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- [00:01]
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- [00:59]
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- [01:04]
Michael Popak
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Michael Popak
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- [03:11]
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- [04:06]
Michael Popak
Experience. Welcome to Legal AF the podcast. Karen Freeman, Nicknifolo and Michael Popak strap in everybody. Get a big pot of popcorn because we've got a lot to talk about, some of which just happened today. Like as we were coming on the air, there's new reporting that we now know the reason that Donald Trump was in such a rush to fire the Eastern District of Virginia U.S. attorney and appoint his office wife, or whatever you want to call her, Lindsay Halligan, into the position wholly unqualified. But apparently there must have been a conversation where there was a quid pro quo. Hey Lindsey, I'll give you the job you're not qualified for, to become the prosecutor of one of the most prestigious U.S. attorney's office in the nation. But you have to bring an indictment by Tuesday against former FBI Director James Comey because the clock is ticking on his testimony five years ago to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Russia interference. We're back to Russia, Russia, Russia, everybody. And now Lindsey Halligan said I do and she took the job. And now we've got this new reporting about an indictment we expect as early as Tuesday. If she can convince a grand jury. Who am I kidding? Can she convince a grand jury? She's never been a prosecutor. Wait till I show you some clips of her. You'll know what we're talking about. And I have a real prosecutor on here with me. Former, anyway, and Karen Freeman McNifolo. So we're going to Tear that one up. Then it's another FBI DOJ cover up scandal. See, we're not even done with Epstein yet. And now we got another one. Tom Homan, the border czar for Donald Trump, the one that likes to crush the souls of families and put children in cages, including the American ones. Looks like he's got a little bit of a problem, as in he was the, he picked up a bag of cash stuffed into a paper bag of takeout container bag kind of thing at a restaurant with $50,000 of US dollars in it, taking it from what he thought were federal contractors trying to influence his decision to send work their way. When he became the border czar but was really undercover FBI agents in September of 2024, Tom Holman, come on down. You got caught in a bribery sting operation for public corruption. And there's a cover, of course there's a cover up related to it. And now all the reporting is out and the Democrats and public interest groups are demanding the video, give us the video of the undercover sting operation. Homan's got an interesting approach to defending himself and we'll get to that next. Then again, this is all today. See, we like to keep it au courant. Twenty states, including Rhode island and California, New York and New Jersey won a big preliminary injunction today up in Rhode island in front of Judge Smith, a Republican Bush appointee who said what we wanted him to say, which is that Donald Trump can't withhold FEMA funds from 50 different FEMA programs, you know, to help people in need when there's natural disasters or other things. You can't tie that to requiring and commanding blue states primarily to drop their sanctuary status and enforce federal immigration law in return for the money because it violates the spending clause of the Constitution and the Administrative Procedures act as being arbitrary and capricious. And it's a big no, no. And then finally, we've got a new ruling by the United States Supreme Court. See, Karen, they're not even in session yet and they're already pissing us off. They issued a new ruling about whether Donald Trump can fire at will agency heads and commission heads. We thought, at least at the ftc, the Federal Trade Commission, they would not allow him to fire without cause. Rebecca Slaughter, the only Democrat on the entire commission. But, and because there's a 95 year old precedent and they certainly wouldn't get rid of it in an emergency application, would they? Well, stick around and find out what happened to the case of Humphrey's executor. Yes, we're returning to 1935 and yet another precedent that's beyond on life support by this United States Supreme Court. All on the midweek edition of Legal af. Karen, come on in.
- [08:44]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Hi, Popak, how are you?
- [08:46]
Michael Popak
Lashana Tovah. Yeah.
- [08:48]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Happy New Year to you.
- [08:49]
Michael Popak
Thank you very much. We get to take a break from spending time with our families to join our Legal AF family and my, my family by extension you. Lots of things here, some of which in your wheelhouse as a former prosecutor, which you might find interesting. Let's kick it off. Well, let's start off with tell me how you do it. Catch me up on things.
- [09:09]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Everything's good. Everything's really good. I can't complain. I, yeah. How about you?
