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- [00:00]
A
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B
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What I bought a new Blink Mini 2K smart security camera. What I got 2K clarity sharp enough to see every detail of home when I'm away. Plus audio like I'm in the room, not with my bestie traveling to another city. Plus easy plugins set up to install faster than skipping through podcast ads. But you'd never Skip ads, right? Plus I got all of this for just $49.99 Blink Mini 2K mini camera max performance shop now@Amazon.com.
- [01:26]
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- [02:26]
A
Welcome it's only the midweek, but welcome to the midweek of legal af. No, no, don't adjust your dial. That's not Karen Freeman Ignifolo but that is Dina Dahl, who regularly sits in for one or both of us when we are doing something like traveling or trying cases or something in that world. I'm so pleased to have Dina Dahl, my colleague and compatriot on unprecedented on Legal AF here to sit in for Karen Freeman Igniflo, who is in court and so much to talk about. But we have to curate it. You know, we have a, it's like a fire hose of legal news. You know, we frankly literally need two channels to cover it. You know, between Midas touch and legal AF YouTube just to cut and even that we could have a spin off like ESPN3. We could have literally have a legal AF2. I'm going to talk to my producers about that after the show is over. But when all that is said is done, let's get down to I'll do a little. I like the kibbutz at the beginning. People know that about the show before we get into like our hard topics and just have a little open an open dialogue here, a little bit conversation between you and me, Dina. So how do you see this? We've got sleepy Donald Trump who can't keep his eyes open even during orchestrated cabinet meetings that where it's all scripted so that every person from Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary to Marco Rubio, Secretary of State to Pete Hegseth, who's about to be convicted one day as a war criminal, just sit and praise Fearless leader. He can't even stay awake for that. If you can't stay awake for the part that you orchestrated, that has nothing to do with the substance of your administration. How are you possibly up to the task of the job? And he got all hot and bothered because a reporter for the New York Times rightly reported that he is gassed, that he is out of energy and flagging. He's working four and a half hours a day, and that's not including the time that he's golfing. He didn't like that and started bragging about his cognitive testing again.
- [04:40]
What are you just at the top of this podcast, what are you observing? What's the most interesting or shocking thing in the first 10 months of this administration that you've observed?
- [04:53]
B
Oh, wow. Just that. But before we get into it, happy birthday, Popak.
- [04:59]
A
It's the Se Sante Grande.
- [05:02]
B
It's a birthday special.
- [05:07]
A
Yes. That's why I have a door behind me and not my usual office. I'm on holiday with my family. But thank you. Look at that.
- [05:18]
Well, Christmas stockings soon need to be stuffed so that was a very, that was a very nice treat. Yeah. But listen, there's breaking news. What am I going to do? I mean, my wife thought, thankfully, is so understanding that she lets me disappear into this, this corner of the, of the hotel room. But thank you for, thank you for acknowledging that. I do appreciate that. But no, seriously, seriously, folks, 10 months in, you can put your version in comments tonight. But for what are you observing here? You're a student of government, of law, of the intersection. What is the most shocking thing so far that you've observed in this presidency?
- [05:56]
B
I think there's two things and it's a super interesting question because sometimes I feel like I have ADHD when I talk to somebody because we're so in the middle of it. It's like, wait, what happened last week? Like you said, there's some, so much that happens every single day. But I think two things. One is the major expansion of presidential power, which I know we're going to talk about a little bit because obviously he's doing it with the help of the Supreme Court. But that to, because that's beyond Trump, let's say even past Trump, and whether or not it has to do with him putting in federal troops in the cities, him removing people within agencies, him frankly just telling the attorney general who to appoint and not appoint. That is, even though we, we all warned that he was anti Democratic, that is still stunning, that attempt to really elevate the office of the president above the other two branches. And Frank, Project 2025, so many of the things when you go through what he's doing is in that plan. And my concern is, is that Trump is uniquely bad. Right? I mean, like you were just showing him falling asleep when people are, you know, this is his supposed to be his favorite thing, favorite thing, favorite thing in the world. And he still can't stay up for it. But then on the other hand, he's also a puppet. And I'm, and I am concerned about the effectiveness, let's say, say with Project 2025 doing, frankly, so much in the, in the last 10 months.
- [07:25]
A
When you say the, when you say a puppet, do you mean like people like Stephen Miller and Russ Voats and others are really the pulling, the pulling the levers of power while Donald Trump barely stays awake to go after personal grievances, retribution and play golf?
- [07:44]
B
Absolutely. He likes power for power's sake. Plus he likes to get rich off of it. But he's not making any of the decisions. The policy decisions around all of it really got made already with their Project 2025 manual. I mean, just like a little tidbit, you know, when that recent thing where they changed the loans so that nurses no longer are considered professional. When I dug into that deeper, there is literally a Project 2025 paper written in November 2025 that says they need to change the federal loan policy because the current loan policy is basically keeping people in higher education and not having them produce as many babies. You know. So you see there's a lot of the actions that he take is in lockstep with their plan.
- [08:30]
A
But then the cowardly thing is they don't put that on the bumper sticker when they change the policy. They say, hey ladies, great news, you can have more babies because we're going to be taking away your ability to get higher education. Like, I don't remember that being debated that way. But you're right. When people like you, intrepid reporters and commentators here, illegal af and I'm midas touch, when we do the digging and we, and we find the connective tissue, this is what we find. I guess for me, I agree with those two. I guess for me it is the bald, bald.
- [09:05]
Lining of his pockets with his family and the fact that there's no real pushback. I thought MAGA would be maga, Congress would be a limp noodle, it wouldn't do a thing about it. But the fact that even mainstream media that they just, we're like, oh, he made, he made $5 billion for himself and his family in the last 10 months.
