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- [00:01]
Ben Meiselas
This episode is brought to you by Enterprise Mobility from fleet management to flexible truck rentals to technology solutions, Enterprise Mobility helps businesses find the right mobility solutions so they can find new opportunities. Because if your business is on the road, they want to make sure it's on the road to success. Enterprise Mobility moving you moves the world. Find your road@enterprisemobility.com this episode is brought to you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. Shop Pay boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer carts going abandoned and more sales going Cha ching. So if you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are. Visit shopify.com to upgrade your selling Today, Every idea starts with a problem. Warby Parker's was simple. Glasses are too expensive. So they set out to change that. By designing glasses in house and selling directly to customers, they're able to offer prescription eyewear that's expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable. Warby Parker glasses are made from premium materials like impact resistant polycarbonate and custom acetate, and they start at just $95, including prescription lenses. Get glasses made from the good stuff. Stop by a Warby Parker store near you.
- [01:22]
Michael Popak
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.
- [01:49]
Ben Meiselas
Hey prime members, are you tired of ads interfering with your favorite podcasts? Good news.
- [01:55]
Michael Popak
With Amazon Music, you have access to.
- [01:57]
Ben Meiselas
The largest catalog of ad Free Top podcasts included with your prime membership. To start listening, download the Amazon Music app for free or go to Amazon.com ad freepodcasts that's Amazon.com ad free podcasts to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads.
- [02:16]
Michael Popak
Donald Trump loses three times to the three law firms in federal court that actually stood up to his executive orders targeting those law firms. Other law firms bent the knee. They're now disgraced and humiliated in the legal community. But Trump was handed loss after loss after loss in three separate courts, including two federal courts where they were George W. Bush appointees. We'll discuss. Also, an order against the Trump regime from using signal and other text communication methods for sending classified communications in violation of the Presidential Records act was handed down by none other than Judge Boasberg, who randomly got assigned the signal gate case brought by a group called American Oversight. Judge Boasberg is also handling the case by the ACLU regarding Donald Trump's regime's kidnapping of migrants and sending them to concentration camps in El Salvador. Speaking of that case, Judge Boasberg extended the injunction against the Trump regime from these kidnap renditions to concentration camps in El Salvador that was extended to about mid April. We'll discuss and we're learning a lot of stories about migrants who are not trend Aragua gang members who were here lawfully lawful asylum seekers, good people, family people who are now living in or maybe even not anymore, concentration camps in El Salvador. A real horrific time in our nation's history. Also, we have to talk about a bad ruling. Not all good rulings, not all gravy here when it comes to what the courts are doing. The D.C. circuit Court of Appeals issued a bad ruling regarding Donald Trump's terminations of the National Labor Relations Board member and the merit protections board member. To me, a really bad ruling saying that the status quo being preserved is the termination by Trump, not the fact that the people hold onto their jobs. So it's a kind of temporary order, but it will prevent these people from getting their jobs back during the duration of their litigation. And I think it's a bad, bad ruling. It'll likely get appealed to the Supreme Court, but not a good sign that that's what the Court of Appeals did. But a good ruling, if you will, by the Supreme Court against the Trump regime on the issue of ghost guns and against the NRA on the issue of ghost guns. It was a 7 to 2 ruling. We'll discuss that ruling, its implications as well. But seven to two against ghost guns, it should be unanimous, but that's where we're at. Let's bring in Michael Popak from the Legal AF podcast. Michael Popak, before throwing it to you, I just want to share this video of Kristi Noem at the concentration camp in El salvador wearing a $60,000 Rolex. Kristi Gnome is the secretary of Homeland Security a dog killer as well, a human killer as well. Here she is. Let's play this clip here at SECOT.
- [05:38]
Ben Meiselas
Today and visiting this facility. And first of all, I want to.
- [05:42]
Michael Popak
Thank El Salvador and their president for.
- [05:44]
Ben Meiselas
Their partnership with the United States of.
- [05:45]
Michael Popak
America to bring our terrorists here and to incarcerate them and have consequences for the violence that they have perpetuated in our communities.
- [05:53]
Ben Meiselas
I also want everybody to know if you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face.
- [05:59]
Michael Popak
First of all, do not come to our country illegally. You will be removed and you will be prosecuted.
- [06:05]
Ben Meiselas
Know that this facility is one of.
- [06:06]
Michael Popak
The tools in our toolkit that we.
- [06:08]
Ben Meiselas
Will use if you commit crimes against the American people.
- [06:11]
Michael Popak
I wanted to lead with that, Michael Popak and share that at the outset. We're going to talk more about it in this episode. It's not getting the attention it deserves from other corporate news media. That's why, being independent news media, it's important that we highlight that we have prisons in the United States. We have a deportation process. Nobody wants criminals and gang members here. But we do have a system of due process to determine who are the bad guys and who are not. And bragging about concentration camps in El Salvador, a country that has a $30 billion a year GDP and a 25 to 30% poverty rate. It's not exactly the model of who we should be in the United States. Let me throw it to you, Popo.
- [06:55]
Ben Meiselas
Yeah, look, the Kristi Noem is obscenely unqualified to be protecting the homeland in any way, shape or form. She referred to the people in violation of the Geneva Convention, paraded before her bare chested and tattooed as being, quote, unquote, their terrorists. What she skips is the thing that Judge Millet, who we're going to talk a lot about today because she was on two different two to one decisions that you and I are going to talk about in different segments at the D.C. court of Appeals. Judge Millet said we're talking about the intersection. You and I talk about the intersection a lot, but the intersection of Fifth Amendment due process and the Alien Enemies Act. And that's the thing that's always missing from the Trump administration. It's not that we are not in favor of the esoteric theory that bad people who committed crimes and or are here illegally should be removed. The thing that we're against as a nation of laws, as a constitutional republic, is doing it through a kidnapping program in the middle of the night with no due process. So these people can stand up and prove that they are or are not part of the criminal terrorist gang before they are sent not to their home country, not to even a detention center under the US Auspices, but to one of the world's worst prisons, in El Salvador, where more than 300 people died in the last year and a half from quote, unquote, natural causes. If you think beating another human being to death is a natural cause, then you'll agree with President Bukele of El Salvador. This is a pay to play scheme. That's immoral. We're paying Bukele $6 million to fill empty jail cells for himself. So that Kristi Noem, and let's call it like it is, wearing her $60,000 Rolex, her hair extensions, her Botox and her too tight T shirt can go hang out in front as an F you and a middle finger. Back to judges that are doing the nation's work and God's work, like Judge Boasberg and other judges who are standing between this abuse of power by the Trump administration and these individuals. This was. I don't care what Boasberg says about the Alien enemies Act not being able to be used to kidnap and deport people. I'm gonna go down there and thank President Bukele. So now our America, our democracy, through Donald Trump is taking instruction on how to run its democracy from. From President Bukele who puts in a social media post in the last couple of weeks directed to Donald Trump. He writes, you should go after the judges. I did it. You should, you should. You won't be able to get your agenda passed without doing that. Now we're taking instructions about how to run our democracy from El Salvador and nobody finds that to be appalling. Let me, let me leave one note of personal, personal point here. That comment that she made, that ad campaign about don't come to this country, you know, it's a, I was sitting in Miami a week ago at a restaurant where people were watching the Brazil, Argentina, World cup playoff. And so it's filled with people from lots of different nations, mainly Spanish speaking ones. And she comes on with a commercial in English in which she said effectively, that ad campaign that she just used in front of the prison there in El Salvador, which was don't come to this country if you're illegal. Leave now. You may be able to come back one day. I assure you that 80 to 90% of the people in that room had troubled status and, or new people that had troubled status, close family members and the like. And, and this went over like a lead balloon in that room. I watched for the reaction and this is what you and I have to on the channel to continue to keep an eye on and promote as we move towards the midterms. One last thing. Paybacks. Canada. I sent this, I think, to you guys. Canada is running billboards in Miami that they're paying for in talking about the tariff war just means higher prices for you as Americans. They don't have their name on it. But the Canadians are running ads now on US soil to talk about how tariffs harm the American pocketbook.
