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- [00:01]
Ben Mysell
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- [01:01]
Michael Popak
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Ben Mysell
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Michael Popak
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Ben Mysell
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Ben Mysell
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- [02:30]
Ben Mysell
A lot to discuss on this weekend's legal AF A massive lawsuit has been filed against the construction of Trump's Golden Ballroom. And this one is a serious lawsuit that could result in the ballroom being blocked from further construction. An emergency hearing has been set in Washington, D.C. by a federal judge on Tuesday. We will break it down. The Department of Justice got rejected yet again in trying to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James before a separate grand jury. If this sounds like Groundhog's Day, it is. The first time they brought the case against her, it was dismissed for an unlawful prosecutor. The second time they tried to get an indictment, it was just outright rejected by a grand jury. They moved to another city and county and it was still rejected by a grand jury. We will break down what took place there now in the related matter of James Comey, where that case was also dismissed for the unlawful prosecutor in another case involving one of the key witnesses. In fact, the key witness, a guy by the name of Dan Richmond, and it was only his documents that were brought before the grand jury. In the Comey matter, a federal judge has found that there was an unlawful search and seizure of his emails. We'll talk more about that. In addition, more Epstein documents were released. And Judge Boasberg in Washington, D.C. is pursuing these contempt proceedings and he's not buying the attorney client privilege and executive privilege objections by Christy Noem and others at the White House who are trying to block the release of the information about why they violated the court orders. Lots of COVID ups, Michael Popak. But the wheels of justice now turn in the right direction. You're seeing a lot more judges, I think, be assertive in standing up to this regime. But we got a lot to discuss.
- [04:27]
Michael Popak
I had, I agree with you. I had Senator Whitehouse on a day or so ago and he so eloquently put it, most everything that you and I cover since Trump took over again and took over the Department of Justice, it's just another version of corruption. It's just corruption by another name. Everything that you and I talk about today can just come down to the C word. And you know, whether it's Donald Trump refusing to acknowledge the existence of Congress, whether it's trying to grab all the power from the other two CO/ of government and the Supreme Court, allowing him to do it, getting rid of regulators, getting rid of administrative bodies that would hold him back. Getting rid of the East Wing, getting rid of migrants under the Alien Enemies act without having federal oversight by judges. You know, we didn't even have on our list the National Guard decision that just came out, which is also corruption. So it's really at bottom, if you were to put a header on the top of the Trump administration and its Department of Justice, it would just be corruption. It is the most corrupt in real time presidency and Department of Justice ever in the history of America. And I'm not being hyperbolic and that's it. But the good news is we have to continue to report on it and commentate on it because, because elections matter. And 2026, as I've said before in other hot takes, is the most momentous year in my lifetime in terms of whether our constitutional republic survives or not. I mean, I hate to make it seem so, so, so dire, but it is. And, and I, and so this community that's been built here by, by Midas Dutch and legal AF are just so important. And that's why we got to cover these stories the way that we cover them. So people have knowledge and information they need to pull the right lever come election day.
- [06:40]
Ben Mysell
Look, this would be one of the most corrupt regimes if we were talking about in Russia, like in Orban's Hungary, like there is really no comp to another United States presidency because there is no attachment to the Constitution, to the norms and traditions of the country. It's just literally the attempt by Donald Trump to impose a Putin style authoritarian regime. Here you have a bootlicking United States Supreme Court that through procedural mechanisms of a shadow docket is staying and pausing. The legal term is a stay, but that means kind of pausing the district court judges who are blocking Trump's unlawful behavior. So the Supreme Court allows Trump to continue under the guise of we'll take this up in a few years when it comes back to us. And you know what they're going to set up is wait for a Democratic president and then they're going to say, oh, we were right. The whole, all of these things were so wrong. And, and now we're going to, weren't we Great. We're saying all these things are unconstitutional. Like, like, you know, they're setting it up to try to heads I win, tails you lose it, no matter what, what the outcome is. And, and what we need to do is we need to win the information battle, not specifically in a partisan way, but in a factual way, in a legal way. That's why this show exists to just say to you, the law matters and the law needs to be followed. And there's a reason why our laws and traditions are important. It's a reason why I and Michael Popak went to law school. There's a reason why I'm a professor at a law school right now. It's a reason that we have a legal AF YouTube channel. It's illegal. It's a reason why our country was, you know, was. Was viewed as before, with all its imperfections, as. As a model, not as the model of what not to be. And unfortunately for the rest of the world, they look at America with disgust right now. So let's just get into first this ballroom lawsuit, because, Popak, you and I have been talking about this for a long time. We wanted to see that lawsuit filed before the East Wing was destroyed.
- [08:51]
Michael Popak
Better late than never.
- [08:52]
Ben Mysell
Better late than never. And this lawsuit can still stop the construction of it. And the judge has a number of things that the judge could order also. It's hard to say, go back and rebuild it, but all these studies need to be done. I mean, I think we've even seen, for example, when you rush it like this, when you reject union workers the way Trump has here, and you don't go through the processes and protocols, there's lots of concerns about asbestos clouds and whether people were exposed to asbestos there from a health and environmental impact. People in the White House, around the White House and in the nearby community. Then, of course, there's just the historical preservation component of it. Like, there's a reason the White House looks the way it does America, if it wanted to. We could build castles. Okay, we have Disneylands. We could build magic kingdoms. We could build massive palaces. There's a reason the White House is the people's house. And it's a humble abode that. That sends a message. There's a reason we don't have golden ballrooms. Other presidents could have done it the right way. But, like, there's a reason our founders and the tradition of America rejected that type of motif. It's just not who we are as America or who we were as Americans. You know, and then there's. You can't just demolish the East Wing. There are processes in place and laws in place. And so Popak, there's this group, it's called the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States. They're a congressionally chartered group. If I were to say there was one good group that should be filing this, it's them. They know this area. Their Job, quite literally as a chartered congressional group, is to be the voice of the people in things like this. So at the end of last week, they filed a lawsuit. It got assigned to Judge Leon, who's a George W. Bush appointee, but from what I heard, he's a law and order guy who's a decent judge to draw. He's not one of these Trump lackey judges, but a law and order guy who will look at the facts here. And the National Trust for Historic Preservation, they're making a number of claims and they're saying, look, you violated the Administrative Procedures act by just ripping it down without giving a notice or public comment. You violated the National Environment and National Environmental Policy act by not doing any environmental impact statements, and you violated the National Capital Planning Commission related laws by not going through the Planning Commission and not submitting the claims. And one of the things they point out is you also committed fraud. You said you were going to go through the right steps. You said the ballroom was not going to result in any area of the White House actually being physically touched. It was going to be next to the White House, but that there wouldn't be any destruction or demolition. You said you would submit the plans and they bring receipts. Popak they said, look, even when you wanted to get up a fence during the first term, you had to go through all of these steps to change the fencing around the White House. That happened during the first Trump term. And then they went through every president. Whenever there would be any alterations, they would go through the planning commissions and they would do it the right way. And you can't just rip it down. So, Popak, I actually think that this lawsuit, the way it's crafted and framed, has a probability of prevailing on the merits. Ultimately, you know, the Trump regime is going to argue too late. It's already down now. There's nothing we can do. That's basically they're going to be their argument. I'm not sure Judge Leanne's going to buy it. What do you make of it?