- [09:27]
Like so it's just the self aggrandizement which led us to the ballroom. These, sorry, the, the East Wing and all of the history of the first ladies being torn down by Donald Trump. Not even in the middle of the night. I think that's one. And the second for me is the fact that how bad and how south his policies would go as quickly as they did. The velocity at which his presidency failed within the first 10 months, I think it, I guess it's symmetrical to the shock and awe. You know, four corners, you know, flood the zone approach to 220, whatever it was, executive orders on day one. I guess that's the flip side. The flip side is when you move with that type of velocity, you could also fail with that type of velocity. But I think, I mean, I knew it was going to fail, but I did not anticipate tariffs being his third rail that he would constantly grab to electrocute his own administration as often as he has, you know. But again, you and I could spend a whole show and we could have a whole panel and we'd all. It's like, it's like shopping at the supermarket. No two baskets are the same. Right. It's remarkable that you and I will not have the same shopping cart.
- [10:48]
B
No. But I do think it's interesting that you bring this up because we're about a year out, right, from that really devastating election that took a long time for us to kind of get out of it. I mean, it was depressing, right? A really, really depressing loss. And I wouldn't have thought just a year later, MAGA was so fractured that Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned. Right. I mean, to your point, things happen much faster. I knew he wasn't going to popular. He wasn't the first time around. That is why he lost. But the velocity, to your point, I don't think I would have thought we had quite the whiplash that we are having, that it would have been a slower burn for him to get to.
- [11:27]
A
This point or that he's decided. I mean, usually when you are, when you lack popularity, popularity at home and you see the polling numbers, you either make an adjustment, but this guy just decides, well, I'm shitty at home, let's see how shitty I can be globally. And so, you know, like he's barely holding on to this administration and yet it's like, hey, what's going on in Honduras? I got a great idea. Let me interfere. Let me release from a 45 year prison sentence a Honduran former president who was a cocaine trafficker. Can I repeat that for a minute? Donald Trump was busy trying to stop fentanyl, the 12 pounds of fentanyl that come through Canada. You could tell I'm being tongue in cheek there and blowing up fentanyl boats in the Caribbean, by the way, that's not fentanyl, it's cocaine. But in any event, he just let out a guy who was responsible for like a million tons of coke into the United States in order to influence the election, in order to side with the party of the guy who was the coke dealer and then claimed the American people. He's doing it in the name of drug interdiction. You're going to benefit the. And it looks like it's not working. The Honduran candidate of the same party as the drug dealing president that you just released and claim that you're doing it in the name of drug interdiction. And now let's put Tennessee and Honduras together. Donald Trump's magic lamp keeps rubbing it, but good things are not happening for him any longer. Right. You've got. He's all excited because, hey, we barely won Tennessee. He carried Tennessee Trump by 22 points. This guy barely beat in Tennessee a Democrat by six. That's a win for the Democrats, people. That's a 16 point swing. Honduras, the people of Honduras look like they're rejecting Donald Trump and they're gonna be siding with the moderate candidates there. What do you make of that?
- [13:40]
B
Yeah, I mean, to your point to Tennessee, she really ran on affordability. Afton Bain. That was her message. And you had a day before Trump say affordability is like a bad Democrat slogan. You know, it is weird how his political, I don't know, instincts, you could say are completely gone. Because you can see with Mamdani's win with the winds in New Jersey, you know, people do care about affordability, frankly, that is why he got some Latino voters to vote for him, is because people, even prior to this, you know, are having to work multiple jobs and, and, but instead of him trying to pivot to the policy, he calls it some sort of Democrat flaw. And the Honduras move, I think is very unpopular even among his MAGA base.
- [14:28]
A
Right. And like for Mumdami, I thought it might have been evil genius for him to embrace Mandami and the affordability argument. Like we were all looking like, what is he doing here? You know, because if you think about it, if he just stayed there and just did this nice bro fest with the Democratic socialist in the White House, he could try to say, see, I get affordability. But no, three days later he's saying, under the Trump economy, affordability is a con job. I agree with him. Affordability under Trump's economy is a con job. It's impossible to obtain. But to your point, the instincts, the superpower that he thought he used to have, and I'll be fair, in terms of political analysis, Bill Clinton had the same problem. Bill Clinton, as he aged, he was always known as a tremendous political strategist, even beyond like Barack Obama. I mean, Bill Clinton of his day, in his day was, I mean, just a man of the people, just had it at his fingertips. I feel your pain. That was like a real thing. He understood politics and rural, urban, red, blue. I don't even think we called it red and blue back then in any event. But he lost his powers as he aged. He just wasn't in the mix in the know, the way he was before. You can see hermetically sealed. Donald Trump is not getting the info that he needs in order to make good decisions. And he hasn't realized the narrative and the ground has shifted under his feet.
- [16:14]
B
That and perhaps his dementia is making it so he's blurting out stuff and he has no control. You know, nobody becomes president without some sort of political instincts. Right. He is an entertainer at heart. He likes to, he, he knows what the audience wants and he was able to play into that and lie to the American public, but understand what his audience wanted. And now we do see a disconnect. I 100% think he brought, you know, he did that brofist with Mamdani because he saw Mamdani was a winner and he wants to co opt that win, which was a typical political instinct. That is what got him here. And then completely sidestepped it. Perhaps it was age or dementia or his inability to control it. We'll see.