- [11:21]
Michael Popak
Look, as Doge, with its wrecking ball, is firing all of these people, destroying lives, targeting Social Security and Medicaid, shutting down Social Security offices. How is this regime spending money? And there's a reason why there's actually been more federal government spending in the last month than ever before in American history, because they're using it to fund the lavish lifestyle of Donald Trump's vacation. All of these trips by Kristi Noem, JD Vance going to Greenland, where he just shows up in a military base because Greenlanders don't want him there. I mean, these ad campaigns are hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.
- [12:06]
Ben Meiselas
30 million. $30 million for his nine golf weekends. $30 million of American taxpayer dollars. Yeah.
- [12:15]
Michael Popak
And think about all of the Social Security Administration offices that could have been kept open so Donald Trump can play golf while Elon Musk is doing that. I also think about the video of the Tufts PhD student. Roomsa Oz Turk has not been charged with a crime. If there's a crime that's committed, then charge with the crime. Let the American people know what the criminal act was. And there's a lot of situations where there are people in colleges that the Trump administration, the regime doesn't like what they are saying, what they're publishing, but they're not saying what crimes are committed in this horrific video of Ramesa oz Turk, a PhD student studying in Tufts, pulled off the street, put into a detention center. And you have Rubio and you have the State Department people not saying. They're saying, oh, we want to stop the illegal activity. Well, then, okay, then say what the. Say what the crime is. You know, we are a nation of laws. And what they are telling us, this regime, and they told us this all along, they don't like our system. They don't like due process. Due process is a process, and processes take time. And processes have things that you're like, well, it would actually be faster if we did this. It could be quicker if we did this. Why are we going about doing this? Because the totality of human experience and enlightened thinking that worked its way into our Constitution told us that this process is needed. Because otherwise you have authoritarians that first they go for this group, and you may go, well, I don't agree with that, so that's not affecting me. Then they go for this group and they're like, well, maybe I don't agree with that, but that's not coming for me. And then they come for you. And that's why it's important whether you agree or disagree with the right Whatever your views are, you need to stand up for due process in the United States of America. That is our legal system. And when I see as a lawyer who used to litigate against big firms, who have lots of friends in big, who work in big firms. Michael Popak was a former big firm lawyer early on in his career. He started his own law firm as well, which I'll tell you about now, which is a small boutique that he has right now. But Popak started at one of these firms. You have law firms that are standing up to the regime and winning in court. And you've got law firms that are bending the knee and are cutting deals with Donald Trump to provide like, services to the Trump regime agenda because they're so scared about losing clients. On the good guy or the good person and good women side of this, you've got law firms like Perkins, Coie Jenner and Block, Wilmer Hale who are fighting back on the bad guy, bad person side of this, you've got firms like Skadden, you've got firms like, like Paul Weiss, Michael Popak. Talk about what's happened in court, the wins by these firms that have fought back and those who have bent the knee.
- [15:22]
Ben Meiselas
Yeah. And I'll do it from the perspective as full disclosure. And I did a hot take up on the Legal AF channel. I started my career proudly at Scaddin Arps, cut my teeth there. Close relationships there with including people that were on the executive committee as their careers continued. I always proudly said I was a Scadden lawyer that worked under Joe Flom, who was the ran that firm while I was still there before he passed away recently. And now I no longer feel that way. I will talk about what Skadden has done and the amount of tribute and extortion they have been willing to pay and sacrifice their professional ethics and their a professional responsibility on the altar of their profits per partner. There's no other way to put it. Let me frame it this way, Ben, and then I'll get into the three losses, two in a row yesterday for the Trump administration on this issue where good order and law firms that fight are winning at 1000% clip at a bat in a thousand, regardless of the practice area that you choose to practice in or not practice in when you leave law school, if you're a member of the bar of any of our 50 states, I don't care if you're a transactional lawyer, mergers and acquisitions, intellectual property, a tech law, family law, divorce law, corporate law, you know, litigation, you can divide the world into transactional Regulatory and litigation. However you divide the world, when you left law school, when you took the bar exam, when you took the ethics test, and you got admitted and sworn in, regardless of where you went off in the rest of your world, you may never have seen a courtroom ever in your life because of the nature of your practice, but you took an oath as a profession to uphold the Constitution and to abide by the rules of professional conduct or responsibility for your particular bar. I don't care if you became a tax lawyer or you became a family lawyer or a divorce lawyer or an M and a lawyer at Scadden, whatever it was, you are a lawyer. If you didn't want to be a lawyer at this critical moment in time and you wanted to just make money in business, there were plenty of ways to do that without taking the bar and becoming and swearing an oath. You could go to Wall street, you could be an I banker, investment banker, hedge fund, private equity, become a broker or a trader, get an mba, whatever you wanted to do. But once you became a lawyer, and that's how you apply your trade and your profession, then you had an obligation. At this moment of crisis, where Donald Trump, on a retribution campaign, has attempted to blacklist and make radioactive, the reporting is up to 14 law firms. He started with this four. But up to 14 law firms, now is the time that you stand up and you say, no, I'm not going to turn my pro bono department, which is where we give back to our society for free and represent people who can't afford the scadden arps at $2,000 an hour but need amazing representation, whether it's an asylum case, a death penalty case, your Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss, and your sue and Rudy Giuliani case. This is where the pro bono programs and the firms have used those pro bono programs in order to attract top talent because they say to them, you'll get the experience that you wouldn't get working for corporate clients. We have this amazing pro bono program and it's cohesive with our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, hiring black and brown people and women and putting them in positions where they can benefit society. If you're willing to sacrifice all of that and give your pro bono program over to Donald Trump and give him, in the case of Paul Weiss, $40 million worth of free service and just basically shutter your DEI commitment and the same thing for SCAD, except now the number's $100 million. Okay, you should just, oh, it's existential. We'll go out of business. Well, then you should go out of business. If that is your business model, then you should go out of business. And if you've watched, see what Skadden, my old firm, what Scadden, the lesson it learned from Paul Weiss, its neighbor down the street, paying $40 million, also run by corporate people, mergers and acquisition people, not litigators, is, well, it wasn't so bad. A couple of bad news cycles, couple of bad articles. We'll take that. We're