- [12:19]
Michael Popak
Suit should have been brought in October, not in December. You and I had speculated about which groups of people and entities, and we even identified this one as having standing to bring the case. But I'm only saying half ingest, better late than never. Although, you know, Carolyn Quillen, who's the head of this organization, she issued a statement. She said it's almost like she was like, apologetic. It wasn't step one. It was our last option. Construction appears to be ongoing. Appears to be ongoing. There's a giant crane that's referenced in your complaint, that's been erected on the grounds of the demolition site. What is happening now at the White House could foreclose a meaningful review. It could determine in advance, it could determine in advance of the review what the project footprint is making making the review moot. So we felt we had no choice. You had no crap, Carolyn. So here's what the suit says. I'll just read the first couple of paragraphs. First. It starts with a description of the neoclassical design of the White House. As you said, a modest design. This would be almost three times larger, the Golden Ballroom, than the actual White House itself. Putting aside history that went out the door with the destruction of the East Wing. Leave it to our derelict first lady, who is completely derelict in her duties as first lady, to preside over the destruction of the East Wing, which is dedicated to first ladies and all of their history. Of course, it would be Melania. And it's obvious that Trump and Melania and the rest of them got a taste for doing this and scarring the sacred citadel of democracy when they tore down of the Rose Garden, when they put in pavers in the, you know, the rose in the Rose Garden area the first time. And the second time, like, oh, what else can we do? Let's tear down half the building. So the lawsuit says that, that they did so without. The Trump administration, did so without seeking approval from Congress. See, Congress, there's, there's that, that, that little stubborn little word again. Congress. The only ones who can determine what happens to federal property that can determine what happens to renovate or demolish it. Or as one reporter asked Carolyn Levette about two weeks ago, is it your position that the President could tear down the entire White House? What about the Jefferson Memorial? What about the Lincoln Memorial? Could he do that, too? Then you just sat back and watched Carol Levitt just double talk her way into abusing the press. It goes on. The defendants did not stop with the demolition of the East Wing. Recent reporting describes that on the former location. Such sad words that you and I have to say out loud. The former location of the East Wing is a bustling construction site. Great. You can get a ham and cheese and coffee at the. At the White House these days, with dozens of workers driving piles, stockpiling materials and amassing heavy machinery and erecting a towering construction crane. And then they come, I guess, to their point, no president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House. They are something every grade school kid knew, finally writ large in their complaint without any review whatsoever. Not President Trump, not President Biden and not anyone else. And no president is legally allowed to construct a ballroom on public property without giving the public the opportunity to weigh in. And it should be immediately halted and paused and so on and so on. And they said he may be right, Trump, about a certain aspect of review process that he doesn't have to go through. But he's not right under the National Environmental Protection act, he's not right under the Fine Arts act, he's not right under the, under the Historic Preservation act or the National Capital Planning Commission act or anything else, including you gotta go to Congress to get the funding. Now we've got, as you said, a doormat for Congress led by a doormat of a speaker in maga, Mike Johnson. And so of course the Trump is going to completely ignore and they're not going to do anything. Congress should have effing intervened. They should have filed this lawsuit. That's something you'll never see during this administration and that's why they're going to go down in flames. I'm talking about MAGA Congress at the midterms. You don't see any spine whatsoever. As the separation of powers is violated and the co equal branches of government is violated. As core constitutional, our core constitutional arrangement. It shouldn't be private plaintiffs and attorneys general have to argue about the separation of powers. It should be Congress suing the President and getting it before the Supreme Court. But will we ever see that in our lifetime with this Congress? No way. So they asked for and they've been assigned, as you said, to Judge Leon, who I actually like you and I covered him quite extensively. He's been involved with many, many things including law firms being put on blacklists and you know, federal officers being created by Congress being fired by Donald Trump. And you know, there's a whole lot of violation of the Administrative Procedures Act. There's in the, in the suit. There's a whole lot of separation of powers violation and all, all the rest of it. He's smartly called a hearing on Tuesday. I mean look, the demo damage has been done. You know, we can't snap our fingers and re reanimate the east wing, but he can stop the construction of the ballroom. Two weeks ago you and I reported on the fallout between the hand picked architects which I guess gave the national trust enough time to get their suit together because there was a fight because he said I'm not building this 90,000, I'm not designing a 90,000 foot ballroom. It's the wrong size, it's Double what we discussed. It dwarfs the main building, literally dwarfs it, and I'm not doing it. And so there's this whole fight that broke out between this architect that had been friends with Trump over it. So fortunately, there's no supervising architect at the present moment, and that's a good thing. But why do you think it took two months? And what do you think Leon's going to do about that in the temporary restraining order aspect as to irreparable harm?
- [18:53]
Ben Mysell
You know, I think that, to your point, there was an expectation of our checks and balances, that the normal checks and balances work. I don't think that this group, the National Historic Preservation Trust, is often in the game of doing these types of cases. Not to suggest that they haven't before, but this idea of the White House being literally torn to pieces, like, you know, they're used to dealing with, you know, what happens where there is, you know, a slight dent in the bronze sculpture outside of something. And do we repolish it or do we, you know, so I think just something of this size and magnitude, I think they had to figure out who's the right law firm to bring it, what are the right claims. I think they had to go through all of the prerequisite stuff. And in the lawsuit, they talk about, look, we sent a letter to, you know, Trump fired a lot of these other, like, commissions that would be involved, like the National Planning commissions. We reached out to them, they never got back to us. So we followed up again. They did all the precursor stuff, and I think the speed at which it was ripped down, the fraud to which it was represented, it was going to be something and it wasn't. You know, I just, I just think it was a matter of time for they, they had to. They had to get their resources together to be able to file it. They have a great law firm that's bringing the case.
- [20:20]
Michael Popak
Let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. Because a very interesting person involved in this case, you know, you. You saw it and I saw it. Greg Craig. Greg Craig had been in the Obama White House as White House counsel. He wasn't. Only he wasn't. Oh, he signed the pleading. He wasn't always at the current firm. He's at Foley Hoke. He was at my old firm, Scad Norps. When he was at Scad Norps, he got indicted for the Ukraine lobbying scandal involving Scad Norps. He was acquitted at trial. He's 80 years old. He was acquitted at trial. He had this illustrious career mainly in Democratic causes and working for Democratic presidents in the White House. So very interesting that Greg Craig at 80, is signing this pleading and bringing it on behalf of the trust. So certainly somebody that knows his way around, around Washington and around federal courts. But I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention that I was indicted but ultimately acquitted by a jury related to lobbying for Ukraine.
