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- [00:01]
Ben Crump
This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. When you visit the doctor, you probably hand over your insurance, your ID and contact details. It's just one of the many places that has your personal info, and if any of them accidentally expose it, you could be at risk for identity theft. Lifelock monitors millions of data points a second. If you become a victim, they'll fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year@lifelock.com podcast terms apply. Martha listens to her favorite band all.
- [00:32]
Michael Popak
The time in the car, gym, even sleeping. So when they finally went on tour.
- [00:40]
Ben Crump
Martha bundled her flight and hotel on.
- [00:42]
Michael Popak
Expedia to see them live. She saved so much she got a.
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Ben Crump
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- [00:48]
Michael Popak
Sort of.
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Ben Crump
You were made to scream from the front row. We were made to quietly save you. More Expedia made to Travel Savings vary and subject to availability Flight inclusive packages.
- [00:59]
Michael Popak
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- [02:00]
Ben Crump
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- [02:24]
Michael Popak
Foreign.
- [02:28]
Ben Crump
We've got a lot to discuss on this weekend's Legal AF. We got to talk about the FBI's complete and utter mishandling of the investigation into Charlie Kirk's killer, Tyler Robinson. The alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, who turned himself, basically confessed to his father his Father went to a bunch of pastors. They turned the kid into the 22 year old into the police where he's currently in custody. 22 year old white kid, Utah gun family Trump supporting family. The kid's political views, 22 year old killer's political views unclear. But we see this all too frequently. 22 year old, 18, 19, 22 year old frequently white kids over and over again. Kind of fitting this profile. Yet magnas want to try to target every marginalized community and stoke more kind of political violence and division. We'll get into that. Talk about the Epstein birthday card that Donald Trump sent back in 2003 for Epstein's 50th birthday, subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee thanks to aggressive maneuver maneuvers by Democrats in Congress specifically led by Congressmember Robert Garcia is obviously Trump's signature. It's obviously Trump's letter. There's a lot of other damaging information in there, including people at Mar A Lago joking about Donald Trump buying fully depreciated women from Jeffrey Epstein for $22,500. A lot of other grotesque letters in that book which are authentically in the book. Just to give you another example, in the UK their ambassador to the United States, a guy by the name of Lord Mandelson, he was fired from his job after the book came out, his handwriting, he said similar things that Trump said about how great Epstein was and they canned him right there. Yet in the United States of America, the cult that is the MAGA Republican Party, they got to forgery. It's not really a signature when there's obviously, it's obviously a signature. And there's so many other examples of, of his signature that looks just like that, just wild. We should talk about Lisa Cook, governor on the Federal Reserve. We're learning more details whether it's Reuters, Washington Post, Financial Times, basically everybody's reporting that what was initially stated by Trump's fair housing Administrator, this Bill Pulte, this hatchet man who's out there accusing everybody of mortgage fraud so that Trump can use that to try to fire people and destroy people's lives and reputations was just an utter fabrication that let's talk about appellate judges chastising the Supreme Court and we're hearing from Supreme Court justices that are I guess engaged in various media tours to go after each other. It's just a totally dysfunctional court. That and more in legal af. Michael Popak, great to see you, sir.
- [05:34]
Michael Popak
You as well. It was great to be together with you. I feel like this is a little Bit of the calm before the storm. Not that we don't have a lot of in many ways, not that we don't have a lot to talk about in legal and political developments, but we have to do it against the backdrop of political violence on the march in America. And you're right, it's not hard to point the finger at the culprits. They're not black and brown people who are pulling the trigger. They're not women, they're not migrants, they're not trend Aragua. They are disaffected and desensitized and loner 20 to 20 to 30 year old white males. Whether it's Dylann Roof in a black church who opened fires in Mother Emanuel church and kills eight or nine people, or the Buffalo supermarket shooter who went purposely to Buffalo 100 miles from his home in order to open fire on the Latin and black community, or it's bowling alleys or its rooftops at Butler, Pennsylvania, or shooting the person behind Donald Trump, or it's the suspect for the murder of Charlie Kirk. There's a common denominator here and it's not transgender and it's not leftist. It's a disaffected group of people. No longer children because they've left high school, but somewhere fall down the rabbit hole, usually leading them to inordinate amount of hours on the Internet and in gaming platforms and in streaming gaming platforms where they've developed a unique vocabulary and patois and hardwiring of their brain about how things work, how memes work, how shitposting works and all the things I've had to learn in the last several days to try to try to make sense, if that's the right term for what happened with Charlie Kirk getting shot. And the problem is we only have. We need two groups in order to come together in America in order to resolve the root causes of political violence. And we're one party short for that discussion and that dialogue. So it becomes the Democrats and a couple of non maga Republicans late to the party who are calling for, who are pointing to things that have created the atmosphere and the environment for what we watched. But it's really Jasmine Crockett and all of the leaders of the Democratic Party like the governors Newsom and Pritzker and others who have come forward and in Congress who have said why don't we take a close look at what causes these people to do what they're doing, whether, whether it's Charlie Kirk or church parishioners and why don't we address that from A mental health, gun control, civil civics training, social contract installation in schools and stop pointing the finger and blaming for cheap political points at a moment of tragedy for at least a large group of Americans that supported one MAGA and Charlie Kirk. And I'm not trying to diminish that. It's not our side of the aisle, but it's one that, you know, he did for a living what you and I do for a living just on the opposite side of the political spectrum. So he, you know, that should not have been a death sentence. That should have been I wanted to debate Charlie Kirk, not see him in a morgue. And that's the right approach that the Democrats are making. But when you have a president who in who in who goes to Fox News, Fox and Friends, no less, because he happens to be there after the Yankee game in 911 and strolls in to try to salvage the wreckage of his FBI. We'll talk about that later in Cash Patel about the capture of the suspect and while he's there, happens to say in response to a softball question from a right wing news media person on the couch, how do we use this moment to bring the country together? Well, I'll probably get in trouble for this, but I don't really care. That is Trump. We had Obama who sung Amazing Grace at the church after the, you know. Right. Charleston, South Carolina, after the, after that we have, we've had the, the or the soaring oratory of so many presidents to be the consoler in chief at a moment when there is a group of people which I will acknowledge that are grieving the death of Charlie Kirk. And this was his response. And then you have all the war imagery break out and you have the widow of Charlie Kirk saying you will rue the day. You don't know what you've unleashed all the language and vocabulary not of healing, not of solving, but of tearing apart this country and creating a warlike environment where the moderates and the liberals and the fair minded people who are at MAGA have become now the new targets. Is this, is this the moment? Is this the Reichstag moment? Is this the moment where the MAGA party jumps the shark and jumps the track and starts chasing us because they don't like the fact that there's a fallen leader for them. And we're going to talk about that. And the FBI's fumbling and bumbling, which shows us, as you've said and I've said over and over again, that we are not safe with Donald Trump in control of our homeland or national Security. And we just saw an example of it.