- [09:14]
Michael Popak
I think it's going great. I think things are, you know, one thing I like about this post Kirk world that we live in where Donald Trump tried to make Charlie Kirk a martyr and instead he martyred Jimmy Kimmel. It kind of backfired on him, you know, since then, I really think because of Donald Trump's continued overreaching and trying to use and exploit the death of another human being here, you know, a fallen hero for that group and his attempts to exploit it so ham fistedly to go after Democrats and liberals and everybody that doesn't wear a red cap of some sort and doing all that. I really see the Democrats and the leaders in the House and the Senate getting their footing and really finding a message. And it's hard when you're the party out of power, you know, but I just see that group, that leadership from the DNC all the way into Congress and the Senate and the governors, of course, really starting to hit their stride. What do you think about that?
- [10:21]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Yeah, look, I still think the Democrats have a little ways to go to get their messaging together and really define who their leaders are going to be. Certain people are definitely rising to the top. I think of Congress, good leadership roles. But I don't think we have, I don't think it's clear yet who the leaders are going to be, who has the strength and fortitude to take on this administration. But I do see, I agree with you that there is hope and there are people who are starting to tone down the rhetoric and say, we're a country, let's come together and let's find common ground and have conversations. I thought Jimmy Kimmel's, his monologue last night was actually excellent, that he handled it really, really well. And I think there's a lot of people who are starting to think that Donald Trump has really gone Too far. His administration has gone too far. And that display at the United nations was very odd to me. In addition to being dangerous, he really did not look well. He really looks more insane than usual. And I think people are starting to see that. And I'm hoping that we' going to course correct back because things are really, as one commentator I heard say, said, basically this is a break glass moment that we're in. Right. In case of emergency break glass. I kind of agree. And I think Donald Trump is crossing a lot of bright lines. So not that he hasn't already, but he's even crossing the bright lines for others. Right. And so hopefully that'll start to bring us together a little bit more. And so I am feeling a lot more hopeful.
- [12:08]
Michael Popak
Yeah, we always said that we found illegal AF for the break the glass moment, but yeah, our last moment might.
- [12:16]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Be different than others.
- [12:18]
Michael Popak
That's true. That's true for sure. Speaking of a Department of justice out of control and lawlessness and all, we've got the reporting as we came on the air that we may have the explanation as to why Donald Trump was inside Such a rush 48 hours ago when he chastised Pam Bondi in social media posts with this urgent Pam, I was like, okay, we're gonna hold, we're holding a staff meeting right now in social media postings. All right, go, Pam, we're running out of time. You must bring these charges against my political enemies. And he listed Comey and Adam Schiff and Letitia James by name, which is playing right into the hand of the vindictive prosecution crowd and defenses related to that. And then Lindsey Halligan, you know, Lindsey, she loves you, she likes you. Lindsay, you should hire Lindsay. And then suddenly, you know, a day later, after, after actually Bambondi didn't want to hire Lindsey, she hired Lindsey. And Lindsey has now been nominated Lindsey Halligan. Halligan has been nominated to be the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. The proud eastern eastern district of Virginia. Virginia, one of the original 13 federal districts starting in 1789, is now headed by a person who was an eight year insurance defense lawyer in Florida. Some of you were thinking, I've never heard of Lindsay Halligan. You wouldn't under any other circumstances in her career except for the fact that she was picked maybe because she's. Well, I'm going to show a clip of her in a minute. She was picked maybe because of her looks and because she's a Federalist Society person to be the local counsel in the Mar A Lago case. For Todd Blanche and Emil Bovey, that's how we first learned about it. We look, looking her up, like, who is this person? I knew her law firm in Florida. I knew her background. I'm like, all right, well, you know, car accidents slip and fall. All right, that seems interesting. They must just be using her to sign pleadings until they get admitted. Nope. They brought her into the White House, put her onto the Smithsonian refurbishment, where she was charged with going through all the museums and making sure they were factually correct according to Donald Trump. Meaning, get rid of all those stubborn facts like Trump was impeached a few times and black people were enslaved by white people during the, you know, slavery period. All, you know, all those little stubborn little facts that Donald Trump doesn't want to acknowledge. So for those that are wondering, who is the new Eastern District of Virginia prosecutor who is now, according to reporting, been. Who've been instructed to bring an indictment against FBI Director, former FBI Director James Comey by this Tuesday because there's a statute of limitations running on his testimony last year. Sorry, five years ago at this month before Congress. That's the reason he got rid of Eric Seibert, who was a Republican, as the career prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia. When he refused, it was like a dress rehearsal. Prosecute. Bring a case against Letitia James for mortgage fraud. The New York Attorney General. No. All right, you're out. Who's up? Lindsey Halligan. Let me show you first, Karen, in the audience, mainly who Lindsey Halligan is. Let's play the clip of Lindsay Halligan.