- [21:20]
Ben Mysell
Got a lot to discuss and we're going to talk a lot about just the overall incompetence of this regime. They say you can indict a ham sandwich, even innocent ham sandwiches a lot of times, but not when it comes to this regime. They've went to Norfolk, to Alexandria. They're like a band doing a tour, this doj, trying to get New York Attorney General Letitia James indicted. Oh, they don't wanna do it in this city. Let's do it in this city. I mean, and this stuff is just like we're reporting on unchartered territory. Lots of the stuff we're talking about. There's no way to go back and be like, well, actually, when this happened before, any normal DOJ would have fired Lindsey Halligan, like, immediately. Never would have hired her in the first place. And then after all the stuff we know that happened during the first case, I mean, in my opinion and in Popox and I think in others, this stuff is the obvious disbarable. Well, in our opinion, you know, yet alone, you keep this person on as the United States Attorney even though she's disqualified. It's very bizarre behavior. Let's take our first quick break of the show. A reminder. Michael Popak has started his law firm about almost a year in, and he's been representing a lot of our viewers and listeners. Go to ThePopoc Firm.com or call 877-popak AF. That's ThePopoc Firm.com or Call 877 POP AF. If you've been injured in a car accident, auto accident, if you've been injured by the negligence of others, medical malpractice, victim of sexual assault or sexual harassment, or if you know somebody who's been injured or someone who was involved in a wrongful death case, give a call. The consultations free. Also check out Michael popo substack legal af and check out the legal af YouTube channel as well.
- [23:10]
Michael Popak
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Stop right there. We're so achingly close to a million subscribers on Legal AF, the YouTube channel, which will hit in a year. As I joked recently, we have 400 million views in the year of our work. If I just got 1% of that to subscribe. I'd be on the heels of the Midas Network, but at the very least, help us cross the one million Before Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.
- [23:40]
Ben Mysell
You're never on the heels of the Midas Network. You're shoulder to shoulder on the front lines. Let's take our first quick break of the show.
- [23:47]
Michael Popak
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- [26:47]
Ben Mysell
Welcome back to Legal AF. Thank you to all of our sponsors. This show is not possible without those great sponsors so go check out the discount codes in the description below. Michael Popak let's talk about what happened in New York. Attorney General Letitia James ongoing being targeted by the Trump regime over and over again and how she keeps defeating the regime without even really having to do anything in these grand juries. They tried last week, we reported about it. They tried again this week and they were rejected twice. The grand jury did not return a true bill and rejected the claims of mortgage fraud against her. So you had that taking place. And then separately, as far as we know, the DOJ has not yet gone to another grand jury on the Comey case and you'll talk about maybe why to try to get Comey indicted again. But there's been updates there as it relates to one of the key witness or the key the only person whose information was utilized during the first grand jury. Although during the first grand jury, we know from all of the filings and what was exposed that the FBI agent had these documents that he shouldn't have seen and the FBI agent by seeing attorney client information should never have testified in the first place. And then Lindsey Halligan gave fake false instructions and then gave a fake indictment signed just by the foreperson that the grand jury didn't end up seeing to the judge. Which kind of the most basic grand jury procedure is you have to show the full grand jury your document, not just take one person and say, hey, sign here. So Popak, what's the latest update this week?
- [28:40]
Michael Popak
Yeah, well, let's start with Letitia James. That's relatively straightforward. We knew after Judge Curry three weeks ago had fired Lindsey Halligan effectively as the U.S. attorney, although apparently nobody's told Lindsey Halligan that she's been fired. She still shows up to work every day and signs things as the U.S. attorney I think she should be prosecuted for impersonating a federal officer. I don't know what her job is. And federal judges are not happy in the Eastern District of Virginia and are questioning including judges assigned to cases like Comey's case. Like why is she still signing on pleadings as the U.S. attorney? Even in recent filings that she made related to James Comey's case, she signed it. She. There was two other lawyers with her, but she still signs things as the U.S. attorney. But she got fired. There is a vacancy that needs to be filled. I'm not quite sure why the Eastern District of Virginia judges haven't gotten together to fill it and create this constitutional crisis, but they haven't. And in the meantime, you know, probably her number two guy named Robert McBride who's slightly older than me, semi retired. They pulled him out of whatever he had been a U.S. attorney Assistant U.S. attorney in the past from Kentucky of all places. They shoved him into the Eastern District of Virginia to babysit her. So he's been the one with his team and people not named Lindsey Halligan trying to get another indictment of Letitia James on mortgage fraud. There it was an avenue opened because there is no statute of limitations problem or the time in which you must bring an indictment or it's found to you are found to have been precluded because of a lapse of time. Almost every criminal statute, but not every criminal statute has has a statute of limitations once it runs your sol, if you're the prosecutor, sometimes you just to give a little inside baseball if you're negotiating like you and I used to do for on behalf of clients in cases involving crime with the Department of Justice or something similar to it. And they were running up against a statute of limitations issue because they should always have their eye on that. They would often ask you for a tolling agreement giving them more time. Some people might think, well, why would you ever sign that that to give them more time? Because if you don't, they'll just rush in and indict you anyway and you're hopefully in some sort of discussion mode for a plea deal. So you don't want to piss them off completely. Although I have been involved with cases where I've told them to go pound sand. I'm not. I'm not signing the tolling agreement. But that's how important that issue is in the everyday world of prosecutor defense attorney negotiations. The plenty of time left on mortgage fraud. And just to remind people, because I know people are joining the story late, there's no Mortgage fraud.
- [31:28]
Ben Mysell
Here.
