Michael Popak (60:19)
I formed the Popoc firm. It's almost the same period of time a year ago. It is dedicated in a way that I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't able to in my prior firms. But here I formed my own firm in collaboration with some amazing plaintiffs lawyers around the country focused on catastrophic injury, auto accident, motor vehicle accident, rideshare, Uber Lyft accident, medical malpractice, civil rights violations, sexual harassment. Things that frankly, unfortunately turn your life topsy turvy and upside down. It may even lead to a unfortunate accidental death. Those are the kind of cases that the Popoc firm is going to work with you on and is committed to obtaining justice for you. It's easy to find the Popoc firm. You can go on the website where you'll find us at the I kept it simple and our 800 number 1-877-popocaf and there both places you'll get a free case of a review. And if we decide to take your case, there is no fee. We don't get paid unless you do. 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That's magicspoon.com legal af4 for $5 off. You know, sometimes when I'm listening to the news cycle spin out of control, I look over at my cat and I think, yep, the news and my cat have a lot in common. Both are unpredictable, loud at inconvenient times, and demand my attention when I least expect it. But here's the thing. I can't fix the chaos in the world, but I can make sure my cat is eating better food. That's where our next partner comes in. Smalls. This podcast is sponsored by Smalls and if you're a listener of this show, you know that my cat cannot live without it. It Smalls cat food is protein packed, made with preservative free ingredients you'd actually find in your fridge and it's delivered right to your door. No wonder cats.com named Smalls their best overall cat food. I fed my cat Smalls just this morning the fresh smooth fish flavor and let me tell you, they've never gone back to their old food since switching fewer hair balls, shinier fur and even a cleaner litter box. 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She was the CDC director for three weeks until she was, as she testified today, she was ordered by RFK Jr to rubber stamp whatever the vaccine board came up with in terms of their recommendations, which is, was filled with anti vaxxers and, and not, and not look at the science behind any of the recommendations and, and to fire anyone who was pro vaccine that worked at the cdc. And she said, I will not do either of those two things. And he fired her or she quit. But then there you are. But then she testified, as we knew she would, and she's effectively told the American people that RFK Jr. Should be, if not impeached, he should be indicted, that hundreds of thousands of people are going to ultimately die in America because of a perverse health care policy that doesn't keep Americans safe and undermines public, public health just the way the Republicans and MAGA undermine public safety. Same thing in public health, she said, for instance, I'll give you a great example, she said, we are not ready as a nation for the next pandemic and the next epidemic and the next virus that kills people or the next flu season. She's, you know, and only if you trade in magical thinking, do you think that another Covid out of a lab or out of a jungle or a wet market isn't on its way here. Because it is and it will come faster than others. I mean, whether you called it SARS or Ebola or Legionnaires disease or MERS or fill in the blank, you know, we are ravaged as an amer, as a, as a, as a human people on planet earth with things that can kill us, that are communicable. And she said point blank in the hearing today, we are not ready for the next pandemic and we won't be. And we are far behind because of this group of jokers that RFK Jr. Has brought in. I mean, the new head of the CDC acting. He's a, he's a venture capitalist, doesn't have any science background. He's Peter thiel's buddy. He's J.D. vance's buddy. What is he doing heading the CDC? He's not running a McDonald's franchise or whatever it is. So she said we're not ready, and we're not ready to make the next vaccine to stop the next pandemic or to stop Americans from being killed. Not when almost a billion dollars worth of grants was killed by RFK Jr doing his part for Doge. And he killed all of the vaccine production capabilities that were used in the warp drive operation that Donald Trump continues to brag about. The only thing I think he did well during COVID we're not going to be able to have another operation warp drive because he killed all the funding related to it. And she said as an example of that, we have our biggest measles outbreak in 30 years. Measles? What's next? Smallpox? Rubella? How about polio? We're bringing all the old timey diseases back. Everybody. Did you miss them? Because they're coming back. You know, I never worried until RFK Jr got in about my young daughter and her and her contracting one of these rare diseases that had all been all but been eliminated because of vaccines and an adherence to science. I never saw the day that Donald Trump would actually, I thought it was a joke