- [15:42]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
You share an update on what progress the White House has made so far. Yeah. So we sent a letter to leadership at the Smithsonian just requesting a review of all of the exhibits that are currently shown to the American public to ensure that they're not pushing a political or ideological narrative. And we met with the leadership at the Smithsonian yesterday, and it was really productive and helpful. And I think that we're going to be working together and it's going to be very collaborative and it's going to be part of making D.C. beautiful.
- [16:19]
Michael Popak
Yep. Trying to make D.C. beautiful. That's your new Eastern District of Virginia prosecutor, everybody who's now been charged with bringing claims against James Comey. Before we show you the clip of James Comey testifying at Congress, let's bring in a real former prosecutor and Karen Freeman. If you talk about what we're watching, this shit show that we're watching in the Eastern District of Virginia to go after Donald Trump's political enemies.
- [16:44]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Yeah. So look, there's 94 federal judicial districts and they're broken up by areas or like. So in New York, we have the Southern District of New York, the Eastern District of New York, the Western District of New York and the Northern District of New York. And it's just, they're just geographical boundaries that are, that are districts where they hear criminal and civil cases. And there's 94 of them. Not all of them are created equal. Right. Some are more prestigious than others. Some handle more complicated cases than others. The Eastern District of Virginia is considered to be one of the Premier, top notch U.S. attorney's offices in this country. They also have something called the rocket docket that they're sort of infamous for, famous for. And they get cases faster to trial than any other federal district. And so it's a hardcore place to practice that requires very serious lawyering. And so to put someone in who has zero prosecution experience whatsoever and who is, has basically her first day on the job. Now, she's only going to be the acting U.S. attorney. The president has to nominate her and then the Senate has to confirm her. If the two senators of Virginia will actually give her a blue slip and nominate her, I don't know that she's qualified to be confirmed, but it doesn't matter. You can be an acting United States Attorney for like, I think it's 210 days before you no longer can be in that position. That's certainly enough time to do exactly what her marching orders are, which is to indict Jim Comey and others. And as you said, the statute of limitations runs in less than a week. And so she has to rush and go do it. And she has been brought in to, to basically overrule the prior person that was handpicked, Mr. Siebert, who was handpicked by Donald Trump to be his United States Attorney. Right. Saying that he was the person I pick for this prestigious job who said there is no case, there is no crime. You have to imagine that is what the FBI agents and the line prosecutors who are actually doing the work. Right. Because there's tons of prosecutors who work under the U.S. attorney and report up to the U.S. attorney who actually look at the case, look at the facts, look at the law, and they all are saying there is no case here to be brought. That is why Mr. Siebert was fired or resigned, depending on who you believe, whose story you believe his or the President's. And she is basically on her first day on the job announcing there will be an indictment. Any. Well, she hasn't announced it, but it's leaked, so he might as well announce it that it's coming out that he, Mr. Comey, that Jim Comey, the former director of the FBI, is going to be indicted. And that is just staggering to me and shocking to me. I don't know how they're going to get line prosecutors to actually do it. I don't know where they're going to get the evidence to do it. Let's see if they'll be able to get a grand jury to indict. Don't Forget, in Washington, D.C. there were several. I think there were three times they tried to present a case recently of somebody who threw it a sandwich at an ice. I think it was Homeland Security or ICE agents. And the grand jury was like, no, we're not indicting this case. We'll see if a grand jury will actually indict this case. But either way, this is the rocket docket. I could see this case going very quickly. And prosecutors have an ethical obligation to not bring cases if you can't sustain both a conviction and sustain an appeal. Right. You have to be able to bring a case. You have to be able to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt to bring a case. That is your ethical obligation as a prosecutor. Those are the rules. And so these prosecutors, these line prosecutors, if they do bring this case and they ultimately, you know, there's going to be a vindictive prosecution, selective prosecution claims, right? Saying this was just. He said, find me the man and I will find the crime is basically what. What they are, what the marching orders they're giving about this case, and they're just finding a crime, they're going to stick it on him. And I think they have a decent case for a vindictive, although that is hard to sustain, those very hard cases to bring here. Thankfully, Trump and everybody else that tweet to Pam Bondi where he said that you'd mentioned that, Pam, you need to basically indict this case. They have a pretty good case. He's saying the quiet part out loud. I think he has a good vindictive prosecution claim. And I think that he could either get the grand jury to dismiss the case, a judge to dismiss, miss this case, or maybe even an acquittal in the end. Obviously, I don't know anything about what the case is. I'm just talking about the hoopla surrounding the case that is so highly unusual, so politically charged. Yep, we'll see.
- [21:35]
Michael Popak
Well, one of the things that the new Bombshell reporting says it's going to be over and why there's a rush. Now we understand if this is true, why Donald Trump was telling Bam Bondi in that social media post, which I agree with you. They should just type exhibit A on the bottom of that in their motion for dismiss for a vindictive prosecution is that there's a time limit on Comey. He gave testimony on September 30, 2020 to Congress, four hours worth about the Russia investigation and the FBI's role in it. That timer is five years for lying to Congress. That's up on Tuesday. Doesn't have a lot of time. Let's assume there is a grand jury already laying lying around in the Eastern district of Virginia that her line prosecutors, she's not competent to do it. Did you see her? She's not. She's eight years out of law school. She's never been a prosecutor. She's not going to like go get an indictment from a grand jury on a high profile matter against the former FBI director that'll be dead on arrival. So she's got to rely on some career prosecutor who's still in the office to do that job. But the lying to Congress part, I mean, I listened to the four hours of testimony. I went through the transcript. He was pretty honest and forthright. I can't imagine there's a spot in there where they're gonna go, aha, he lied about being the source of a leak or this or that. In fact, we have a clip from the actual testimony. Let's run that clip.
- [23:04]
James Comey (clip)
7Th 2016, the US intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral of FBI to FBI Director James Comey and Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's approval of a plan concerning US Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US Elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server. You don't remember getting that or being taught.
- [23:39]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Bells with me?
- [23:40]
James Comey (clip)
Okay, that's pretty stunning thing. It didn't ring a bell, but it did come to you. Let's just end with this. You get this inquiry from the Intelligence Committee to look at the Clinton campaign basically trying to create a distraction, accusing Trump of being a Russian agent or Russian stooge or whatever to distract from her email server problems. And how far fetched is that, Mr. Comey, when we now know that the Democratic Party through Fusion gps hired Christopher Still, a foreign agent who had a very strong bias against Trump, who hired a Russian subsource who the FBI believed to be a Russian Spy to compile a dossier that was a bunch of crap to be used against an American citizen working for the Trump campaign. You already knew that. Seems to me you'd want to investigate other allegations. But you're telling me that you don't recall this.
- [24:40]
Michael Popak
I'm sorry, Senator, is there a question?
- [24:42]
James Comey (clip)
Yes. You don't recall this inquiry. I just read about September 2016.
- [24:47]
Michael Popak
Now, as I said, it doesn't again.
- [24:49]
James Comey (clip)
Do you remember being told, do you remember?
- [24:55]
Michael Popak
And that went on for four hours. I love the wind up, you know, all of these long winded speechifying by people like Lindsey Graham and him just sitting there, Comey, just sitting there, very calm, cool and collected, saying the whole thing you just said about Hillary Clinton being involved with a conspiracy to take down President Trump. I don't remember getting that memo. I'm sorry, sir.