- [17:01]
A
And he has nobody around him that gives him political advice that's any good. I mean, we know who his political operatives are. You know, it's Stephen Miller. You know, Susie Wiles is just trying to hold on to her job as the chief of staff. I don't think she's giving him good political advice. And, and, and here is the result. And then we haven't even touched on it. We won't really have much time to touch on it. But we will talk about for a minute, you know, Pete Hegseth one day being indicted for war crimes. And, you know, he thinks he created a new defense the other day at the cabinet meeting, you know, the fog of war defense. It was a fog of war. It was a lot going on. There was smoke everywhere. Couldn't figure out who was clinging to what boat. I'll let the, I let the special ops it. And Trump's like, yeah, I left after. I had other things to do. I left after the first video. Well, you've got two bipartisan republic committees in the House and the Senate, including the Armed Services Committee for the House and the Senate that are opening up investigations here to get to the bottom of it, led by former veterans and they are not happy. Pete Hegseth does not have a lot of support in Washington, you know, understandably for how poorly he's performed. And he was always under, under or no qualified for that position to begin with. And you know, him saying his new version of. He went from. We don't have the clips tonight, but I'll do it in a hot take soon. He went. Pete Hexeth went from. You know, in the early days of the first couple of missile hits, I was very, very involved with every aspect of decision making. All right, well, we're talking about the very first hit on the boat on September 2nd. And then the Washington Post is standing by. It's reporting that Pete Hegseth gave the oral command to double tap the boat and kill the two remaining people with their backs to the missiles. No threat to America and the fog of war. I don't know. That ain't gonna work, Pete. And you don't have the immunity protection that the President of the United States does. And I'll tell you who knows that. Donald Trump. And he's going to be. We've watched a lot of bus throwing though, thrown under the bus issues with Trump lately. Kristi Noem thrown under the bus in the Boasberg criminal contempt proceedings. Like who gave the order? Who gave the code Red to send the planes to El Salvador, you know, after Judge Boasberg said to ground them? Kristi Noem. That's convenient. Who gave the code Red to double tap the boat? Pete Hegseth. You know, and now we've got even Cash Patel. I'm not sure Cash Patel makes it till December 19, when the Epstein files are supposed to be released, because I don't know. Did you see that? Suddenly Donald Trump's podcaster of choice, who writes and works for the New York post, got a 115 page secret memo from the FBI, including current members, reporting that basically Cash Patel and Dan Bongino should lose their jobs. It was an exclusive of Miranda Devine. Donald Trump's been using the New York Post to leak gossip since Cindy Adams and Page Six in the 70s and 80s. That was a setup and Cash Patel is not going to make it. But look at these people that because they like Howard Lutnick and the rest, they think they are the president. They delude themselves. They don't have the power, they don't have the protection. And they're going to be the first ones thrown under the bus, right?
- [20:32]
B
Oh, absolutely. And I think that the fact that there are those significant leaks having to do with Hegseth and Cash Patel shows that the cracks are well beyond what we're seeing with like the Marjorie Taylor Green resignations. They are in that inner circle in the White House, in the Pentagon, for these leaks even to occur, which thank goodness for those of us who actually care about our Constitution, our democracy, we need these leaks. This is how we're going to get information. And the Hex head story is rapidly changing. As you say, he keeps on changing back and forth. But you know, he's in trouble. Him. And unfortunately, anybody who carried out that order all the way down because the DOJ put out that memo trying to give them legal cover. But if they're court martialed, that DOJ memo doesn't have the same kind of significance. The soldiers who were prosecuted for torture in the Iraq war also tried to rely on the DOJ Memo back in 2002. That kind of gave a legal cover to enhance interrogation, as they called it. But what prevailed was the army handbook. And here you're going to have like the Navy handbook and what other military were involved. And I'm from people who know more than me, it sounds like the shipwreck scenario is in that handbook. So this is definitely going to be something with consequences. But we are. Which we will obviously have to follow because it's rapidly moving this story.
- [22:04]
A
Absolutely. So why don't we do talk about Mar A Lago. There's been a development there before we take our first break. I think we can cover that pretty efficiently. So remember Eileen Cannon, Alien Cannon? Dina?
- [22:21]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [22:22]
A
Donald Trump's favorite judge. Well, Donald Trump decided that he needed to remind Alien Cannon that he's still the president. He nominated her as a judge because he's now moved to intervene in the lawsuit, the Freedom of Information act lawsuit, effectively brought by American Oversight, which is a public interest group, and the Knight Foundation.
- [22:45]
They have been litigating for many months now in the 11th Circuit and at the Southern District of Florida courtroom of Cannon to get volume two of the Jack Smith bestseller about the Trump prosecutions, Volume one, we saw already a couple hundred pages related to the election interference case that was in front of Judge Chutkin, that was released by Merrick Garland with the approval of Judge Chutkin, and that was that. But volume two, dealing with Mar? A Lago, the espionage act, the obstruction of justice, Donald Trump's role in all of that is using employees like Carlos D? Ol Viera, an IT worker, and his butler, Walt Nauta, to cover up for the fact that he basically stole classified documents and took them with him to Mar? A Lago when he shouldn't have. That volume two never got released. It was one of the many failings of, I think, of Merrick Garland. He should have released that before he left office and said he left it with a cover letter addressed to Pam Bondi, like, well, it's in your hands now.
- [23:54]
And Jack Smith could release it on his own. It was blocked from being released by Aileen Cannon for good reason. At a particular moment, that case was still going on against Walt Nouda and Carlos de Ol Vieira. But then that case Got dismissed by the Department of Justice and through appeals, and there's no chance they're going to be prosecuted again. Statute of limitations is going to be up by the time the Democrats take over the Department of Justice, and this Department of Justice isn't going to be prosecuting them. So release, you know, release the document. Eleventh Circuit sends it back and gave Alien Cannon 60 days to make her decision. Why don't you talk about what you picked up in the filings and where? How do you think this is going to come out?
