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Hi, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Are you looking for a beach read this summer? May I suggest your big wireless build? It's got suspense, mystery, a slightly flat emotional arc, and a shocking twist where you realize you've been overpaying the entire time. Fortunately, though, Mint's story is better. Every plan $15 a month, even unlimited. That's it. Happy ending, zero tears. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment
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is busy see terms Monday.com AI agents took over my work and I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind.
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Now.
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on Monday.com close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast. Breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste.
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Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contacts. We got some startling news. It involves the Senate Judiciary Committee concerning who's going to fill Lindsey Graham's seat and how the 12 Republican votes against 10 Democrat votes are going to shake out related to Todd Blanche being confirmed or at least voted out of committee by the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow. I'm Michael Popak. You're on Legal. Lay off the podcast. Let's get into these high velocity events. Firstly, it took the Republicans a long time, but they must know they have the votes to confirm Todd Blanche. The number one indication for me they think they have the votes and they can get over even John Cornyn of Texas. Voting against Todd Blanche is the fact that Darlene Graham, the sister of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, is taking his chair in the Senate Judiciary Committee along with all of his other committee assignments like Appropriations and Budget. She's not going to become the chair of some of those committees, but she is getting the vote and holding the fort down until the middle of August when a special election takes place in South Carolina. For me, it's a major indicator, bright light indicator, that they think they've Got the votes. Right now with her vote, there are 12 Republican votes and 10 on the Democratic vote. Even if they were to lose John Cornyn, which is possible over the Jan6 fund, with a meeting being canceled between Cornyn and Blanche, they would still get Blanche out of committee by one vote. It would then go to the Senate floor next week for a major block Blanche vote. We got to work the refs right now. We got to work the senators to make sure that even ones that voted him out of committee have second thoughts and take back their vote. I'm a little surprised that Darlene Graham, I thought they would get some other MAGA stalwart to take that spot, but I think it's an indicator that they think they've got at least the 11 votes necessary. You know, it's a pass fail coming out of committee to send him to the Senate floor. And even if Senator Cornyn, where there's no love lost between Cornyn and Trump after Trump opposed him in in his Texas primary and he won't be returning to the Senate even if he makes good on his threat, I don't think they lose Thom Tillis as well. Thom Tillis has been blowing a lot of smoke up a lot of people's backsides about. Well, I want this about the Jan6committee fund and I want that about the Epstein survivors. You know, Thom Tillis is the only person in America that believes that the meeting between Todd Blanche and the Epstein survivors went well. If you listen to the Epstein survivors and I've had them on the show and interviewed them, including Danny Bensky, they said it was the most disgusting, depraved interaction they've ever had with somebody at the Department of Justice and left them feeling more victimized for Thom Tillis with his BOLO and whatever. I think that was very good meeting. All right, this is going to squeak by 11 to 10. I don't want it to. But you know, we don't blow smoke or sunshine here on Legal af, the podcast at all. If you want to follow the confirmation vote at the Senate Judiciary Committee level, we will be airing it Live on Legal AF, the YouTube channel under the live tab. And if I can, as people can tell I'm traveling, if I can, I'll join for a pre game show. It's important that we watch these things and that we watch them and bring our public outrage to the moment. Now is the time to call your senator or anybody else's senator on a regular basis to encourage them to block Todd Blanche. I got two programming notes about that Movement one Senator Cory Booker reached out and he's going to be with me sometime tomorrow to talk about what happened at the vote. We had Cory Booker on just recently and he said the fix is in. From what he could see, Thom Tillis was in the bag. Even if Cornyn voted against him against Blanche, he was still going to get it. Now the rap sheet about Todd Blanche is legion. We can all make the case about the most corrupt Department of Justice in history when it's not abusing grand juries, abusing federal judges, abusing the rule of law, taking inconsistent and illegal and unconstitutional positions in court and creating a not only a Jan6 fund, but what Donald Trump always wanted, which was a super pardon for his family and himself of tax liability and criminal liability. You know, he's going after Donald Trump's political targets, going after the Southern Poverty Law center, going over former FBI Director James Comey, going after former CIA director John Brennan, threatening to go over Barack Obama. He is not independent. He is completely aligned with Donald Trump who pulls the strings and pushes his buttons and tells him exactly what to do. My second programming note is I'm going to be joined tomorrow. It'll be in the afternoon on Legal AF YouTube channel with a very special