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- [00:01]
Michael Popak
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- [00:59]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
This summer, Instacart is bringing back your favorites from 1999 with prices from 1999. That means 90s prices on juice pouches that ought to be respected, 90s prices on boxed Mac and cheese, and 90s prices on ham, cheese and cracker lunches. Enjoy all those throwbacks and more at throwback prices only through Instacart. $4.72 maximum discount per $10 of eligible items. Limit 3 offers per order expiration September 5th while supplies last discount based on CPI comparison Back to school is better with Family Freedom from T Mobile we'll.
- [01:39]
Michael Popak
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Karen Freeman Agnifilo
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Michael Popak
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- [01:56]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
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- [02:01]
Michael Popak
11 Pro for well qualified credits end and balance due if you pay off early or cancel. Contact T Mobile Whether you're into comedians roasting each other's life choices or turning yesterday's bad decisions into today's funny stories, Amazon Music's got the most ad free Top podcasts included with Prime. Download the Amazon Music app and get in on the joke or or go to Amazon.com ad free comedy that's Amazon.com ad free comedy to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads. Oh, it's that time. It's legal AF the live recording of the podcast. You can tell that because Karen Freeman, Nickniffalo, Michael Popak are up on the screen, scream. You know, that's what I want to do. I want to scream. During most of our podcasting. I meant scream. Anyway, it stays in the podcast pod. Let's get down to the hot topics for today. Here we go. We got a major update, including today of developments in the Kilmer Abrego Garcia matter. And it's not just about him, right, Karen, because he's the poster child now for what is wrong and depraved and lawless about the Trump administration. We are Kilmer Abrego in every sense of the word and more. I finally got to hear from him instead of just seeing these pictures over and over again. Saw him at the press conference that was arranged by his lawyers before he was whisked into detention again by ice. The more I felt a level of compassion and a level of empathy for him that I, that I, not that I was surprised by, but, but that I, it made him human. It's, you know, he's a person that's being pulverized before our very eyes by the Trump administration. And, but there's some good developments there, including about the A word asylum. Then we'll talk about the attacks. Another a word on the Federal Reserve and its autonomy and its independence by Donald, going after the only black woman member of the board of governors, Lisa Cook, using, as the Wall Street Journal put it today in their editorial, an orchestrated attack using Bill Pulte, the Nepo baby who runs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, big Trumper, to make a whistleblower complaint to Pam Bondi about mortgage fraud over Lisa Cook's purchases of a couple of houses. And then Donald Trump, right on cue, I'm gonna fire her. She should resign. She should take a leave of absence. I should be able to. And what is this all about? Donald Trump's trying to get control of the seven member board of governors. And he's in the minority. We know he hates minorities and he hates being in the minority. So it's four to three Democratic appointed with Lisa Cook and Jay Powell in the majority. And he wants to flip the numbers. And that's all this is all about. And why is it that I never hear, Karen, about Republicans that have cheated on their taxes or that have declared a home to be their primary residence when it's their vacation home? The only ones that are being, that are being accused in America of committing quote, unquote, mortgage fraud are the black female leaders and enemies of Donald Trump and other and other Democrats. That's it. We'll talk more about all of that what it means for the stability of our financial markets and our, and the health of our, of our economy. Then we're talking about maps, maps, maps, maps are coming out of our ears. We got new developments in California about their referendum that's going up in November to plus 5 the amount of Democratic seats by redrawing the map in California as an antidote to what the Texas Republicans are doing to -5 the amount of seats for the Democrats. We've got a challenge there by an interesting law firm that Karen, you picked up on right away in some of our prep before we got on the air today. We'll talk about that challenge and how quickly that was shot down. And then we'll move to that touched on Texas. We'll talk about Utah and a judge there getting a whole lot of MAGA heat because of a ruling that she made to redraw the maps before the midterm election. And then Trump's on a losing streak. I know he doesn't act like he's on a losing streak. We know he times his new executive orders, new takeovers of cities, new peace treaties or whatever. Maxwell tapes he times that to step on bad news cycles for him. We got that. We got it. All right, Trump, we understand, we know what you're doing. But you're losing in courts. You continue to lose in courts. There's about four this week. We'll cover two of them. Trump loses badly in front of a Trump appointed judge concerning his attempt to disqualify the Maryland, all of the Maryland federal bench, all 12 of them. And we'll connect it to something related with Alina Haba's losses and what they're all There she is. I would say I miss her, but I don't. And how Alina Haba lost a kind of a similar thing with a judge sitting by designation and how that sort of works. A little bit of a teachable moment for you and me to talk about procedure. Karen Friedman, Agniphilo. The crowd goes crazy.
- [07:24]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
Great to see you.
- [07:25]
Michael Popak
She's also a little known fact, she's a very good street photographer. She'll be publishing her works for Christmas in a coffee table book coming out soon. That's an inside joke, but I wanted to make it anyway. Karen, how are you doing?
- [07:40]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
You know, I'm doing great. It's great to see you. Popak. I want to say that my dad and my stepmom who watch Legal AF religiously last week said I miss Popak. Where's Popo?
- [07:50]
Michael Popak
So, oh wait, last week you and Dina did it right. Yeah.
- [07:53]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
And they love Dina, but they just, they miss Popo. So. So I'm glad we're back together.
- [07:59]
Michael Popak
I know people miss you when you're not on. Yeah. So we're on. So let's take advantage. Let's take advantage of being on. You want to. It's going to be a pick them one. Which ones do you want to lead on? What do you want to lead on?
- [08:12]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
Well, I want to start with acknowledging that there was a terrible shooting today and several children have been killed and many other injured and many, many others completely traumatized. I'm traumatized by this. I just. The idea of these going back to school, going to mass and it's supposed to be a great happy day and people are anxious already going back to school in this time of year and to be sitting there at the first day of school mass, these young children to be shot and massacred, frankly, the way they were today is just. It just hits really terribly. And I know there's a lot of school shootings in this country for some reason I don't ever. They never get. They never sort of get old or they never. It never goes away, the pain that it causes. So I just think we really need to continue to talk about these issues and the prevalence of just guns that anyone can get and get into the hands of the wrong people. And these are children, these are people's lives. And so many lives have been upended because of this. Not just the ones who have lost loved ones, but the trauma that this has caused. So I just want to acknowledge that and acknowledge that that's what's in the background today while we talk about these issues. But the issues we talk about and saving democracy in this country, we don't do it because we just were fighting and you know, the left versus the right, it's because all of these policies that governments and politicians put into place have real life consequences. And the gun, the people who. Look, I believe in the second Amendment, this has nothing to do with that. But there's a just outrageous gun problem in this country that needs to be just reined in and have sensible gun laws. Don't take guns away from law abiding people. Don't take guns away from especially law abiding people in rural areas who don't have police departments nearby, et cetera, protect your families. But there are the people who get guns, who do things like this massacre, people who have mental health histories, people who have criminal histories. Those are the people who are killing people and those we have to figure out a way to get guns out of the hands of, of those individuals. And we're failing at that. And so I want to just talk about that because what we're talking about when we say things like Popak you said last night on the intersection, you said we are at war and we are at war to save our democracy. We are at war and there is nothing more important and lives are at stake.