- [25:18]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
So, I mean, you know what's interesting, Popak, is how do you prove that he lied about his memory? Right? That's what's interesting. Even if whatever the underlying facts are about whether he leaked information or there's all kinds of theories about what he lied about, what they're gonna claim he lied about, and if his answer is I don't recall, that's very different than yes or no or, or lying. Right. How do you.
- [25:44]
Michael Popak
He's not the source of a leak.
- [25:46]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Right.
- [25:47]
Michael Popak
I mean, which could also be a memory issue as well. But, but I wanted to show that to our audience so that if it is about his memory, I think you're right. There's very, I don't know how they're going to get a grand jury to, to indict on that. Just the fact that, you know, it's almost like they did a test run on Letitia James with Eric Seibert. They said, well, why don't you indict on, on Letitia James and mortgage fraud? And what's. He said, what's the, what's the mortgage fraud? Well, she checked the box that it would be her primary residence. Let me get this straight. The lender thought that the New York Attorney General, who lives between Albany and Manhattan, was living in Virginia as her primary residence while she was still in office. Is that even a thing? And it turns out that there was a power of attorney that she gave to her niece to close on the house for her father and that the lender knew at all times that this was not, of course, going to be her primary residence. Maybe they gave her the equivalent of an interest rate that's the equivalent of having it be your primary residence. But nobody was defrauded at the bank and certainly no criminal intent. But that was apparently the test run. Let's see if Cyber will do this. Oh, he won't do it. Oh, you're fired. What's the grounds? Oh, the Democrats supported you. He got two blue slips in May. This is now almost October. And I think you're exactly right. They don't care about blue slips. They're just going to put her in some sort of special attorney, acting attorney role long enough to indict as many people as she can that's on Donald Trump's shit list, and then leave the.
- [27:19]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Bag of shit cases for somebody else.
- [27:21]
Michael Popak
Absolutely. And the weird thing about Comey because. But he's, He's a sore winner. We on the Democrat on the other side of the aisle, we blame James Comey because he held a press conference in July leading into the 2016 election in which he basically tarred Hillary Clinton and said, I don't know, she was using an email server. I'm making a recommendation and a referral to the Department of Justice in July of the election year. And so we've never forgiven him. And he spent a lot of. He spent most of his time now sort of in the. In the lion in winter trying to recover from that. He's written books about it and he never thought. But everybody that ever had his role said, why are you giving a press conference? You're not the Department of Justice. I mean, you're the FBI. Don't talk about investigations during an election season. So we never forgave him for that. I just think it's ironic that Donald Trump won that election. There was no interference, but he won't let it go. It's like, no. He, Lindsey Graham maybe asked him a question and he said no. And it's not, oh, my God, will you get over it and stop wasting our time? And then look at all the people, Karen, that are willing to sacrifice, if they ever had it, their professional ethics and their morals in order to get this job. I mean, Lindsey Halligan, if she wasn't told directly by Trump, she had to have been told by Stephen Miller or other people in and around Donald Trump that you're getting this job for a reason, Lindsey. Don't screw it up. Come on. We know that happened.
- [28:49]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Yeah, it's crazy. It's absolutely. This whole, this whole thing is just bananas to me. So we'll see. I mean, I, I just, I can't believe they're going to actually bring these crazy. Or try to bring these crazy indictments yeah.