interview of two current federal judges, Judge Beth Bloom, Southern District of Florida, Miami and Judge Salas, a judge a district court in New Jersey. You'll know Judge Salas well because her son Daniel was gunned down by a would be assassin who knocked at the door to to take out Judge Salas. There's now a Daniel law in his name about keeping judges information about where they live and the rest private. And that's all because of Judge Salas. She has a very unique and authentic story to tell about the continued attack on the federal judiciary by Donald Trump and those around him. And Judge Beth Bloom, not a former, not a retired, these are active sitting judges who want to talk to our audience about the threats against their courts, the threat against democracy and Todd Blanche being unqualified to be the head of the Department of Justice. So you'll catch that on Legal AF YouTube channel as part of our black Block Blanche support. Now there is, there is already a related to Todd Blanch. There is already a bill that has passed to try to block Ghislaine Maxwell from getting a pardon. Frankly, it's just performative. It's nice that they passed it to send a message to Donald Trump and to try to distance themselves politically. But the pardon power is absolutely and solely in the hands of the president of the United States. And so there's no stopping him if he decides to give a five time convicted child sex trafficker a pardon. I mean, they're cozying up with the Tate brothers who ran another independent child sex trafficking in porno ring. Why would we, including Barron Trump being involved with it, why not with the sex trafficking but being involved with the Tate brothers. Why would we be surprised that he's going to reward Ghislaine Maxwell for trying to bail him out with testimony that was untruthful by giving her a pardon? I don't think anybody would, would be surprised by that. We got a new development as well, is going to be a show about new developments. We got a new development about the British Broadcasting Corporation case that Donald Trump brought for $10 billion. His words, not mine, for alleged defamation. What was the nature of the defamation? The defamation was they clipped a couple of words out of his own word, his own vocabulary, his own language. They used his own words against him. It's very hard to win on defamation when you're using the words of the person. Now, they clipped a couple of things out in order to make it fit about Donald Trump telling people to fight or they wouldn't have a country left. But we all know from the January 6th committee, we know from the special prosecutor Jack Smith that that led to the insurrection as the followers of Donald Trump to attack the Capitol. We know that's what happened. And so the BBC is fighting back in this Miami case in two different ways. One on the liability side, they're saying, okay, you say we defamed you. We're gonna prove it's all true. We're gonna prove you, you fomented the violence, that you lit the match that you turned after whipping them up into a frenzy, you turned your supporters, who you know were armed, and you aimed them at the Capitol to attack elected officials. On January 6th, they're going to prove that they've got 75 or so subpoenas out which are being handled in various courts, mainly in D.C. to the Jan.6 committee, to Jack Smith's original prosecution team in the Department of Justice, and to family members and inner circle advisers of Donald Trump. That's on the, that's on the liability side. On the damage side, they're meeting Donald Trump on the battlefield of his own creation. Donald Trump, in his operative complaint, which defines the scope of discovery, which is the exchange of documents and information in a case, said that his reputation, his brand, his assets lost value because of the BBC running a documentary with a three minute clip of his ellipse speech edited on a channel, a streaming channel, that nobody got in the United States, by the way. And he said, that's worth $10 billion. Now, when they were, when they were with the magistrate judge, Judge Lett, who handles discovery matters, during a hearing seven days ago, they said, well, we, we think they should wait till they see our damage model with our expert. The judge says, they don't have to wait. You've said 10 billion in your complaint. The operative complaint says severe economic damage. So they get to test the theory of that. You didn't have to put that in your complaint. You could have put in nominal damage. There's two types of defamation. There's defamation per quad and defamation per se. Defamation per se is you attack somebody's business reputation. The law presumes damage. A dollar is enough. If you want to sue for it, you don't need actual damage. A point that Judge Lett reminds Donald Trump. But you can also sue for a defamation per quad where you have to prove actual damage. Okay, then you got to bring it. The judge basically said in the hearing, I don't know exactly what you meant, but it is in your complaint. So the Trump lawyers jumped up and down and said, judge, we're going to file an amendment. We're going to take our pen. It's called amendment by interlineation. We're going to take our pen and we're going to strike out certain allegations. We're not going to tell you what they are, but they're going to narrow the damage model here considerably. I guess. They're going to drop anything that relates to all of the taxes, income and assets of Trump and his Trust, which owns 400 companies in which his assets are held. That's what this fight was about, a subpoena to the Donald J. Trump revocable trust. And the judge says, all right, well, I'll wait around and issue my order, but if you don't amend it, I'm going to order it all be produced. Seven days went by. He missed the deadline. They didn't file their amendment. And what happened as a result? As a result, the judge issued her order and she said, the