making $5 billion a year as a law firm. We'll take that. That's okay. We'll do that. As opposed to watching the lesson of Perkins Coy, who got a temporary restraining order issued by Beryl Howell, that it was a First Amendment violation, that the Trump administration can't bar and ban law firms from doing business with the government, from representing clients before the government, from getting contracts before the government, from representing clients in federal courts or before federal agencies. For some of the firms you and I are talking about today, it's 30, 40, 50% of their revenue, hundreds of millions of dollars, and Donald Trump knows it. So you either get your temporary restraining order as a First Amendment violation and an abuse of power from Judge Beryl Howell two weeks ago for Perkins Coy, and you follow that lead, which Jenner and Block did, which Wilmer Hale, we know it's got a longer name, but we know these firms as Wilmer and Jenner and Block. Those firms said, f this, we took an oath. We are being abused by extension our clients and we're being retaliated against. And we need to do something about it. And shout out to, I'll talk about the orders, but shout out to the law firms that are representing those law firms because they have law firms which are now on the radar screen for Donald Trump. Cooley, which I know because I had given Cooley work when I was in House counsel. Cooley is representing Jenner and Block. And of all people, Paul Clement, who used to be the rightest of right, who is the rightest of right wing and former Solicitor General in the Bush administration, the one who was in favor of waterboarding, the one who was against gay marriage and gays in the military. He is representing Wilbur Hale in his case. So it makes strange bedfellows. I may not agree. I never thought I'd say I agree with Paul Clement on anything, but I agree with him here in terms of his defense of the profession. So we had back to back hearings in two different courtrooms in the same courthouse in D.C. on Friday, late in the day, but the same result, one little Twist before I get there. Paul Clement, when he filed his case on behalf of Wilmer Hale, tried to get Beryl Howell as the judge. She had already issued the temporary restraining order on an almost identical executive order blacklisting that firm. He tried to argue it was a related case. He directly filed it to Beryl Howell. Beryl Howell, I'm sure, wanted it, but decided that based on the factors, it was not a related case, even though the same type of executive order. And she kicked it back to random selection by random choice. We'll talk a lot about that when we get to Judge Boasberg. It ended up with Richard Leon. Leon, who's a former. Who's a Bush. Yeah, Bush appointee. Yep. On the, on the other side, the random wheel assigned it to Judge Base Bates, who's another Bush appointee. And both of them found First Amendment violations. I'll tell you, Bates got really pissed off during the hearing. The reporting about the hearing itself. Bates in, in talking to the lawyer for the Department of Justice said, well, are they, are, is the firm barred or not barred from going on to federal property and visiting with agencies to do their job for their clients? Well, those guidelines haven't yet been completely fleshed out. I would think if you're in my courtroom on a temporary injunction about the ramifications of an executive order, you would know if the answer to that question. So what Bates did is a very simple order. He said, the motion for temporary restraining order is, is granted. You are not to blacklist them. I want a status report about compliance of every federal agency by Monday at 12:00. Judge Leon wrote a six page decision. He said, this is retaliation on its face. This is a First Amendment violation. And then he quoted. Just so people understand what's at stake here, he quoted a executive lawyer for Wilmer Hale who said that they have 100 matters right now before the federal government for clients. That 50, 40% of their revenue comes from representing clients before the federal government to the tune of $500 million. That this would effectively put them out of business. That's the irreparable harm. I'm granting the tro. And without coordinating with Judge Bates, he also entered a status report requirement, joint requirement for Monday at 4 o'clock. So where are we now? Three and oh. For firms that are fighting and $140 million paid by Skadden and by Paul Weiss, for firms that are more concerned with their profits per partner than what's.
- [24:33]
Michael Popak
Right in America, history will have a very dark and dim view on the firms that submitted during this moment. It is a travesty, in my view, for anyone who supports democracy, who considers those firms as really a place where, you know, you can practice law under your ethical rule. Just giving you my opinion, given your ethical obligations as a lawyer, firms that have become agents of fascism, it's a horrible place to be. And, you know, I'm certainly going to let my law students know a bit. They can choose wherever they want to work. But I think it's important that they know what the stakes are here, at least when it comes to just fundamental democracy and what the rulings are. And then they can decide where they want to work, you know?
- [25:23]
Ben Meiselas
You know who put it best? Ben Jud. I wrote it down. Judge Kofador, who issued the, it's hard to believe, the first temporary restraining order five days into this administration on birthright citizenship in San Francisco. We now have 70 or 80 injunctions. But he was the first. He said out loud at that first hearing, and it stuck with me. I don't want history to look back and say, during this era, where were the judges and where were the lawyers? And for Scadden and Paul Weiss, they're going to have to look their future clients or current clients and, like you said, law school candidates in the eye. And people are already quitting that firm. And there's at least two that have been public about it and say, where. Where were they? You know, where were they? You know, where were the lawyers and law firms in Nazi Germany, I guess is the what we're trying to say. Absolutely. And judges.
- [26:15]
Michael Popak
I'll tell you where the Michael Popak is starting his own law firm and doing a great job. I am so proud of Michael Popak for starting his own law firm. Just in the past 30, 35 days or so, it's off to a great start. Michael handles catastrophic injuries. So he has cases, for example, like trucking accident cases that involved wrongful death, car accidents that involve wrongful death. People who have gotten catastrophic injuries from different types of accidents, sexual harassment and sexual assault cases, wrongful termination cases, medical malpractice cases. And because it's a boutique firm, you can't handle all of the cases. So usually the bigger catastrophic cases. So if you or anybody, you know, has a case like that or a family member or a friend or anything like that, Michael Popak, where can people go? And a lot of people have been reaching out to you. So I just tell people, reach out to Popak's firm. If there's a case like this, where do they go?
- [27:22]
Ben Meiselas
Yeah, we've had over a thousand people. Reach out. We've got an easy website, it's the POPOC firm dot com. We'll put it up on the screen. And we also have a very easy 1-800-number that's staffed. It's 1-877-popoc-AF. It is the intersection of people, the court system and lives. And that's why I wanted to be involved.
- [27:44]
Michael Popak
Well, it's doing great. Reach out to Michael Popak. We're going to take our first quick break of the show. Also, a reminder for you to check out the Legal AF YouTube channel. It's soaring. I want to try to get that a million subscribers in the next few months. So make sure you're subscribed to the Legal AF YouTube channel as well. And by the way, you can check out the Midas touch substack@midasplus.com while you're at it. Let's take our first quick break of the show. We've got a lot to discuss when we're back.