- [11:04]
Michael Popak
And why Minnesota again, that poor state just had the major tragedy with its lawmakers and here we are again now at a Catholic school church for school opening. And yes, there's reporting and I'm not going to ignore it, there's reporting that this guy might have been anti Trump, but how crazed and cracked was he to kill an 8 year old or a 10 year old to pay back Trump? But it does show you that policies rhetoric of this Trump administration on the already cracked or mental health problems, they're not helping. They're not helping when you put people like Trump does with his rhetoric at each other's throats. Because in order for a Trump to exist, there has to be a seething cauldron of hatred. Now we try not to promote that because that's not in our best interest as free thinking people, as moderates, as Democrats, as independents. Donald Trump wants us to hate the person next door who's MAGA and wants the MAGA flag flying person next door to hate you because from there then he can implement his strongman dictatorship and crush and occupy Democratic strongholds and rewrite the maps we'll be talking about today to steal seats and representation for the American people. And the way he talks, literally and talks down to the American people and disparages in a disgusting fashion migrants, immigrants, women, the Democrats judges just gives license to people who are not suffering from mental health problems to become disgusting in their own rhetoric. But when it falls on the ears of the people who are deranged, it is something that contributes, I am sure, to their, to the gun violence in this country. I haven't done the map, the graph about whether during the Obama period or the Biden period or the Clinton period, there were less school shootings, but there were less school shootings and less other types of shootings. Because when you have a combination, this deadly combination of Republicans and a Supreme Court who won't allow for reasonable gun regulation to take this out of the streets and have let's have mental health testing before you're allowed to get a gun, since we have a party that's completely abdicated their responsibility to control guns it's the worst administration ever for public health and public safety we've ever had. The attacks on the police, the Jan6 insurrectionists being pardoned, the turning the National Guard into the police, which is not doing well with courts and civil liberties being attacked as a result. When you have that and money taken away from mental health and the rhetoric coming out of the White House, and not just the White House, I mean, everything in the White House. Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth, you name it. Every proxy for Donald Trump, you know, is another thing that ends up in the, in the, in the, in the unit, in the universe and is out there. And then a guy like this kills, you know, fires indiscriminately to a church and kills people. It's, it's just, I, I'm not saying the Trump administration has blood on their hands, but you know where I'm going with this, with this theory, right, Karen?
- [14:48]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's true. It absolutely is true. But, you know, there's a great organization, it's called Everytown for Gun Safety, started by M. Bloomberg, and I urge everyone to go to their website, and they have incredible statistics about what you were just saying. They track all that stuff about school shootings and about gun purchases and how it spikes at certain times and just what sensible laws would be and who has good laws, who has bad laws. Really, just, they do a great job at tracking all the data for people. But I do think it's time for, for something sensible. For sure, it was, the time was a long time ago, but.
- [15:28]
Michael Popak
Well, we'll look at this. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to step on you there. The. And, and as we segue into our first major segment here and look at the depravity that's exhibited by the Trump administration and its leadership. They are bringing the entire weight of the federal government, the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, the bully pulpit of the presidency, down on the slender shoulders of one person named Kilmer Abrego Garcia, to pulverize him and make him disappear. And whether you believe or don't believe the allegations that have been lodged against him, and they're different. If you're looking at the court filings from what Pam Bondi and other people are saying in public, whether you do or you don't, we all have to agree as Americans that he's entitled to due process, he's entitled to have a federal judge intervene. And if he's the target and the subject of a prosecutorial misconduct, abuse of power. Vindictive prosecution, then there has to be a remedy for that. And we can't just reward the Trump administration for doing bad things. There has to be a federal judge using their inherent authority and using their equitable powers, has to be able to right wrongs. And so let's bring the audience up to speed on Kilmer Abrego Garcia. We know from the Weekend edition that he was ordered released from his federal detention on the criminal indictment that the Trump administration manufactured out of thin air for human trafficking, sorry, human smuggling in Tennessee. But after Judge Holmes, the magistrate judge took a look at the indictment like is this what you got? And had witnesses testify in front of her, she was had a, I guess putting it nicely, a jaundiced view of the indictment and its strength, but also said that the grounds to keep him in jail are not present any longer. And she ordered him released. And he went home in the custody of his brother on Friday to go back to Baltimore, Maryland. And he had two orders that that applied to him at that moment, Judge Holmes's order that you go home custody of your brother Monday morning, which was this Monday 10am phone in, phone in to ICE and check in in the Baltimore office. Judge Zinnis said when you get out, you're under my jurisdiction, remanded to me and you are to be given the same conditions of release you had before you went to El Salvador and were tortured by way of the Trump administration. None of that happened. None of that happened. You know, Shawn Hecker, Karen.
- [18:09]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
Yes. Yes.
- [18:09]
Michael Popak
Good. So we'll get to because the original firm for Abrego Garcia is out. Talk about that later, which was Quinn Emanuel and others. And Sean Hecker and his partners are in and boy, are they doing a great job. Why don't you catch the audience up about what happened about the come in for an interview, won't you? And how Sean and his team were ready for that press conference filing and all that.
- [18:32]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
Yeah. So look, they that he was released from federal custody in Tennessee because he's charged with low level federal human smuggling case. And so there was no reason to hold him in on bail. And he had to check in with ICE because he has this immigration proceeding going on. And he was going to check in, I think by phone and they asked him to come in. And everybody knew that that was meant he was going to be detained, which of course he was. And his lawyers were ready to with a lawsuit. And they brought a they brought the lawsuit in front of Judge Zinnis, who very quickly ruled that he can't go anywhere. And you're not going to, while we are going to litigate what's going on here, I'm going to get to the bottom of it and I'm going to hold hearings in October. And he must not be removed from this country until then because they were trying to extort a plea out of him. They were saying, hey, if you plead guilty to the Tennessee smuggling case, because I think they know that's kind of a BS case. It's certainly not that serious. You could go to Costa Rica. You'll like Costa Rica better. Because if not, if you don't take it, you are going to go to Uganda. I mean, that's essentially extortion. And it's very hard to get a judge to accept a plea like that under those circumstances because pleas have to be knowing and voluntary. And during a plea allocution, when someone pleads guilty to a case, judges will ask a defendant, is anyone forcing you to do this? Is anyone threatening you to do this? Is anyone coercing you to do this? And he'd have to say yes to all of those and the judge would not accept that plea. And so it's downright extortive. So they were going to, I think they want to do that to get rid of the case because I think they know it's a BS case and they don't want to have to try that case. Right. You would think it's, they used to say it's easy to indict. A prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich. And it's easy to get an indictment. And it is an easy, it is very easy to get an indictment, but it's much harder to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt. And the reason I said it used to be is because also going on in Washington, D.C. is they keep trying to indict somebody for, I think it was throwing a sandwich at an ICE officer or FBI agent or somebody, and they're trying to indict that person for a federal crime. And they've presented it to three different grand juries and all three times the grand jury rejected it. So which I think is stunning because Trump is trying to bring these low level cases to Washington D.C. and this.
- [21:13]
Michael Popak
Is the administration that let 1600 people out for attacking the Capitol, trying to hang and assassinate elected officials. Five people died and somebody threw a sandwich.