subpoena to the trust is going to be upheld. It's not going to be quashed. And the only thing I'm going to do is limit in a little bit in time, the amount, the time limit. She's going to limit the time to January 2023 to present about every asset, every brand, everything in taxes and financial information held by the trust, because it goes to the heart of the case. What they should have done is they should have struck the damage model from the complaint and then they might have gotten out from under the subpoena. But they didn't do it that way. They did it their own way, and it blew up in their face like one of those exploding cigars. You know, look, Trump miscalculated when it came to the BBC. Having settled with abc, who needed regulatory approval for transactions and got, you know, 17, $18 million, having settled with his buddies who took over CBS for the 60 Minutes, Kamala Harris editing and getting, you know, 15, $20 million, he figured the BBC who initially apologized. Yep, it's very British. They apologize for the editing, that they were going to bend the knee. But once you start suing for billions of dollars, probably worth more than certain of the assets on the books of the BBC, they're going to fight back. They'd rather give a law firm several million dollars to go fight. And so they came out hard with discovery. Trump's lucky they didn't ask for his deposition. A sworn statement under oath yet that's coming. That should be. If I were the lawyers there, that would be. You don't even need the documents. Just sit him down in a chair and. And your case will be won. So BBC is not settling. What can they do about Judge? Let's order. Well, if Trump doesn't like it, he doesn't has to do with his taxes. Again, they can take an appeal directly to the judge in the case, the district court judge, Judge Altman. They don't like the result there. It's very difficult to take an appeal about a discovery matter, a subpoena during the trial, and take it up to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. I'm not sure that happens here, but he'll continue to delay and fight that fight just as he always does. But I think it's important to see that at least one of his many defamation cases, you know, are backfiring. So glad you're here with me. You know, I love my wife, I love my daughter. They gave me permission to take time out. They know this is important. This is not the time to take our foot off the gas or take our hands off the controls. This is not the time to do anything but focus on the midterms, on protecting the vote, on blocking Todd Blanche and to calling out the Trump administration for its continued fraud. We can't get fatigued. We can't get, you know, weak kneed about any of this. We're here together for a reason, and I'M so glad you're here with me on a little bit of a warm night where my wife and I and my family are vacationing. Many ways to support what we do here on Legal AF. There's a Legal AF YouTube channel. We do 12 hot new videos every day. I do the first four. We've got contributors from the ACLU to the NAACP to Democratic attorneys General to Democracy Forward, Sky Perryman to Adam Klassfeld's All Rise News and more. More. So come over to Legal AF YouTube channel and hit that free. Yep, I'll repeat it. Free subscribe button. That's one Legal AF substack. That's a new community that we started building about a year ago. We're already in regularly in the top 30 for all US politics substacks. That's another eight to 10 pieces of content, original writing, live, live reporting that I do, live feeds that I do, sometimes with guests, sometimes on my own. Over on Legal AF substack. Again, free membership. If you want to read the motions and the filings, the orders of the court, we post them there as well for our paid members. That's two things you can do to help here on Legal af the podcast. We could use some love when it comes to downloading the audio versions of this podcast. I can't tell you how immeasurably that helps keep us at the top of the charts as a law and politics podcast for sure. And then finally, as many people know, I formed a firm. It's called the POPOC Firm. And really for our Midas Touch and Legal AF audience, we're representing hundreds and hundreds of audience members and people related to them for catastrophic injury, illness, anything that's been caused by the negligence of others, including medical malpractice, anything related to cars, trucks, you know, collisions, God forbid somebody died, somebody in your family. Let the POPOC firm and its tireless fighters evaluate your case. If we take the case, you don't pay a dime unless we win justice for you and get you money. And we'll evaluate evaluate your case for free. Thanks for being such good supporters, such great supporters of the POPOC firm. Your generosity, really overall for Midas Touch and Legal AF is overwhelming. Then of course, we've got our sponsors, our pro democracy sponsors. Some been with us from the very beginning, six years ago. Some are new, all curated and picked by a combination of Jordy Meisellis and me for your viewing pleasure. Now let's take our first break in business. I'm always trying to make smart, informed decisions and get the best for less. But if I'm honest, I haven't looked at my life insurance policy in way too long. Is my coverage enough? Given today's economic uncertainty, am I overpaying? And if my health has changed, am I still getting the right protection? That's exactly why I'm finally taking a look with select quote For over 40 years, Select Quote has helped more than 2 million Americans find the right life insurance policy for their unique needs. Their licensed agents compare policies from top rated carriers in as little as 15 minutes. Working for you, not the insurance companies. And they do it for free. They can even help many people with pre existing health conditions. Get the right life insurance for you for less and Save more than 50%@SelectQuote.com LegalAF Save more than 50% on term life insurance@SelectQuote.com LegalAF Today to get started. That's SelectQuote.com LegalAF I was a senior executive in my career. Today's executives are more threatened, more exposed, and more vulnerable than ever before. Corporations spend billions on workplace security. But what happens when a threat finds your executives outside the office? Here's why that matters. 