- [28:14]
Ben Meiselas
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- [33:20]
Michael Popak
Welcome back to Legal af. Thank you to our pro democracy sponsors. Right there. The discount codes are in the description below. I want to talk about two Judge Boasberg rulings. The first on the use of the Trump by the Trump regime of the Signal app in violation of the Presidential Records Act, a case that was randomly assigned to Judge Boasberg and then Judge Boasberg extending his injunction against the Trump regime using the Alien Enemies act war powers to further kidnap migrants in the United States and send them to concentration camps in El Salvador without due process. That temporary restraining order was extended to mid April. The Trump regime appealed to the D.C. circuit. A 2 to 1 ruling affirmed what Judge Boasberg was doing and now the Trump regime is appealing that to the United States Supreme Court as well. Before tossing it to you, Popak, I want to show two videos. First, the first I want to show John Kecker from the Kecker Van Nest Peters law firm. John Kecker runs one of the big law firms in the United States and he's a fighter. First off, he was in Vietnam. You should go and read his story. He was the chief, one of the chief lawyers in Iran Contra. I mean this, this guy is one of the top lawyers out there. He put out a powerful statement to the legal community about fighting back against the Trump regime and not submitting. And I brought him on and featured him on Midas Legal af. I just want to share with you because this guy's one of the kind of top litigators in the legal community. Here's what he had to say about fighting back against the Trump regime. Let's play it. My message is if you're good, you're going to be okay. Don't let a bully push you around and make you humiliate yourself in order to either please him or make clients comfortable.
- [35:35]
Ben Meiselas
If a client doesn't want to have.
- [35:37]
Michael Popak
A lawyer who's got some guts and some principles, then let the client go.
- [35:45]
Ben Meiselas
Someplace else and you'll hope to be.
- [35:46]
Michael Popak
Against him in litigation. But my message is stand up and don't let this happen. And don't be just scared about you. Be scared about the entire situation, the entire rule of law, the entire role of lawyers in this democracy. I want to share with you this video of Attorney General Pam Bondi, but let's do it after Popak first. I toss to you and then maybe chat about these two Judge Boseberg rulings. Let's frame it in the legal first and then let me show you what the Trump regime is doing, which is not the legal stuff, it's the propaganda. I'll toss it to you, though, for.
- [36:28]
Ben Meiselas
Joe, and you'll do the price. So there's always two worlds in a split screen with Donald Trump, right? We've talked about it a lot when he was criminal defendant Trump or criminal convict Trump. There's the world where extrajudicially outside the courthouse, he his lawyers here in this case, the attorney general, press secretary, Alina Haba, White House counselor, soon to be acting U.S. attorney, New Jersey. They attack, attack, attack. Elon Musk, the federal judiciary, the federal judges, insane, leftist, corrupt, over and over and over again, creating their own hermetically sealed loop of echo chamber. And then as we've said before in that ecosystem, they activate their social media campaign, their rapid response team, their paid social media people. And then we're often running with this clarion call for the head of the federal judge so bad that the Supreme Court's head had to step forward and say, enough, pump the brakes with Justice Roberts. Now we're in the courtroom with Judge Boasberg sort of two ways. And then later we're going to talk about some rulings at the D.C. court of Appeals level, where one three judge panel made two rulings, but one judge flipped to support the Trump administration at a, I thought a bad moment. Boasberg gets assigned randomly the signal gate case about, you know, the 18 people on a signal chat, which is barely encrypted, talking about war plans against the Houthis in in the Suez Canal region and their military strikes that they were planning, including target packages and types of equipment. Turns out that much of what was discussed in the signal chat, which was first arranged by Mike Waltz. But Pete Hegseth doesn't seem to understand what confidential and top secret is either. New reporting is he's brought his wife to a number of the meetings when he was abroad you know, the meetings where he's caught with a alcohol glass at a meetings with the Europeans. He also brought his brother and his wife along with him to these secret meetings. Not, not great. And so this whole group sort of gets together. The Israelis are upset because it was their intelligence from that region, the Suez Canal around Egypt, that was discussed in the signal chat. So it sort of torched and burnt the Israelis. Pilots for the military, current and former, are upset. Or as one put it, who's currently in the military. They the Trump administration is going to get us killed by talking about operations in an insecure, unsecure way before we've launched them, allowing our enemy to know where we are and shooting us out of the sky. So we have. I'm framing the issue. It's been downplayed, attempted to be downplayed. Of course, it's backfired. For the Trump administration outside the courtroom, you know, it's a glitch. You know, Mike Waltz learned a lesson. He's going to be fired any day now, by the way. On the. In the courtroom, a group that often sues for transparency in government brought a lawsuit about very simple and very ingenious and how simple it was. Didn't have to get into whether it's top secret. Not top secret, classified, not classified intelligence, classified military, who cares? It's a federal record and the fact that they were using an app that by its nature auto deletes like Snapchat, but for the military and security purposes, they said that is a violation of the Federal Records act because they're doing the people's business. These are the people's records. These are transactional communications that need to be preserved for this administration, future administrations and the people. But of course, Donald Trump, what did he learn from Mar a Lago and how that was ultimately handled? He can get away with anything when it comes to top secret, classified, compartmented ccs of stuff. So of course, his administration doesn't give a shit about any of that. The case gets filed for violation of Federal Records act to stop or enjoin all of the people on that chain and all departments from continuing to use signal and from deleting these documents. It gets assigned to Boasberg. Pam Bondi takes to the airwaves and says, isn't it a coincidence that Boseberg, the radical left lunatic judge, got assigned to this along with the Alien Enemies act case? Yeah, it's not a coincidence. He spent a. I love. He had. There were two moments of levity in the first hearing with Postberg, the first Was he spent an inordinate amount of time at the very beginning talking about the random selection process in the court system and how every judge has an electronic card and the wheel spins. When I started my career in federal court, there literally was a wheel. Okay, I sound like I, like I was wearing a powdered wig. You know, when you watch the lotto numbers being picked and a ping pong ball popped up, it was like that there were ballots in a giant thing and the federal. And this clerk would pick out a judge's name that way. Way. Okay, we do it now through an electronic wheel. But he felt he had to do that because he knew he was going to get the grief that. Why did I get this case again? Look, there's only 24 judges in the, in the D.C. courthouse, which is hard to believe given the amount that they, the volume that they, that they work on. So, yes, there's a 1 in 24 chance, but it happens. And he. There, there's so many cases, you know, hundreds of cases against the Trump administration already. Of course, there's going to be overlapping judges or judges that get signed to more than one case. So he get, he spends the time doing that. Then after listening to all of it, he outfoxes, no pun intended, the Trump administration, because he gets them to agree to an injunction that, between you and me, I'm not sure he had the power to grant, because I'm not sure the irreparable harm part was there. What he wanted was them to agree to preserve all of the signal records from March 11 to March 15 and not delete them. The lawyer for the Department of Justice was busy tap dancing and stammering in front of the judge. Well, trying. The Department of Justice is working where we've made demand on all the departments and some have cooperated, like the Treasury Department and others we haven't heard from, like the Department of Defense and Hegseth, which did not give the judge any great comfort. And whenever you hear the Department of Justice is on it, you know, you can. They have no credibility in these courtrooms for obvious reasons, and so that the judges don't trust that. But he got the lawyer for the Department of Justice to agree effectively to his order that they would not, they would not delete and they would preserve those documents. Now, he can get out of the injunction world and he can get to the merits of the violation of the Federal Records Act. But so the reporting is that he issued that particular order at the end. The other moment of levity, which I love, because Boasberg is getting abused. And I'm sure it's showing up in his attacks on him in social media. And I'm sure there's an increase in violent rhetoric aimed at him that the federal marshals are going to have to, that are dealing with. There's a fight in the Alien Enemies act case we'll talk about next, in which they're arguing at the Trump level, which is a ridiculous position to take, that his oral proclamation, his injunction at 6:35 two Saturdays ago to stop the planes and stop the deportation under the phony war power declaration by proclamation by Donald Trump. There's an hour gap there where it looks like they were violating. And they said, well, no, because it took an hour to put it up on the docket. That wasn't the order. That was so the public can keep track through an accurate docket of what happened in the case. The order is what you're told in court. That's why when you're a lawyer, you take down notes, you get the transcript, you make sure you understand the parameters and contours of your injunction against you or the order. When I hear the judge say, which he said in the transcript, pardon me, I'm ready to rule. As soon as a judge sets the magic words, as soon as the judge says I'm ready to rule, you and everybody on your team takes out your pads or your computers, if you have your computer and you start to write, because that's the ruling. So there's this fight about oral versus written. So the judge said at the end of the hearing about signal gate, he said, here's my order you're going to preserve. You agree? Yes. Okay, great. Oh, don't worry. You don't have to worry about writing it down. I'll be issuing something in writing. And then he just stood and looked at them, which I love that he is able to have that sense of humor in that context. So that's on the signal gate side. You want me to switch to the Alien Enemies act? Up to the D.C. appellate court?