that he would actually let RFK Jr. Run wild over public health. And I think Dr. Monterey has finally, once and for all, everybody can go rip those bumper stickers that I see in my neighborhood of Maha, make America healthy again. This is magical thinking of the first order. Then I'll just sell you some magic beans in exchange for the cow, you know, because you think you're gonna be Jack of the Beanstalk. Come on. And I'm hoping that the doctors and the scientists that are inside of Congress and there are a number of them that provide oversight over this committee, are going to use Dr. Monteraz's testimony as the final straw that broke the camel's back to get rid of RFK Jr and put in a doctor, an immunologist, a virologist. I'll take a dermatologist at this point to replace that. It's hard to believe we once had Dr. Fauci, you know, keeping America safe. And I, and I, I had the pleasure Speaking of Dr. Fauci. I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Fauci in college, when I was in college, when I was a resident advisor and we had a big conference about AIDS because I went to college in the 80s in the, in that late. I went to college from 84 to 88 in Manhattan. And so we brought in this guy who nobody knew because, you know, no Internet. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was the leading expert at the time on aids. And I got to talk, I just was, I followed his career. I was like a fanboy geek for Fauci after the time I met him. The speech was amazing. I still think about it, meeting him, little tiny guy with nice handshake in the hall afterwards. We don't have Dr. Fauci's, we don't have Dr. Monaras's. And she's not the only one. Four other, four other leaders of the CDC walked out with her. And now they're telling us what we suspected, which is we are unsafe and unwell as a nation because of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Who was a failed European, sorry, a failed environmental. Where I get the European from? A failed environmental lawyer living off the Kennedy fortune. He's the shittiest of the Kennedys. I mean, really, of all the Kennedys that Trump could have put in office, this is the one that he put in, you know, and every one of his family members, every one of his family members is against him and has said he's going to get Americans killed. I said hundreds of thousands of Americans are going to die over the four year period, more than they would have because of these failed policies. And we're going to have to continue to follow it. This isn't the last we've heard of Dr. Monaraz. This is not the last we've heard about RFK Jr and to step on all of this bad news cycle because RFK Jr. S debacle started when he was cross examined during his hearings a week or two ago. Epstein, FBI, Department of Justice. I mean, there's very few competent people, if any, working in the Trump administration. Even when you think there's one like Scott Bessant, the Treasury secretary, it looks like he came out of central casting. You know, he's a gay man, treasury secretary, married to his husband. I'm like, all right. You know, worked at, worked for George Soros, ran a hedge fund. I'm like, all right, he could be an adult in the room. How many stories do I have to tell about Scott Bessant having a fist fight with somebody who's Ever heard of a Treasury Secretary having a fist fight? Apparently, according to reporting a week or so ago at a MAGA business luncheon, he almost got into a fist fight or a shoving match with Scott Pulte, the guy on the Federal Reserve, on the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who's accusing Lisa Cook of fraud. There was earlier reporting that he almost got into a shoving match and a punching match, a fist fight with Elon Musk. This is our Treasury Secretary. I lost a lot of credibility. He lost a lot of credibility in my mind as he goes after Lisa Cook about the Federal Reserve. And then. So you got all that going on, you know, and are you better off than you were 11 months ago when the President was named Joe Biden? And if you, if you can't say yes, then you got to vote against MAGA and ours at the midterms. And that's, that's just the reality. Because what we're missing here, people are like, aren't these things impeachable? Yes. Aren't they unconstitutional? Yes. Isn't this a violation of the separation of powers? Yes. So what are you going to do about it? You know, I feel like Sean Connery's character in the Untouchables, you know, when he's lying there in a pool of his own blood telling Kevin Costner, what are you prepared to do? You know, everybody knows where the bad guys are. We just have to go get them. What are we prepared to do? We better be prepared to vote in large numbers and get off the couch and not set out the next democracy like a lot of people did during the Kamala Harris, Joe Biden race against Trump. I know why people sat out. I understand the ration. I know why. But that doesn't mean it was right. And that doesn't mean that we're not in a pickle because of it today. And so when all these bad news stories are going on, you know, Donald Trump's gonna come up with a new distractor. But this one was like, ridiculous. And I did