- [11:23]
Ben Crump
Yeah, I mean, America, a melting pot, America, a boiling cauldron ready to explode. Both can exist at the same time. And leaders are needed to keep this beautiful tapestry that was America, with all of its flaws, as cohesive as you can, as unified as you can. And Donald Trump takes that boiling cauldron and sets the heat higher and higher and higher and the temperature higher. And it's a big problem. You know, it was very important, our coverage here on the Midas Touch Network. I did a whole video of it on Friday too, where I was like, oh, well, there are reports that he was, you know, Trumper. There were reports there's porch that he's a leftist. I said exactly what you said though, Popak, which is you're really missing the kind of point, the profile of this young, often white male who, but doesn't always have to be, but usually young white male who is going down this Internet rabbit hole of this meme culture. And frankly, they're often not fitting a neat category of, oh, he's a rightist, he's a leftist. But they are being radicalized and embracing kind of this vision of themselves as accelerators of amorphous revolutions, that their groups are online and that they're instigating some historical explosion that indelibly puts them into some historical purpose, that they have not found meaning in their lost lives and in their view of themselves as not being able to fully interact. And we see this frequently over and over and over again. And then in every tragedy we've seen really since the MAGA movement has taken over the Republican Party, every single tragedy becomes this highly politicized affair where I feel like you have rational human beings. I try to consider myself on an occasion to be one, saying things like, look, we need to be very careful, you know, we condemn violence. We need to be very careful. Right now we should come together, you know, and you have that type of language and then you have incoming language basically saying, you know, no, we did. This is war, you've declared war, we're coming after you. You know, and, you know, I think back to the wildfires here in Los Angeles. And that started, that started the year where I had to evacuate my home. You know, we could see the fires, you know, fairly close, you know, on the over the hills. It was a scary moment. But quite literally, as I was evacuating to then stay in my mother in law's place, the disinformation already began. It already became a right wing politicized thing, you know, Gavin Newsom really cared about the certain type of fish over that. And so he saved the fish to kill the Californians. And then, you know, he's, he's hiding the water from everybody. And, and it was every, it was just everything. And even someone like Gavin Newsom, who's a great, you know, great orator, could debate anybody on any stage of national prominence and crush it. He was like, he was caught off guard. And I think it took him three days to realize, oh, crap, you're telling me that I've got to fight the disinformation and spend more time doing that than even being an actual governor because otherwise all of these lies prevent my ability to become a governor and actually do the tasks. Because there's this wave of chaos and even today, and we're going to keep on seeing it, all these right wing influencers are pushing every story to try to make, make this a divisive, politicized issue and pull this country and tear it to shreds. You know, foreign actors, Russia, China, elsewhere, they recognize the melting pot, boiling cauldron analysis that I just gave, and they knew how to turn a melting pot into a boiling cauldron. And I've seen people go on and go, you know, you got to be careful, these foreign disinformations. I go, it's not even there. It's coming from the Oval Office. Donald Trump addressed the nation after Charlie Kirk was killed and talked about this is a leftist ideology and eradication and all of this language. And meanwhile, Michael Popak, who is leading the FBI, some right wing podcaster, Cash Patel, with really no FBI experience, who doesn't know what the hell he's doing. He was selling children's books of dogs, peeing on political enemies. He would sell merch of K dollar Sign, you know, cash merch. He was out there doing, calling himself the Cash, the Meme Lord. And he would show himself like sawing off the heads of politicians in AI Memes. A deeply embedded meme culture guy in Kash Patel and who's leading counterterrorism, who's leaning? A guy named Thomas Fugate III, some 22 year old intern from Trump's with no law enforcement experience. It's a 22 year old kid. I mean, look, imagine if Michael Popox, someone came to you or me and said, you guys are running a successful, say, generic Democrat becomes president. It would be like them coming to me and saying, hey, I want you to believe the FBI. You know what I would say to them? I would say, you should not be the president. Of the United States if you think I should lead the FBI, Right. It's a pretty sick. But Cash Patel goes, you know what? I'll take the job. I'm gonna do it. And we saw how bad he was. There was. First he said it was this guy and it was like a mentally ill person. Then he said it was this guy who was just an Arab guy who actually was a Charlie Kirk supporter. And then it turns out he was eating at, like, an Italian restaurant.
- [18:11]
Michael Popak
I know the restaurant.
- [18:12]
Ben Crump
He was sending these posts to begin with. Then he shows up at a press conference, and he looked, like, visibly scared at the press. Like he's like, shaking his head left. He looked like he was nervous at the press conference. And then he puts out, you know, if you want to get the award, $100,000. He didn't do anything. The dad was the one who turned in his own son. And then he, like, gives that speech. He's like, charlie, brother, I'll see you in Valhalla. Valhalla. I'll see you over there.
- [18:42]
Michael Popak
We have the watch. It's.
- [18:45]
Ben Crump
And it's a strange. I've never even. That that's the expression that you're going to use. It's also deeply strange. You're in Utah. You're in a country led by Mormons. You're Hindu. Charlie Kirk is Protestant. But the FBI handled this as a. And they've caused so much more problems right now as a result that America's.
- [19:09]
Michael Popak
Just far less safe. Well, I agree with you. And back to the root cause again. You and I studied in college and philosophy, nihilism, the philosophy that life has no meaning. And that is a version of what we're watching with. And this is our fault as a society. You and I are parents. This is our fault as a society that we're not instilling and inculcating the values and the social contract and our constitutional republic greatness in our children. And they instead are being taught by their fellow teenagers and middle schoolers, you know, with their earpieces playing streaming, gaming and whatever else. And they have become unmoored from what makes America great and what it means to be an American and what it means to be a human being in our society and so on. The conveyor belt of children and young adults being produced. There's going to be a bad apple that gets generated from that. Something has happened in their background. This kid wasn't beaten up in school. He was popular. He was good at academics. Something happened. A flip. A switch got flipped. And that's what we're supposed to be focusing on, not on what's his politics. What was his Halloween costume? Did he use a meme that suggested that he knows, you know, that he's pro transgender? I mean, it is just ridiculous how quickly the right wing and the Nancy Maces and the Anna Lunas and the Laura Loomers and the Elon Musk jumped on this rickety bandwagon of attacking other Americans. Now, on the, on the we are not safe theme of this podcast, as we've talked about, as soon as Donald Trump put into, into positions of leadership the Tulsi Gabbards to head up our national intelligence and coupled her with a right wing podcaster to be the head of the FBI, supported by another right wing podcaster who can't even find the killer of a right wing podcaster. That is, that was the beginning of the end. We said they were obscenely unqualified and we were less safe as a nation as a result. Watching him cash Patel, not wanting to finish, not wanting to be interrupted finishing his lemon chicken at Rao's and I've been to Rao's. I know the restaurant. It was also the scene of a ganglion shooting about. It's not the place where you would go to be in the FBI. There's a lot of organized crime that hunts that, that used to hang out or could hang out at Rao's, but this is where he chooses. And rather than go back to FBI headquarters in New York and quarterback this, this manhunt, he's, he's social media posting and I, and I, by the way, I want to get a copy of the bar tab and the restaurant receipt for Rao's and how many, let's just say it, how many drinks he had while he's, he's posting. We've got him. Got him. We apprehended him the night of the murder and then an hour later said nevermind, which then Donald Trump had to clean up by going on Fox and Friends, which didn't really help Donald Trump because he then went off on some sort of weirdo wanderer tangent in which he talked about the Chinese have a better court system than we do. Right. And then right after the end of it, they take you out and execute you and then comments about I'm not here to bring the country together and I really don't care. He didn't cash Patel, didn't do anybody, didn't do Donald Trump any favors. That Trump had to go on and be the FBI director on Fox and Friends and announced the apprehension from the night before. So what? He should. But here's our point. So he sits in Rao's, doesn't go to the FBI headquarters, gets whatever the feed of information from sitting trying to eat your chicken parm, and then gets it wrong. And the reality, as we said at the top of the show, is the FBI manhunt didn't lead to the capture of this suspect. The kid's parents did. Any local sheriff or law enforcement can post the grainy photo from a video and say, can we find this guy? And have somebody go, yeah, the T shirt with the wounded veterans and the hat, yeah, I know that kid. But that wasn't the result of an FBI manhunt. But what it demonstrates is we are woefully ill prepared between the hollowing out of the FBI as an institution, the firing of the varsity representing the leadership of the FBI, the firing of the junior varsity which represents the leadership of the FBI, transferring 1500 people away from Hoover Building in Washington and sending a lot of them to Huntsville, Alabama, and effectively defunding the FBI has left us ill prepared. God help us if there's another 911 or domestic terrorism event in America. How do you, how safe do you now feel watching Cash Patel stand watch and try to apprehend one guy who fired a bullet from a rooftop, you know, at Charlie Kirk? He couldn't do that, right? Can you imagine what he's going to do next? Any other president would fire Cash Patel for misconduct and incompetence based on what we just watched. This president, of course, won't. He'll double down on Cash Patel and his handling of the FBI. And to just state the obvious, sometimes podcasters have to state the obvious. We have been safe in this country not because of Donald Trump. We have been safe in this country since 911 because of the coordinated efforts of local law enforcement in major cities. Code, coupled with the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and their intelligence gathering, coupled with the CIA and other national security and the security and intelligence apparatus in America. Every one of the things I just mentioned has been destroyed and compromised by Donald Trump and the people he's put in and the funding and musk and Doge and the rest, leaving us tremendously vulnerable. As Warren Buffett famously said in another context, nobody knows you're swimming naked until the tide rolls out or rolls in and there you are. We're swimming naked right now. In terms of national security and homeland security, chasing immigrants through home, through Home Depot parking lots is not making me sleep well at night because I'm worried About sports arenas, shopping malls, movie theaters, bowling alleys, supermarkets, and the rest of the, of the, of the soft underbelly, unfortunately of America, given the size and scale of our country. And watching him in action while, you know, I was like, oh God, let's, we gotta talk about how they couldn't catch the killer. But think about the deeper implications of what we're just watching about the future mass casualty event or terrorist event that's going to happen. Not because I want it to happen, because historically is going to happen. And it's certainly going to happen when we don't have any line of defense or firewall around America because it's being led by a band of incompetence.