- [45:31]
Michael Popak
Let's do it. Switch it up.
- [45:32]
Ben Meiselas
All right, we got two different. Sometimes panels of three judges that are randomly assigned to a case are held together for more than one appeal. Depends on how the appeals come in. So back to back, Wednesday and Friday, we had. I'll cover the first one first. We had the same three judge panel. Walker, Trump, appointee, Millet, Obama, Henderson, Bush. I almost said Reagan, Bush. Okay. Same three judges, Henderson being the wild card. I'll tell you about that in a minute. They also get assigned to the case of the joint appeal about whether Donald Trump could just decapitate and put out a business effectively. The Merit Protection Service Board and the National Labor Relations Board, which are for all the unions that didn't support Kamala Harris. You got a lot of explaining to do now because the two entities that were around to protect your workers have now effectively, for the duration of this administration been put out of business by Donald Trump and by this three judge panel. So the three judge panel, same three judge panel ruled for Donald Trump in that case, ruled against Donald Trump in the Alien Enemies Act. It went up on a hearing on the Alien Enemies Act. And the only issue in both of these cases is whether a stay on the injunction that was issued by the various judges to stop Trump's abuse of power, whether that injunction is going to stay in place while the duration of the appeal is litigated over the next three, six, nine months. What is the status quo that's being preserved? That's the only issue. It gets to the merits because you've got to look at the merits of the underlying appeal in order to determine whether somebody's likely to succeed or not. But it's only about a stay. And there's certain factors that an appellate court can use about stay under a certain factor test that have to be analyzed. On the Alien Enemies act, all three, there was no real agreement except two judges in concurrence, Henderson and Millette said the Trump administration is likely to lose. They overreached in using the Alien Enemies act. Or as Henderson put it, what you're pointing to this terrorist gang that's in America and has been in America for quite some time. That's a migration issue. That's an immigration issue. Migration is not a predatory incursion. Migration is not an invasion or a war. In order for you to have that power, for me to give you that power through the Constitution, there has to be a war and we don't have war with Venezuela. Millette is the one. She also in concurrent said effectively the same thing. Mallette went further in oral argument and said, where is the due process? You can do everything that you're doing, but do it in front of a judge, an immigration judge, and give them due process, give them an opportunity to have a lawyer and prove whether they are or are not part of that gang. And then that might be a different story. But the Nazis, suspected Nazis in America, were given better due process rights that you're giving these individuals who you've sent off to Venice, El Salvador. That was the big headline for that. So in a 2 to 1 with Walker, the Trumper in dissent, who said this is really a Texas matter, why are we in D.C. this should have been done with a writ of habeas corpus individually down in Texas while they were still there. But they're not still there. They're in El Salvador. That's the problem. So they upheld the Boasberg decision two to one, keeping the injunction in place. Donald Trump doesn't like it. He's filed an application, the seventh application, to the United States Supreme Court. And as of our recording, the Supreme Court is sitting on it. They haven't gotten the four votes yet to ask for a briefing schedule. So they haven't assigned usually. I would have thought if they were really interested, when they're interested in something within a day, they will give the other side an opportunity to file a brief and they'll rule thereafter. They did that in a couple of cases recently here. I'm still waiting for the briefing schedule. They may not find this that interesting, meaning they can't find four votes to take up this application or five votes to support Trump. And we'll follow it here on Midas Dutch and on Legal af. That's the full completion. I'll take a breather. Before we move on to the other, the other batter today.
- [49:56]
Michael Popak
When I was doing this, it was like a switch hitter, like a baseball season starting. That's why I love it. Switch it up. That's why I was doing that. I want to call a quick break, our last quick break of the show. And then I want to talk about the Trump propaganda. I'll take that piece of it. But then there were some not so good rulings in the D.C. circuit Court of Appeals. You talked about the good rulings there. What's important on a show like this is that we let you know the good, the bad and the ugly. I hope that's one of the reasons you like Legal af, because we're not going to sugarcoat a bad ruling and its implications or gloss over it. We'll talk about that, but we'll talk about a good ruling as well.
- [50:34]
Ben Meiselas
Don't worry.
- [50:35]
Michael Popak
We're not going to finish, though, on the bad note. We'll finish on the note of the Supreme Court making actually a good ruling, a common sense ruling when it comes to ghost guns. The fact that it wasn't unanimous, though, makes you scratch your head there for a second. Want to remind everybody, though, about the Legal AF YouTube channel. It's soaring right now. It's on its way to 1 million subscribers I'd love to get that legal AF YouTube channel. 1 million subscribers. I'll remind you about Midasplus.com, which is the Midas Touch substack. And then finally, so proud that Michael Popak has started his own law firm. The types of case they handle at the Popak law firm are catastrophic injury cases, car accidents, trucking accidents, medical malpractice, wrongful termination cases, sexual harassment, sexual assault cases like that. So if you or a loved one has a case or a friend that you know has a case, the consultations with the POPAC law firm are free. We had originally got so many inquiries of people who wanted help in these areas that Popo said, you know what? I'm going to start my own law firm and popoc, it's doing well. Where can people find out about your firm if they have a case?