a whole hot take on it on LegalAF YouTube about the new York Times getting sued in a, in a 70 page suit filed in Tampa, Florida, where it'll get no press, by the way. That's like the backwater of Florida in terms of media. Tampa, Florida, in front of a federal judge, arguing that the New York Times and Penguin Books, that published a book by the New York Times writers that called Donald Trump a failure and that he's failed up every time he's been given the opportunity, triggered Donald Trump, what do you mean? I wasn't a big star when I went on the Apprentice and Mark Burnett had to discover me, by the way. That's true. By the time. But that triggered Donald Trump. There's an entire, like, one third of the lawsuit is about the Apprentice. Another third is just this vanity, vanity, narcissistic allegations about. Donald Trump's the greatest, the best, the most. He's been on world. He's been on WrestleMania. This is his list. WrestleMania. He's been on Home Alone 2. He's been on. I mean, I couldn't even look at his long list. And then photos of his buildings. Of course, ignoring all of his bankruptcies, all of his people that he screwed in terms of contracts. The fact that his current company, Trump Organization, was convicted of 19 counts of felony fraud in New York, that he was convicted of 34 counts of business record fraud and election interference. That his current company, Trump Organization, is under a monitorship to this day led by Barbara Jones, A former federal judge leaves all that out and says, the New York Times has had it out for me. They won't. They won't. You know, then he goes through, you're supposed to go through on a defamation case and say, this is what they said about me. Me, and this is why it's wrong. And all he says is, this is what they said about me. And I'm amazing and I'm great and I'm, and I'm world renowned and I have charisma. She writes this in his, in his complaint. I knew I was in trouble or they were in trouble. In the first paragraph of the opening paragraph of the complaint, I'm like, okay, well, this will be good. This is the relevant facts. This is the sister. This kicks off the defamation. Right? Here we go, first paragraph. Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris by 313 to 247. It was a landslide. He won all seven. I'm like, what does this have to do with the defamation case? Nothing. Then he spends pages upon pages bragging about his other defamation wins. I sued abc, I sued, I sued cbs, I sued this. And then, then he actually takes time and ink and wastes our time with an entire paragraph in the middle of one of the complaints. One of the pages in which it's just Donald Trump in a tweet, in a social media post bragging about his wins against other companies. This can't. Let me remind people, this is about, supposed to be about the New York Times and its defamation. What does ABC and Stephanopoulos have to do with anything or CBS in 60 minutes zero nothing. It violates the rules of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure because of the way it's written. It includes what we call impertinent, immaterial and scandalous material that has no place in a well pled federal filing. It. And when you get to the, the meat, after you go through all these, this bun, you peel away this onion. I must be hungry. Where like, okay, where are the allegations that support a defamation case, which for a public figure have to be an untrue statement that causes you damage that was made or uttered or written with actual malice, which is a defined term, a term of art in the law, defined by a case involving the New York Times called New York Times versus Sullivan from 1973 or 1974, in which the court, the Supreme Court established that in order for a public figure to win a defamation case, they have conditionally show that the other side said something, wrote something, did something like that with either knowing it was false. So knowledge, actual subjective knowledge, or reckless disregard for whether the thing was true or not. Like, I see counterfacts, but I'm going to bury my head in the sand. Like, that's not going to work either. But you have to prove that and you have to allege it. And you can't just allege it without operative facts to support it. It. You can't just say they had actual malice, not in federal court. So I looked at, I looked at the actual malice part and that's the sound of me making, looking in the complaint. And when I get there, it says effectively, they don't like me and their hatred is manifest and they're mean to me and they have Trump derangement syndrome and they're mean to me. And I'm like, okay, keep going. No, that was it. That was it. No facts, which is a problem in federal court when you don't have them. No facts that are alleged that like there's an email, there's a phone conversation, there's a photo. I secretly recorded them. Nothing. And then on the, on the willful blindness or on the reckless disregard, nothing. It's just, it, it's obvious that there are. And they hate me because they hate me because it's obvious. I'm like, no, that's a tautology that doesn't work. So here's what's going to happen to this case. In short order, the New York