- [21:22]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
Exactly, exactly. But that's why, that's why the jury system, the grand jury system, at the end of the day, you know, people speak and they, and they don't like government overreach. And I love that three different grand juries rejected that. Anyway, but back to Kilmar, Abreco, Garcia. I'm sorry I went off on that.
- [21:40]
Michael Popak
Tangent, but I like that tangent.
- [21:42]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
But back to him. He essentially is being extorted because they don't want to prosecute that weak old case that they didn't even arrest him at the time. It was a traffic stop and they let him go. They were digging up something to try to do this to him. And so Judge Zinnis is not having it. And she's basically said, you're not taking him anywhere where we're going to get to the bottom of this and what's going on? And she even said to the Department of Justice prosecutor, Drew Ensign, do you understand he must not go anywhere. She was like, I want to make sure you understand exactly what's going on. And they said, yes. So we'll see. He's seeking asylum and we'll see what ends up happening here. But the good thing is, at least there's some due process happening, which is exactly what the Constitution gives him and all of us a right to. And that's exactly what's being taken away from him. You know, I just want to point out, though, also Popak, how strange it is that we even know his name. Right? There's about, I think, 65,000 federal prosecutions a year. There's not that, that's not that many cases, but still 65,000. How many can you name? Not that many. You can name a couple, maybe a celebrity here or there, a couple of high profile cases. You can't name a, you know, a guy who was charged with human smuggling in Tennessee from a traffic stop. So the fact that we even know about this and know the details, it just shows how unusual this case is and how ridiculous it is. Right? This is, this is something that is really not worth any of anyone's time. He should just be allowed to go on with his life. But he is not being treated as a human. He's being treated as a police political pawn. And it's, it's really atrocious. But I'm happy to see that judges, and, and this judge in particular, Judge Zinnis, is insisting on upholding the rule of law.
- [23:34]
Michael Popak
So he's here until October. That's when the evidentiary hearing is going to be. I never heard a federal judge in my life. I've been doing this 35 years who had to say out loud, you are absolutely forbidden to remove him from the country while I, I have jurisdiction and I'M considering the writ of habeas corpus. I mean, this is, this is how low the Department of Justice has sunk in the eyes of the federal judiciary. And I don't want to gloss over the, the amnesty thing. That's a big thing. The reason I say that is normally somebody seeks asylum. I said amnesty. Somebody seeks asylum in this country because they're being tortured if they return to their country or they're going to be politically persecuted or otherwise persecuted, and they prove that to an administrative law judge, slash immigration judge. Think about what we're arguing, what effectively the lawyers for Abrego Garcia, including Sean Hecker, who you and I both know are arguing. They're arguing that they're going to be arguing for a political asylum or asylum, sorry, in front of Judge Zinnis. And they're going to argue that the Trump administration has unclean hands, that they are. They have committed prosecutorial misconduct in that trade that you talked about. Would you like to go to Fantasy island or Uganda? I mean, what is this? Let's Make a Deal? And so to punish vindictive prosecution, selective prosecution, prosecutorial misconduct, which she already said. She already scrunched up her nose when that was described to her. The won't you plead guilty to the indictment that you have up for motion to dismiss for vindictive prosecution that Judge Crenshaw is dealing with and solve that problem for us?
- [25:15]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
No.
- [25:16]
Michael Popak
Okay, you're going to Uganda. And she didn't like that. So if at the end she says, look, if this were a, if I were Judge Crenshaw looking at an indictment for prosecutorial misconduct, I would dismiss the indictment and not allow it to be re indicted as a punishment to the government for breaking the law effectively and righting that wrong. But that's not what I have in front of me. What I have in front of me is a series of civil liberties and due process violations that I have to figure out a way to redress and unclean hands by. This is me doing my rendering of Judge Sinus.
- [25:51]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
This is Judge Popak.
- [25:52]
Michael Popak
This is Judge Popak, but this is Judge Zinnis, who's. This is the one who got appelled 90 by the Supreme Court, whose orders have been ignored. I mean, there's a whole rule in Maryland we're going to talk about later in federal district courts in Maryland, which is referred to as the Abrego Garcia rule, named after him, which require that nobody gets sent to El Salvador or anywhere else after a writ of habeas corpus has been filed for 48 hours and so that's what we talk. We actually, we're going to be. Those worlds collide in a later segment for us. But this particular judge sent us, who got taunted by the Trump administration about Abrego Garcia and has been told by the Supreme Court, you do you, you protect his civil liberties in your courtroom the best way that you can, and you're doing fine. Which is, you know, my version of the, the, the April or May April decision by the United States Supreme Court. She says, I got this all in front of me, this body of work of you, the Department of Justice, and how do I right this wrong? I'm going to grant asylum to the, in the United States again, in the country that he believes the government of, has tortured him. That's where we are in this upside down world right now.
- [27:04]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
Yeah, it is an upside down. Well, it makes you wonder, right? Things must be really bad if he wants to stay here, given how he's treated with his family.
- [27:12]
Michael Popak
I mean, he's got his family here. If I were him, I go to Costa Rica.
- [27:15]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
I know that's what I was thinking.
- [27:16]
Michael Popak
But that's me. But that's me. He's courageous and he's fighting. And the more I heard him talk, it was in Spanish, in translation, the more I was like, this is, I mean, this is like, this is like a Rosa Parks moment. I mean, this guy just standing up. He didn't take the path of least resistance to go to Costa Rica and take that deal, you know, and it's not his lawyers holding him up. But look, these are important matters. Like I said, he's the poster child for the depravity of the Trump administration. And he's fighting back. And the Trump administration is on full display. And the more they fight back, the more it provides evidence for Judge Crenshaw to dismiss the indictment and hopefully for Judge Zinnis to grant him asylum as a punishment to this Department of Justice. I mean, look, you're a lifetime prosecutor. Before you became, before you became a private, a private lawyer, private practice. Have you ever. And you've worked closely with some of your counterparts in the federal prosecutor's office. You ever seen anything like this, a, a person subjected to this much prosecutorial misconduct?
- [28:22]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
I have never seen anything like it. I mean, this is just unbelievable. They are pulling out every stop rather than saying, don't forget, when he got sent to El Salvador the first time they admitted it was a mistake, they made a mistake. This administration, rather than saying, oops, I made a mistake. They have to win at all Costs. And that is what this is about. They have to win at all costs, assert their might and their authority to send a message to everyone. Do not defy this presidency or we will come after you. We will use any tool we have in our toolbox. And I have never seen such a vindictive and I use the word prosecution. This is not more than just a prosecution. Whether it's deportation, whether it's the prosecution. They are just looking for any lever they can pull against him so that they can win. And I've never seen anything like it. And I think that is what could be a basis for, for dismissal and for granting relief. I was thinking a lot about the Uganda vs Costa Rica extortion, but frankly, prosecutors extort pleas out of defendants every day in this country. Every time you say, I'll offer you a lesser sentence if you want to plead guilty. Now if you go to trial, you'll get more. Right. And so what do they do? They take that or they say, I will trade you life in prison instead of the death penalty. And that has been ruled to be okay. And that is not considered extortion, that somebody takes life instead of death. Right. So I don't know that the Supreme Court is going to view this any differently if it gets to that point, but I think there are plenty of other grounds that the judge can rule that this is selective and vindictive prosecution. And really, I mean, I've just never seen anything like it. It's the. We're not talking about someone accused of a serious crime. We're talking about someone who's accused of transporting people voluntarily.