- [51:50]
Ben Meiselas
Always appreciate your support and you know, we stand on the shoulders of what we've been building here on legal af. It's easy. Www.the opocerm.com is the website. It brings you right to the free consultation form and all the different ways to have your matter assessed. And if we take the case, you know we're going to do it on a contingency meeting for free. Unless we all get paid, you know, unless you recover. And then of course, the 800 number is easy to remember as well. 1877 Popac AF.
- [52:21]
Michael Popak
Check that out. And check out our Pro Democracy sponsors. We'll be right back after our last quick break of the show.
- [52:28]
Ben Meiselas
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- [56:20]
Michael Popak
Welcome back to Legal af. Thank you to those pro democracy sponsors right there. The discount codes are in the description below. And thank you to everybody who is also reaching out to the POPOC firm. I could actually see the calls that come in and the emails as they come in in real time. Also, if you forget the number or the email address, we'll say it again at the end of the show. But it's in the description below as well, how you contact the POPOC firm. Hey, Michael, I said as we got back I would talk about the Trump propaganda portion of this. And basically their attorney general, Pam Bondi at this point is nothing more than a spokesperson who goes on Fox and not really a good one on that. I mean, say what you want about Merrick Garland, the former attorney general, but he was at least somebody who understood in theory what the role of an attorney general was like in terms of you're not, I guess I set my standards fairly low with that description, but at least it's not someone who's on FOX every day now. I think we all feel very strongly that very strongly would be putting an understatement that a lot of what's occurring now could have been avoided if I think Merrick Garland didn't underestimate. And again, I'm really, I think I'm saying the understatement of the year made sure that the crimes that needed to be prosecuted were actually prosecuted. But there's a whole other show and multiple other legal AF shows on that topic. But I guess the point I'm making is that Pam Bondi should not be on FOX News every single night whining and complaining and acting like a bad PR flack. Here was the one of the more recent appearances where she's there, like attacking federal judges whose experience compare whose legal knowledge compared to hers is the difference between a mountain and a little ant molehill or something. I'm not good at descriptions like that. But anyway, play the clip.
- [58:22]
Ben Meiselas
Pam, thanks for being with us this afternoon.
- [58:25]
Michael Popak
Let's start, if we might, from the.
- [58:27]
Ben Meiselas
Decision by Judge Boasberg. Tomorrow is your deadline to answer questions. Those questions include the following. What time did the plane take off from US Soil? Where did it leave from? What time did it leave U.S. airspace? And what time did it land in a foreign country? You have, I don't know, four, five, six questions the judge wants answers to regarding the details of those flights over the weekend. How will you respond at the Department of Justice? Well, will our lawyers are working on this. We will answer answer appropriately. But what I will tell you is this judge has no right to ask those questions. You have one unelected federal judge trying to control foreign policies Trying to control the Alien Enemies act, which they have.
- [59:11]
Michael Popak
No business presiding over.
- [59:13]
Ben Meiselas
And there are 261 reasons why Americans are safer now. That's because those people are out of this country.
- [59:22]
Michael Popak
The judge had no business, no power.
- [59:25]
Ben Meiselas
To do what he did and will. He came in on an emergency basis on a Saturday with very, very short notice, if any, to our attorney to.
- [59:34]
Michael Popak
Run in the courtroom.
- [59:35]
Ben Meiselas
You know, and this has been a pattern with these liberal judges you just spoke about that. It's been a pattern with what they've been doing. This judge had no right to do that.
- [59:43]
Michael Popak
They're meddling in foreign affairs, they're meddling in our government. Again, the, the defamation of our court system. I mean, quite literally, federal judges hear things on emergency bases. This is the role of the federal judiciary. This was never a thing in the past before the Trump whining and victimhood permeated politics. That was even a question when I went to law school, when Popak went to law school slightly before I went to law school, and those before Michael Popak, who went to law school before he. These weren't questions of import or of any substance because this is the role of what the federal courts actually do. And as a result of the Trump regime defying the initial court order and coming up with this excuse about, oh, it was an oral order or whatever, you know, we've been covering on the Midas Touch Network all of these stories of a guy named Andres who's a gay hair stylist, political exile from Venezuela. Not trend day. Aragua now sent to El Salvador's concentration camps, probably going to die in an, in a concentration camp while Kristi Noem parades in front of a group of prisoners at that concentration camp. You know, there's the story about the dj, the musician, the story about the individual who's here lawfully asylum seeker, the story of someone who had a tattoo that was for autism awareness because a family member had autism. And that was said, oh, you're trend Aragua, that's a gang sign. Autism awareness, that's a gang sign. Even when the initial ICE detention people told him, you're not a gang member, it's okay, they sent this guy to El Salvador. They sent women to the concentration camp in El Salvador and then they had to be sent back because it's a male only concentration camp. The soccer player or football player who had the Real Madrid tattoo, had the Trump regime complied with the initial order, those people would not be killed in concentration camps. And the question is, are you okay? Even if there were some Gang members on that plane, which I think they should then have gone through the process where they're determined they're a gang member. You don't release them into general population. You make sure that they get the biggest penalties for the crimes that are committed. I'm not okay with people being sent to El Salvador concentration camps without due process. Again, call me old fashioned about my interpretation of a law and ordination, but due process is something that should exist. You know, now you have all these people in concentration camps under the authority of the United States flag, dying and being murdered and the rest of their life there in concentration camps. I mean, it's ridiculous and it's a despicable and shameful time in American history where this is taking place. And then you see the propaganda that she does and goes, ah, the judge, the lefty judge. Look, this was a judge who was first appointed by George W. Bush to the superior court in Washington D.C. then appointed by former President Obama. He's been the chief judge of the FISA court, the Foreign Intelligence Services Act. Chief Judge of Washington D.C. yale Law student. By the way, when Trump goes after Wilmer Howell, Judge Nichols, The Trump appointee, D.C. federal judge, worked at Wilmer Howells as a partner, you know, and so you have these ridiculous clownish, no offense to real clowns as opposed to these Trump fascist clowns, because being a clown's a real profession, but being a Trump clown isn't. I mean, this is not the way the legal system works. I want to flag that. We should all be against that, regardless of your political party. And it's a bunch of nonsense injected into the veins of that fox. I put this in quote news audience, and it's, it's horrific.