- [24:38]
B
Well, thank goodness, first of all, for the nonprofit organizations, so many doing such good work throughout many Trump actions here and keeping this, you know, the toads, the fire. And to your point, Trump has a much harder argument for stopping the release of this information because his former aides are. There's no longer a trial. You know, you would say otherwise. Releasing information could prejudice potential jurors, not give them a fair trial. Now that that's off the table, it's going to be much harder for Judge Cannon to come up with a reason not to. Of course, this is Judge Cannon and, you know, so she likes to do the bidding of Trump. We think that she was hoping for a higher appointment from him. You know, who knows, Maybe she's still looking for a promotion. In any case, you know, the argument is basically one is grand jury proceedings. It should remain private. There's confidential information, national security information, and the big Jack Smith wasn't even validly appointed. So this information should not come out because basically it's part of a case that was was never validly brought and investigated to begin with. That's essentially the Trump argument. But it is really hard for, you know, and Cannon maybe will get reversed on this if she does rule in favor of Trump. Because the fact is, is Merrick Garland was appointed by Jack Smith. No higher court has actually upheld Judge Cannon's earlier decision that, you know, she took the Justice Clarence Thomas footnote from the Supreme Court decision and kind of tried to run with it. But that's never actually been validly affirmed, let's say, by an upper court that Jack Smith was invalidated appointment. So you have a valid appointment by Jack Smith, you have a valid investigation, you have valid subpoenas, you have valid, you know, gathering of information. So it is very hard to argue against the release of this information. As you said, Volume one was already released. So and especially now that you have these former aides dismissed, she has about 60 days to decide. So it will be mid January when we find out her decision.
- [26:56]
A
Yeah, I Agree with you. I think it should be released. I think Cannon's going to do everything she can not to release it, and it's going to go. She got reversed Twice of the 11th Circuit the first time around. And I think Judge Pryor, who's the chief judge sitting In Atlanta, the 11th Circuit is just chomping at the bit to get another Cannon case back in front of him. And I think if she Fs it up, I think the 11th Circuit will fix it. I think we'll ultimately see. Now, look, I'm not going to be shocked by anything in the Mar a Lago. You know, there was a, I think there was a superseding indictment in that case. It was 37 counts. We got a lot of the evidence. We understood a lot of the evidence from reporting and from hearings and from filings and from motion practice and press conferences. So do I think. Yeah, I mean, there might be some interesting tidbit in there about, wow, I didn't realize that person was involved in that. But by and large, I think we've gotten a lot of it. But it needs to come out to the public. You know, we spent tens of billions of dollars for that investigation. And Donald Trump was, was.
- [27:59]
His lawyers were genius in blocking that release while he was running for office. But now there's no reason why, and it's a public record and it should be released to the public. So I agree with you. I think she's going to probably find a way to screw it up and then the 11th Circuit will have to, we'll have to bail it out. So we've reached sort of the, the, the first segment, first portion of our podcast. So glad to have Dina Dahl here sitting in for Karen Freeman. Igno. Thanks for all of your support. Early voting has already started. I mean, for the podcast. You can show your love for the Legal AF podcast the way you have been. I mean, I, I really want to embrace our audience. The fervent support of our audience. We are in YouTube's recent rankings. The everything related to Legal AF is doing fantastic because of our audience. Number 56 of the top 100 podcasts in, in all of YouTube is Legal AF the Intersection, a show that I do on my own, which is on Tuesdays hit number 30, its highest rankings. Yeah.
- [29:07]
B
Congratulations.
- [29:08]
A
Thank you very much. And, and then on Apple and Spotify audio versions because we exist there too as well. You know, top 50, top 60, top 70 in news and other things. We just, we were just kidding around today about Spotify rankings. I learned a lot of Things about, you know, how, how Legal AF is doing on Spotify. I also learned that our producers number one most listened to artist was Taylor Swift, which I appreciate it. I don't think he realized that he had sent that around.
- [29:37]
Or maybe that wasn't his. I don't know. Anyway, it was funny when I saw it. And then there's a lot of different ways to support what legal. I see. Oh, I see that. Our, our audience. Oh, he said our. He's trying to bail himself out. He said the audience is number one. I would say.
- [29:55]
Yeah. So we have a Taylor Swift audience. That's very, very good. I appreciate that. Legally after YouTube channel, another way to support what we do. Dean is over there with me doing unprecedented. I got 10 other contributors, 11, 10, 11 videos a day because we need it at the intersection of law and politics. We're at, I don't know, 975,000 subscribers. We're with God's will and your help, we're going to cross the 1 million barrier by the time Christmas and Hanukkah roll around and Kwanzaa and whatever else is out there. So we appreciate that. It's all for free. That's a completely listener supported audience supported channel. And then we've got Legal AF substack. I just ran a sale. I ran a. Forget Cyber Monday, forget Black Friday, it's popoc birthday Tuesday. And we got almost a thousand people to become paid, paid subscribers. Yeah. Over the Thanksgiving weekend of my birthday to support what we do. And that is a way to really support financially what we do. I'm always like, God, how do you. With all the editors and the, and the thing. And when you, Adam class felt this and how do you do all that? Well, this is one of the ways we do all that through Legal. I have substack and then we have some exclusive content available to our subscribers. It's like seven bucks a month. I appreciate it. And that's. And that's where we're at. And then we've got these amazing pro democracy sponsors. What I mean by that is they know what our show is about. They know kind of from big picture what our viewpoint is and what our analytic tools are and what our opinions are. And yet they are here weekend and week out. It's the way that keeps us on the air. And we, and we really appreciate our pro democracy sponsors. They never censor us, they never would. If they don't like what we do, they move on or we move on from them. But these are, these are sponsors that are very very important to the ecosystem around Midas Touch and legal life. And we appreciate them. And here's a word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by IQ Bar, our exclusive snack and hydration sponsor. IQ Bar is the better for you Plant protein based snack made with brain boosting nutrients to refuel, nourish and satisfy hunger without the sugar crash. And I'll be honest, when you cover law and politics as intensely as we do on Legal af, you need fuel that actually works. IQ Bar has genuinely become part of my everyday routine. I love starting my mornings with the toasted hazelnut IQ Joe 200 milligrams of clean caffeine zero jitters. My go to bar is the Mint Chocolate Chip IQ Bar and if I need hydration without sugar, Blueberry Pomegranate IQ Mix is my number one. It really keeps me sharp without that midday crash. If you want to try it all, the Ultimate Sampler Pack is the move. It comes with nine IQ Bars, eight IQ Mix sticks and four IQ Joe sticks. Basically a greatest hits bundle. And the best part, everything IQ Bar makes is totally clean. 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It is an incredible scientific breakthrough to support our long term health and wellness. And you guessed it, healthy aging. Fatty 15 co founder Dr. Stephanie Van Watson. She discovered C15 while working with the US Navy on aging dolphins. Over 100 studies now show that C15 strengthens our cells and helps slow biological aging at the cellular level. When our cells don't have enough C15, they become fragile and age faster. That's called Cellular Fragility Syndrome, the first new nutritional deficiency in 75 years. One in three people worldwide may have it. Fatty 15 is a science backed, award winning, patented 100% pure C15 supplement that repairs cellular damage, boosts sleep and brain health and helps your body feel younger from the inside out. I've been taking fatty 15 for a few months now and I really started noticing deeper sleep and more energy throughout the day. I wasn't expecting much at first, but I've actually seen a difference and that's saying a lot when most supplements don't deliver and it comes in a beautiful reusable jar with easy refills sent right to to your door. Fatty 15 is on a mission to optimize your C15 levels to help support your long term health and wellness, especially as you age. You can get an additional 15% off their 90 day subscription starter kit by going to fatty15.com legalaf and using code legal af at checkout. Welcome back. You're on legal af at the midweek with Dina Dahl sitting in For Karen Freeman, NickNiffalo and me, Michael Popak. All right, Dina, let's get into the law and politics side. We've got a number of things that have happened involving US Attorneys, none of them good for Donald Trump. You've got in the last two weeks, some of which I'm going to talk about with you in the last like 48 hours. You've got Lindsey Halligan fired as the US Attorney in Virginia, the prosecutor for.