- [31:29]
Michael Popak
Letitia James, among various other pieces of property that she's acquired, bought a. I mean, talk about a modest home. When I give you the price, people are gonna think I'm talking about some. Some transaction in, like, 1980, $118,000 house she bought three or four years ago in Virginia. Why Virginia? She has family there. She has. I think her father lives near there, and her plan was to have it as a second home and to let family members stay there that need to stay there. She's got a niece with kids, and she's let the person stay there. Has she been renting it out? I've been told by lawyers that represent her in the press that there is no rental agreement. She's just been letting family stay in a house, and she visits it as well. Where's the fraud? You know, and to hear Lindsey Halligan, when she was still in the case, there was $17,000 worth of rental income. No, Lindsay, there was $17,000 in. If. If you're right, that she should have gotten a higher interest rate based on a document that she signed that would have been her savings over 30 years. So you're telling me you want the American people to believe and grand jurors to believe that the attorney general for the state of New York, in order to save the equivalent of five Starbucks coffees a month, decided to commit mortgage fraud? I mean, and. And now grand jurors are not buying this. So there's always been this weird forum shopping, grand juror shopping that. That the Trump DOJ has been using in Virginia. In the Eastern District, there's two main locations, two main districts. There's Norfolk, Virginia, and there's Alexandria. And they've been running back and forth between the two of them. The Major Crimes Unit head for the Department of Justice. At the day that Lindsay Halligan arrived, Liz, youse gave a memo that said there should be no indictment here, and I'm not gonna go for an indictment in Norfolk, Virginia. There was already a grand jury up and running. She got fired for having let. Let it be known that she had recommended against any kind of indictment, which, of course, a jury's eventually gonna know about. She gets fired, then they move to Alexandria, Virginia. Oh, we don't like that grand jury, even though that's where the house is located. Let's go to Alexandria. And so they go to Alexandria. And Lindsey. Oh, Lindsey Halligan gets an indictment. Okay. The indictment gets thrown out. Now they run back to Norfolk, Virginia, and they can't get a re indictment. That was last week or almost two weeks ago because the grand jurors didn't re. So they go again, but they move it to Alexandria, Virginia, and they don't a second time. They can't get an indictment because by this point, as our colleague Karen Freeman Agnifolo put it on Wednesday so eloquently, grand jurors can read and they know what's going on. And then they have sided with Letitia James, the defense against the prosecutors. And even though there are presumably career prosecutors like this guy McBride who's in there grand, I mean, just picture for a minute, you and I have never been inside of a grand jury room because we're not allowed in there. We're allowed to, or jury deliberation rooms for that matter. Although you and I have spoken to jurors after they're done, which we're allowed to do. But can you imagine in a grand the grand jury deliberation room when they seat them and they tell them they're here on the case of US vs. Letitia James, the New York Attorney General, how much eye rolling and, and, and, and moans were there in that room before they got started? I am sure there was quite a few like that. Effing case. So what we're watching with this Department of Justice that has spent, I never thought it would only take 10 months to completely sully and undermine the prestige and reputation of the Department of Justice. I thought it would have had take longer. But in just 10 months time, Trump and his Department of Justice have so sullied the name of the Department of Justice that federal judges don't believe a word that they say. They don't believe a word that the witnesses, who are often Department of Justice lawyers, they don't believe a word that they say. They don't give them the presumption of regularity any longer. Juries don't believe what's coming out of the mouth when you're presenting your case. If you're saying that you're representing the United States of America, grand juries are not believing them. We saw it in Washington. You interviewed the woman who had been attacked by ICE or some during a protest and they tried four times to get an indictment. They couldn't get it. So this is our way as Americans to vote against the corrupt, lawless regime, as you like to say of the Trump administration. So I'm not telling you not to follow the facts as presented or the legal arguments. But if you are not buying what the Department of Justice is selling and you're a juror or A grand juror, you should vote accordingly. And that's what we're starting to see. You and I speculated about this. I think Adam Schiff had said something like it in an interview with you a few months ago, which was the long term deleterious impact on the Department of Justice's reputation as it plays out in the courtrooms as jurors and judges and grand jurors no longer believe them, is yet to be seen. And now, 10 months in, 11 months in, this is what we're seeing. But to round it out before I turn it back, it's exactly what you said. We don't have a comparator for this. You and I can't go back in history and say, well, it's just like the Johnson administration, or it's just like when Andrew Jackson took over the department. We've never had this. Okay. And federal judges fighting with the United States Supreme Court in open warfare never saw that either. So for people that are kind of joining law and politics kind of in progress through our show or otherwise, there is no historical exemplar that we can point to because this is unchartered territory.
- [37:37]
Ben Mysell
Popak, talk about what's going on with Comey where you had a federal judge, the Comey case, just like Letitia James case, was dismissed several weeks back because you had an unlawful prosecutor. Lindsey Halligan was the only person in the room when the indictment on both those cases was secured. In many ways, Lindsay Halligan being disqualified may have been the best thing for Lindsay Halligan, because in Comey's case, she was in a lot of ethical trouble. And judges were about to make rulings to the extent she wasn't disqualified about her behavior in the grand jury room using a witness, the only one witness, an FBI agent who was exposed intentionally so to this attorney client information between Comey and Dan Richmond. Essentially, the main witness that they were going to try to claim if this case went to a trial was the witness against Comey was Dan Richmond, Comey's lawyer and friend. Okay. And they got the information in inaccurate information through an FBI agent based on hearsay, who invaded the attorney client privilege and shouldn't have had access to this information in the first place. And then, I believe, misrepresented what it said. Halligan also gave incorrect legal instructions, fraudulent legal instructions to the jury, and then we also know, presented an indictment signed to the magistrate judge that the grand jury never even saw. So there was all of that. So that case gets dismissed on the disqualification grounds, though, the same way New York Attorney General Letitia James case got disqualified, got removed on the disqualification grounds. But now that lawyer of Comey, who's a Columbia law professor, Dan Richmond, he initiated a legal proceeding in Washington, D.C. federal court because his documents were essentially stolen from his computer by the DOJ and utilized in that proceeding. And he's like, there was no warrant for this. You just basically took documents from my email account that you never should have had access to. You never had a warrant for these documents. And tell us what happened, Popak, with this judge's order.
- [40:04]
Michael Popak
Yeah, I learned a lot about things. I didn't realize Blu Ray discs were still being used to collect evidence. But apparently in 2017 and 2019 and 2020, Daniel Richmond produced documents to the FBI in two different tranches. In 2017, he voluntarily turned over his computer and had it imaged. We call it imaged. Apparently it was burned onto a Blu Ray disc, video disc, with all the gigabytes of information. And that was done because Richmond was a part of the cast of characters and admitted, has already been professed by or confessed by both Comey and Richmond, that when Richmond worked as a lawyer for Comey, as a special FBI employee, they had been friends since their U.S. attorney days in New York. That Comey, needing to try to get a special counsel prosecutor appointed to go after Donald Trump for the corruption in the first Trump administration that he experienced, used Richmond to leak several memos, CYA memos to the New York Times for the sole purpose of trying to get the public up in arms about Trump trying to interfere with a criminal investigation of Michael Flynn. And he used Richmond as the conduit. It's all been admitted. So there was an investigation about that. There was a separate investigation that codename Arctic Hayes, about Hillary Clinton and her emails. So between 2017 and 2020, in two separate tranches, Richmond turned over his files. But there were warrants and there were limits to that, and they dealt with those investigations. Now, the government kept the documents, kept the Blu Ray disc. I know that because Judge Kolar Catelli, in her order from yesterday, told this whole story. And what she ruled is that the government retaining for 2017, 2018, 2020, all of this material, the Columbia University emails, and all of the imaging of his computer and laptops and all of that. The retention was not the problem. That's not an unlawful search and seizure or seizure. The unlawful search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment and in callous disregard for, for his rights happened in September of 2025, led by everybody starts with Lindsey, ends with