- [64:04]
Ben Meiselas
Well, before you leave, Boasberg said it best. He said in his, when he did his hearing, he said, you understand, for the Department of Justice, you understand, I'm not ordering the release of any of these people. I'm not ordering that the jails be emptied and these people be put into like the general population of America. You understand that, right? Yes. Okay. Mr. Ensign, you understand that you can continue to arrest people if you want, for now under the Alien Enemies act, the way my injunction is written. You understand that? And you can keep them in Guantanamo and all different places. The thing you can't do is to deport them without due process to a foreign prison under a phony war proclamation. I mean, that's, that's the summary of that. And you got Pam Bondi, who I'm nostalgic always for the Biden Administration and how they handle things like when we see signal gate and the rest. But to see an Attorney General as a cheap political hack going after, you know, when, when she was saying he has no right as a judge to do anything to review the Alien Enemies Act. Well, actually he does. And if you read the 1953 case of Ludecki, you would know that anything that has to do with words, their meaning, interpretation, and whether the triggering events to give a president power or not, even the utmost constitutional, absolute core presidential power, like war powers, gets reviewed by a single judge in a single district, going up to a three judge panel of a court of appeal on the way to the United States Supreme Court. And every major case and constitutional case that you and I have ever studied and that we've ever covered has come up almost the exact same way. So this malarkey that they, that this pap. This, this drug that they try to peddle to the American people, this is extraordinary. A judge interpreting the language of a statute or a constitutional provision. Yeah, ever since 1803 in Marbury vs Madison, that is the role of the federal courts. What they want is the thing you started this podcast with. They want the frictionless ability of an absolute monarch to make rulings without any pushback at all. He's got a doormat for a Congress, except for the Democrats doing their part. He wants a doormat or a limp noodle of federal judges so that in the short amount of time that he has, boys, it seemed longer of being the president for the last time, he can do maximum damage. It is that friction between the plates and the courts doing their role to keep the presidency in line, the presidency doing its role against the federal courts in Congress. It is that tension, that friction that Louie Brandeis talked about in the 1920s, that is our checks and balance system. Or as Judge Beryl Howell put it recently, they are trying to upend the constitutional order of things that have existed for over 200 years. And so we have another decision just to transition, batter up, transition. Same three judge panel, Henderson, Millet and Walker. Except now, whereas Henderson was like, you know, I'm not letting you exercise war powers when there's no war, so sit down here. When Donald Trump decided to decapitate and put into mothballs the National Labor Relations Board and its expertise about labor and collective bargaining matters and illegal practices in the workplace, and the Merit Service Protection Board established to protect federal workers in the civil service area, that was reformed in the 1970s. And he decided, I got away, I'll get rid of the quorum, I'll fire the Democrats. I won't replace them with anybody and they don't have a quorum, so I don't have to worry about it. No more National Labor Relations Board and no more Merit Service Protection Board. Well, multiple judges starting with Beryl Howell and Rudy Contreras and at the time Amy Berman Jackson decided no, you can't fire the special counsel, the Merit Service Protection Board or the National Labor Relations Board board member because Congress established them as yes, they're in the executive branch, but they are independent, they are bipartisan and they don't exercise enough executive power to run afoul of a long line of cases starting in the 1930s with a case that you and I and the rest of us refer to as Humphrey's executor named after a case. And that case said as long as this thing doesn't exercise that much executive power and it was set up bipartisan and it does these administrative things, even adjudicative things. It is, it can't be fired at will by the President unless there's cause. None of these people, there are no cause. The only cause was he didn't like the color of their party, if you know what I mean. They were blue, but they're also women and black. So that case which was reaffirmed in 2020 in a case called Celia Law, that's been, that is 90 years of precedent. Now the three judge panel again Henderson flipped, this time the Bush appointee and sided with Walker, the Trump appointee and decided that they're going to throw over the game board of 90 years of precedent and say Humphreys executor is questionable and it's really the outer boundaries and find these boards are exercising more executive power than the Humphreys court had anticipated and therefore it violates the separation of powers. That's how they got there. Millette, the judge who in the other case said Nazis have more due process. She's livid. And in her order in her sorry her dissent, she said you are the only federal court to have ever found after Humphreys in 1937 or 35 and after Celia and all the times the Supreme Court has affirmed it to find that a president can fire without cause people with agencies who and these do not operate in the world of exercising too much executive power. They have barely power at all, but they are important. And all you're doing, she called it out, is you're letting Trump remove the quorum so there's not enough people to operate effectively incapacitating them decapitating them, despite the fact that Congress has funded them and established them for a reason. So it's the executive branch. If anybody's violating the separation of powers, it's the executive branch. And the status quo, as you started the hot take or the podcast with the status quo is keeping them in their chairs. But now by a 2 to 1 decision, they're fired again from their roles, meaning these two entities stopped existing. And the parties, the plaintiff side, the appellant side, have asked the court to stay. They're ruling to give them an opportunity to go out the United States Supreme Court, and we haven't gotten a ruling on that yet. But you can see you and I half joke a lot about tell us who the judges are and we can tell you what their judicial philosophy is and how on a lot of cases they're going to come out. And so when I heard Henderson, who'd been on a wrong side of a couple of other cases involving Donald Trump in the past, was the swing vote here, if you will. So you can see where she's at. No. On war power, phony war powers, okay. On unifying the executive branch and letting Donald Trump do whatever he wants with all these agencies.
- [71:50]
Michael Popak
You know, this is where I see a lot of quote unquote conservative jurists kind of over intellectualize us into fascism, into and view this as some kind of fascinating thought experiment into how smart they are and these kind of esoteric ideas. And it's very weird because you would think that the same panel that basically says, hey Trump, you're acting as a dictator by kidnapping people and sending them to concentration camps would also be the same people who go, hey, you're acting as a dictator by firing these people in independent boards. But you see where I say they over intellectualize that. The issue is not that they're saying, Trump, you have a right to fire the people. Trump didn't win the case. What Trump won is that these right wing judges who ruled against him in the other case, in the 2 to 1 decision, were basically like, what is to be or not to be? That is the question, right? It was what is the status quo? Is the status quo now because they're fired? The fact that they're fired so they don't return. And thus if we just seal, hermetically seal what's happening, you could still fight, but it'll take you two years to fight for your job back and you may ultimately win the merits. But the status quo is the termination or is the status quo the fact that these people had a job and now they no longer have a job, which is what the people who were fired were arguing. The status quo is return us to the job. And so you could understand the thought experiment, if this was a law school class, argue this. Well, the termination happened. Thus once you go to court, ergo, they're fired. So the status quo before they filed is that they're fired. But you're like, okay, well, now you've just justified dictatorship, you freaking idiots. And that, to me, is a lot of the issues with these John Roberts style conservatives who act like they're so smart. You know, it's like, you know, watching the Harlem Globetrotters play basketball, and it's like, okay, but you'll never actually beat the freaking team if you just spin the ball around on your fingers, go like, beat the dictatorship. At the end. At the end of the day, it's like, I get it, you're smart, but you just made a freaking stupid ruling.
- [74:20]
Ben Meiselas
Do you think, Let me ask you, I, I totally agree with that. Do you also think that Henderson, knowing what she ruled on Wednesday, do you think this was a makeup call, the umpire continuing baseball, saying, wait, that guy was out in first place? Well, you think it was a makeup call by her to give, to give the Trump administration one.