- [29:01]
Michael Popak
And just today in the Abrego Garcia case, Sean Hecker's firm filed a motion or a reply brief in which he pointed out he didn't even have this information. He pointed out that Lindsay Gray, Lindsay Halligan had been stepped in, effectively appointed, and Eric Seibert had been fired for his refusal to bring phony charges against Letitia James to support his vindictive prosecution motion in favor of Abrego Garcia in the eastern in the middle district of Tennessee. So, you know, all the lawyers who have cases involving targets or people Donald Trump's going after one way or the other are all watching these cases and to learn from them on what to bring as, as Donald Trump creates evidence to help get indictments dismissed. Because again, we're looking at, as far as I'm concerned, the most corrupt Department of Justice we've ever experienced. When we come back, we're going to do speaking of corruption, we're going to talk about Tom Homan, the border czar, being caught on video apparently at a Kava restaurant taking a bag of cash for $50,000 taxpayer dollars because it was undercover sting money and what he did with it and how they're trying to excuse themselves for it or not really. I think actually there was a clip, we'll have to find it, a clip of Carolyn Levett, the press secretary, basically conceding that he took the money but saying that there was nothing wrong with it. And then we have a win today for more than 20 states because of the way the judge ruled about Trump's attempts to tie FEMA funding to compliance with his immigration law to force states to help federal ICE agents and others do a crackdown on migrants in return for FEMA money allocated by Congress. It takes on a special result or a special shine because of what happened today. As we know, we came on the air at 6:40 this morning. We had somebody looks like a sniper up on a roof trying to, I don't know, take out somebody, but hit migrants and then, and then, and then he himself died. So we have a dead, you know, two people in the hospital, three people in the hospital and one migrant killed and then the shooter killed as they try to get to the bottom of what happened in Dallas, Texas today. But you know, we do have a ruling about trying to force states to participate in these inhumane attacks on other human beings. And then finally we'll talk about the United States Supreme Court and what we think they just did about a 95 year old precedent called Humphreys executor. But fortunately it's now that time for our commercial break. We've got our sponsors, our pro democracy sponsors. As many ways to support what we do here on Legal AF and to keep the content coming to you uninterrupted. We've got the, this podcast itself. It lives in Audio World on Apple and on Spotify. Wherever you get your audio podcast from, five years in the making, put in Legal af. There you go. And then if you're a wat, if you watch it on YouTube like this audience tonight or you listen to it, go back and forth between the two, that helps with the views and that helps with the, with the, with, with the ratings. Right now, because of our audience and their fervent support, we're regularly in the top 50 on audio and we are regularly in the top 50 or so or even higher on YouTube's weekly ratings of all podcasts, regardless of genre. So that's one thing you can do. Then we've got the whole people. How can we become a card carrying member of Legal AF community? Okay, here you go. Podcast YouTube, Legal AF, the YouTube channel where we are. We're up to almost 820,270 million views. Amazing audience there. 10 videos a day with a dozen contributors of course, including me, which I curate. Karen's actually going to have a great interview this week in her return to legal AF, which we're on YouTube, which we're looking forward to. And so that's a place to come. No paywall. Hit the free subscribe button and that's how you can support it. Then we've got Legal af, the substack. There it goes legally off the sub stack is a place where we can do sort of things at the immediate with an emergent voice, grab people together, put three or four thousand people together to do a live talk about issues, publish things that are a little longer written analysis. Other contributors are there as well. You're really going to like what's on Legal AF substack and if you can swing it, become a paid member. I kept the price low. I think it's seven or eight dollars a month and believe me, we give you much more than that in terms of content. And then of course we've got our pro Democracy sponsors and here is a clip. 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You know, the guy that just heartlessly goes on all sorts of television shows and says, I think children in cages are okay. I think US Children, if they're born to migrants, they should be deported, too. Their parents made a mistake. We're going to fix it. You know that guy? We're going to get rid of 11 million people over two years, see what happens to our economy. Well, it turns out that in September of 2024 under the Biden administration and a, and a really competent FBI director named Christopher Wray, they were working on a, another target not named Tom Homan about public corruption. And during their investigation, that target on a case that was pending in the western district of Texas, at least from a grand jury standpoint, they said, classic whataboutism. Me. What about Tom Homan? They said, what do you mean Tom Holman, the guy that's going to be tapped to be the border czar for Donald Trump? Yeah, what about him? He's taken money in order to direct federal