- [26:32]
Ben Crump
And you don't have to take Michael Popak's word for it or mine. Maybe take the word of Brian Driscoll, former acting director of the FBI. Stephen Jensen, one of the top counterterrorism people, major leader at the FBI. As high as you get, other than Driscoll, who was literally as high as you get. Spencer Evans, 20 year veteran of the FBI. Those three individuals, not exactly litigious people, right? They sued the FBI actually the morning when Charlie Kirk was killed, and they sued the FBI. They sued the U.N. obviously unrelated. And they didn't know what was going to happen. It just happened to be the morning that they filed the lawsuit and they said this FBI after they've unlawfully fired us and the reason why they told us they were getting rid of us and others is because Donald Trump wanted retaliation and retribution. And Cash Patel said the only way he keeps his job is if he fires all of the people in the FBI that Trump wants to inflict retaliation and retribution against. And they also said that there's going to be lots of issues that are going to emerge because Cash Patel and Dan Bongino are more concerned about social media likes and reposts than the integrity of what the FD FBI does. So that lawsuit was filed in federal court in Washington D.C. earlier in the morning. And then later we learned about the killing of Charlie Kirk. I, I just want to say this before going to the first quick break. You know, Charlie Kirk was a very bad guy, okay? We condemn violence in the strongest possible terms here on the Midas Touch network. But what's pissed me off is to try to see corporate news coverage act like this was a good guy, okay? Charlie Kirk was a bad guy who said terrible things about black people, gay people, trans people, the minorities in general. This was someone who said that the Civil Rights act was a mistake. And shouldn't have taken place. This was someone who, after very violent and horrific events and shootings, would say things like, this is just a, what you have to do. If you, if you want a second amendment, there's nothing, there's nothing that we can do about it. And a lot of other very hateful, hurtful, divisive, divisive things. So people pretending this was like a good guy who, like, rallied people to unity, the exact opposite of it. Nonetheless, it is critical that we say, even with people who say hateful and horrible things, the way to deal with those differences is nonviolently. Okay. It's through debate. It's through winning with your ideas. It's like winning the way we're winning on the Midas Dutch network, where we get more views and more engagement than other networks. That's how you win, and that's what you're supposed to do. All right, take quick break. Reminder, check out Michael Popo's law firm. It is growing rapidly. We're getting a ton of clients from legal AF viewers. So give a call to 877 Popoc or the Popoc firm dot com. Go to thepopoc firm dot com or call 877 Popoc if you've been in a car accident or a trucking accident or you know someone who's been in an accident or you know someone who's the victim in a wrongful death case, who's died because of the negligence of others, medical malpractice, other types of negligence, sexual assault and sexual harassment cases. Give Popak a call. Popak started the firm because lots of people who watch the show say, popak, can you handle our cases? And he couldn't. Now he can. So give him a call. Also substack. Subscribe to Michael Popak substack, the Legal AF substack. Check it out. And also the Legal AF YouTube channel is right there about to get 8,000 subscribers and very close. So please help it get 800,000 subscribers. And then we're on our way to 1 million subscribers. All right, let's take our first quick break of the show. We'll be right back.
- [30:38]
Michael Popak
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- [33:44]
Ben Crump
Welcome back to Legal af. Thank you to those sponsors. They help support the show. So check out the sponsors discount codes are in the description below. All right, Michael Popot. This week the birthday card which was or the birthday book for Jeffrey Epstein's 50th was subpoenaed by the Democrats, was subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee. The Democrats forced the House Oversight Committee to issue this subpoena. They certainly Republicans, led by James Comer, did not want to issue that subpoena. But you know, it just goes to show you why it's helpful to have good leadership even when you're in the minority, like Robert Garcia, the new Democratic ranking member of the House Oversight Committee. Night and day, this is the reality. You know, I mean since he's been there, he's been every day he's been pushing, pushing, pushing and making sure that know these documents come to light. So this birthday book is in the possession of the Epstein estate. The Epstein estate produced the pursuant to a subpoena. The Epstein estate is not like, they're not like the bad guys anymore. The Epstein estate, it's, it's run by a court appointed trustee who took over all of the documents and data and everything. So it's supervised by federal courts that appointed a trustee and a trustee oversees the settlements with victims, the documents in the cases, the way these litigations are being handled. And they do it in the interest of being helpful to the survivors and the victims. So I just want to make that clear. So they produced this book and it had, you know, it was 238 pages. Trump was one page of 238 pages. All of the other pages were authentic pages. These are all people who Jeffrey Epstein knew during this time period. We all know that Trump was like best friends with Epstein during this time period. You all know what the letter says. Trump talks about enigma, Trump talks about secrets and they'll never age and all of these very creepy things. Rather than have a normal explanation. Hey, I'm friends with Epstein and you know, our secrets were, we would golf and we had this secret handshake and the enigmas were, you know, we did puzzles together, whatever, you know, Trump goes with, never wrote that. Not my signature, never. I don't know anything about it. Well, here it is. Yeah, that's a forgery. Then all of Mag is like, that's not his signature. I mean it was clear. And there was like all these other signatures that came out that show that it was this like, it's like. It's exactly a signature. It's not a debate. Was this his signature? Okay, it is his signature. It is. It is what he. He.
- [36:32]
Michael Popak
He wrote this.
- [36:33]
Ben Crump
It just shows you the degree of derangement that exists where. That's what they came up with. Forgery this way. Well, I think Congressmember Moskowitz put it humorously, although, you know, it's. Whether you find humor in any of this is. Is a bit morbid. But he goes, so let me get this straight. There's a forger on the loose. And we. And now MAGA doesn't. Someone's forging the signature of the President of the United States. But not only this, they also were able to predict the future. So are there. Are there X Men among us? Like, there are some time travelers. There are time travelers and forgers, and we don't want to get to the bottom of it. We're just like. It literally makes zero sense. But then there were other portions of the book that also referenced Trump. There was like, one really creepy cartoon that seemed to show Mar A Lago, and it showed Epstein in 83 giving little girls balloons and then basically having those, then sexually assaulting those girls. And it shows them doing various sexual things with him in 2003 and massaging him and touching his genitals. And it looks like Mar a Lago is right there in. In the background of that photo. And then you had another photo taken at Mara at Mar A Lago with Mar A Lago members and Trump's close friend who were holding up checks. Trump wasn't in the photo, but it was Epstein, Mar A Lago members, the whole Trump's crew, and they were holding up a check, doing a joke that Trump was buying a depreciated girl or woman for Jeffrey Epstein for $22,500, basically mocking this woman as though Trump was getting the girls that Epstein had first. And after they. After the women or girls depreciated, Epstein would hand him down to Donald Trump and Trump would pay Epstein for that. That's what that. That's what that meant. If anybody was.
- [38:27]
Michael Popak
That's what passed for humor 30 years ago.
- [38:29]
Ben Crump
That's what they were. That's what they were suggesting. But then popo talk about that. But then even more significantly, then Bloomberg drops 18,000 emails, and they start to mention that real estate transaction with Abe Gossman, with the Russian oligarch fertilizer oligarch who bought the property from Trump four years later. That was the Epstein. Epstein was going to Buy that one in bankruptcy. Pascal, that guy you saw in the photo there, he break it all down, Pop.