- [36:11]
James Comey, former FBI director, and Letitia James and with her, the indictments are bounced as well. Then you have a week or two later, Alina Haba as the District of New Jersey U.S. attorney for the entire state, get fired by a unanimous panel of the Third Circuit sitting in Philadelphia for similar but different reasons, but very, very similar. Now you've got this Thursday, Letitia James in her capacity as the New York attorney general in her office arguing to a judge in Manhattan that John Sarcone in the Northern District of New York should be bounced and his grand jury subpoenas against the New York attorney general's office be quashed because he was illegally appointed. He also is a liar, by the way. He lied and said that the judges of the Northern District of New York extended his terms when they did not. I mean, how do you lie about that? Anyway, all of this going on and then you've got the DOJ talking tough about we're going to appeal right away and but there's some new reporting about their, their chosen Strategy may be to indict. Re. Indict first and then appeal second. What, what have you heard? Kind of piece this together for our audience. Letitia James, James Comey, Alina, Haba, this and what they're doing next. What they're. So our audience is not surprised.
- [37:45]
B
Yeah, I mean all three of those are really similar and that their appointment expired except for Halligan. Basically Siebert, who was in the position before her appointment expired and then the Attorney General wasn't able to, let's say, appoint a substitute. And it's so all, so all of the actions, hobby. And then the reason why, obviously Halligan's indictment of the two Comey and Letitia James is because she wasn't valid the appointment. But I think that this is interesting and I know maybe this is my theme, maybe our theme for the show is the executive power, the unitary theory of this expansive power. Because the fact is Trump says over and over, I have a mandate. I have a mandate. They control the Senate. He could have put, put his Siebert through. He could have put, you know, Haba through. He could have put Halligan through. I mean, maybe they wouldn't have gotten approval by the Senate. But is he supposed to control the Senate? I thought that he could do whatever he wanted. The fact that he didn't even try to get Senate confirmation but instead had people stay in it. Like for instance, Cochran was. They just tried to change his name. So instead of being the attorney, U.S. attorney, they tried to change it to like special attorney. They tried all these fancy ways that basically just meant keeping somebody in there beyond the 120 days that they were allowed to be appointed. You could say this is complete incompetence or you could say this is part of the plan to try to get the Supreme Court to allow the president to not get Senate approval. You know, I mean, this is where this is going, right? Popak? This is all going to get appealed. And I'm sure the project 2025 Heritage foundation people would love the Supreme Court to step in and actually allow the president to just completely bypass the Senate. That would be huge, monumental shift in the separation of powers. So we really hope that isn't what's happening. But why didn't they even try to get Senate confirmation? But that's the point. They didn't even try to get Senate confirmation. All three of them, you know, they, they went past 120 days. In terms of the actual Comey, Letitia James, it sounds like they are planning on re indicting them. Comey as we know, there's an issue with the statute of limitations because it has now run. There's a federal provision that allows the re indictment if the dismissal is based on certain procedural issues. So the government is going to argue that that federal provision applies and try to indict Comey there. So it's. We will see, you know, how that is handled. And Letitia James doesn't have that statute of limitation issue, so they will be going forward, it sounds like, with trying to re indict her.
- [40:43]
A
Yeah, the James Comey one. I mean, there's reporting that they're considering a different statute that would get them out from under the statute of limitations problem of the perjury under. Under what we call a 1001 charge for lying to Congress. I just don't see it. Now, I'm not privy, of course, to all of the evidence, but there's. There's a new motion that's been filed by Professor Richmond of Columbia against the main evidence and documents used in the Comey case, which could blow a giant hole from which the indictment or the prosecution may not be able to recover on the perjury anyway. You know, Richmond was the lawyer for James Comey, a friend of James Comey. They had worked as prosecutors together in the Southern District of New York when Comey found himself up against a corrupt president named Donald Trump the first time, asking him to do corrupt things. Like, why don't you just end the criminal investigation of Lieutenant General Michael Flynn? Like what?