- [30:22]
Michael Popak
Right. It's a six month sentence in Tennessee at best, even if it were proven. So we're going to talk about Donald Trump's vindictiveness. He couldn't get Jay Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman, to step down. And now he sees an opportunity to take control of the Federal Reserves Board of Governors. So the attack on the Federal Reserve, we're going to pick up with that. And Lisa Cook fighting back and her and the resistance related to that. Maps, maps, maps. You're going to learn more about Utah and what happened there. The NAACP filing a lawsuit about the Texas maps. And California already winning after 48 hours, a lawsuit that was filed by a law firm affiliated with the head of the Civil Rights division of Trump's Department of Justice. Sounds like a conflict. We'll talk more about it. And then finally, Trump is on a losing streak of epic proportion. We say that every week because he is on federal courts, he loses in Maryland in front of a Trump judge, and he lost in Pennsylvania related to Alina Haba. We'll bring all that together, but first we're going to talk about how to support Legal Afghanistan minus Touch Network and all of that. Because people do ask. I mean, we're, we've been doing this for five years now. And, you know, I don't want people's eyes to, to gloss over or glass over. We don't, we're independent. We don't have a corporate parent that tells us what to do. That's a good thing. You know, we don't have fundraisers, we don't have outside investors, we don't have a paywall. So the way to support us, if you like, if you like the work you do, and we're all here together, you know, we're going to get a couple hundred thousand people listening, watching this, and then, you know, a lot more on audio as well. But the way to support us is, you know, simple. Subscribe to the Midas Touch Network. 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Go to try miracle.comlegalif and use the code legalif to claim your free three piece towel set and save over 40% off. Again, that's try miracle.com legalaf to treat yourself. Thank you Miracle made for sponsoring this episode. Welcome back to Legal AF the podcast Karen Friedmann, Knock Nifflo and Michael Popak all right, let's talk about the Federal Reserve. Not because we want to, but because we have to. And Donald Trump says salt on it. There's a reason you don't want Karen Presidents controlling their fiscal policy, right? Their tariff policies, their budget and all of that. The statistics and economic models and metrics that come out to measure the success of the Trump economy and also control the monetary policy, which is the spigot of money that comes the money flow in the economy based on the interest rates. Because you don't want one person with their hand on all of those things. The economy doesn't want that. The American people don't want that. And because the threat is just as you see it in countries where the president of those countries controls monetary policy, like in Turkey and in other places, and Nixon when he got control of the Fed back in the 70s, which looks to be Donald Trump's model, inflation goes through the roof and that's something that we will get hit with long after Donald Trump and MAGA are gone. So you want a independent Federal Reserve setting interest rate and monetary policy so that they can balance the twin goals of the Federal Reserve set by Congress, which is a full employment or as much as full employment as we can get and keep inflation under control. That's their two main things that they need to do. They do it through a seven member board of governors and a 12 member, which is the seven plus five more federal open markets Committee. And they meet once a month to set interest rates. It's been driving Donald Trump, I'd say drive him crazy, but he came in crazy, drives him around the bend more because they've refused to cut rates. And he's doing all sorts of crazy things that are hurting the American people at the grocery store, at the doctor's office, at the fill in the blank around their kitchen table, in his tariff proposals and his budget, in cutting $3 trillion out of social services, throwing 100,000 federal workers on the streets. And all this is having an impact. Prices are going way up. Jobs, job hot. People that hire are stopping, stopping their hiring. The economy is rolling backwards. I'm not talking about the stock market, talking about the economy rolling backwards. And these are all bad things. And Donald Trump wants to wallpaper over that by getting his hands through his governors on the interest rate and lower it. Cheap money, he thinks at least for the time that he's in office, will help him with all of these policies. And so he took a shot at the Federal Reserve chairman, Jay Powell. And jay powell, all 5 foot 6 of him, 130 pounds of him, stood up to the big bad wolf of Donald Trump and said, go away, I'm here till May of 2026 as the chairman. And we and the governors and the board and the economists here are not, are not going to, not going to take it. But there are a couple of Trumpers that are on the board now. There's going to be a third Trumper on the board of governors. And Donald Trump sees an opportunity to go after the only black woman who's ever been appointed to the board of Governors, Lisa Cook, on some phony claim, as far as I know, I mean, for what I can say anyway, that she took out two loans on her houses and, and designated them primary residences to get a cheaper interest rate. And then right on cue, Bill Pulte, who's a buddy of Donald Trump's big donor, Nepo Baby from the Pulte Homes, pardon me, construction business, who's now heading Freddie Mae and Fannie Mac, those mortgage, not servicing entities, but mortgage promoting entities, made a whistleblower complaint against him and Letitia James and Adam Schiff, etc. Etc. Etc. And now, of course, Right on cue. They want her to step down, take a leave of absence, quit, and give Donald Trump another seat on the, on the Federal Reserve. Why don't you pick it up from there? And Abby Lowell representing her and all that good stuff.
- [41:47]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
Yeah, Well, I learned a lot preparing for this segment about the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve boards, the board of governors and how they are appointed for a certain number of years. I think it was 12 or 14 years. And they. It's a 14 year term and it's staggered. Yeah, there's seven of them. And so every two years, one expires. And the way that the reason they do it like that is so that it's not partisan, so that policies that they can implement are for the health of the whole country, not at the whim of whatever party is in office. And so it was really interesting to just learn about it in general and to keep it nonpartisan. And there's a reason why the dollars has always historically been the strongest in the country and why in the, in the world. Sorry. And why it is that every business, does every, every legitimate business, always wanted to do business around the world in US Dollars is because it was stable, it was not political, it was not partisan, and it, it's largely due to things like this. And so it was customary, for example, that if somebody was in office, it's customary if someone's term expires, but they were appointed by a Republican and a Democrats now in office, but they were good at their job, they get reappointed again. It's not like this was always something that was replaced with your political cronies, something Donald Trump is changing. And I think that is not a good thing for our economy. I don't think this should be partisan, and it never has been and nobody has thought it should be. So the only way Trump can do it is for cause. There has to be a. You can only fire someone if there's for cause, which has always been defined as gross misconduct. So what you described, Popak, what the allegation is, is that she bought two houses, like a vacation house or two different residences. I don't how much time she spent in each or what. And that she checked a box on a mortgage application saying both were her primary residence in order to get the claim. The allegation is to get a more favorable interest rate. And what struck me as ironic in all of this, if that's all she did, I mean, you know, who knows? That just seems ridiculous to me. But what is ironic is when you think about The Trump's civil fraud case, it was all about manipulating real estate to get favorable loans to get right to or to get, to inflate the value to get a loan or deflate the value of the same property to pay lower taxes. So it just seemed really ironic that he's now saying this makes her unfit for doing something like that, if she even did it. But the bottom line is she hired Abby Lowell who is taking, is going to take this to court and he's going to fight it. She's not stepping down. So this is, this is going to be fought and we'll see, we'll see to be determined what happens here.