- [39:00]
Michael Popak
Okay, yeah, the whole. Well, the book. The book is easy. You and I have done what's called question documents, cases. I've tried about a half a dozen of them. And I will tell you that in a court of law, it would take about five minutes or less for a jury to conclude that the page 158 of a 237 page birthday book. By the way, I've had a 50th birthday I never had. Lewd and lascivious cards prepared by hand by my friends and pasted into a 400, effectively a 400 page book. So somebody in the middle, he didn't get top billing in the book. Donald Trump. That's probably what pissed him off also, Ben, that he wasn't the center folder. He wasn't page one. So somebody went into a book 30 years ago and plotted against Donald Trump to bring him down, knowing he'd one day be president by pasting in a forged document that was using Donald Trump's vernacular, his verbiage, his grammar, his syntax, his art skills, his signature for Donald in order to embarrass him later on. I mean, and because they never answer that question, as you said, you know, the Carol and the Vettes of the world never answer the question, who's the forger? Who would forge his for and for what purpose? And everybody else in the 237 pages has effectively conceded that that is a legitimate work of submission of theirs, except for Donald Trump. Alan Dershowitz, Leon Black, Pascal, the guy with the check, the 22,000 with the check. Everybody else said, yeah, that sheepishly, you know, that I did that. But no, Donald Trump's is the forgery. So a jury would conclude immediately after seeing legitimate exemplars of Donald Trump's signature, including one that Adam Parkhomenko was. I did a live with him. Supplied to the Wall Street Journal from a letter he took out of the trash that was being thrown away between Trump and George Conway and Hillary. Hillary Clinton, in which the Donald signature is almost an exact duplicate. And so that's all you got to do is piss off the Washington Post and the New York Times long enough because there's that old line that Donald Trump never learned, which is never pick a fight with somebody that buys ink by the barrel. Don't pick a fight with Midas Touch. Don't pick a fight with the Wall Street Journal because they're just gonna go after you and prove you wrong. We're gonna talk about that when we get to the Lisa Cook matter in a moment. And so the Washington Post and the Times goes through the analysis of the handwriting with dozens of examples of Donald Trump from public records of him signing exactly the same way. So that is a lie. They know it hurts them. You know, it's the old, we like to bring in our trial experience, you and me, in this kind of case and this kind, this kind of podcast. It's like, you know what you're what you think you're what you're what you know, what your opponent thinks has hurt him or her when in the rebuttal, they, they address that particular topic like you do your argument, your opening statement, or your argument in court, and they have a chance for a rebuttal. And you know what, what they think has hurt them in your case by what they address like that. And sometimes I've been in court and even in trials where I'm like, that's the thing that you're doing the rebuttal on. That's the part that you think hurt you. So it's because it's odd here, you know, that the Trump administration believes they've been damaged beyond repair by the enigma statements and the sweet enigma and the secrets and the this and that. Because it looks terrible once it turns out that the guy is a, a child sex trafficker and a pedophile and a predator. Because you don't, you don't get to say enigma and Swede and he likes young and. And then, of course, it comes back to haunt you, because we have another concept in the law called willful blindness. And I believe a jury, I do believe this, that a jury would conclude if we put on all the evidence, you and I put on all the evidence of the close relationship between Epstein and Trump, including the girl and women chasing and the predator behavior of both, and the grooming behavior of both together and the videos and the audios and the book a jury would read. We asked the jury whether they could conclude on whatever standard you want, maybe not a reasonable doubt, but certainly on a preponderance of the evidence standard, is it more likely than not that Donald Trump knew or should have known that Jeffrey Epstein was a child rapist. I think they would conclude that they, that it is, that that's true. And so Donald Trump knows that hurt him, and so they come up with all these, as you said, ridiculous things that have to rely on time travel in order to be true. Now we go to the Bloomberg email dump, which you did a great job on. And I did a number of hot takes on as well. Forget the client list. There is a gift spreadsheet. It's hard to believe that in the 18,000 emails, not only do we learn about the perverse purchasing on Amazon by Jeffrey Epstein, including little girl school uniforms, a leather bullwhip, and an FBI agent's uniform. I don't know if they were all for the same event, but that's disgusting. Or can be. And then you've got the gift list. $1.8 million Ben of purchases primarily through Maxwell, but approved by Epstein to go to victims because we know they're victims. It's easy to match the names to go to victims for schooling and laptops and trips and lingerie and all sorts of disgusting things given the age of these people at the appropriate time. And then let's just call it out. Luxury gifts listed on the spreadsheet to people like Alan Dershowitz, who has no problem going on the Harvard law professor, no problem going on right wing media and defending Ghislaine Maxwell as part of her rehabilitation tour so she can get a pardon that maybe she's the victim, but never disclosing that not only was he the lawyer for Jeffrey Epstein, that got him the non prosecution agreement that kept him on the street abusing girls and being a predator to girls longer than he should have been, but never admitting I got an $80,000 Lexus from Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell as a part of being biased. Like, he shouldn't be talking about these things because he's so conflicted and ethically challenged. So we see. But we also see a watch for Bill Clinton. I'm not saying it's for anything nefarious. I don't know what it was for, but they were gifting him a $30,000 AP watch. All right, so maybe we should be less focused on the client list and more focused on the gift list. But who's investigating this? No, it's not. We keep demanding the release of the Epstein files, but we also. There's just this magical thinking that I think we're operating under that there's a Department of justice that's gonna do anything about it. So we release the files. So there's a whole bunch of people's names in there, Republican and Democrat, powerful men primarily, who maybe were participating in this child sex ring. I don't know who's gonna go after him. Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche. Who? The problem is no one. It's gonna be left to the Letitia James's the Attorney Generals of New York, the Attorney General of Democratic states, where they have criminal enforcement power to bring people to justice. Because this group's not gonna do it. Not when they're busy spending an inordinate amount of energy defending the President of the United States, who is somewhere in these files. And that's why they're being blocked. And there. And just to wrap it up with this. So there's a lot, there was a lot of, there was, and there were emails in there. You did a good job on this. There's emails in there that show that Ghislaine Maxwell should be prosecuted again for lying under oath during her eight hour, nine hour love fest with Todd Blanche to try to vouch for, increase her credibility. To be able to vouch for Donald Trump, a convicted child sex predator, has to vouch for the President of the United States. That's, that's how low he has sunk. He sunk, he sunk lower than her. So he wanted her to help her. But if you look and compare, and we have the audio and we have the video of her, the audio and the written transcript, if you compare what she said, most of it was completely refuted with emails between Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein about the closeness of the relationship, about them negotiating over the language of what deal he would, what plea he would cop to. Should I do lewd and lascivious or should I do soliciting sex from a minor prostitute? And they're. Well, I think you should. I mean, are you kidding me? And the amount of money that it was exchanged between the two of them and things that would indicate to me and you that she had knowledge of his activities, including emails in there from others saying, let me introduce you to a Russian, a woman, young woman in New York who can, on the college campuses, can go recruit other people for you. And this was. No, I mean, it was, you didn't have to read too much between the lines to realize that this was what was happening in those emails. And then finally, you've got the thing that for me and you confirm what we've been saying, which is Donald Trump's bullshit that he's been pushing to the American people since he ran for office the first time as he's tried to distance himself from Epstein because he was heavily vetted by his own handlers before he ran for office the first time. And they said, let's get down to Epstein because he just got convicted in 2009. What was your relationship? And they kept challenging and challenging. They figured out politically they better Start saying that he didn't have a relationship with Epstein. That's clear, you know, that's why. But, but the problem is you can't get rid of 20 years of proof of video and pictures and photos and testimony. So we always. So then they started saying, well, the reason he fired Jeffrey Epstein as his best friend was because he found him to be a creep, which implied that he knew about the child sex predator stuff, which is also weird and not helpful. And that's why he barred him from Mar a Lago. And you and I have always reported that's not it. It's a $41 million bankruptcy auction in West Palm Beach, Florida, over a five acre piece in Palm beach on north county line on North County Road called Maison la Metis, the House of Friendship that was owned by Les Wexner that Donald Trump wanted after it was introduced to him by Epstein. And they ended up duking it out in a bankrupt court. And Donald Trump had to pay more than he wanted to because Epstein was a bidder, along with Mark Pulte, who's going to talk about Bill Pulte, who's Bill Pulte's father, who also bid up the price. Donald Trump got the property, sold it for double the value two years later to a Russian oligarch, and he never forgave Epstein for it. And that was the falling out. And there in the middle of these emails is the email from Maxwell to Epstein in which she says right at the time, they're negotiating the non prosecution agreement to keep him out of jail for the rest of his life, where he belonged, saying this is all it says. But you and I picked up on it because we knew the language, we knew the vocabulary. They must be going to Donald Trump, then Gabe Gossman, then WPB Docs, which is not doctors, and then they listed Pascal, the guy that made the sign about the selling girls for a depreciated value in the birthday book. Abe Gossman was the nursing home billionaire who went bankrupt, who owned the property, having acquired it from Wexner that Trump wanted. This $41 million property was owned by Abe Gossman and the bankruptcy was his bankruptcy estate. So Gossman is Gossman. Donald Trump is the bidding war, though WPB docs is obviously the filings at the West Palm Beach Federal Bankruptcy Courthouse on Clematis street or Day Torah Street. I used to practice there. And that's what she's referring to. And that somebody is sniffing around. I don't think it's reporters. I think it's the prosecutors who are looking at this issue and they're worried about it, which is, for me, proof positive that even Epstein knew that the reason he's no longer talking to Donald Trump and he could be his adversary is because of that transaction. There's also a working theory, I think Michael Wolf raised it, that, that Trump, if he dropped a dime on Epstein, it wasn't to turn him in because he was a creep. It was to get rid of him because of the real estate transaction. And it might have, if Donald Trump was an informant, it was to get rid of his former friend because of the $41 million Trump had to pay for the property.