Halligan. Lindsey Halligan, who gave permission to the FBI to go back to the Blu Ray disc, or as I like to joke, the box on the shelf and go rummaging around through it again to find communications between Daniel Richmond and his. And his client, lawyer, client, James Comey, and the FBI agent, without regard in this warrantless search to any of the prior restrictions and without a new warrant, opens up the box 18 days before the indictment, when they finally got in to get the indictment, and starts rummaging around the Blu Ray desk to look for these communications and finds them. And then therefore is. Is tainted or polluted because he saw things he shouldn't have seen through a warrantless search. Now, the reason, as Judge Kolar Catelli in D.C. which is where this issue came up, the reason she thinks it, they did it that way without a warrant, is they're running out of time. There was only 18 days to go before she had to get that indictment under the statute of limitations. So they were like, effort. We don't have time for the warrant. Go through a process where Richmond would move to quash and there'd be a process. They couldn't get it done in 18 days. So they were like, just look in the box. So he looks in the box and then he goes and testifies about stuff he shouldn't have seen, like attorney client privilege, information that is a cardinal violation of the Fourth Amendment. The issue for the judge, and this is where she came up with a nuanced ruling, the issue for the judge is, and she says it right in the first paragraph of her order, when there has been a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment and an illegal warrantless search of somebody's material. What's the remedy? The government Department of Justice spent almost the entirety of their opposition brief saying this is just a stalking horse motion. This isn't even about Richmond. He doesn't care about getting his stuff back. It's all about trying to help his buddy, James Comey. And it's really a suppression motion that can only be brought by James Comey after an indictment. And she said a collateral issue that it may or may not help Mr. Comey is irrelevant to the Fourth Amendment violation of the professor that I'm dealing with now. So what, she. She granted the motion and this is how she. This is how she thread the needle for our audience. Very. And I thought it was done. Well, to be frank, all of the Blu Ray disc and the data taken from Richmond has to be immediately returned to Richmond and certified on Monday by the Department of Justice. The Attorney General that that has been done and all copies and versions and derivatives of it have to be destroyed. With one exception. The government is allowed to make what I'll refer to as a deposit copy, one copy of the Richmond stuff to be deposited in a neutral location, the clerk of the Eastern District of Virginia court system, where it will sit until there is proper subpoenas, search warrants, litigation oversight by a federal judge or magistrate about who's ever going to get the Richmond docs and how they can be used. It's not going to be her problem. She sits in D.C. it's back to the Eastern District of Virginia, particularly Judge, Judge Nakmanoff and Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick who sit over the Comey issues. I still think they'll get the case if there's ever a re indictment. So the deposit copy gets sent to the Eastern District DOJ destroys everything in their possession and returns it all to Richmond. If you and I are right that the sole basis, the foundation of the indictment against James Comey for having given a one sentence answer to Ted Cruz in a Q and a in 2020 September at a House Oversight Committee meeting. Do you stand by your prior testimony? I do. Okay, if that, if the foundation of that is the Richmond testimony in order, in order to get the indictment from the grand jury, the Richmond files and they're now not going to be able to get the Richmond files that easily without going through judges and suppression and a motion to quash hearings which she invites in her order. You know, Richmond, you still got an ability to move to quash this stuff. And there'll be that fight if they don't get that. And they have, under your and my calculation, they're completely out of time and the statute of limitations on perjury is running. They've thrown up an argument that there's a statute that deals with defects, technical defects in indictments, which is exactly what it sounds like based on the case law. Like you left out an element of the crime, you forgot to sign it, you know, you missed paragraph numbered. Then you've got six months to fix that. They're going to argue we get six more months because we had a defect and her name was Lindsey Halligan. We had a defect in the appointment of the U.S. attorney. No, that's not the defect. The appointment of a, of a US Attorney who turned out to be invalid and unconstitutional results in no indictment, which is what Judge Curry ruled. And therefore no clock stopping on the statute of limitations. So you see, that fight's going to happen and all that's got to happen. If they need the Richmond stuff, which I think they do, because they've never suggested the Department of Justice they have another avenue to go after Comey. If they can do without it, they'll have to do without it. If they need it, they're going to have to wait to go through a process and hope they don't come up against the other six month outer boundary for the indictment. But it's short answer good news for James Comey, good news for the Fourth Amendment and Professor Richmond's rights who have been vindicated. The Trump administration can go appeal to the D.C. court of Appeals if it wants to, if they really want to do it. But I think my, my prediction, there's a 20 or 30% chance they're ever going to be able to get an indictment against James Kobe. And then if they do, then we're back to the world of vindictive prosecution, dismissal, selective prosecution, dismissal, maybe defects in that new indictment. The issue that we just talked about, which is the statute of limitations, but that's all going to be handled back in the Eastern District of Virginia with Judge Nachmanoff and Judge Fitzpatrick.
- [49:31]
Ben Mysell
And now that the composite file is with the Eastern District of Virginia, their judges and magistrate judges, all of these judges have the experience now with this Eastern District of Virginia prosecutor's office that is being unlawfully led by Halligan, who keeps still signing her name to these pleadings even though she's been disqualified. And so, so you would have to have Halligan, who's been disqualified by them, who's pretending to be the United States Attorney still, even though she's basically been evicted and her argument is, you disqualified me, you didn't evict me yet, you're going to have to get an eviction notice. They're like, yeah, when we say go, that means go out of the building, not go Rams, like go Yankees or go Dodgers. It means go out of the like, what are you talking about? Well, you never specifically said where to go, or you said, I'm disqualified, but.
- [50:29]
Michael Popak
From what Judge Curry said, vacancy has been created by the illegal appointment of Lindsey Halligan. How much clearer does she need?
- [50:36]
Ben Mysell
Clearer can you be? And Halligan goes, well, that doesn't mean me. Yeah, it literally means you. So now you're gonna have, you're gonna have to have that Eastern District of Virginia office with zero credibility petition the federal judges based on the unlawful search and seizure, that these attorney client documents should now be utilized in a grand jury proceeding. You know, what the Trump regime was hoping is, look, we bring this into a grand jury. There's no judge in it, there's no lawyers for the other side in it. We just lie to the people who don't know about the process and we just, and we just get these indictments and then kind of who cares after we got the indictments that we don't even need to think about the next step. And one of the things that I want to tell you all is that part of the law and being a professional or being a grown up is you have to think about the next step. Okay? You have to think about when you do something, what happens thereafter. And that's an important thing to. It's an important thing to. Oh, by the way, Popak, while that's going on, you have the DOJ posting those Franklin the Turtle or Franklin images trying to recruit immigration judges by stealing the IP of this beloved Canadian cartoon. They're like, do you want to be an immigration judge? It's like, this is how you're advertising for being a judge was once a really big deal. Okay? Not anymore. According to this doj, Franklin is helping write the next chapter of America. You can too. We're looking for patriotic legal professionals to serve as deportation judges. Your work will have generational consequences. Applied today. Join.justice.gov Franklin becomes a deportation judge.
- [52:19]
Michael Popak
Like how you have Midas Canada and your guy there, Angus, I'm sorry, why a turtle in a powdered wig? I don't. What is it? What's the connectivity here?
- [52:31]
Ben Mysell
The connectivity was that Hegseth did this originally as a. He thought it was funny to show a children. Just a children's. He could have used See Spot Run or Good Night Movie. He just showed the popular children's character book.
- [52:47]
Michael Popak
It makes them softer, it makes them more.
- [52:49]
Ben Mysell
And so he showed it as. This is Franklin's new adventure. He is blowing people up and committing war crimes. Oh, and that was. And that was Hegson. So since then there was outrage to that because you know, from Canada and from people here who don't like war crimes saying like, why are you doing that? Like that's so like. And then so like the right wing MAGA's like, that's how we own maga and we're owning people. So they've continued to use Franklin now because it's pissed off people as like a way to troll. Like, like hahaha, this makes libs angry. So it's like it's not just make libs angry. You just look stupid. And we're trying to not look stupid.