- [41:50]
And then Comey decided to write some CYA memos, then leak them or give them to his lawyer to leak to the New York Times. But that's all public, and Comey is very forthright. They asked him, why'd you do it? He said, because I wanted a special prosecutor to be named to go after Donald Trump, and I wanted to get out in the press. And I thought I was about to be fired. I mean, he was very honest about it. And so Richmond, like, eight years ago, had a search warrant against his records related to Hillary Clinton and the Arctic Haze email investigation about what happened to her emails and what happened to James Comey related to those emails. So he already turned over a lot of documents, but there was supposed to be segregation so that his attorney client communication with James Comey and with others would not have been read by. By FBI agents and people in the Department of Justice. And that didn't happen. See, they did not use new search warrants and new subpoenas for the current indictment or the now dismissed indictment against James Comey. Oh, no. They went back and used a new FBI agent to go back and look at the old documents sitting in a box from prior search warrants. And apparently because Lindsey Halligan is a. What's the word I'm looking for? A moron, she did not know or wasn't sophisticated enough to tell the FBI, hey, you can't. If you see something that's related to James Comey communicating with his lawyer, Richmond, you can't look at it. So there was no segregation. There was no control wall. So the FBI direct, the FBI agent who testified for the indictment of the grand jury was tainted. That's the argument by all of this. There wasn't a taint team to make sure that didn't happen. So we know all of that because Judge Fitzpatrick, the magistrate judge in the case, excoriated Lindsey Halligan before she was fired by Judge Curry. He, as the magistrate reporting to the trial court, Judge Nachmanoff, he said, we got a number of problems here. Lindsey Halligan, you violated the fifth and Sixth Amendment during your grand jury proceeding. The way you presented the evidence to the grand jury, that's a problem. And you, Lindsey Halligan and FBI, you ran roughshod over the Fourth Amendment rights of both Comey and Professor Richmond. And right on cue, Richmond files a motion to not only get his stuff back, but to prevent it from being used in the Comey case at all. And now that's going to be in front of Judge Kohlarcatelli, a Clinton appointee in D.C. and she's, she's going to make that decision. So we have a lot of judges involved with it, right? We've got Judge Curry, who handled whether Lindsey Halligan was properly appointed. We got Judge Nachman off, who's the trial judge, day to day judge in the Comey case. We've got Fitzpatrick, who's his magistrate. We've got, we've got, you know, Judge Walker, who's the judge for Letitia James, we've got Kohler, Catelli, who's the judge to decide if the Richmond docs are going to be quashed or not.
- [45:06]
B
A lot going on, so much going on. And you talking made me think, you know, thank goodness that our criminal justice system is so resilient, right? Because we have really, we have rules over whether or not how evidence is collected, how is it tainted, how is it presented? Because our founders were worried about the fact that the government has been so much power. It has its own law enforcement agency. It has the money, it has the wealth, and they put in these checks and so the irony is that Trump and, you know, Halligan and whatever, they all think that they can do whatever they want and they come right into really stringent criminal, you know, rules that help a criminal defendant in this country. And interesting, since we talked about Mar A Lago, you know, Lindsey Halligan has been around Trump for quite some time. She was part of the lawyers involved in the Mar A Lago classified documents case. You know, so she was running around.
- [46:03]
A
With Jim Trustee when. Jim Trustee, he had like three sets of lawyers down there and but one of them was, was Lindsey Halligan. And the one you're so right because one of the ways we know that is Anna Bauer, friend of the podcast who I interviewed, who writes for Lawfare. She met with Lindsey Halligan at Mar A lot. No, at the Breakers Hotel in Palm beach near Mar a Lago, when she was covering the Mar A Lago proceedings.
- [46:33]
B
So you do wonder what hit Lindsey Halligan knows. Right. And the fact that Trump was so confident she was gonna do his bidding. She has been with him for quite some time. You know, we talked about him being her, his personal attorney. But when you talk about it and you know, it's not just she was helping maybe with some corporate deals with his Trump Tower, you know, this, this classified document case. But anyway, it makes me feel good about at least they have this criminal. You know, as much as you don't want to be a criminal defendant in this country, you actually, if you're coming, Letitia James do want it because it seems to be the only area that's actually strong enough to defend against these kind of revenge tactic tactics by Trump.
- [47:16]
A
Well, because, and as you said, when politics, when politics takes over legal, that's when bad things happen. I mean, Jack Smith, just to end it with that, he wants to testify in open before the American people about his special counsel work. He relishes the opportunity. We've already seen clips of him being interviewed by Andrew Weissman and others who used to work with him on the Southern District of New York about his approach to being the special prosecutor. And you know, we finally get to hear from Jack Smith. Of course, the MAGA house is scared of Jack Smith. So now they're ordering him to appear, but he's going to appear only behind closed doors and we'll get a transcript at some other time. Because they're cowards, right?
- [48:04]
B
Yeah, for sure. He would be fantastic for the American people to hear and maybe he will still get a chance. We'll see. Right. But that, yeah, he, he, he's a Weapon for, you know, those of us who care about the rule of law.
- [48:19]
A
For sure, we need another shadow hearing. We need, like, you know, Blumenthal in the Senate, Jimmy Raskin in the House Judiciary Committee. Ranking members to call shadow hearings and bring in DOJ whistleblowers Erez Riveni, who's now working for democracy Forward. Bring in Jack Smith. Let the American people hear.
- [48:39]
B
Yeah, absolutely.
- [48:40]
A
We're gonna end up there. So speaking of when courts work, well, we got a new ruling coming out of Judge Talwani in the District of Massachusetts in favor of Planned Parenthood and the. And to block the efforts of the Trump administration and maga, you know, playbooks, you know, pages right out of Project 2025 to defund planned Parenthood and all of the great work it does around the country for reproductive health, reproductive rights, family counseling, yes, on occasion, abortion. But, you know, the. The bill, the budget bill, they actually wrote a provision that the only entity that could possibly fit the bill to be defunded was Planned Parenthood. It was like, if you're providing, you know, reproductive health and family planning and abortion, you've taken more than $800,000 in fiscal year 2023. I'm like, oh, okay, every Planned Parent affiliate, effectively, why don't you say Planned Parenthood? And so Planned Parenthood, people might be thinking, oh, I know about this case already. Judge Talwani has been blocked by the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Right, Popak? Not exactly. Because when Planned Parenthood sued and got Talwani, they argued that they were improperly targeted and had their due process rights and other rights violated. She agreed with that, and that got blocked by the First Circuit. But this is a different group of plaintiffs, right, Dina? And they have a different argument to make as being the 22 blue state attorney generals. Why don't you pick it up from there?