- [52:27]
Ben Crump
Michael Pop. Remember Ghiain Maxwell said, though, when she was asked by Trump's former criminal defense attorney and number two at the DOJ, Todd Blanch, that she stopped speaking to Epstein in 2003 and that she really didn't even know much about Donald Trump and Epstein's interactions. But her email about a very specific shady transaction that went down and she was emailing it in 2007, and she's got very specific understandings that that transaction and the relationship among those individuals, Epstein and Abe and, and, and Trump and, and the, the property and the documents and Pascal, was a concern for Epstein's criminal liability and that the Feds could be talking to those individuals. Look in the Epstein files. Will we see Donald Trump talking to the Feds? Will we see the Feds investigating Donald Trump? I. I don't know. Will we see other witness statements?
- [53:30]
Michael Popak
I don't know.
- [53:31]
Ben Crump
The reality is just release the files. But think about it this way. For Donald Trump, whatever is in those files coming out is far worse than what's happening right now. By claiming that that's not his signature and all of these things. So they've made a calculated decision. Whatever's in there is so much worse than him continuing to say things like, that's not my signature when it is his signature, or saying it's a Democratic hoax. And I think Bopach, they want this. They think this is going to go away now. They think we've turned over 33,000 documents from the DOJ, even though all of those were the old documents that were previously produced. Literally nothing new. That was like 2% new, but it was all redacted. So you don't even know what it was anyway. So they're done. Like, they're like, we're not turning over. No. The Senate this past week, 51 Republican senators voted to block the release of the Epstein files. So it's just that we just have to start calling the Republican Party what they are. They are aiding and abetting a cover up of ace of a child sex trafficking ring, the biggest child sex trafficking ring in history. They're aiding and abetting the COVID up of it right now. And they were the ones who promised that they were going to turn over. They want to shift the blame on Democrats. Why didn't Biden turn it over? That wasn't the issue that Biden was running on. Biden was trying to get the country out of Donald Trump's mess that he left the first time after Covid hit our shores where Trump said like a miracle, it was all going to go away. And then Trump and the Republicans weaponized the issue of the Epstein while Biden was focused on all of those things. Look, the reality is, could Biden and should he have and should the Democrats been more focused on the issue? I think the way Democrats should answer is, you know what, I don't think Democrats need to be defensive about it. Yeah, we should have been more focused on it. We were focused on trying to save the economy from the depression that Donald Trump had left. We were doing a lot of things. But you're right, that's one of the reasons why we lost, because we weren't focused.
- [55:45]
Michael Popak
We should have focused.
- [55:46]
Ben Crump
You are 100% right. It should have been a bigger focus. We were focused on all these other things, systemic, economic, saving the country, bringing in Finland and Sweden into NATO. But you're right, we should have focused on this. Well, now we have the opportunity. We should all do it. And Republicans, Democrats never affirmatively said no, we don't want it released. And now the Republicans are affirmatively saying, no, we're covering it up. That's what's happening. And I think that's how it needs to be messaged. One other point, I mentioned his name earlier, but the ambassador to the United States from the uk, part of Keir Starmer's government, Peter Mandelson, guy named Lord Mandelson, rich guy from the uk. He was in the birthday book. His signature was in the birthday book. Fire.
- [56:34]
Michael Popak
No, wait, wait, wait, wait. With one correction, it wasn't the birthday book. It was the emails.
- [56:38]
Ben Crump
No, no, no. It was both the emails.
- [56:40]
Michael Popak
They didn't fire him off the birthday book. They fired him off the emails.
- [56:43]
Ben Crump
Correct. The birthday book though, was first.
- [56:46]
Michael Popak
Yeah.
- [56:46]
Ben Crump
And then the emails came out the next day and so, and, and there was drip, drip, drip. But the birthday book said, jeffrey, you're my best pal, or words.
- [56:55]
Michael Popak
The photo of a Half naked ambassador sitting in a towel at poolside with Epstein.
- [57:01]
Ben Crump
Yeah, them together. So there you have that. I want to remind everybody about Michael Popo's law firm. If you or someone you know has a case, civil case, whether it's a car accident, a trucking accident, negligence of somebody else that injured you, a wrongful death case, call 877 popak AF. That's 877-popak AF AF. Or go to the popoc firm dot com. So whether it's a you've been injured in negligence case or you've been or you want to see if you have a case, there's. The consultation is free. If you're the victim of sexual assault, sexual harassment, medical malpractice, reach out. Every day, Popak is getting hundreds and hundreds of calls from our listeners and he's taken a lot of cases. So if you think you may have a case, you don't know, do the free consultation or if you know a friend who's been telling you they have an issue, go reach out to them and say, look, just give Popak a call. Popox got lawyers across the country who will, who will help if indeed you have a case. Also subscribe to Michael Popo's YouTube channel. They're on their way to 1 million subscribers. Help them get to 800,000 subscribers first. That's the Legal AF YouTube channel. And subscribe to the Legal AF substack as well. Right, thanks everybody. We will be right back after our last quick break of the show.
- [58:27]
Michael Popak
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- [61:06]
Ben Crump
Thank you to all of our sponsors. Discount codes are in the description below. And thanks to everybody who gave a call to 877-popoc AF got a lot of calls of people sharing their potential cases. Get that free case evaluation or go to thepopoc firm.com and share that information with friends as well. That you know who may have been injured in a car accident or trucking accident, or victims of sexual assault or sexual harassment or medical malpractice. Let Popak do a free consultation for you. All right, let's get back into it. Michael Popak and talk about Lisa Cook, one of the governors at the Federal Reserve. Part of Donald Trump's plan to take control of the Federal Reserve was to frame Lisa Cook, have Bill Pulte his hatchet man. Bill Pulte runs the was appointed by Trump to run the Fair Housing Administration, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and he goes through your mortgage documents and then he tries to frame you for fraud. Is kind of the the Go to move, I guess, whether it's Letitia James or whether it's Lisa Cook or Adam Schiff or whoever. And so he did that with Lisa Cook. But it turns out that not only, I mean, so first Lisa Cook prevailed in obtaining injunctive relief to keep her job, which Popaki could cover because the federal judge, Judge Cobb, saw right through the scheme. Even without this additional data point, just even if you accepted the allegations as true for purposes of an injunctive relief without even entering, you know, what actually are on those documents, the judge would say, or the judge said, it's clearly pretextual. You didn't give her due process and conduct that took place before. The position is clearly not envisioned as for cause termination while you hold the position. But then, Popak, we've also learned additional information there. Why don't you talk about that? But now, as this case works its way up to the Supreme Court too, where we'll see what the Supreme Court does. They did create their Federal Reserve kind of carve out as it relates to the. When. When they were firing one of the people on the, on the what. What board was it, Popak? Was it one of the labor commissioners?
- [63:34]
Michael Popak
GWEN Wilcox, National Labor Relations Board.
- [63:36]
Ben Crump
Yeah, National Labor Relations Board. And then the Supreme Court said, well, Trump can basically do whatever he wants with those positions, but when it comes to the Federal Reserve, it has to be for cause. Okay, well, Trump, Trump gins up a fake for cause against Lisa Cook. Now, is the United States Supreme Court going to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, only as it relates to the chairman of the Federal Reserve. The exception was for the chairman, not for the governors.