70% of attacks on executives happen at home or away from the office, and Ironwall understands a terrifying reality. If someone has a grievance against your company, the first place they turn to is Google. It takes about five minutes to find one of your executive's home addresses online. And if their personal information is sitting on the open web, they're far too easy to find. You're leaving them unprotected. The team at Ironwall knows this better than anyone. They protected some of the most targeted executives and individuals on the planet for almost two decades. As a white glove enterprise security service, they protect your people with continuous power, personal data removal, proactive prevention tools, and emergency support. So when someone goes looking for your executives, Ironwall ensures they hit a dead end. So here's what to do. Go to ironwall.com legalaf Fill in the quick form and request your free risk assessment. Their team will show you just how exposed your executives are and how to lock it down before a threat reaches their front door. That's ironwall.com legalif stop online threats before they become real world attacks. Check for the link in the show notes below. Welcome back to Legal af, the podcast at the midweek. I am Michael Popak. Thank you to our Pro Democracy sponsors a development in the Eugene Carroll case. Donald Trump is on a bit of a losing streak at the Supreme Court, including about E. Jean Carroll, but that hasn't stopped Donald Trump from filing a new petition for writ of certiorari, a petition to have an appeal granted to him at the United States Supreme Court about the larger of the two judgments that E. Jean Carroll obtained because she convinced through evidence a nine person jury that she was sexually abused by Donald Trump back in 1996. Now she's already been paid the five point billion that ran with interest for the first case where she proved to a jury that Donald Trump is a sex abuser in New York. 90 after weeks of evidence and testimony, this is about whether she's going to get paid on the $83.3 million second case, second jury of 9 0. Again she's 180 with jurors about whether Donald Trump, while he was president of the United States defamed her from the Rose Garden and social media posts at rallies and the rest saying that she was disgusting, not his type, a shakedown artist, never met her. And the rest, and the question is based on that and other defamatory statements whether the the jury's verdict and judgment against Donald Trump now running with interest up to $91 million, whether that can be overturned by an appellate court. Now, it's kicked around a number of appellate courts. It's kicked around the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals three times. It kicked around a court in the District of Columbia once. And Donald Trump's argument, I want to be clear here, is not that he didn't do it. His defense is not that he didn't sexually abuse E. Jean Carroll or that he didn't defame her, or that there was a error in the evidence or the trial judge made an error related to a witness or an error concerning letting in certain evidence or not letting in certain evidence. He's not arguing that at all. He's arguing that he enjoys two types of immunity. He can get away with murder or in this case, sexual abuse. And in a civil case, this is, let's all remember this is a civil case, not a criminal case. In a civil case that he doesn't have to pay her. In fact, he has two arguments. One, that he's a federal employee, he's badge number one, and therefore he enjoys what we refer to as Westfall. Immunity comes from a case which says that all federal employees working within the course and scope of their duties and responsibilities cannot be sued in their individual capacity nor pay damages because you're really suing the United States of America, a sovereign which you can't do without its permission. And so what normally happens is you sue an employee of the federal government. The government makes a decision whether it's going to step in. The Department of Justice files a motion for substitution to come into the case, which eventually kills the case. Now, the Biden administration, when it was running the Department of Justice, declined to intervene in the case about Donald Trump's sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll in 1996 in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman department store, about 200 yards away on Fifth Avenue from Trump Tower, when he bumped into E. Jean Carroll, who he knew is based on testimony. And later, sometime later that afternoon, things turned dark and violent and sexually abusive, and she was sexually abused. Some would claim that she was raped. She would claim that she was raped. At the time. The only reason it wasn't rape is because at the time, a victim needed to be able to testify with certainty that the penetration happened with penis. I can't put this any nicer. And if she closed her eyes, no surprise there during the violent attack. So she couldn't handle that particular element. And therefore the jury came back with the next level, which is sexual abuse. That's the reason today it would be rape. In the state of New York, they changed the law. So Donald Trump's not arguing, I didn't do it. Donald Trump's not arguing, other evidence was let in. It shouldn't have been. It's that I'm immune, that I'm a federal employee. I've got Westfall immunity. The question is whether he was just doing his job when he defamed E. Jean Carroll. His argument