- [53:29]
Michael Popak
Like put on your encyclopedic knowledge here for a minute, which you always have have. I thought there is another frog. That is a QAnon. Yeah, yeah, right. Anti Semitic frog. So they're using a turtle, a green character. Why don't they use like Mickey Mouse? Why don't they rip off Disney and it's new AI deal? Well, they use Mickey Mouse as the, as the.
- [53:53]
Ben Mysell
It's just intellectual theft of K because they're, because they're just such crappy. The whole thing is just. There's Pepe the Frog.
- [54:00]
Michael Popak
Pepe the Frog.
- [54:01]
Ben Mysell
But they specifically want to go after a beloved cartoon in Canada because we, because honestly, the DOJ and Department of Defense right now is run by a bunch of like, you know, I would say toddlers, but the Hodlers are more mature. Let's take our last quick break of the show. A reminder. Go check out Michael Popox law firm. If you've been injured in a car accident, auto accident, or know somebody who's been injured as the result of negligence, go to 877 or call 877 Popoc or go to thepopoc firm.com the consultation is free. 877-POPAK AF or go to the popoc firm.com they have lawyers all across the country. The consultation is free. Subscribe to the Legal AF YouTube channel. As Popo said, it's on his way to 1 million subscribers, so subscribe there and check out the Legal AF sub stack as well. We appreciate everybody subscribing to all of those Legal AF properties. I will be right back after our last break of the show.
- [54:58]
Michael Popak
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- [58:04]
Ben Mysell
Welcome back to Legal af. Thank you to all of our sponsors that make this show possible. Go check out the sponsors. The discount codes are in the description below. So it's a big week. Michael Popak where under the Epstein Transparency act, which is a law, although it frankly has no enforcement mechanisms or teeth in the law, which is a fatal defect in the law, which is probably why the DOJ just told Donald Trump if you sign it, it literally does nothing different than what the status quo was anyway, which is you have the ability to turn it over. So just sign the thing and we'll make our own Objections, and we'll not turn over the things that we don't want to turn over. But anyway, it's due this week. Right. And we've had smart judges across the country in response to the Trump regime's demand that the transcripts from the grand jury proceedings in Epstein and Ghislaine's case be made public. These judges made clear, first off, there's nothing in here that will matter to the victims and survivors and the public, because anything that was in here is small, like literally 85 pages, like with a single agent who testified. But, you know, Ghislaine had a trial, so all that stuff that was in the grand jury is in the public trial that's out there, or it's in the underlying indictments that people are, are aware of. These are not the Epstein files. And the survivors and victims have been misled and the public has been misled that somehow the grand jury transcript is the file. So the judges made very clear, we'll release the grand jury transcripts now in light of the Epstein Survivors Act. But there's nothing in here that's going to be of import. But what you saw Judge Engelmeier do in the Southern District of New York, for example, he's one of the three judges that talked about releasing these grand jury transcripts. He said, okay, I'll, I'll release mine if you tell me what you have in yours. So he made the Trump regime list all of the files that could constitute the Epstein files. So there's a whole list of everything there. So we, and we also know back from the great FOIA work, Freedom of Information act work of Bloomberg and others. But Bloomberg, the reporter Leopold, does a great job. He showed that back in March, there were over a thousand FBI employees and DOJ employees assigned to the redaction squad or whatever they were calling it, to go through the Epstein files. And there was like massive $1 million in overtime alone that was paid during a one week period of like, massive redactions taking place to these files. So these were all ready to go in March and, and people were tasked with going through and finding Trump's name or people Trump knows and others and like redacting stuff. So that's been in the works for a very long time. And so Popak, on the eve of this release, you had Democrats from the House Oversight Committee publishing a number of new photos that were fairly disturbing, not fairly, they were like disturbing photos. I mean, it's a combination of Trump with, with young ladies or girls. And then there's like all this like Epstein sexual stuff of like massage stuff and gags and something a pussy pump. It was like literally. That's what it said on it. I'm not using that language myself. That's what it said on it. You had like extreme restraints, like ropes job. It's crazy stuff. I mean this is sickening stuff stuff. Popoc, Trump condoms, something. I'm huge. Trump condoms. So that was released and you know, look, I think the Democrats in the House Oversight Committee want to keep the pressure and attention on this as as this week. But what do you think happens this week as the Epstein Transparency act hits its 30 day mark? Ultimately, what do you think the DOJ is going to produce?
- [62:20]
Michael Popak
I want to manage expectations the way that you do. Donald Trump has blown through and ignored deadlines, congressional deadlines before. See Tick tock. I don't think he thinks it's a real deadline. I think he'll calculate whether he can take the political heat or not when they release some but not all of the documents that his FBI and Department of justice has looked at and he's been briefed on. He's never needed congressional approval in the separation of powers to release executive branch documents that were held by the Department of Justice and the FBI under his command. The Congress thing was always a ruse, was always a distractor to try to say, to try to point to somebody else that was blocking his own quote, unquote willingness to be transparent when we know all he wanted to do was to continue to cover up his close personal friendship and relationship with a convicted child sex trafficker and an indicted one who committed suicide rather than, or took his own life rather than go through a court process. And the more that Donald Trump boxed himself in and painted himself into a corner. I didn't really know these people. I wasn't really that close to them. That required and that force the media and House Democrats to continue to do reporting and, and unearth and report on as we have videos and photos and pictures to show the close personal relationship between Donald Trump and Ghisain Maxwell and, and Jeffrey Epstein. And it's up to the American people to question why somebody who alleges that he did not know about the depravity and the immorality and the criminal conduct of some of his best friends, why he spent so much political capital and so much resources to hide and cover up for these people if he wasn't really somehow involved. As you and I both said independently, we have something called an adverse inference in courtrooms that if you don't produce something that you should have produced or you don't. Right. Or you spoliate it, you, you destroy it or whatever the version of that is. The you, the jury can make an adverse inference that the documents that you're not producing are the ones that would be adverse to you, the ones that would harm you. So the COVID up and the COVID up of the COVID up that we've been watching ad nauseam since the beginning of this administration when Donald Trump, you know, for political purposes on the campaign trial, said, I'd release the files and then it was like, holy crap, what's in those files? And once he learned what was in those files after being debriefed by Pam Bondi, it was like, we're not releasing those files. Let's say the Congress has to release them, which again, has no role in Congress interfering with the criminal investigation. Then you had, let's pin the blame on federal judges, do that. Now, the only thing that came out good for the congressional statute is that it did lead to federal judges like Judge Berman, Judge Engelmeier and Judge Smith in Florida to release everything that they had and get out from under their federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6e problem on grand jury secrecy and to release other documents like the Maxwell exhibits, which you and I reported on in real time when it was happening. So at least that came out of it. But if anybody thinks Donald Trump, there's just going to be a data dump and a link everybody can go searching through the hundreds of thousands of pages that were reviewed by the FBI. That's not happening and I don't expect it to happen. And what you're watching with the Oversight Committee and the Democrats, like Garcia and others, is you are basically playing chicken with the, and warning the Trump administration that we have access to the motherlode of Epstein estate documents. I mean, you and I reported on 19 and then 70 photos. There are apparently 95,000 images that the, that the, depart, that the House Oversight Committee, the Democrats have in their possession that they obtained from that hard drive of the, and the, and the email boxes of Epstein and Max and Epstein. So they're using that as a compelling Donald Trump who doesn't know, you know, it's asymmetrical informational warfare here. He doesn't know what's in the box that the, that the Democrats have. And he, they're letting him know. It's like proof of life. They're sending fingers and ears and toes after they're telling him. You keep effing around, you think these are bad. We got 95,000 more images that could have your name or picture on it. So that's how, and it's smart it, you know, the Jamie Raskins and all this. Very, very smart because they happen to have a, a confirmation load of documents at least from the Epstein estate where they can say, what about this? You better produce all your docs because if you don't, you're not going to like what we produce. So we'll get it all anyway. But I think that's what we're, that's why it's just like these drips and drips. Let's do the photos for the Epstein island and show the massage tables and the dentist chair and the whatever. Let's do the sex toys and let's put Donald Trump's face and photos that he can't deny and can't say they're AI of him with young girls and you know, with, with this, that and the other thing. And so that's a very smart move by the House Democrats to do what they're doing. We're all about protecting the survivors and giving them back their dignity. I just afraid that it's, they're not going to be happy with what happens in the next 10 days or so when the deadline comes.