- [74:37]
Michael Popak
They're bizarre. You know, I saw it in law school. I was in Paul Clement's class in law school. That was a professor who taught clinics at Georgetown Law Center. And so, you know, you can have a guy like Clement who's like, I'm going to fight for the law firms against this overreach. But, you know, the Patriot act does allow a lot of torture, you know, you know, the unitary, you know, it's just the, you know, I do think that I don't want to hold, you know, this over the head of Mayor Eric Adams. So I'm going to think there should be a full dismissal. You know, these, you know, it's why I've always said you can't run a media network or anything, trying to actually court these people and be like, come on, we're the pro democracy crew. What you have to do is just be in your own lane, speak the truth every day. And if they want to join because they feel shame that they're not part of it, then they'll join. But you can't, like, actually put your hopes into some of these people because they'll always let you down.
- [75:46]
Ben Meiselas
One geeky last. And we have to move on to our last story. One geeky thing. Hampton Dellinger, who's the son of my Constitutional law professor, the late Walter Dellinger. He threw in the white towel two weeks ago. He would have been the third case and he would have lost the Paris. He, he saw the writing on the wall. He was the head of the Office of Special Counsel, which is the other part of the Marriage Service Protection Board. He thought he couldn't win. I thought under Humphreys executor, the case we talked about, he would win. But you know what? I gave it up to Hampton. At least he wasn't on the losing end of this decision that we're talking about.
- [76:16]
Michael Popak
Well, and he bought enough time where he was able to issue a report to help the federal workers when he issued a report saying those terminations were unlawful. And he was able to see. He bought himself the 10 days to do that. He did his thing, which is I think why he asked for those 10 days. And then he went into the sunset, if you will, and has no interest in being a part of this ridiculous Trump regime. Finally, though, on a positive note, this 7 to 2 ruling seemed like an obvious ruling. So kind of clapping for it is probably not deserved if that's where the Overton window has shifted on Second Amendment issues. But Popak, why don't you briefly hit this 7 to 2 Supreme Court ruling?
- [77:04]
Ben Meiselas
Yeah, that's. We had hoped this would happen. This is speaking of nostalgia for the Biden administration. This is a Biden era push to have home kits that you can make a DIY gun at home already sounds bad. Through either 3D part manufacturing or you just get the whole kit. And these kits either run the gamut from like a jigsaw puzzle where everything is, has to be put together and it takes you hours to do it. Okay. Or. And there were reproduced photos in Gorsuch, who wrote the majority opinion. 7 to 2 opinion by Gorsuch or it's not a kid at all. The thing is exactly a gun. It's got a couple of plastic tabs you need to just cut. You shove the magazine in the bottom. And as one of the advertisers, one of the labels on the side of the box said that Gorsuch reproduced just buy, point, buy, build and shoot. Right. And that's the point. The question was whether this type of kit was governed by the Gun control Act of 1968. Remember when Congress used to get together with national, national tragedies and handle them a bipartisan way, like when RFK was killed and Martin Luther King Jr. Were killed and they came up with maybe we should get guns off the street. Remember that? So The Gun Control act still exists. And the question was a little bit of an esoteric one, whether the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Bureau, whether the Bureau's interpretation of a reg or issuance of a regulation pursuant to the Gun control Act of 1968 under Joe Biden, under Biden administration where it said that these kits need to cut, whether who are being sold by gun manufacturers have to be registered with serial numbers and people that get them have to get background checks. And because the explosion, no pun intended, of these kits, 30,000 ghost guns, that's what they call them, with no serial number were used in crime in the last year, up from 1,000 five years ago. So we got a problem. And all Gorsuch and the other six said is that these two things can live in harmony. The Gun Control act does not mean that this regulation is facially invalid. Now he left it open for depending upon the type of kit and how, but he didn't like the kits that he had seen because they looked a lot like guns out of a box. So now the ruling base 7 to 2 with Alito and Thomas, of course, Thomas, who wrote the Braun decision New York Rifle about expanding the second amendment rights, making them personal rights for people and not allowing regulation of people having personal sidearms and other weaponry unless back in old timey time they could find a historical antecedent or analog for it. He wrote that. So of course anything that looks like gun control. So there, as I said in a hot take, two people on the court are in favor of mass murder and mayhem used by guns that are unregistered, which law enforcement hates by the way. And seven thought that's not such a great idea. Let's find a way to shoehorn these DIY kits into the regulations. Again, they're not banned. You can continue. Sorry, I'm stuttering over it. You can continue to make your guns at home, but you got to get a background check and you got to get registered. It's not going to be an off the grid weapon because so many of them are ending up in the perpetration of violent crime.
- [81:01]
Michael Popak
Michael Popak, you said it all. I was thinking, do I even add anything to that? And all I add to that is. All I add to that is, Michael, I'm really proud of it for you for starting your own law firm. I want to remind everybody where they can reach out to you if they or someone they know has a case. You handle personal injury cases, but really like the catastrophic injury cases. So wrongful death cases, cases where there are serious injuries. And if it's not a case you handle, you team up with the best lawyers in the country to try to get the best results possible for the clients. The consultation is absolutely free. So if people have a case or have a loved one or a friend who has a case, where do they tell them to reach out to?
- [81:49]
Ben Meiselas
Yeah, it's very simple. It's a website and a 1, 800 number. The website is my name, it's the Popak P O P O K firm.com and the 1, 800 number is 1-877-popak.
- [82:05]
Michael Popak
P O P O K A F. It's really great. I mean, you know, you wanted to start your own firm. Got thousands of calls already. So really proud of you there. Want to remind everybody about Michael Popak's YouTube channel, the Legal AF YouTube channel on its way to 1 million subscribers. So check that out as well. Check out the Midas touch substack@midasplus.com m e I-a s p l u s.com midasplus.com and hit subscribe below as well. Help us get to 5 million subscribers here on the Midas Touch channel. We covered a lot. Very comprehensive episode on today's Legal. Aforementioned share this network with friends, family members, coworkers. Share Legal AF with anybody you know. It helps really spread the word of mouth about the show, about what we're doing here, about our mission. I've been getting a lot of videos shared with me from all of these town halls that are taking place where Midas Touch has frequently been mentioned. And people are wearing their Midas Touch and Legal AF gear, which is super cool. To see the impact it's having here in the United States and Canada and Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South America, Central America, Mexico, Africa as well. We see you all Legal A effers. We're grateful for all of you and in Asia as well, grateful for all of you. Thanks everybody for watching Legal af. I'm Ben Meisellis, joined by Michael Popak. We appreciate you. Have a good day. Stay in the fight. Democracy is going to prevail. We're in this together. Shout out Midas Mighty Shout out Legal A efforts like your favorite travel guide. T Mobile's network knows all the spots because T Mobile helps keep you connected.
- [84:02]
Ben Meiselas
From the heart of Portland to right.
- [84:04]
Michael Popak
Where you are On America's largest 5G network Switch now keep your phone and T Mobile will pay it off at the $800 per line via prepaid card. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more att mobile.com keepandswitch up to four lines via virtual prepaid card last 15 days qualified unlock device credit service port in 90 plus days device an eligible carrier and timely redemption required card.
- [84:22]
Ben Meiselas
Is no cash access and expires in six months.