- [64:04]
Michael Popak
So.
- [64:04]
Ben Crump
But pop, talk about Lisa Cook. But then as this case works its way up to the Supreme Court, it's the general frustration that all of these federal judges and appellate judges have with the Supreme Court because it's just pure chaos. And then when I seen some of these Supreme Court justices give these interviews, I mean, you had Amy Coney Barrett give the interview, and she was asked a question that was pretty basic. So the president is barred from seeking a third term. Right. And I mean, and she answered the question like a first year law student. I mean, I was watching it and I'm like, oh, my God, you're a Supreme Court Justice. Right? She was like, well, if you look at the 22nd amendment and you read the words, it does saying it seems to suggest that I'm like, what if. What the. What the f is going. I'm like, how did I go to Georgetown Law and be a freaking Litigator view. You've been a lawyer for three times as long as I'm like, how is this the what the hell's going on?
- [65:04]
Michael Popak
That sounded like what you did and it all happened to all of us. That happened that when you got caught by a blog professor and got called on for something, you were prepared to answer. So you started with some gibberish, some word salad they called it when it's Kamala Harris doing it. That was all word salad coming out of I can't believe she, she wrote a book, let alone be a United States Supreme Court justice based on that. But let's go back to Lisa Cook for a minute. So Lisa Cook is one of seven of the Board of Governors. It's currently four to three non Trump appointed board of Governors. It's an independent entity which the Supreme Court has said is equivalent for, to our first and second banks of the United States, meaning Alexander Hamilton, effectively the first bank. And therefore in a case having nothing to do with the, with the Federal Reserve, Gwen Wilcox, who is the head of the National Labor Relations Board gets fired, says you can only do it for cause and cites to a bunch of cases that we'll talk about, including Humphreys executor for the proposition and then tries to make the additional argument in her briefing that if you fire me today, what's next? The Federal Reserve, you know, sort of a throwaway argument about the slippery slope of what they could be ruling. But when the Supreme Court allowed Trump to fire Gwen Wilcox and fire this, this agency head, this, this board head under the theory that it exerts a lot of, or exercises a lot of executive power. So we gotta let Trump fire at will, they said. But as to the Federal Reserve, the case was not about the Federal Reserve. But they so wanted to put a ring fence around the Federal Reserve and protect it that they went out of their way to say but in the Federal Reserve that's like our first and second banks. And so we don't allow that. That's an independent, semi private entity. And no, you have to do that for cause. Of course they stopped short of defining what for cause was. So that was the ruling in May. Donald Trump's been floundering around trying to find for cause against Jay Powell, the head of the Federal Reserve. Maybe I could do cost overruns related to the two buildings that are being remodeled at the Fed. And how did that go? Not well. Pulls out that with Tim Scott on the walking tour with hard hats. Pulls out this. Well, just found out right here Jay, that you're another billion six over and trying to do a gotcha moment. And Jay Powell, because he's smarter than Donald Trump looked at it and said you're adding in an entire building that was done in your first administration five years ago. Well, it's all part of it, Bill. Jay Yeah. Okay. So then after that Trump backed off going after Jay Powell and then decided who can we go for and what can we use to go after it. So he puts Bill Pulte, who's the depo baby billionaire, 40 year old son of Mark Polte who we talked about earlier, this rich real estate developer and contractor, they built a lot of homes in the southeast. Pulte Holmes, who's huge maga Bill Pulte, I never saw, I mean he is, he wants to run for office, he wants to be in the administration and he basically bought, he bought his seat. It was pay to play to be the head, the head of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which is the Federal National Mortgage association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, which are semi private entities that are not the watchdogs in the mortgage market. They're not the, they're not the inspectors general, regulators when it comes to mortgages. They handle liquidity, which means they help by taking loans off the books of banks and putting them into securitized lots. It's called mortgage backed securities. They put everybody's home loan regardless of credit. You know, the higher, the better credit is an A loan, the medium credit is B, the crappy credit is C. They put it all together on a shelf, they securitize that shelf and sell it to investors, which brings money back into the system and takes those loans off the books, if you will, of the banks, which gives them more money to give more loans. So it keeps the money flow of mortgage loans running. It also does guarantees of certain loans to make banks lend money for home mortgages. That's what it does. What it doesn't do is go looking around and rooting around half assed research in public files to see whose loan documents are on file and what accusations they can make about it. Bill Polti just did a hot take about it. Bill Pulte put up a post about Lisa Cook. Financial fraud is a big deal. Don't do it. Well, maybe his own parents shouldn't have done exactly what he accused without proper information or full complete picture what he accused Lisa Cook of doing, what he accused Letitia James of doing, what he accused Adam Schiff to do. So the, the, if you're doing the diagram at home Trump wants to go after his political enemies or destabilize the Fed. In this, in this scenario, he, he hires, he basically has Bill Pulte, through social media tweets, post half ass half, as you said, framed evidence, not even evidence suggesting that Lisa Cook and the others have taken out two primary mortgages, two declaring two properties to be their primary homes, getting some economic benefit potentially from interest rates and from a tax break on the property, property tax side. Except there's a problem with that. First of all, she didn't do it because the new information that Reuters just broke is that she was fully transparent with her credit union where she took the loan out for, for the Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia rental vacation home, her primary home being in Michigan, that it was a second home or a vacation home. It's all over the documentation within the bank's old records, which Reuter got ahold of. And they also got ahold, which would have been very simple for Bill Pulte if he was trying to be honest instead of trying to frame her to go to the Fulton County Property Appraiser's office and pull the file to see if she had checked the box for, for taking that as her primary residence and getting a property tax credit. She didn't because she's taking that credit in Michigan. Now, it turns out in another expose by Reuters that Bill Pulte's own parents not only did the fraud where they claimed Michigan as their primary residence and Boca Raton, Florida as their primary residence or their homestead in Florida, except in Michigan, they got $180,000 property tax break, which already the Michigan tax Assessor has clawed back and charged them back the $180,000, finding that there was fraud. And 20% of Donald Trump's cabinet have done the same or similar things with checking the boxes. Now, this ties into the Cobb decision, the GIA Cobb decision, the federal judge in favor of Lisa Cook, in which she found that she was gonna block the firing of Lisa Cook and keep her in her job, certainly through the 16th of September next week, when they meet again as the Federal open markets committee, 12 members to vote on interest rates. Because two things she found that there was not proper for cause to terminate Lisa Cook, even if any of these mortgage allegations were true, and now we know they weren't, because she says, if you look at the entire body of law in this area, you can only get fired for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance on the job, you know, related to your statutory duties, not something you're accused of doing that's not even, that's not a convicted crime before you were confirmed by the Senate. That's something she said that the judge said that should have been picked up in the confirmation process if people had issues. And more to the point about the evidence that Bill Pulte ignored on purpose in order to try to frame Lisa Cook is the fact that the judge found that her due process Fifth Amendment rights were violated because she wasn't given an opportunity to defend herself on the allegations and social media posts and the criminal referral, nor was she given a hearing, a hearing at which I suggest she would have been able to pull up the documents from her credit union to show that she was fully transparent about this being in Atlanta, a second home and a rent and a vacation home and not her primary and all the tax documents. But she never got that day in court. She never got that hearing and that's a Fifth Amendment violation. Now, Trump doesn't like any of that. So he's so intent on compromising the integrity and the independence of the Federal Reserve that he not only raced to the D.C. circuit Court of Federal Appellate Court, but he filed an emergency motion a day or so ago and demanded that they rule by Monday that Judge Cobb was wrong on due process and wrong on cause. His first argument is always the same, Ben, in every one of his cases. It's discretionary to me about what what I why I'm firing her and you court can't review it. It's every argument he leads with his chin in every argument. And so it is reviewable. Because what would be the difference? Why would the Supreme Court go out of their way to say you have to have a for cause reason here for the Federal Reserve if there's no difference between for cause and an at will firing? If you can just say I don't like the way she looked today, I don't like the color of her dress, I don't like, I don't like her name. I just could. That's the, that's it. I've decided it. That's the cause. And if that's sufficient without a process or proceeding or without what I said, the inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office, then what's the difference between fire at will and being blocked and having to get over the hurdle of for cause? Nothing. So he can't possibly be right about this. Now here's what I don't think the appellate court is going to rule in his favor. I don't think they're going to block Lisa Cook from continuing to serve on the Federal reserve through the 16th and otherwise. And look, they're gonna cut rates. Let me just cut to the chase. They are going to cut rates because of Donald Trump's disaster of an economic policy where the bottom is dropped out of jobs by millions and the tariff framework for his entire foreign policy and economy is a disaster. And, and is leading to worldwide global slowdown and American GDP slowdown. They're gonna have to cut rates. The sad part for Donald Trump is. Or the reality is Lisa Cook was gonna vote to reduce rates anyway. He didn't have to go through all of this. Everybody's gonna vote, at least in the majority, to reduce rates of interest rates, to pump more money into the economy to save Donald Trump's ass. He didn't have to try to destroy the Federal Reserve in order to do that. So I don't think they're gonna block her. He's gonna have to erase Ben on an emergency application if he wants to continue this folly in light of this new evidence, which I'm sure will be presented to Judge Kopp about Bill Pulte and his bullshit up to the United States Supreme Court on an emergency docket, which then we're talking about in the next segment about the fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and other federal judges bemoaning and chastising the Supreme Court for how they're handling the Trump's emergency applications.