is, I was just defending the president presidency. This is really an attack on America. It's not an attack on America. The United States of America didn't sexually abuse E. Jean Carroll. You did. Donald Trump did. And so we're going to have to see if, if the United States Supreme Court wants to touch this with, pardon my French, a 10, a 10 foot pole or smaller, or whether they want to completely ignore it. They could just say, pass, we're not going to comment on it. We think the lower courts got this right about the fact that he was outside the scope of his duties as the President of the United States. Whether you analyze it as core constitutional functions or the, the presidency's powers stretch to its outer boundaries, I think they're right about that. I think they should stay out of it. The second argument that Trump is making to try to block having to pay E. Jean Carroll in her lifetime is that the, the criminal immunity statute from 2024 or 2023 also means that he shouldn't for the same policy concerns. He shouldn't be subject or no president should be subject to a civil judgment because it'll impair their ability to do their job. That people won't be robust and full throated about their presidency and their powers because they're looking over their shoulder at potential civil liabilities. See, it's different to say you're looking over your shoulder about whether you're going to be robust in your presidential powers because you're worried about a criminal case and going to jail. This is a civil case. I don't see the same policy concerns and frankly, I don't see the United States Supreme Court finding those policy concerns either. So that's, that's first argument. Second argument is related to that, which is he was acting in the course and scope of his duty stretched to its outer boundaries. It's very similar to the earlier analysis. I don't think they want to revisit the immunity case this early, this, this soon. And the main defense to all of this which will be briefed is that Donald Trump and his lawyers waived immunity because they waited 12 months, 15 months in many ways after the verdict and after the judgment to try to assert it. I mean, let's be frank. Trump becomes president of the United States a second time and the first thing he does is take over the Department of Justice and make them reverse course and offer to intervene and make a motion to intervene in the case to take Donald Trump out as a party and deny her E. Jean Carroll her dignity and her money. And the judge, Judge Kaplan refused it and said it's too late. It's 15 months after the jury verdict. Just because you won the presidency doesn't mean you can come into my courtroom and now assert the immunity that was never asserted earlier. See, if you don't assert defenses including immunity, you waive them so that he never asserted Westfall immunity till 15 months later after jury verdict. There's no party that would be entitled to, to that type of immunity protection so late in the game. And then on the, that the criminal immunity ruling by the Supreme Court can be stretched to cover civil judgments. I think they lose on that as well. And that was, that was never raised at the trial court level until, you know, months into the trial. Too late, too late. It was done in post judgment motions. And I think the 2nd Circuit got it right when they said we're not going to hear the case because these motions, these immunity defenses were raised too late. And I think they're going to win on that. So the petition has been filed. We know that, but this is not going to get heard until the new term opens for the Supreme Court the first Monday in October. Probably going to be a November, December, January event, oral argument in January to March sometime, and a ruling in June. She's 83 years old. You know, Trump's trying to wait her out and never let her see this money in her lifetime. It'll go to her state, but that's not the same thing as doing justice by the only person on planet earth that was able to prove that Donald Trump sex abused them in a court of law. So we'll follow that very closely. We got developments related to FBI Director James Comey. James Comey was indicted twice. First, his indictment was for lying to Congress five years ago. It was done by Lindsey Halligan, a disgraced prosecutor who was forced to resign after it was found that she was illegally appointed. Also was found that she abused James Comey's the former FBI director's civil liberties and constitutional rights in the way she presented the case to the grand jury and a judge dismissed her and dismissed his indictment and the indictment that was brought against Letitia James, the New York Attorney General. This all has to do with how harsh of a critic James Comey has been since he left being the FBI director. He's written books, he's been on talk shows. His daughter used to work in the Department of Justice. She prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell. And Donald Trump's been livid and has been trying to get back at him ever since that indictment got dismissed. So they were. There's no way to bring that indictment again. They're out of time. So they looked around and they saw, oh, James Comey commented on social media about a picture somebody took in the form of seashells on a beach. 