- [44:51]
Michael Popak
She, she's on till 2038 and that drives Donald Trump crazy. She was the last appointed by Biden. She got confirmed by, by Kamala breaking a tie. It was a very, it looked like a very anti minority vote by Maga. She's a accomplished PhD in economics. You're like she doesn't have any, you know, monetary policy, economic. Are you effing kidding me? Have you seen the people that Donald Trump has appointed in these various positions? The Department of Defense is headed by a Fox and Friends weekend anchor. His name is Pete Hegseth. The head of our national intelligence is by a congresswoman named Tulsi Gabbard who people suspected was a Russian asset. The head of our there, our head, our chief public health officer is an anti science non doctor person who's anti vax and conspiracy theorist named RFK Jr. And you're telling me she's got the wrong PhD? I mean enough just. I would be, I would give them more credit if they would just stand in front of a microphone and say the following. We want to get control of the Federal Reserve. We think we can go after her and get rid of her and therefore politically we don't because she's not voting on rates the right way for us. And we want to take down the board of Governors and we want to gain control of the Federal Reserve a la Nixon. Just say it out loud. You know, it would just, it would be, I mean it would be for a less interesting show for us, but it would at least we'd have, you know, if we lived in a society where they had to tell the truth, it would be a quite different truth than what we're hearing from here. And it matters, you know, the, the independence of the Federal Reserve. I just did a hot take on Legal AF YouTube about the undermining of the investability in America. We have flight capital used to come into America from other countries, like rich people in destabilized countries would take their money and put it into the stable environment of America. Real estate businesses, treasury notes and the rest of. But now we have flight capital. It's leaving, it's avoiding American investment. Billions of dollars are being invested in funds that are not invested in America. Look, we have a, we have a 3 trillion. Is that the right number? $3 trillion debt. 30 trillion. No, we have a $30 trillion debt and 20 trillion of it is owned by foreign entities. Two thirds of our debt is in the hands of four. And these are the same people that we are bashing and tariffing to death. And, and all they're going to do is pull the. They are our creditors and they're just pulling the plug. We're just pulling the plug on our own, our own creditors and making the United States not a place where people want to invest. And I'm not even talking about the Canadians that, that obviously don't want to invest here and the other countries, but the private sector and the financial markets are like turning their back on the United States. So while he might be extracting some billions of dollars, Donald Trump, in tariffs, forced tariffs, he's losing on the other end, an equal dollar amount of foreign investment that's not coming into the United States and turning away. And everybody says the stock market, Nvidia. Well, Nvidia didn't do great today because even they couldn't keep it up as a driver for the stock market. But if you invested the, the same hundred dollars in the US Market since Donald Trump took over, and you put it instead in Latin America, emerging markets, you double your money. So the stock market here has been okay under Trump, but not better than certain markets in Europe and Asia and in South America. And that's all part of this. So get your grubby, greasy hands off the Federal Reserve and its independence. And I'm glad Abby Lowell, who's representing Letitia James, is also representing Lisa Cook as they drum up these false, I would think, false mortgage claims. And why is, no, I said this recently. Why is there not one Republican at least to show that they're bipartisan? Where is the Republicans that are cheating on her taxes? Where are the Republicans that are claiming a home as their primary residence when it isn't? It's just the Democrats. It's just these four. Come on. The American people see through this. As you said, grand juries can see through, you know, inauthenticity and lies. And the American people are going to have the right to do exactly that come the midterm election and as Donald Trump knows that he's trying to steal seats. So we come back from our next break. I want to talk about Utah, Texas and California and the seats there and the Trump losses related to his attempt to attack the federal judiciary over and over again and do an end run around the Senate in his confirmation process for his U.S. attorneys. But we're going to take another quick break. Take a moment. Subscribe here. Midas touch subscribe legal AF YouTube channel, which I curate. I got a dozen contributors over there. We're doing 10 videos a day, podcasts and the rest. And you can help us out by hitting that, that subscribe button. And then of course, Legal AF substack. It's only a couple of months old. We already are. We're gonna hit about a hundred thousand subs there very, very soon. And all the contributors from Legal AF are coming over to the substack and doing and doing work there. And I'm doing two lives a day over on Legal AF substack as well. If you don't know what substack is, go over there, check it out. I think you'll like it even not just for law and politics, but for anything in your life. You'll find an amazing, amazing landing page there for things like that. And then we've got our sponsors, our pro democracy sponsors. And here's another word from them. You know, as much time as I spend prepping, reading and recording for Legal af, I didn't realize how much sitting all day was dragging me down physically and mentally. By the end of the day, I felt stiff, foggy and worn out. That's why I started using this episode episode sponsor Uplift Desk Total game changer. It's not just about standing. It's about moving more, improving posture and keeping my energy up throughout the day. I'm sharper, more focused and honestly happier at my desk. Uplift Desk builds premium ergonomic furniture designed to keep you moving, feeling good and doing your best work. You can customize your setup with over 200,000 desk combinations to fit your style and workflow. My personal favorite, their wire management system. No more tangled cords, just clean, focused space. Your workday doesn't have to leave you feeling worn out. Go to upliftdesk.com legalaf and use our code legal af to get 4 free accessories free same day shipping, free returns in an industry leading 15 year warranty that covers your entire desk plus an extra discount off your entire order. That's uplift-e,-k.com legalaf for this exclusive offer only available through our link Right now, the headlines are chock full of data breaches and regulatory rollbacks, making us all vulnerable. But you can do something about it. Deleteme is here to make it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online. As someone with an active online presence, privacy is really important to me. I keep hearing about data breaches in the news. I just had one happen to me. In a recent Coinbase breach, a hacker got names, addresses, even parts of Social Security and bank account numbers. And guess what? Data brokers scoop that up and sell it. Thankfully, Delete Me helps remove that data from hundreds of those sites, keeping it out of the wrong hands. Delete Me does the hard work of wiping your personal info from data broker websites. You tell them what to delete and their privacy experts get to work sending you regular personalized reports. You always know it's been removed. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your delete Me plan when you go to join delete me.com legalaf and use promo code Legal Aid Checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com Legalayoff and enter code Legalaya checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com SL Legal AF and code Legal AF. Welcome back to Legal AF. Thank you to our Pro Democracy sponsors. Subscribe, subscribe, subscribe Legal AF YouTube Midas Touch Legal AF Substack all the great ways and help this podcast download if you're a watcher. Watch if you're a listener on on all places where our podcast is platformed. Karen, let's talk about maps. Maps, maps. Used to love maps as a kid. Donald Trump's decided that's the way to fame and fortune at the midterms. Steal seats from other Americans. Let's redraw the maps. I'm like, the Census was in 2020. This is 2024. We're now redrawing maps to cut out black and brown people and Democrats. And it's getting ridiculous. And now where we don't have the political muscle like Texas, despite a valiant effort by 50 Democrats who left to break the quorum, those maps are getting approved, have been approved. But now there's lawsuits, right? Because once you get the maps approved, boom. Then it's time for the lawsuit. So we've got the NAACP has filed their lawsuit against the Texas maps, which subtracts 5, 5 seats from the Democrats, just crazy numbers. Remember, we're trying to add up to a, to a House here for Congress and just automatically give five seats to the Republicans. New seats. Terrible. But then Gavin Newsom, showing bravery, political courage, leadership tryouts for 2028, he got his legislature together and they decided, well, why don't we add five seats for the Democrats and neutralize Texas? And that's going up on a referendum. We'll talk about a lawsuit that was filed on that. Utah, we got a judge, a state court judge who's ordered new maps by November, before November. So you got all these things going on. So, Carol, what did you pick up so far from all of this sturm and drying over map making and gerrymandering and seats for congressional representatives?