- [76:44]
Ben Crump
Well, here's the thing. Just provide due process to Lisa Cook. The reality is, if you wanted to do a 4 cause termination, then do what's supposed to happen, especially for something this high profile. You can, you know, have a committee investigated, you can put out the evidence. You, you can actually do this in a way that allows Lisa Cook to provide the documents in response and say, here's what it is, right? We get all of the evidence, whether there's an administrative panel that oversees it, or you bring the claim before a court, it gets litigated, it gets addressed. I mean, there's no criminal case filed, there's no civil case filed. I mean, you can't just make up. There's no difference between for cause and without cause. If you just can make up and say, I declare that you committed a crime and because I'm the president, you did it. I don't care if you're not convicted. I mean, regardless of what political party you're from, you shouldn't want to be in a system, right, where that is something that takes place. We definitely don't want to be in a system like that. So, Michael Popak, though, let's go to this issue, though, of when we talk about due process, though, playing out in the federal courts. What's pissing off, whether it's the 4th Circuit or most federal judges around the country, is that, okay, well, now we are hearing the evidence, we're making rulings, we're finding things that the Trump regime is doing to be patently unlawful. We're the trial judge, we're the initial referee of this. But then it's like, if any of you all watch football, you know, it's like, we're the referee. We made the call. We don't even need to go. It's such an obvious call. We shouldn't have to go to instant replay. But every time we make a call, no matter what it is, it goes to instant replay. And then we get a call from New York. That's a very specific New York reference. But you get a phone call and say, you've been overruled.
- [78:52]
Michael Popak
Overruled? What are you talking about?
- [78:54]
Ben Crump
Well, you've been over every single time. We're making the right calls each and every time. It's worse than that, though, because obviously the implications are people's lives. But the Supreme Court shouldn't even be getting involved in any of this stuff until there's a trial and until it goes through the normal court of appeal processes, the Supreme Court's using this emergency docket, and then they're not even doing briefings. Like, they're not even having oral arguments on a lot of these cases. Sure. For the case involving Trump's unlawful tariffs against the world, they're going to do oral arguments, and they're going to hear it in, like, November. And it's still. These unlawful tariffs are going to at least remain in place until then. But mostly all these other cases, you get no actual discussion by the Supreme Court, why they're ruling. They just say, hey, district Court, we're staying, or we're pausing your order until. Until such time as it finds its way back up to the Supreme Court, which could be years from now, versus allowing the district court that's handling the case to administer orders. So, Popak, tell us about what we're seeing from judges across the country who are pissed.
- [80:03]
Michael Popak
It is extraordinary and unheard of. You and I, regardless of when we went to law school, this is. We've never had a situation where there's been open warfare between an open hostility between district courts, appellate courts, and the United States Supreme Court court, and now appellate courts and federal District courts have had it. And they're not only speaking anonymously like they did last week to NBC to express their displeasure and their open call for the Supreme Court to stop abusing them and stop letting them twist in the wind with unclear direction. But now, during a 4th Circuit which sits in Maryland, a 4th Circuit oral argument, or it sits over Maryland and other places, the judges, a number of them, we're going to play one in a minute, decided to use part of the 80 minute oral argument to chastise the United States Supreme Court and tell them, if you think this, all we want from you is clear direction expressed in an opinion of a certain length. So we know what we're supposed to do, what the precedent is and how to apply it. And instead we are getting one paragraph which has, or sometimes less or a concurrence that we're supposed to glean like it's, you know, magic eight ball jurisprudence, you know, shake the eight ball. I think it's going to be a rough day for you today. That's what they're getting. And the judges now are saying it out loud. It was almost like a therapist session. And I'll play it in just one second. And what they're rebelling against and what the American society is rebelling against is that the Supreme Court is hell bent to be complicit with Donald Trump, to allow him to exploit with their approval, the shadow docket, which is a fast track, short circuited method of getting an appeal up to the Supreme Court, which is on an incomplete factual record not properly yet developed below by the trial judge, on an incomplete set of briefs. Legal written arguments, normally without even the help of amicus briefs or friends of the court briefs. No oral argument, almost rarely no oral argument. They only grant it rarely without the deliberative process that goes into the United States Supreme Court in general to come out with one paragraph where they say it's not substance, it's just procedure, and they're using it to go after and destroy some of the most fundamental aspects of our United States Constitution. Not just out in the seams of the Constitution, the very fabric of the Constitution, like one paragraph to destroy the Fourth Amendment, illegal search and seizure and to allow racial profiling to happen again at the hands of Donald Trump's immigration shock troops chasing human beings through California and other states. I would have thought if they were going to put the Fourth Amendment out of its misery, they would have done it. They would at least have the decency to do it in a full blown appeal with a 50 or 100 page opinion with dissents and concurrences. No, it was one paragraph and then five pages by Kavanaugh and dozen pages by Sotomayor to tell me what just happened. I would have thought if they were going to take away the right that had been used for more than 75 years of federal judges to use temporary restraining orders on a national basis, nationwide injunctions to remedy constitutional violations, they would have done it in more than a paragraph or two paragraphs. And so federal judges below them, because there's two reasons you write an opinion. One is to teach down because they have to follow binding precedent in the hierarchy of our jurisprudence, lower court judges, the appellate judges and the district court judges. But how can they possibly figure out what a one paragraph supposed to mean or if that's supposed to apply in other cases? Again, we're at the Oracle of Delphi moment where we don't know what they just come out, make a pronouncement. I got to spend the rest of my lifetime trying to figure out what they just said. And the federal judges are getting frustrated. Let me play a clip from Judge Winan today or earlier the week in an oral argument where it burst out into the open. It's giving us signals. And this so called shadow document, that document that's being put out here, we can gleam and probably predict pretty accurately. If that's our job, is to predict the Supreme Court and call that a win, I can tell you how we'll do. We'll just do it the Supreme Court, you don't need this court. But you have to agree as you answer Judge King's question, we have an independent obligation to consider the merits of this appeal.
- [84:51]
Ben Crump
If it wanted to, it could have just told us you don't need to do anything else. We're going to go ahead and decide it for you.
- [84:58]
Michael Popak
So if it's decided the merits of.
- [85:00]
Ben Crump
The appeal, then it would have done that.
- [85:02]
Michael Popak
It didn't do that.
- [85:03]
Ben Crump
It didn't even tell us that. And that's the problem we got is.
- [85:06]
Michael Popak
We have a Supreme Court.
- [85:08]
Ben Crump
I'm not criticizing the justice. I'm just saying you're using a vehicle that's there, but they're telling us nothing. And they're leaving the lower courts, circuit courts, the district courts out in limbo as to guess what they are doing or to gleam or predict what they're.
- [85:23]
Michael Popak
Doing, which may be correct to do.
- [85:26]
Ben Crump
But the truth of the matter is.
- [85:27]
Michael Popak
They could easily just give us directions.
- [85:29]
Ben Crump
On it and we would follow it.
- [85:32]
Michael Popak
When you don't Give us clear directions. You end up with a situation where you're answering Judge Richardson question, well, they.