8,000, 647, which means remove the president. Like, remove the tuna salad from the menu. I worked in a diner. I know what 86 means. It doesn't mean assassinate the president or assassinate the chicken salad. It means remove it, which is what everybody's calling for now. There was already a federal judge concerning a, a, a group, an activist group in a park in Washington who's flying the flag of 8647. And the Park Service tried to pull their ticket to protest and their permit by saying that was a true threat against the president. Judge said that's not a true threat against the President. That is a phrase that's been around since the 1920s. Came out of, like, soda jerks and luncheonettes and things like that. And that helped that case helped James Comey because when he got indicted in the Eastern District of North Carolina, he was at his. He was at his beach house when he posted that on social media or reposted it. This all comes down to whether him liking or commenting on somebody else's social media post about seashells on a beach constitutes a true threat against the life of the President. Those are the elements, and that's the case law. And so his lawyers, led by Patrick Fitzgerald, formerly the U.S. attorney in Chicago. Let's remember James Comey, before FBI director, was the prosecutor in the Southern District of New York. Two top prosecutors leading this case. They argued with a motion to dismiss that as a matter of law, somebody posting or commenting on a photo of the phrase 8647 could not, as a matter of law, constitute a true threat against the President of the United States and the indictment should be dismissed. That's their argument. I think it's a very good argument. They've got another motion in their back pocket, and that one is for vindictive prosecution. But they've smartly not yet filed that particular motion. I think they're going to get two bites at the apple. They're going to file this motion. They're going to fight hard in oral argument and otherwise, and briefing to get it to be successful. It's the cleanest path to have the indictment dismissed outright as a matter of law. If they don't get the right result, they can take an appeal. That appeal would go to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers North Carolina. And then they can always file next the motion for vindictive prosecution or selective prosecution. I mean, that's going to be easy. It's harder because the law for vindictive prosecution, usually before the Trump administration, is very difficult to prove. But not when it's the Trump administration. Not when you have the President of the United States going after, with high vitriol and angry, violent language and rhetoric, going after his political targets, and then the Department of Justice following suit. That collapse of the hierarchy of the Department of Justice plays into the hands of lawyers like Patrick Fitzgerald representing Comey because it's much easier now. It's a much shorter distance to travel to prove vindictive prosecution when you've got Trump as the chief law enforcement officer of his own Department of Justice, calling the shots for people like Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche. And we already had one example, a successful motion to dismiss an indictment brought by a target of Donald Trump, Kilmer, Abrego Garcia, where they successfully argued and got a motion to dismiss for vindictive prosecution granted. I mean, in the history of the Department of Justice, I don't know, that's happened two times in 100 years. But James Comey's got a very good argument. But you see, that's the reason he's waiting until the end to see what happens with the straighter, a little straighter shot, cleaner shot of trying to take it out by arguing that as a matter of law, it can't be considered a true threat. No one in their right mind, no reasonable person would interpret a seashells on a beach as being a true threat against the president's life or calling for it. It's ironic that Donald Trump cares about seashells on the beach and the Department of Justice seems to also, because they don't care a wit about things like the safety and lives of federal members of the judiciary, of federal judges all the way up to the Supreme Court. They do nothing to denounce it. You never see Todd Blanche come out and denounce it. You never saw Pam Bondi do it. They actually enable their client, Donald Trump to constantly attack and others in his administration to attack with vitriol, with violent rhetoric. Federal judges, plain and simple, or state court judges. I'm going to have with me on a special YouTube video on legal AF tomorrow. Judge Salas of New Jersey, whose own son was assassinated or was murdered when an attempted assassination against her went awry at her home. And now the depraved send pizzas to judges homes in the name of her son. Did you hear me? Yeah. Yeah. And we're going to hear from Judge Salas tomorrow in my interview about the threats to the judiciary. We're going to hear from Judge Beth Bloom, who sits in the in the court where I practice in Miami, Southern District of Florida, and several other judges. Join me tomorrow for that exclusive briefing of current federal judges talking directly to our Legal AF audience. So many different ways to support what we do. Legal AF, the YouTube channel. Come over there, become a free subscriber. It cost you nothing. But to us it is. I can't even put a price price on it. It is priceless what it does to support our channel. It lets us grow. It lets us. Our voice gets bigger. So your voice gets bigger. Your voice is heard. We bring on some amazing, amazing guests because of our size, our reputation, our credibility. I'm just your ambassador. 