- [68:33]
Ben Mysell
Yeah. You know, and you know, Trump in the White House and the magas on the, in the House Senate Democrats, you're cherry picking and you know, and you know, the people who are there, you know, they're not, you know, you're misrepresenting who's in the photos and this and that. Well, then just release the whole files. Like just release everything at the end of the day that's, you know, Trump does know what's in the files because they have the files, the custody and control is in the doj. And from all of the reporting and everything we know, Trump was told his name is in there repeatedly over and over again. Frankly, you know, these images were bad. But to me, the real, I mean, the real smoking gun type of stuff I thought was those emails, that initial batch of emails from the Epstein estate. I mean, you know, where Donald Trump is mentioned before Epstein ever even felt that he was in personal criminal jeopardy again after the sweetheart deal. You know, we're talking 2012 emails, you know, 2014 emails where Trump is mentioned in reference to girls and Epstein activities and Trump's behavior at a time where you, Trump was not running for office and in real kind of sickening ways. So if you were to tell me that those emails are what's in the file. And you know what Epstein was doing, and you know the circle that Epstein ran in with other pedos. And you said, well, actually, you know who their other best friend was in this crew? Trump. But he's saying he didn't do any of this stuff. But then we have him on tape saying that he grabs women by their genitals because he's rich and you get away with it. He's been found liable for sexual assault. We'll move on to the next topic. But Popak, every time also, Trump's behavior is mentioned on tv, they're always like, but there's no allegations that Trump was involved. Trump's been found liable of sexual assault. Talking about like, that's not a normal thing to be found liable in a federal jury of sexual assault in civil cases. That a jury heard this and said, yeah, that guy did it, that guy did it. And Trump's excuse as well, it was a finger and not the genitals. So. So there, like, I just want to, as sickening as that is, I just want to remind people this is a guy who's been actually found civilly liable in a federal court case before a federal judge and a federal jury. Popak, last thing I want to talk about is contempt, contempt, contempt. You have Judge Boasberg moving forward with or on his own ready to move forward with contempt proceedings against Kristi Noem and others who defied his order. He asked them to submit declarations about their involvement, and their response was to assert privilege and not turn anything over. So remember how the Trump DOJ invaded attorney client privilege in the prior segment that we gave, and a judge said, well, that's unlawful search and seizure. You stole somebody's privilege. Well, now they want to use privilege improperly as a shield to say, oh, you know, the doj, we're our own client, and Kristi Noem is actually the client and all these people in it. So all of our communications are private as the doj. Even though Kristi Noem makes all of these videos in public and, you know, goes on Fox all the time and holds all these bogus press conferences, she ain't gonna testify under oath. She'll say all that stuff on Fox, but she ain't gonna go under oath. Why would. Why would she do that for? We. We don't do that no more.
- [72:37]
Michael Popak
So.
- [72:37]
Ben Mysell
So you have that. And Judge Boasberg's like, yes, you are. You just submitted a declaration that said you're not going to say anything. So show up and we'll take the objections one by One. Now, in any normal time, Michael Popak, a hearing is held and then later you can appeal it or you object one by one. Objection, objection. During the hearing itself. But you don't just stop a district court's hearing from taking place. But that's precisely up until this point. The latest thing that happened was the D.C. circuit with these two Trump judges who do anything that Trump wants. They did an administrative stay. Remember back what I said earlier, using procedure as a way to allow Trump's fascism to take place. And these Trump judges said administrative stay. We're going to stop a district court's hearing. So I'll toss it to you, but there's a broader point before we go to of these district courts, Trump judges, Obama judges, Biden judges, Reagan judges, these district judges are pretty much doing the right thing. The problem to a lesser extent is the circuit court judges and to a massive extent at the Supreme Court. So Popak, what's going on here with Boseberg?