Times is going to serve Alejandro Brito, this lawyer in Coral Gables, Florida, with a letter and a demand and an attached motion for sanctions against him and Donald Trump demanding millions of dollars in sanctions if they don't withdraw this bad faith filing of a defamation case. And when they don't do it, they're going to file A Rule 11 under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure motion for sanctions against both Trump and against Brito. And Brito should go. Look what happened to Alina Haba when she filed something just like this in the Southern District of Florida in front of Judge Middlebrooks. Because Judge Middlebrooks found that suing Hillary Clinton by Donald Trump, the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and a whole bunch of other people was nothing more than, in his words, a political screed masquerading as a lawsuit. Dismissed it as a false filing, sanctioned Alina Haba and Donald Trump $1 million, which was affirmed on appeal. He's a lot closer to that happening than the New York Times stroking him a check. What he hopes is because the New York times is worth $9 billion, apparently mainly owned. It's a public company, but it's mainly owned by the, the Ock Schulzberger family that he's going to try to, you know, make it so difficult for them and rain down MAGA on them that they're going to rather stroke a check so he can claim victory than fight. I just don't see the New York Times doing that. I just, I mean, I know Harvard's about to capitulate, but I don't see the Times doing it, especially when they have a winning case like this one. So it's because it's just bad for journalism. It's bad for the First Amendment. It's bad for their reputation as the paper, paper of record since the beginning. I mean, there, I mean, you could, you could say what you like about a lot of newspapers, but the New York Times is the New York Times. I just don't see them doing it and, and at all. So I think this ends up in a sanction. I think I'll dismiss the case eventually. When he gets. It's like a child with a toy, but he gets tired of it. It, when it served its purposes, that now there's a headline that he's suing them for, for six times their enterprise value, $55 billion. And then if he gets a giant check, he can say, see, I got a giant check. I just don't think he's getting the giant check for this one. If I'm wrong, I'll come back and talk to the audience and tell them I was wrong. I just, knowing the paper I mean, there's very few people from outside the New York Times that know as much about the Times as I do. I've read every biography of the New York Times. As my late mother would quip, I've been reading the New York Times since I was 8 years old. I, I just kind of got into like learning about the family and, and all of that. I just don't see them doing it. I'd be, I'd be shocked if they did, especially since the other case that invented defamation law for public figures has their name on it. I think there's a legacy here that's important that they're not going to abuse. But we'll continue to follow it as we always do right here on Legal Layoff. Thank you for joining us. Karen was here. For those who are wondering, she went to go get vaccinated. She heard we were doing the RFK Jr. Story. She was like, I better go get vaccine. And she has, she has. Which of course she'll be back next Wednesday, Saturday. Ben Meisellis and me, my co founder Ben will be here for Legal AF on Tuesday nights. If you're looking for something to do, I've got a podcast called the Intersection here on the Midas touch network at 8pm Eastern time. We had an amazing show last night. We had I don't know, 10, 15,000 in the, in the chat while we were recording. We have 350,000 that have viewed it. It's, it has, it is also moving up the charts. It's just got, it broke into the top 70, I think of or 75 of YouTube weekly rankings. So join the Intersection. I think you'll enjoy it. And then of course we've got the legal AF YouTube channel which just is experiencing today. It's one year birthday. There we go. And, and I thank each and every one of the 810,000 subscribers that joined us in that one year period and have viewed our work. Legal AF substack, another great way to continue with what we do here on Wednesday and Saturday nights. Join Legal AF Substack. I do live reporting. I bring in guests. We've got written materials. All all the lawsuits and orders we talk about we post on Legal AF Substack, another great place for you to contribute, become a member, consider becoming a paid member which also helps what we do here for Legal af. So until our next Legal AF or anything related to it. I'm Michael Popak. Thank you for joining us. Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal A. Did you see the game last night. Of course you did, because you used Instacart to do your grocery restock. Plus you got snacks for the game, all without missing a single play. And that's on multitasking. So we're not saying that Instacart is a hack for game day, but it might be the ultimate play this football season. Enjoy. $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees apply for three orders in 14 days. Excludes restaurants.