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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 this episode well, it's brought to you by IQ Bar, our exclusive snack, hydration and coffee sponsor. IQ Bar protein bars, IQ Mix hydration mixes and IQ Joe mushroom coffees are the delicious low sugar brain and body fuel you need to win your day. I've been looking for better grab and go options and I like having convenient snacks that fit into my day. The Ultimate Sampler Pack lets you try everything with nine IQ Bars, eight IQ Mix Sticks and four IQ Joe sticks. I also like that IQ Bars Plant protein Bars have plenty of plant protein, tons of fiber and no added sugar with over 20,000 5 star reviews and counting. More people than ever are fueling their busy lifestyles with IQ Bars, Brain and Body Boosting Bars, Hydration mixes and mushroom coffees. Their Ultimate Sampler Pack includes all three. And right now IQ Bar is offering our special podcast listeners 20% off all IQ Bar products, including the Ultimate Sampler Pack plus free shipping. To get your 20% off, text legal AF to 64,000 text L E G A L A F to 64,000 one more time. That's legal AF to 64,000 message and data rates may apply. See Terms for details. Welcome back to Legal A F at the midweek, I'm Michael Popak. I'd say I'm on vacation, but let's be frank. There's no rest for the weary and there's certainly things we need to do to protect the rule of law. I'm here for you and I appreciate of course, my family for giving me the opportunity and the time to speak directly to you on podcasts like Legal af. And thank you to our pro democracy sponsors. Let's get into our final topic. The one that keeps our audience up at night and me up at night is our right to vote. What's being done to protect it? As Donald Trump continues his assault, especially on mail in balloting, he's lost 18 times at the various federal court levels in his efforts to try to get voter data from the states. Really blue states, red states have just turned it over without, you know, they folded like a cheap card table. But the the blue states are reminding the President that there is a separation of powers, that there is a constitutional provision that makes only two entities responsible or have a role in in voting. One is the state's primary responsibility and finally Congress, if it decides to act. Conspicuous by its absence is any reference in the Constitution to the President of the United States as the Executive branch having a role when it comes to voting. Executive talks about executing faithfully the laws of the United States created by by Congress. Donald Trump's hell bent on being a legislator and taking advantage of a weak need do nothing wash rag of a Congress led by the Republicans. That'll change come the midterms with the vote. And Donald Trump knows that he's on a short time horizon and is trying everything he can to overturn the will of the people even before we vote. So in those 18 cases he's 0 and 18 in obtaining voter data. Yet he's created somehow a voter confirmation or voter integrity database error riddled prone to making mistakes like telling people who are American citizens that they're not allowed to vote, naturalized or otherwise, created by the Department of Homeland Security and Social Security on orders of Donald Trump. And then they use that database to try to deny the right to vote. And they're doing it in conjunction with the Postal Service, arguing that the Postal Service answers to Donald Trump. Okay, so there's been a number of lawsuits about Donald Trump's instructions to the Postal Service to weaponize them. Scary thought, by the way. A weaponized Postal Service, we'll leave it at that. But that they are. They're going to decide, the Postal Service is going to decide based on commands given to them by the president, which mail in ballots they're going to. They're going to deliver or withhold, and which mail in ballots that may have been obtained directly from voting offices are not going to be delivered by the Postal Service to the election offices for counting. So there's been a series of cases about that. There's. There's two. One at the First Circuit Court of Appeals coming out of a case ruling by Judge Talwani in Boston, one at the D.C. court of Appeals. They kind of came out four days apart. And now the latest that I wanted to bring to your attention is a new emergency shadow docket, emergency writ and motion for administrative stay brought by Donald Trump's former and current criminal defense lawyer and the Solicitor General of the United States, John Sauer, lobbed into the United States Supreme Court on their summer holiday to argue that Donald Trump is right, that he gets to control through executive order mail in ballots because he controls the post office. Like what? Now, I said earlier tonight in this podcast that Donald Trump's on a mini losing streak at the Supreme Court, and he is. He lost birthright citizenship, and the time has passed for him to file a motion for reconsideration, although he bragged that he would. So, no, he doesn't get to change the definition of who gets to be an American Citizen Born on US soil that was enshrined in the 14th Amendment since our Reconstruction period. He lost on his tariffs. I mean, he's trying to pop up with new tariffs that are probably equally as unconstitutional. But no, he doesn't get to use the Commerce Clause, which is resigned to Congress, or the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, I. E. But to set tariffs. So that got overturned. He lost. When it came to Eugene Carroll and her $5.6 million judgment, they refused to intervene to help him out of that, he lost. He lost in his attempts to try to undermine the Federal Reserve and destroy its independence by firing Lisa Cook. And gaining control of the Federal Reserve. So he's got a little bit of a losing streak going now. He had a tremendous amount of wins in the last two years about immigration policy, a woman's right to choose, due process and his ability to fire at will people in the executive branch, except at the Federal Reserve. Which brings us to mail in balloting. He just lost a mail in balloting case written by Amy Coney Barrett for the majority by trying to argue that all mail in ballots have to be not only date stamped the day of the election, but counted on the day of the election and received and they can't come in any day later. No grace periods. Well, that got shot down by the United States Supreme Court. So it's interesting when it comes to voting maps, how they draw maps to, in this, in this case give the Republicans a 10 seat advantage before we even run the midterm election. That's what happened. It's like going to a basketball game, looking up on the scoreboard before the game has even started and you're sitting in