- [85:39]
Ben Crump
Told us what to do and then.
- [85:40]
Michael Popak
You asked King's question.
- [85:43]
Ben Crump
But I'm not saying they told us what to do. So that's a, that's a problem. We have an independent obligation.
- [85:50]
Michael Popak
That's what we ought to undertake here.
- [85:52]
Ben Crump
And we do so independently. Even though some might want to predict.
- [85:57]
Michael Popak
Or even you could actually predict what the Supreme Court. I don't think we should guess that we have a job to do. That's our constitutional duty. The Supreme Court has its constitutional duty.
- [86:06]
Ben Crump
We all should just do our job.
- [86:08]
Michael Popak
Do your job. We just had A week ago two judges on the D.C. federal that was the entirety of the 4th Circuit sitting in Richmond, Virginia, by the way, that was en banc. That was about a Doge Social Security case of great importance. And that broke out there a week earlier. You've got two judges, Judge Millard and Judge Pan, who said to the Supreme Court about Rebecca Slaughter and her termination without cause from the Federal Trade Commission, which seems to violate on its face a 95 year old precedent called Humphreys Executor literally say to the Supreme Court in writing, do your job. We're not going to do your job for you. We're going to apply a 95 year old precedent that's on the books because you haven't told us otherwise. And if you. And what. So what did they do three days later? They blocked that decision, signaling that they're going to overturn the 95 year old precedent. But how is the Court supposed to know that? And the other problem we have is they're not only not giving guidance to the judges and of course to the public, which can't understand, let alone legal AF figuring it out what it means to be able to have any legitimacy about their rulemaking, their decision making at the Supreme Court. That's why you issue opinions. I may not agree with the jurisprudence or the intellectual underpinnings, but at least I should understand them in order to debate it with you, so to speak. But then you have the next level, which is the Supreme Court getting prickly and attacking federal judges because they're not, quote, unquote, following the one paragraph, which is supposed to be on procedural grounds anyway. So you have about a month ago, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh gang tackling a senior judge who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, William Young, up in Massachusetts, on a funding issue in which he ruled that the Trump administration couldn't cut off the government federal funding on A certain program. And they said, oh, you didn't follow our precedent from the Department of Education. And he said, what precedent? You mean the one paragraph on a procedural grounds where you told us it wasn't substantive? I would never. They actually said, Gorsuch said that this was a judge that was defying the Supreme Court. See, this is bursting at the seams now. Supreme Court's getting prickly because they think they're getting defied, but they're not getting defied. They're just not giving clear direction to the federal judges below them. The fact that the entirety of the Fourth Circuit decided to use an oral argument, I kind of felt bad for the advocates there because this was not about them. This was about a therapy session and them dropping a dime to call the Supreme Court and tell them how they felt. Now, the fourth Circuit just, I'll leave it on. This has a particular hurt feelings because of all the 13 circuit courts that are in American federal circuit courts, they had the worst record at the United States Supreme Court on substantive appeals the last term. They were 0 and 9. They got overturned nine times by the, by the right wing ideologues that occupy the United States Supreme Court majority. They won on a couple things that we like, like on Abrego, Garcia, Judge Zinnis, and then the 4th Circuit got a firm 9, 0 on another shadow docket. But on the real appeals, 09. So let's just say there was a lot of hurt feelings on the fort. So it was an appropriate place to do it. But last week you've got NBC doing an interview with 10 federal judges anonymously, obviously, because they're active judges who said, what are we supposed to do? We're not getting guidance. We don't know what to do off the shadow docket. You're not supporting us complaining about the Supreme Court. You're leaving us twisting in the wind. We're doing our job the way we did before Trump was president. And now suddenly we're at fault, we're defiant. We don't know what we're doing. We knew what we were doing for all the years until nine months ago. And so, but, but I want to put this in last historical perspective for our audience. And I've only practiced law twice as long as you, not even. It's. You're catching up. So. But this has never happened. This is not normal. This has never happened. Where occasionally Supreme Court would be like, oh, I wish you had followed by our rule. No, no, no. Open warfare between the two of them where each one of them thinks the other one's wrong and is pointing the finger. No, we've never had that before. But that is the pressure testing that with Donald Trump is putting the rule of law and courts under as he continues to attack courts and judges. They're having their own existential moment and we unfortunately are the victims of it because they gotta sort this out because it's not helping America or our rule of law.
- [90:57]
Ben Crump
Here's what I think's happening. The Supreme Court gave Trump absolute immunity. Very different from the Brazil Supreme Court, which convicted Bolsonaro of insurrection and sentenced him to jail for 27 years. You actually have a functioning Supreme Court in Brazil, but our Supreme Court gave Donald Trump absolute immunity. I saw a nominee by Donald Trump for the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. Her name is Mascot, Professor Mascot. She's a Catholic University professor, and she believes basically Donald Trump should get immunity for everything. That's why Trump's elevating her as a junior professor at Catholic University to become a 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal judge, for which he's absolutely not qualified. And during her testimony, she was asked by Senator Schiff, do you think Trump can Send Seal Team 6 to kill his political opponents tomorrow? And she was like, well, I don't know. I mean, you know, we'll have to, you know, I did a whole video on. It's ridiculous. But anyway, our Supreme Court gave him absolute immunity. He's taking that and breaking all of these laws. They don't want to expose their weak. They want to avoid the constitute the right wing of the Supreme Court, which controls it. It's a six to three right wing Supreme Court. They want to avoid showing that the Supreme Court has no power, because what happens when Donald Trump then goes after them like he goes after all of the other judges? What happens when he starts social media posting about them and saying, I'm not going to listen? The Supreme Court sees that as an existential threat, the right wing to their existence, which they've already neutered their existence. But they see that public, they're worried about the public showing of that. So they issue these shadow docket rulings. They do it in a procedural way so they're not actually creating precedent. And then they say, well, this will just work its way up in three courts, then we'll decide and have oral argument. So what are they doing there? They figure in three years, four years, when these cases work its way back up to the Supreme Court. But at that point, the migrants will have been sent to concentration camps, the government will have been gutted, the economy will have been destroyed. But then in three years, this is their plan. It's obvious to me. Then they say, okay, it's time for oral argument. And then they issue all of these orders. And then now, if there is a Democratic president or someone else in charge other than Trump, but let's assume a Democratic president, then they go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Executive branch. You can't do that. Executive branch. But wait a minute. You did the shadow docket for Trump. That was the shadow docket. We were being procedural. We weren't beings. Now we have to address the merits. And now we've seen the full merits. Oh, Democratic president. That's clearly an infringement on the separation of powers. Come back, watch this video in three years. That's what they're doing. It's obvious to me they're not that smart. I could smoke them out from a mile away what the hell they're doing. It's obvious it's chicken shit. But. And it's. And they're going to destroy the country. It's why we the people need to take back the power and fight back peacefully. It's why those no Kings protests are going to continue to grow. Big ones in October that we are going to be covering here in the Midas Touch network. Shout out to all the peaceful protesters in Chicago for standing up and across the country right now, thank you to all the legal A effers who watch this every single week. Thank you to our sponsors. The show doesn't exist without you. And a reminder, reach out to Michael Popo's firm, 877 Popoc or go to ThePopocFirm.com 877 Popoc or go to thepopocfirm.com if you've been injured in a car accident, if you've been injured in a trucking accident, if you know someone who's been injured in those types of accidents, or if you know someone who is sadly the victim of a wrongful death case. If you are somebody who knows the victim of medical malpractice, sexual assault or sexual harassment, you trust Michael Popak. You know Michael Popak. He's got lawyers across the country. So reach out to a trusted legal scholar like Michael Popo to see if you have a case. The consultation is free. Also, subscribe to Michael Popox YouTube channel, the Legal AF YouTube channel. Subscribe right now. They're close to 8, 800,000 subs. Let's get them there tonight. Then let's get to a million subscribers by the end of this year and then go to Michael Popo substack the Legal AF substack. All right. Thanks everybody for watching. We appreciate you. Legal AERs. We'll see you next time. Hang in there. Let's continue to resist peacefully, of course. Stay in the fight with us. We'll see you next time. Shout out Legal A Effers Shout out Midas Mike High interest debt is one of the toughest opponents you'll face unless.
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