- [55:36]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
I mean, this is really complicated because gerrymandering is where you redraw maps to try. And in theory, the good part about gerrymandering is you do it so that you can be more inclusive and give people, for example, minorities a vote and a seat at the table and who might not otherwise because they're in the minority. And so gerrymandering, it's not a great word, but it can be a thing that has good outcomes if it's done for good purposes. And it's been held to be constitutional and legal in various cases. But there's something called the Voting Rights act that specifically says you cannot do it, you're not allowed to do it. If you are doing it to discriminate racially, and that is just not okay. And that to intentionally diminish the power of certain racial or other minorities, you're not allowed to do that. And so there's going to be litigation about that to see if that's what they're doing. And it's clear that is what's happening in Texas. Look, I have mixed feelings about what's going on because I still kind of subscribe to the Michelle Obama if they go low, we go high. I don't love this whole, okay, they did it, so we're going to do it, we're going to fight back. I just feel like we're being dragged down into the mud. I get the argument, don't take a knife to a gunfight, but I say, I don't know. I just don't like it. I don't like that we are devaluing ourselves by, by essentially doing, you know, I don't like the way certain politicians and Democrats are talking. They're talking like Trump. It's like, you know, they're doing Trump energy back at him. And I don't love it. So I do think it's probably necessary. But in some ways it just also, I just have very mixed feelings. Cuz, yes, of course we can't lose. We have to win. And we have to win not at all costs, but at whatever cost we can. But it does take away a certain argument that we can say, look, you're, you're not doing the right thing if we do it too. So I have mixed. I'm just being honest. I have mixed.
- [57:54]
Michael Popak
I'm less mixed than you are. As you know from my intersection last night, we're at war. I agree with Gavin Newsom. We've turned as many cheeks as we. I've run out of cheeks to turn. We have to play with the. We have to play the cards that we've been dealt. And it's great to be. What's Kevin's phrase for it? It's great to be a liberal of feats, but we've got to. It's not even fight fire with fire. We got to fight fire with fire for sure, because we don't have time to put it out with water. Like, there's no time. The time is a wasting. And we're going to have to use every, every thing that we can do, every tool in our tool bag to defend this democracy and representative form of government. And, you know, I don't want to look back, frankly, two years from now and say, oh, we lost and we lost the House again, setting us up badly for the 2028. But the we. But it was a good college try, don't you think? We saved our morals and our ethics and we could be proud of ourselves. Like, I don't want to have that speech.
- [59:04]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
No, and I don't disagree. Look, I agree with what you're saying. I do. I mean, we are at war. And the stakes, what's at stake is our democracy. That being said, I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, but that being said, we should be able to win over the hearts and minds of people. We shouldn't have to play dirty to win. And that's what's frustrating to me is why are the Democrats having such a hard time winning the hearts and minds? Why are we losing that to begin with? And instead now we have to fight back and fight back dirty and whatever. We'll do it because we have to do it, because we have to win, because our democracy is at stake. But that's what frustrates.
- [59:42]
Michael Popak
Well, that's a good debate. Let's have that debate. The Democratic brand based on polling is in the toilet. It's also hard to enhance your brand if you are the party, if you're the party out of power, because you don't. You're not able to pass laws to help the American people. You're not able to hold hearings to show the depravity of the Trump administration. You get to do press conferences, you get to do really nasty letters, you get to do shadow hearings. I've had the senators on, I've had the Congress people on. We do what we do, which is important. I ran into somebody yesterday while I was having lunch, and, you know, they were kind of staring at me and I was staring back at them and they were like, are you that guy on YouTube? I go, yeah. And. And then he just. I was a burst into tears. He was just so happy and said, you say out loud the things that I think and you give me hope. He's a. A Jamaican, Canadian, of all things, that's living in the United States and as a US citizen. So he has a whole different perspective than you and I do about what's going on, although he's troubled terribly by it. But the brand is in trouble. Is the brand in trouble because we are seen as out of touch? We're not in touch with our younger base of it, or we've turned them off. Is it out of touch? Is it. Is it diminished? Because we're not seen as fighters, we're seen as those that roll over. I don't think we have a choice now about the fighting part. If we don't fight back in this, I mean, I'd love to do diplomacy. I'd love to go for a walk in the woods with a cup of coffee and a fellow MAGA and convince them of the errors of their ways. But that's just. We just don't have time for that. We just, we're out of time. Donald Trump's not out of. He's. He's got his own out of time.
- [61:29]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
No, you're right. And I don't think any walk in the woods is going to convince people are so dig in, dug in. And that's, I guess that's, that's, I do agree, ultimately, and I fall on the same, you know, that side, but I can't help but reflect that it's just, It's a drag to me that this is where we are in our country, where we are so at war with each other, with ourselves, and that's, that's what's Sad is it shouldn't be that way.
- [61:53]
Michael Popak
I agree. But, but, but the courts are also involved. So the NAACP will follow that case, basically saying the way the maps have been redrawn.
- [62:02]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
Oh yeah, I forgot we were talking about a case. Yeah, sorry, go on.
- [62:06]
Michael Popak
Right. Is, is a violation. We're back to the Voting Rights Act. We're back to the constitutional protections of equal protection. And the way they've been drawn is not along political grounds, which is what the Supreme Court has said is okay. But it's really been done to disenfranchise, take away the vote and representation for black and brown people. And who better to advocate for, for that, that the naacp. So they brought that case. We'll see where that goes. That has not been thrown out of court. That is not going to be thrown out of court anytime soon. Which is not. Is. Which is more than I can say for a case brought by Harmeet Dillon's law firm. The fact that she still has a law firm with her name on it is mind boggling to me. While she's the head of the civil Rights division of the Department of Justice, which is ironic. I mean, I, I know Harvey. I did a case, you can look it up. I did a case where we were co counsel where we somehow we were on the same side of an issue. And she ran for Republican National Committee chairman, lost and is very political, political animal. Always wanted to be attorney General. Didn't get the attorney general job, but got this job. And then it's effectively mothballed. We don't have a civil rights division anymore at the Department of Justice. She's completely, first of all, it's been halved. People have resigned en masse, in mass and or she's fired them. So she doesn't have anybody, she doesn't have the funding and she's not going to protect voting rights or civil rights or people, black and brown, people's rights. She's using it to go after people that went after Donald Trump in the violation of his civil rights in the prosecutions and the fraud cases. I mean, that's what she's doing. So she had a law firm. It was like, you know, 10, 15 person law firm based in California. They used to sue over every COVID policy that Joe Biden brought. You know, from churches to stores to everything, they were constantly suing the Biden administration. And now her administrator, her administration, her law office has filed a suit or filed a suit against Gavin Newsom successfully getting the legislature to approve a referendum to go up. This is how they have to do it in California to go up on the November ballot to approve their new map giving the Democrats, let's call it what it is, the Democrats five seats, which her own department has said is fine and the Supreme Court has said is fine of the Voting Rights Act. Political is fine as long as it's not racial. But why don't you tell the audience what happened with that one and then I'll round it out with you tonight.
