings and oversight proceedings that are real and true and transparent, but also passing laws to support the American people and to bring affordability back to this country. This is the this current Congress run by MAGA is the lowest producing Congress in terms of the amount of bills passed in our history. I mean, we're talking about 20 or 30 bills passed in the entire term. And that means they're not working for you. They're working for their boss or who they think their boss is in the White House. We always work for you. We're glad you're here on Legal af. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to win the Webby Awards. Two Webby Awards for Legal AF Best Podcast in in News, both the Committee Award, the the Academy Award, if you will, and a People's Voice Award. And my podcast on Tuesday nights on Midas called the Intersection won the audience award for Best New News Podcast. We'll accept it on your behalf. I'll do a substack live from the red carpet on Monday because I'm here with my family to celebrate this also Mother's Day weekend. Really reiterate what Ben said. We support women, mothers and everybody else in our community to the nth degree. I don't think there's an audience or a community better than ours that exists in YouTube than legal AF and Midas. Touch and we appreciate each and every one of you. Help us continue to grow Legal AF. Come over to Legal AF, the YouTube channel. We're going to cross 1.2 million subscribers in the month of May with your help. Come over to legal AF substack where I'm running a 40% sale for mother's Day weekend starting today to try to get to 10,000 paid subscribers on legal AF substack. So until one last announcement, one last programming note. Wednesday I'll be back on Legal Layoff at the Midweek with Karen Freeman McNifolo. Tuesday, the Intersection podcast, our award winning podcast. 8:00pm on Midas. And then we have a brand new episode, if you will, of Legal AF on the Legal AF YouTube channel. Monday nights. We call it Monday Night Live. Monday night live Legal AF this time hosted by Dina Dahl and Lisa Graves. 5pm Eastern time on Legal AF, the YouTube channel. Another great incentive for you to subscribe over there. So until my next report for Ben Meisellis and me, Michael Popak, shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal afers.
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Michael Popak
Fantastic.
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Michael Popak
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Ben Meiselis
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Hosts:
Date: May 10, 2026
This high-energy, deeply analytical episode sees Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok tackling several major developments at the intersection of law and U.S. politics. Key topics include the Virginia Supreme Court’s controversial redistricting ruling, the ongoing gerrymandering crisis, the fallout from Howard Lutnick’s informal Epstein-related testimony, Donald Trump's compulsive legal filings related to his coveted White House ballroom, and the repeated rejection of Trump-era tariffs by federal courts. Throughout, the hosts stress the urgent need for voter mobilization and call out the hypocrisy and procedural manipulation rife in today’s political climate.
Timestamps: 01:55–18:32
Memorable Quote:
“They just don’t seem to have the respect for voting the way I would expect a United States Supreme Court to have in the past. … I’m not overly confident in their ability to overcome all of the things you outline.” (12:55, Popok)
Timestamps: 15:02–18:32
“What pisses me the hell off is… you’re doing it in Alabama because you’re MAGA states and then in a Democratic state you do it and now you can’t do it. … You are the people who rig everything.” (18:11, Meiselas)
Timestamps: 24:30–39:33
“The only cover up I’ve seen on the Oversight Committee is … the Democrats trying to cover up our investigations …”
“He made a farce of the English language… He was trying to define I, as if saying that what he really meant is that he would not see Epstein alone but be totally fine with having his wife and kids see Epstein. It made no sense.” (31:01, Khanna)
“This was a self-created catastrophe for Howard Lutnick because he decided to try to get out in front of the story … It’s not the crime, it’s the cover up.” (32:29, Popok)
Timestamps: 48:40–54:23
Notable Quote:
“What are we doing here, man? … This is some crazy, gobbledy whatever.” (49:30, Meiselas)
Timestamps: 54:23–66:30
Ben Meiselas reflecting on judicial and partisan hypocrisy (18:11):
“You're the people who rig everything … You're doing the most racist and disgusting gerrymanders in Tennessee, in Alabama, in Louisiana… Shut up with that hypocrisy…”
Michael Popok, on the conservative Supreme Court and voting rights (12:55):
“They just don’t seem to have the respect for voting the way I would expect a United States Supreme Court to have in the past…”
Rep. Ro Khanna on Lutnick’s testimony (31:01):
“If Donald Trump had seen the video transcript, he would have fired Howard Lutnick. It was really embarrassing…”
| Timestamp | Topic | |--------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:55–10:52 | Virginia Supreme Court redistricting ruling & context | | 10:52–18:32 | U.S. Supreme Court prospects, Voting Rights Act, partisan games | | 24:30–39:33 | Howard Lutnick’s deposition, Epstein connections, and consequences | | 48:40–54:23 | Trump’s ballroom litigation, federal filings, and DOJ morale crisis | | 54:23–66:30 | Trump tariffs struck down: legal, economic, and political fallout |
Final thought (Popok, 67:30):
“The only thing that matters right now is voting and mobilizing the vote … It’s not going to be enough just to pull the lever yourself. You’re going to have to motivate two to three to five other people to vote with you and vote.”
The episode ends with thanks to listeners for supporting the award-winning Legal AF podcast, recognition of Mother’s Day, and reminders to subscribe to the Legal AF YouTube and Substack channels.