your seats and one team is up by 10 points. So that happened. But that's. And voting. Yep. When it comes to the Voting Rights act and the rights of black and brown and disadvantaged communities, Voting Rights act is dead. But that's different than how we vote. Election day stuff, early voting, election hours, how votes are counted, when they're counted. That is a sacrosanct sacred right that's reserved in power, reserved for our states. And so I'm not sure, in fact, I am reasonably confident and I'll come back and tell you when I'm wrong, if I'm wrong, that the United States Supreme Court doesn't have five votes to let Donald Trump monkey around with mail in ballots and use the Postal Service to deny the right to vote and to interfere with that sacred casting of a ballot and the election process. But we're going to find out a lot sooner than many people had thought because this petition for an emergency stay, which will put this on a short circuited track, there'll just be two briefs instead of three, as in a normal appeal. There won't be an oral argument. We won't be able to televise or put up any of the live stream of an oral argument, because there won't be one. And this will be decided on a kind of a temporary emergency basis in probably the next three to four weeks about whether Donald Trump, through executive order, can declare that mail in ballots based on a database of his own creation, which is, which is flawed which is incomplete, can be used to deny your right to vote and you and take away your ballot and use the postal service to do it, along with whether he can cut off funding to states that don't comply with his SAVE Act. Here we go again. He can't. He can't get it in the legislature. He doesn't have the political will of the Senate. He can't get over the filibuster the Democrats are going to use to block any attempt to pass voter ID laws. We already have laws on the books that make it a crime to vote fraudulently or illegally. Why do we need more? A penalty of perjury signature and a vigorous prosecution seems to be enough for our forefathers and for everybody until Donald Trump got into office. So this issue is going to go to that court, to the Supreme Court. They've asked now, based on that petition, that in the next several days, and we'll report on it here on Legal AF on the YouTube channel and on Substack, that the opponents, the 23 attorneys general, file their reply brief. I think as soon as they do, I'll get somebody like Attorney General Rob Bonta of California or Jade or Jay Jones of Virginia or, or Mr. Weissman of Colorado or we get the Arizona attorney general on with us to brief our audience about what should happen at the United States Supreme Court. And then we're going to have to sit back and watch. That's the scary thing. And they could enter that administrative stay, turn it into a preliminary injunction, turn it into a stay pending the full appeal, which would change the rules of the road for this upcoming midterm, which is exactly what Donald Trump wants to happen. Now, see, there were two lower court appellate court decisions that are in play as well. The first Department sided with Judge Talwani and blocked that database. The use of that database and the misuse or abuse of the postal Service to take away mail in ballots. A D.C. appellate court, a couple of days later, they took a different position. They said it's too early to come into the court. Right. Because they're very protective over their jurisdiction. They said, come back to us as soon as Donald Trump makes good on his threats to use the postal Service. So in other words, that could be on an emergency basis like a month from now. So we got a weird decision from D.C. but probably consistent with appellate jurisdiction. And then this First Circuit appeal, which was an affirmation of Judge Talwani from Boston's decision. And that's what we're seeing up at the United States Supreme Court. We'll cover it right here on Legal AF the podcast. We thank you for being such fervent supporters. Thank you for tolerating me, doing things in the dark, keeping the content coming to you on Legal AF, the the YouTube channel. There's an opportunity for you to free subscribe right now. Doesn't cost you a dime, but it means the world to us. Try to get us to 2 million subscribers before the midterm. That's our goal. With your help, we will get there. Come over to Legal AF substack, do the exact same thing. Become either a paid member, if you can swing it, or an unpaid member, a regular member, and that helps as well. Download the audio of this particular podcast. There's a QR code you can use to do it. We need more audio and we need five star reviews and comments for the audio version. These are the things that go into a successful podcast and a successful YouTube universe that we've created a fellowship that vibrates on the same frequency. And with your help, we will overcome this presidency and restore our democracy and our rule of law. And then finally, as people know, I formed a new firm dedicated to justice, dedicated to helping people in their most dire circumstances and needs. The POPOC Firm. It's a new website. There's a QR code you can use to get yourself there and start your free consultation. If we take the case, we will staff it with people that I'm associated with throughout the country that are people who have recovered billions in dollars of recoveries. If you've been injured by the negligence of others in medical malpractice, in auto accident, God forbid, wrongful death, somebody's died, you or somebody in your family, come to the POPOC Firm. The consultation is absolutely free. And I'll see you. We have so much to talk about this Saturday with Ben Meiselas on Legal, a podcast every day on legal AI, the YouTube channel, and on my live report on Substack. So until my next report on what was supposed to be a holiday, Michael Popak, shout out to the Midas mighty and the Legal A effers.