- [64:43]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
Yeah. Basically, I think it only took 48 hours. Right. Popak, the case just got dismissed right away. I mean, it's crazy how quickly that happened. It happened so quickly, I almost didn't realize there was a lawsuit.
- [64:53]
Michael Popak
Right, right. And neither did Gavin Newsom. He had a great. Whoever's doing his social media is just chef's kiss. I mean, besides them imitating and parroting. Only slightly parroting. Parroting Donald Trump, you know, he came right out with one in the last long 48 hours. Right. Because so long. So long. DYLAN LAW GROUP yeah, But at the. That was. That was a smackdown loss with her name on it. It's just ridiculous. So that's gonna go. Pardon me, that's, that's. There's nothing wrong with the legislature. They did it by the book in California. There's nothing wrong with putting that up on a referendum for the people to vote on that. Some people who are from out of the country or, or don't follow politics as closely as we do might be thinking, well, that's not what they did in Texas. And that's true because the Texas constitution has a different process and allows the legislature to make the map. And we'll talk about a third process that Utah uses. So you got Texas legislatures. They do it. California goes up after approval by the legislature, goes up for referendum by the voters. November, that's going to happen. And then in Utah, there was a referendum and the voters voted. It may have been narrow, but they voted in favor of having an independent commission draw their maps because they were tired of gerrymandering and having maps drawn politically or racially. So the voters had it. And what did the legislature do in Utah? They rejected the referendum. How do you overturn a referendum in the state House?
- [66:29]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
Yeah, I was wondering that. I was wondering how that works with the. I mean, because. Because it's so unusual. Right. We don't have these propositions, you know, Prop 4, Prop whatever. We don't have those in New York the way they do in California and Utah. Yeah, yeah.
- [66:44]
Michael Popak
So, yeah, the western states, they do things interestingly. So you Know, the I'm there. They just said, well, we're gonna. During COVID they were like, we're just going to ignore it. Okay. And so they overturned the voter referendum, which they're not allowed to do even with a super majority in Utah. And what had happened is they redrew the map. They turned the compulsory commission that the voters wanted to use to draw the maps into an advisory panel, like, meaning they were going to reject whatever they said. And the way they drew the maps and the way Utah drew the maps was not the same. So around the major county there for Salt Lake City, Salt Lake county, it's mainly Democratic. It's a big blue thing in the middle of a red state. But they divided the county into four seats along Republican lines. So it diluted out all the Democrats, even though if you just gave Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County a seat, it would be a seat. So the Democrats are fighting for one plus Democrat seat. There's no Democrat seat because they took that one thing in the middle and divided it up, gerrymandered it out of existence with the Republican seats in different places in Utah. Utah's weird anyway, because registered Democrats are only 12%, but 36% voted for Kamala Harris. There's a big independent group there, and there's a big group that votes, that registers Republican so that they can. Can vote almost like independents in the Republican primary. But when it comes time for general election, they flip over and vote Democrat.
- [68:22]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
I love that.
- [68:23]
Michael Popak
Yeah, I love that, too. So that's the fight in Utah. And they're all. Mag is all ganging up on Judge Gibson because the case was sent back to her by the Utah Supreme Court. That said, the referendum should not, you know, that whole thing should not have been overturned. And she has ordered new maps be drawn consistent, I think, with what the commission had originally proposed or mandated, and that they get delivered by October and be used in November. And of course, Mag is like, no. And all we want, all we want to do here is add one Democratic seat in the entire state of. Of Utah. But you see, for our audience, too, you know, what is it? Pennies and dimes add up to the, you know, quarters and dollars, whatever it is, seed here, a seat here, you lose five, you gain five, you gain one, and then you tally it at the end and you're hoping that we're able to reclaim the. The House at the midterm. See, that's what Donald Trump is so afraid of. Most of his administration can be explained by fear. He operates from fear. His own fears and instilling fear in other people. And so he's afraid, and rightly so, based on the polling. When you're down in the 30s and you're only eight months, nine months into your administration, things are not going to get better for you either. With the economy. When you're in the 30s, heading for the 20s in approval rating, you got to start stealing seats. And that's. And, but fortunately, we got people like Gavin Newsom and federal judges and state judges and NAACP who are all fighting back, you know, you know, on your point about got to fight fair, I'm all about fighting fair within the rules. But look, New York screwed itself because New York's like, well, we'll have an independent commission. And a per. One guy literally drew the map after the census in New York and eliminated Democratic seats and created Republican seats that never had existed. And that's one of the reasons we didn't win at the election, is because we lost a handful of seats that should never have been that competitive because we're, because we're nice. And we were like, yeah, let him do it. Why?
- [70:31]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
Look, I, like I said, I don't, I don't think no one has ever accused me of being weak, I'll tell you that. Or, you know, that that's not, I'm not suggesting that, that we do something weak or that, you know, that we'd be nice, but we should have dignity and we should have. I just think we should, we should win because we're right, because we're the best. That's what we should win. We shouldn't have to play dirty. And that's what drives me crazy. But I'll tell you, as we're having this conversation, I wonder what would happen in more purple states if the Democrats switched parties just to vote in primaries. Like, because it wouldn't make a difference in New York because no one's ever going to get elected, at least in New York City who's a Republican. But in purple states and purple areas, I wonder if that's something. Speaking of fighting dirty, you know, that would be a fun way to see.
- [71:20]
Michael Popak
You came up with a dirty strategy.
- [71:22]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
Yeah, I don't think it's dirty. That's clever and creative.
- [71:26]
Michael Popak
Clever. You're right. Did I say dirty? I meant clever on the. He's speaking of clever. And clever, too. Too clever by half. Donald Trump's decision to sue the entirety of the 12 judges of the Maryland federal court because he didn't like the rule, the local rule that was adopted by the chief judge of Maryland, which was based on a rule that the appellate courts had used. After he had watched what happened to Abrego Garcia, after he watched what happened with Judge Boasberg and his orders and 200 people who were sent in the middle of the night to El Salvador, the chief judge woke up one morning and said, you know what? Now that the Supreme Court has said the writ of habeas corpus is the right way to bring the issue of incarceration and detention before a federal judge, why don't we do this? When a writ of habeas corpus is filed, a petition for 48 hours, the other side, the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and all that, can't remove them out of the country and away from federal jurisdiction and oversight. How about that? 48 hours, that's all we're talking about. Oh, no. Donald Trump. I joked on one of my, on one of my hot takes. Oh, no. Donald Trump was like in his Veruca Salt moment from Willy Wonka. No, I wanted to. Now I want to deport them now. Why? The whole issue for the Supreme Court is due process and the ability of federal courts to exercise it and not have it interfered with. And why are you upset with 48 hours, except for the fact you want to send people to the killer torture chambers of third countries in total disrespect of our way of life, of our system of government, of our constitutional republic. And so Donald Trump had a way, by the way, to, to get that rule changed if he could. There's a, there was a judicial panel, a judicial council for the 4th Circuit. You don't like a local rule, you think it violates something, bring it to the judicial council. That's not what Donald Trump wanted. He wanted the fanfare and the headlines of going after all the judges, including Judge Zinnis in the, in Maryland. So it gets, it gets assigned because everybody's been disqualified to a judge in Virginia who happens to be a Trump appointed judge from his first term. Of course, that didn't help him. And this judge gets the case. And the issue is, is he going to keep the petition or going to dismiss the petition that Donald Trump has brought attacking the judicial branch, where the executive branch is suing the, the executive branch is suing the judicial branch. And what's this judge, pardon me, going to do about it? And what happened, Karen?