- [50:22]
B
Well, exactly. And these are your best friends. I know you've just spoken to most of them lately.
- [50:30]
But basically, the 22 state attorney general sued because the idea was that they depended on this money. Right. And by the way, Planned Heritage, the vast majority of their patients go in there not for abortion, but for health care services. And federal law already exists, and no money could go toward paying for abortions. But so the state's argument was that this denial, they didn't get enough notice. They didn't have enough time to be able to adequately respond to it. Basically, you cut off funding in a way that was arbitrary, capricious, and essentially unconstitutional and violated their due process rights. And that Congress had the power of the Purse, not the president. Congress authorized this. And they are being, the states are being denied those funds in a way that violates their due process. And she agreed with them. She agreed with the states.
- [51:26]
A
Absolutely. States are in a unique position, Right, because Medicaid is, is funded by Congress but is administered by the states. So every state has a program, all 50 states, and they get the funding from Congress. That's the spending clause of the Constitution. And then they rely on that to allocate their budget. Right. And okay, we got money for Planned Parenthood. Okay, we got reproductive health. That's taken care of. And then put money over here somewhere else. And if you deny the money last minute, then they've already spent it for the fiscal year. And that therefore harms many people in the state because they were relying on and did not have time to plan around a last minute pull of the carpet out from under them about funding. So the argument that only states can make is that it violated the spending clause and the notice, therefore, due process argument is you can't take away the thing that Congress funded with no notice and then leave it to us to scramble to go try to fill the hole. That is a violation of many constitutional principles. She issued the preliminary injunction. That's a great thing. Some people may remember that Judge Telwani was also one half of the judge duo that helped Americans, 42Americans get their food supplemental payments under SNAP. You know, again, 22 attorneys general got a filing before Judge Talwani. It's randomly, it is randomly selected by a clerk. But she does seem to come up a lot for the 22 attorneys general. The other case was Judge McConnell in Rhode island, and that was on behalf of public interest groups. So Tawani has been battling it out with the Trump administration. As you said, you know, federal courts are our saviors right now. And then we see what happens at the Supreme Court. You know, I got a chance to ask the attorneys general when I had them, when I was able to be invited into their world and sit with them for a day or so to interview them. And, and they said, look, we just have to continue to chop wood and continue to file the lawsuits and continue to win at the lower court, continue to win at the first level of appellate court. And then we, then we just roll the dice at the Supreme Court. But, but they also reminded us that in many cases, the Trump administration chickens out. You know, it is, it is. Trump always chickens out. They bail after they've been challenged. They, they release the funding. Billions and billions of dollars of funding have been released after they originally said they weren't going to. And that's all the product of these lawsuits. So you can't, you can't just sit there and wring your hands and say, oh, we always lose at the Supreme Court. First of all, we don't always lose the Supreme Court. And second of all, not every case gets to the Supreme Court. Justice is done for 99.9% of the cases at the trial court level or at the first level of appeal and, or the Trump administration chickens out and folds their, folds up their cards and, and releases the money or stops doing the bad thing and just in response to the lawsuit. So that's why these lawsuits are so, so important. You know, 50 of them filed by the attorneys general and hundreds or more that have been filed by public interest groups. One last point. The judge issued a temporary, a preliminary injunction in favor of 22 blue states. The other 28 states, your SOL because your attorneys general don't care about you. They care more about fealty to Donald Trump. So, you know, you're not going to be getting Planned Parenthood or reproductive rights in your state because your red state attorneys general don't have the balls or the gravitas or the brass ones to follow suit. And because the Supreme Court last year in a case involving birthright citizenship, questioned universal injunctions and doesn't like universal injunctions. No longer can the red states just sit back and go, oh, we hope the blue state attorneys general get this for us because we'll get the benefit of the universal injunction without the politics associated with it. F that you're not getting it. And we do have a tremendous divide in this country between the blue states and the red states. And you're seeing it in cases like this. So if you live in a red state, it's because your attorney general and your governor did not join in this lawsuit to get a similar relief for you. Whether we're talking about food stamps or we're talking about reproductive rights or we're talking about immigration rights, shame on them. Vote them out.
- [56:06]
B
That's exactly what I was going to say. Most states attorney generals are elected position. It's yet another thing that we have to keep an eye on. If we were only paying attention to the governor's race or the presidential race. Now take a look at who your state attorney general is, because that absolutely makes a difference. And this reminds me, him taking away the Medicaid with the, the. He's good at destroying things, Trump, right? Like, yeah, let's just cut like millions or billions of dollars, whether or not it's to US Aid or to women's health care in the country. Knock down the East Wing. It's the building that he cannot do. Right. The East Wing building is stalled, evidently, because the architect, he can't figure out the plans. Or if you do, if you wanted to really care just about abortion, but you did care about people who can't afford health care, or specifically women who can't afford health care, come up with an altern plan, but they can't. It's easy to destroy things. It's much harder to build things.
- [57:01]
A
Absolutely. And thank you. That's a perfect way to put that. We're going to take another break for our pro Democracy sponsors. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for supporting all things Legal af. It keeps us at the top of the ranking that is important. The bigger we are, the more street cred we have, the more informed we can be, the more we can support your First Amendment rights by expressing our own. So you can watch the podcast, as you know on YouTube. That's why we ended up at the top 5055 of all YouTube podcasts. Listen to us on audio versions on Spotify and Apple, which helps leave five star reviews and rankings. Come over to Legal AF, the YouTube channel and their early voting has already started. We have no outside investors. We have no paywall. Become a subscriber, figure out whether you are now and if you're not, hit the subscribe button and your job is done. And our job is just starting. We really want to get to that 1 million. 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After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them that we sent you. Welcome back to the midweek edition of Legal AF and thank you for being here. Dina Dahl, my good friend and colleague on unprecedented where we talk about the United States Supreme Court. We thought it'd be a good idea to talk about the United States Supreme Court here at the end of the show. Things are going on, things are kicking off. And on the 8th of December, there's going to be a major oral argument. We will cover it live on Legal AF in a case called Slaughter versus The US and the question is, is she going to be slaughtered, Rebecca Slaughter, or is the Humphrey's executor line of cases going to die a permanent death? What this case is about, and it links to two other cases, is whether once Congress creates a federal office.