contracts. If he gets back into office, they're like, so after corroborating that information, they decided to run a sting operation to see if that was true. And this sting operation doesn't have a lot of moving parts. This is relatively simple. This is as, this is as old as time. They made a meeting, they set a lunch in a reasonably well known chain and the two what, what Homan thought were federal contractors showed up. And at some point, literally a $50,000 bag of cash from a take from the restaurant itself was pushed across the table to Tom Homan and caught on video because you don't do his thing without audio and video in which they got him to say a version, according to those who have seen it, that he, if he gets into, when and if he gets back into office, he will help direct federal contracts to the people that just paid him the money. But then he tried to money launder it by saying, but I'm gonna keep it in escrow or in my bank account until I make sure I get in and then I won't spend it until the end. As if that made a difference. Now, that $50,000 just to follow the money here, that's taxpayer dollars that was taken out of the treasury and the funds of the FBI to use as bait. Right. To use as the honey pot. And Homan took it and kept it. Apparently. Now the reason they didn't bring the, they didn't arrest him right there is because they wanted him to get back into office. And once he got back into office and like directed one of the contracts, boom, they were ready to bounce. Of course, they ran out of time. That was September. And they didn't realize that Donald Trump was going to get rid of everybody in the FBI and the Department of Justice. Now further reporting, Karen, is that the when the Department of Justice and Emil Bovey, the guy that's now a judge Bovey on the Third Circuit took a look at the file. Oh, Tom Holman, a bag of cash weaponization. There's we need to close this investigation, not get the cash back. Just close the investigation. So we now have the reporting that there is a video of the sting operation. And before we go to Karen, Tom Holman went on, I don't know, Newsmax Propaganda center and gave a statement. Now watch his statement here. Watch how quickly he gets out from under the question of where's the money, Tom? And try to defend himself on the 50,000. Let's roll the clip. What is the story with this and where did it come from?
- [41:43]
Tom Homan (clip)
Well, I guess just partner said I did nothing criminal, I did nothing illegal, I did nothing wrong. And this is a series of hits against me. Since the beginning of the year there was, there's been hit pieces about every week. There was a hit piece on my security detail saying I had 30, 31 security detail. I'm wasting millions of dollars. I had about a fraction, a quarter of that. I think I had eight security detail at the time. I had a four car caravan. I had two. Another story about I'm helping certain companies with the contracts. Here's what people need to understand. Day one of the administration when President Trump asked me to come back and we entered on duty. I met with ethics attorneys, and by law, you're supposed to recuse yourself from any company you had affiliations with before. But I took it a step further. I recused myself from all federal contracts. I won't have any decision making in any federal contract. But people are, including this recent case, people are saying, I'm going to line the pockets of people. I signed that declaration. I do not make decisions, any federal contracts. And just so people know, I make about 18% of what I made in my company to come back and serve my nation. So my family's took a sacrifice, I've taken a sacrifice, come back here doing the right thing. The hit pieces keep coming, but I know who's chumming the water. I know who keeps throwing this information out and the media jumps all over it. And they're going to see some legal actions real soon. I'm working on the legal team. I'm done with it. They can attack me all they want, but we're going to take action.
- [43:11]
Michael Popak
Where's the 50,000, Tom? And so now the Senate, the House Democrats, led by Jamie Raskin, have demanded that the Department of Justice and the FBI turn over the video. Democracy Forward is with us over on Legal af. In fact, I'm going to be interviewing Sky Perryman tomorrow about their FOIA Freedom of Information act request about where's the videotape and why hasn't it been turned over? You notice in there, Karen, he never denies taking the money. He just has all sorts of excuses as to why. And the fact, let me just leave it on this. The fact that he signed whatever he signed, that doesn't matter. There's new reporting, for instance, that one of Donald Trump's Steve Witkoff, who serves as our special envoy but is also in crypto businesses and other businesses with Trump and the Trump family, that he was on both sides of a UAE deal to make sure that they got AI chips in return for a major investment in the Trump cryptocurrency business. He's not technically in charge of that procurement. He could have signed a similar document as Tom Homan. It doesn't mean he's not whispering in the right party's ears and lobbying for it, which is what the reporting is, that he was lobbying for it behind closed doors. Even though he is not technically in the chain for procurement or technically in the chain for that decision making. It doesn't mean he doesn't exert tremendous influence, just like Tom Homan does. Kara, what do you think about all this, what do you think the Democrats should do about it as this new scandals rocks the Trump administration?