- [74:11]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
Yeah, he wrote one of the most fun opinions I've ever read. Judge Cullen, he first, he's a great writer, but he's, he's really kind of colorful writer, but he, he basically just dismissed the suit outright. And he could have just really dismissed it with a page or two. I mean, he didn't need to go 39 pages talking about all the things he talked about. But he really did a great job at explaining why you, first of all, there's something called sovereign immunity. When judges do their job, they have immunity, just like Trump does. And so you can't just sue the judges. And also basically said there's a, if you don't like something, you appeal it, there's a recourse and you just, you don't just sue the judges because you don't, you don't like something like that. So he basically smacked them down pretty hard and really just said, there's no such thing as what you're doing. And by the way, what you're doing, and this is my words, not his, is basically a cancer on our way of being. You can't do what you're doing and you have to do things, things the right way. And so I love that decision because he really just handed it to Trump and this administration. And so hopefully, hopefully when Trump appeals this and it gets to the Supreme Court, hopefully they agree as well. But that was a great decision.
- [75:38]
Michael Popak
He's right. There's no way the Supreme Court is going to allow the disqualification of federal bench because you don't like the standing local rule of the chief judge when there is already a way to address that issue.
- [75:50]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
It also, by the way, if you have a judge rule against you, think about it on any case, if he, if he has any case and a judge rules against him, you just sue the judge in the middle of the case and then suddenly the judge is recused and they can't sit on the case.
- [76:02]
Michael Popak
I mean, he quoted Wilkinson, Harvey Wilkinson from the 4th, about the attacks on the judiciary about, from the Trump administration, all the footnotes you talked about. And so that's a big loss for Donald Trump, although not surprising. I, I, I read the reporting about the oral argument. He was like, this would be completely a constitutional lawlessness for the Trump administration. And so, no, nobody was surprised when the order finally came out. And it's very similar to the Alina Haba disqualification, where you had Judge Brandt in the middle district of Pennsylvania having to sit by designation as a New Jersey federal judge because all 21 judges of the New Jersey Federal District Court ruled against, effectively Alina Haba and giving her an extension to continue as the U.S. attorney for New Jersey. And now she's on her Woe Is Me campaign, her propaganda campaign. Oh, It's Cory Booker and Senator Kim wouldn't meet with me, and they're not nice people. And Chuck Grassley, the Republican who runs the Judiciary Committee for the Senate, oh, he, he's using the blue slips to block me. And the President wanted me, and we always win. She told Hannity. I'm like, all right, well, you're not winning this one. The Department of Justice has taken an appeal of the loss where Judge Brand ruled that Alina Haba was unlawfully appointed to be the U.S. attorney. He mapped out exactly the way, the only way that a president can nominate somebody and, and put in one time an acting interim. And if that stops, then it's up to the federal judges to appoint the acting interim until a nominee gets confirmed by Trump. He's not even trying to confirm anybody right now. I mean, like, move on your office, wife lost, you know, goodbye. She is. Get rid of. Get somebody else. There's no one else that you can think of to put. At least in New York, he put Jay Clayton, who you can quibble about Jay Clayton. He's one of Trump's old golfing buddies.
- [78:15]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
But he's very respected.
- [78:17]
Michael Popak
He's very respected, and he once did head the securities and Exchange Commission. And so, but look, it's funny there. Like, why do you think. Let me take it from the prosecutor standpoint for you. Why do you think he put a quality person like Jay Clayton in the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York, but put this political hack into in New Jersey?
- [78:38]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
Look, it's a great question. I think it's partly strategic because Southern District of New York is considered probably the premier place prosecutor's office in the country and has historically brought the biggest cases and some of the most important cases. And it's largely due to the fact that the financial markets of this country sit on the island of Manhattan, right? The Federal Reserve and everything else. And because of that, every single transaction that happens anywhere in the world goes through the Federal Reserve if it's in US Dollars, giving them jurisdiction over all sorts of things that they wouldn't have jurisdiction over. It puts them in a very unique position to really be able to do international cases at the highest level. And so it's a really important office. And so I think that's why it was really important to have somebody who is a quality, respected person like Jay Clayton, N.J. i don't want to give short trip to New Jersey. I mean, they do some pretty big cases, too, and some good cases, but I don't think it's at this level. And I think she wanted New Jersey. That's what I think.
- [79:55]
Michael Popak
I agree with you. I think you hit the nail on the head. I'm from New Jersey. It's a little bit of an always in the shadow of New York. I mean, you know, I like, you know, some people that had headed the office in New Jersey, like I'm sure you knew Craig Carpento and different things. But, you know, New Jersey's not, yeah, New Jersey's not that office, even though it's the fifth or sixth largest in the country. Hard to believe is not it's not Manhattan. And I think there needed to be a lot of repair done to the damage that Donald Trump had done in the Manhattan Southern District of New York prosecutor's office that Emil Beauvais had done where he lopped off most of them over the Eric Adams indictment fiasco. And I think they had to do some repair there with the business community and others. And like I said, I don't agree with the politics of Jay Clayton, but he would get confirmed and will be confirmed by the U.S. senate. I have no doubt yet. You know, you're right. She's from New Jersey. She wants she, you know, and it's a blue state like New York is, and she can do a lot of damage and get a lot of New York media attention from the perch of being in New Jersey because of the way the TV and media coverage is there. And you know, she's unqualified for everything she's ever been appointed to or or selected for. And we'll have to see what happens next with the appeal if this Judge Brandt was right or wrong. By my reading of it, it looked pretty right to me. But we, but we will see and we'll continue to follow it all on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal af. We've reached the end of the Legal AF podcast for the midweek. Karen Freeman Agniflo and Michael Popak tune in on Saturday, where I'll be joined of course by with Ben Meiselis and hit the subscribe button here on Midas Legal AF the YouTube channel. Legal AF the substack. I'll be doing a live report maybe later tonight. Depends how late it goes, the show goes and definitely tomorrow morning. So come on over to Legal AF the substack as well and support our sponsors. Karen, last word.
- [82:00]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
Just sending love and prayers to those families who have were affected by that horrible massacre today. So that's I want to start the show and end the show with them because they deserve it.
- [82:12]
Michael Popak
Yep. Agreed. We'll see you next. We'll see you next time on Legal af. Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal A Heifers.
- [82:27]
Karen Freeman Agnifilo
How do you make an Airbnb a vrbo? Picture a vacation rental with a host. The host is dragging your family on a tour of the kitchen, the bathroom, the upstairs bathroom, the downstairs bedroom, and the TV room, which, surprise, is where you can watch the tv. Now imagine there's no host giving you a tour because there's never any hosts at all, ever. Voila. You've got yourself a vrbo. Want a vacation that's completely and totally host free? Make it a vrbox.