- [63:23]
An administrative body like the Federal Trade Commission, the securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve, the other entities National Labor Relations Board, whether once turned over to the president, he can, regardless of what Congress wanted in the law, can fire at will anybody in a congressionally created executive office. So we have the union Congress is the only one that can create these offices. But if you are a subscriber to the unitary presidential model, and I'll let Dena kick that off, then you say, well, thank you, thank you, Mr. And Mrs. Congress, for giving us this great board or federal office. But it's ours now. And we don't care that you want it to be bipartisan or you want to have firing only for cause because that infringes on the president's power and the president's going to fire at will. So we got a major case here, right, Dina, with Rebecca Slaughter, who's on the Federal Trade Commission, which was actually part of the case, part of the Humphreys executor case from 90 years ago. And you've got the Supreme Court recently ruling that they're not going to make a decision about the Library of Congress person Shira Perlmutter, who's our head of the Office of Copyright until they decide about Lisa Cook and in January on the Federal Reserve and about slaughter on December 8th. Put all that smush, all that together in A jambalaya of Supreme Court analysis.
- [65:03]
B
Okay, I'm going to break it down so it makes sense and why they're all connected. As you know, there's three different positions there as we're talking about the Library of Congressperson that doesn't yet have a case, but depending on how the Supreme Court will rule, it will apply to that role as well. Lisa Cook, as we know is a board is on the board for the Federal Reserve chair. And Trump tried to fire her. Something again related to mortgages. And even though she could only be fired for cause, and she didn't, so she's arguing, one, I was fired, this is not actually for cause, and 1 and 2, I got no due process. The other case has to do with Slaughter, who was on the federal ftc. Right. And that is exactly the Humphreys executor, which I know people who have been following unprecedented on Legal AF and this show have heard of Humphreys executor. And Trump did the same thing there. He tried to fire her even though she could only be fired for cause. The reason why the heads of these positions have only been fired for cause is the idea is we don't want a new president coming in and replacing the person with their own person. It was to insulate these very important agencies from political pressure, from exactly what Trump is doing, sweeping the agencies and replacing them with their own people. So what the Supreme Court decides will apply not just to the ftc, not just to the Federal Reserve, as we hear the talk about the Library of Congress, but it'll reply to the epa, the sec, so the state securities exchange, the environmental protections, every single agency that governs the day to day regulations that really we all count on and we don't see. But it is kind of what makes our lives function under the rule of law with the government. And so these are two very significant cases. As we know, the Slaughter is coming up just around the corner December 8th and Cook is in January. The difference is, is that. So they're both looking basically at separation of powers. And that really is what Slaughter. The Slaughter case just comes right out and says that they took this case on the cert, which means it is a full review. It's not the shadow docket. Cook is a shadow docket, whether or not to keep the lower stay in place, which kept her in the job. Slaughter is different. They're really looking at the issue and the question presented to the Supreme Court, which is what the Supreme Court needs to look at, is is it a violation of the separation powers? Basically for there to be this for cause. And should Humphrey's executor be overturned? That's explicitly in the question presented. It's not just us as legal analysts saying, oh, Humphrey's executor may be overturned. The Supreme Court is literally deciding whether or not to remove it. So what will happen if the Supreme Court decides that Slaughter could be fired despite there being no cause? It will allow not only Trump but any president to be able to replace the heads of these agencies with their own people. This, as we know, is in line with that executive unitary theory, the Heritage foundation that believes the office of the President should be more powerful. This will be a dramatic increase in the power of the office of the president for Trump and for future presidents, which I know Pop always likes to warn, means that, hey, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. So it could mean that, you know, the next president Democrat could replace it with all of their own people. The problem, however, is it's also just bad for consumers and business to have the heads of these agencies just flip flop every four years. And that's essential argument, specifically with the Federal Reserve chair, Lisa Cook. The idea, they say, is that our financial system is supposed to be something that's stable and not so subject to the chaos of political pressures. And it is possible because the Supreme Court doesn't seem to care so much about civil rights, but they care an awful lot about business interests. As you can know from hearing the tariff case, they seemed more likely to rule against Trump in the tariff case than perhaps any other case. There's a slim possibility that they may decide that in every other situation but the Federal Reserve, the president can replace the Federal Reserve chair because it will cause so much chaos specifically for businesses. But that's what we're going to look at. And if Pablock and I talk about the Supreme Court in particular every week, the show usually goes out on Saturday mornings. We will definitely be previewing this more and also summarizing it more and more the week after, after the oral arguments. But that is crucial in this fight over how powerful is a president going to be is these separate cases and why they're all connected. They're basically looking at the same issue. I'm so grateful to be a guest here on Legal AF Popo since his birthday got called away by his family. Natasha, Francesca, sweetest people. I've had a chance to meet them and he had, he had, he was called away. But so I just want to say happy birthday again. Hope he's having a great time with his family. So grateful to be able to sit in and help break down all that happened. As he said, in Even the last 24 hours or today or 48 hours or so many legal updates to get on and follow and subscribe to the Legal AF podcast. I know he's trying to get his subscribers up there and the substack, I put out some articles on that too and it's so great. All of his articles and videos and the filings that he puts on there are so great and really excited to be able to help break down these news. So important right now with our democracy.
- [71:29]
A
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B
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A
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