- [73:50]
Michael Popak
Yeah, Boseberg's doing the right thing. I mean, he restarted his criminal contempt probable cause hearing, fact finding after an en banc panel of the meaning all of the Judges of the D.C. circuit Court told appellate court told him to do it. And this all has to do with whether an order he gave orally at the end of a hearing on March 15 memorialized in a written temporary restraining order grounding planes from flying continuously to El Salvador with Venezuelan men on them without due process, without federal oversight, whether that was violated or not. Now, subsequently, that order, just to add some confusion to the mix, was overturned and vacated by the United States Supreme Court. But that was later question was the power of a federal judge or any federal judge to ensure that their orders are complied with. You can't violate an order even if you think it's, it's unconstitutional or illegal or it's an abuse of power or it's a left wing radical Marxist judge and you may get it overturned one day by your buddies on the Supreme Court. That doesn't give you the right today to violate the order because we'd have utter chaos and anarchy if you could just go, I think I'm going to win on appeal. So f you Judge, I'm not listening to your order. So this is a strange but not academic case about the power of a federal judge to inform enforce their own order. He is already believes, based on the evidence that he's obtained already, that there is probable cause to believe that there's been a criminal contempt violation by Kristi Noem and Department of justice attorneys who did not tell him the truth. That's the second judge we didn't. We're not going to talk too much about Abrego Garcia here today, but earlier this week, a day or so ago, we already had a judge, Judge Zinnis and Maryland find that six different Department of Justice witnesses and the Department of Justice attorneys themselves did not tell her the truth about Abrego Garcia at various times, including about what countries would or would not take him in a removal process. Again, back to our theme of the Department of Justice's reputation lies in, in rags at their feet. No one believes a word that they say. And that's why you're getting people saying things like contempt, contempt, contempt. Zenith is going to do it in Abrego Garcia as well. She dropped in a footnote that she's going to take that up, that lying part up at another time as she released Abrego Garcia from jail or from detention on Boasberg. He had a three judge panel that fractured his order and it was Katzis, Trump, Rao Trump and Pollard, I think at the time, not Trump. Two to one. And they said no. And then the Supreme Court under the Supreme Court said that the order itself was unconstitutional. Not because he'd done anything wrong, because they felt like it was the wrong court, the wrong procedure. Supreme Court said that should be done by judges closer to the detention, like in Texas at the time, and a writ of habeas corpus mechanism. That was the only reason that they overturned him. So the, once the judges allowed him to go back and issue a new order and new fact finding about the violation of his order that before it was overturned, then the he's been moving towards that conclusion. He set a hearing on December 15 for contempt. He ordered after reading these affidavits that don't say anything, I make it worse for them. From Kristi Noem and a couple of lawyers in the DOJ and Emil Bovey on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, he's going to hold an evidentiary hearing. He's started asking questions. He wants True Ensign. I've told people from the last six months True Ensign's in a lot of trouble because I believe he lied to a federal judge. So does Erez Reveni, the whistleblower, who's also ready, willing and able to testify about what he was told the day before, before the March 15 hearing by Abel Bovey to go tell federal judges to go f off and don't, don't stop planes from flying in to El, to El Salvador. So he want, so Judge Boasberg wants to hear from him. The. The Trump administration filed a motion for reconsideration and said, judge, you're making a mistake. You, you, the best you could do is refer this to the Justice Department and we'll take it from there, meaning we're not going to prosecute ourselves. But you can't do anything else. You can't inquire anymore. You can't get beneath attorney client privilege. And the ACLU representing the men wrote and said you've waived attorney client privilege. You waived it because you put the issue at issue. And you also, there's a crime fraud exception and you're participating in a crime or fraud on the court. And therefore you don't get to not tell us what the advice was to Kristi Noem. Before Judge Boasberg could rule on the reconsideration, the doj, as they are want to do, filed a writ of mandamus. Not quite an appeal. It's to get an order from the appellate court to compel a federal officer, in this case a judge, to do something or not do something to stop the hearing. When you don't like a hearing, you don't like a procedure, you don't like a process, you know, it's not an appeal, it's a mandamus. So they file a mandamus. And would you effing believe that in the allegedly random wheel that spun, they got two Trumpers again, including Katzis again, who is totally against Boasberg on all of these issues. This time joined by. By Walker, who's a very young judge. So Walker and Katzis issue the administrative estate. Michelle Childs from South Carolina, who was shortlisted for the Supreme Court by Joe Biden. She said she would not have stayed it. I mean, you know where she's at. And now they're going to get full briefing on this issue. But look, the writing's on the wall. Katz has it out for Boasberg. He had it out for him in April. He's going to have the same sentiment again. He'll probably get Walker to join him. It'll be 2 to 1. And then the ACLU is going to have to ask for en banc and see if the rest of the justices of the D.C. court of Appeals are going to eventually side with Boasberg. In the meantime, the case kind of stays and gets stuck in the mud. But I just don't see how appellate judges, Ben. Can stand for the proposition that a federal judge's orders can be completely flouted and ignored and abused. And there's no repercussion for it. It's just a dangerous place for us to be in. And you know what? You and I are gonna have to, you know, figure out the gymnast, the. The jurisprudential gymnastics that they're going to take with their eventual order a month from now. But that's where we are with Postman. Yeah.
- [81:08]
Ben Mysell
And. And there's this tension that's never really been seen before between the district court judges, the circuit court judges, and the Supreme Court. And the way, again, I would describe it is the district court judges seem to be getting it right 85% of the time, actually, you know, not all that they make some bad rulings, but in this area of Trump democracy, Trump cases, there are about 85. To my view, they're about 85% on target and right. With about 15% decisions that are, like, really wacky, but about 85%. Right. Then to me, the circuit court, it brings it down to about 60%, 55%. And then the Supreme Court, you bring it down to about 10%, 15% doing the right thing. I just think that's, you know, and so the federal judges, and we're talking about judges who are Trump appointed judges, too, and Reagan appointed judges and George W. Bush judges. These federal judges, they spend a long time drafting these orders that are hundreds of pages long. They hold many trials that are, you know, or actual trials that are weeks long with dozens, sometimes hundreds of witnesses. They make findings as the referee basically in it, like, you know, trying to call balls and strikes. They've seen all of the evidence. And then you have an appeals court that just made up of Trumpers, like, ah, we're just gonna stay at administrative stay, or the Supreme Court does it, and the Supreme Court doesn't even give a reasoning. They're just like, yeah, you know, we just find right now that Trump would face irreparable harm if the status quo isn't preserved. And the status quo is what Trump did, not the status quo before Trump did the unlawful things. Oh, so we're not saying that Trump is right. That's how the Supreme Court tries to dodge. We're not saying he's right. What we're saying is preserve the status quo, which is what Trump did, then just bring it back up through the court proceedings, and we'll see in five to six years. Which has the effect of letting Trump do whatever he wants to do. Because when the status quo, then Trump just goes and does his unlawful agenda. So that's the status of things right now. What's important is that knowledge is power and that you're educated and all this stuff so you know what's really going on. And you could be an informed voter and informed citizen and we could get through these issues together. Michael Popak, it's always a pleasure spending the weekends with you and the legal efforts out there. Reminder to everybody hit subscribe on this YouTube channel. But even more importantly, hit subscribe On Legal A YouTube YouTube channels search Legal AF on YouTube. Help Michael Popak get 1 million subscribers on Legal AF. Then check out the Legal AF sub stack while you're at it. Also, if you or someone you know has been injured in a car accident, an auto accident, as victim of sexual assault or harassment, an employment discrimination case, you name it, wrongful death case involving someone you know, reach out to the Popoc Firm. 877-popocaf is the phone number or go to you the popoc firm.com Michael Popak is representing a lot of the legal AF viewers and listeners. Don't be shy. Give a call. He's got lawyers across the country. Consultation is free. Go give that a phone call and thank you to all of our sponsors. The discount codes are in the description below. Thank you everybody for watching. We'll see you next time on Legal af. I'm Ben Mysell is joined with Michael Popak. Have a wonderful, wonderful day, everybody.
- [84:52]
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- [85:24]
Ben Mysell
Hmm. It's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.
- [85:28]
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Could you be more specific?
- [85:29]
Michael Popak
When it's cravinient.
- [85:30]
Ben Mysell
Okay. Like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter, available right down the street.
- [85:34]
Michael Popak
You at ampm?
- [85:35]
Ben Mysell
Or a savory breakfast sandwich I can.
- [85:37]
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Grab in just a second at ampm. I'm seeing a pattern here.
- [85:40]
Ben Mysell
Well, yeah, we're talking about what I.
- [85:41]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Crave, which is anything from ampm.
- [85:43]
Ben Mysell
What more could you want? Stop by AMPM where the snacks and drinks are perfectly craveable and convenient. That's cravenience.
- [85:50]
Michael Popak
Ampm. Too much good stuff.