- [44:45]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Yeah, well, first of all, every time I see a new scandal like this, I'm like, still, you haven't, where's the Epstein files? You know, it's like just so much of this is like a distraction from, from Epstein. So I think we have to mention it every single day until, until all of that comes out. But, you know, look, I look at this and obviously when you read what the bribery statute is, and you look and see if this is in fact illegal, there are questions, right? We don't, we haven't heard the tape, we haven't seen the tape. We don't know what was said. But the FBI's pretty good. They know what to say, right? They set these up. They speak to lawyers, they speak to prosecutors. They try to make sure that before they, they do anything, they know exactly how to do this. They, they do a bag of cash. Because that way, like, if he, he, because he could come out and say, look, I was a lobbyist, right? When I, when I left from the first administration, I was, I was a lobbyist, or I was whatever, whatever his, you know, he's going to say he was doing. I can take money to make introductions and, and that sort of thing, but when you're taking a bag of cash, right, that, that's, that's, that just looks bad, it smells bad. And the question is, right, is this going to, was he considered someone who's about to be a public official? Because that is what would be required, I think, to, to be part of, you know, to be prosecuted here, and we'll see if it fits the law, but it just looks bad. And that statement, as you said, when he got on the air, first of all, he kept the money, right? This isn't, this wasn't a legitimate business dealing. This was an FBI agent, right, giving taxpayer dollars as sting money. So he's keeping taxpayer dollars, number one. Number two, the other thing that was weird about that statement is he's basically was almost like saying, I took a pay cut. I'm making 18% of what I used to make. Almost like he's saying I deserve to keep that money. Like, what, what does that mean? Right? Why was that part of that? I don't know. That just seemed really weird to me. So I think the Democrats, if they can get a hearing and an investigation into this, I think they should, The American people deserve to know, they deserve to know exactly what this was. But we also know that Trump and his administration, they don't think bribery is a big deal. I mean, look at the Mayor Adams case, right? You have the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, who was under indictment for accepting bribes. And that case was just dismissed, completely dismissed. And that's the thing. Prosecutors have discretion to dismiss cases. And it's pretty easy to dismiss a case, much harder to indict a case if you know that, that has no facts, like Jim Comey and the others, that will be interesting. That's a harder thing to do. You've got to find evidence and facts and convince a jury. But to dismiss a case, they can dismiss pretty much whatever they want. They have that discretion. And they don't think bribery apparently is a really serious crime.
- [47:33]
Michael Popak
Right. I saw some commentators on, some former prosecutors like you on msnbc, they were like, I don't know, that's a little thing that used to be called bribery. And I don't know why. It's, you know, you get Carolyn Levette during the press, during her press or saying, get your facts straight. What are the facts? There's a video of him taking cash. I don't really understand. And, and it would be entrapment. Well, which is it, Carolyn, is that he took the money. He didn't take the money because there was no sting operation or he took the money because there was entrapment. They just use, it's like word salad. They always accuse Kamala Harris of, It's just, it's just kitchen mad mat, kitchen magnet poetry. It's just, they are words. I'm not sure she knows what they mean or what their legal import is, but they just throw out all of this stuff, hoping that the, the attention span of the, of the media in the room will move on. And sometimes they're right about it, and sometimes, of course, they aren't. We are dogged, sort of laser focused on these issues and we won't let it die. And that's why they hate Midas touch and they hate Legal af. You know, I'm sure they didn't like the fact that Legal AF's video showed up in the hearing room when Cash Patel was being cross examined. Because they count on mainstream media. And it's, and it's, it's attention deficit disorder, you know, because it's, it's, they're on deadline, they're on timeline. You know, there's micro news cycles, you know, every minute, every half an hour. They have to, you know, they have to change the content, they have to change the website and the app and that plays into the hands of Donald Trump, who's always hoping to grab the news cycle, hope the media forgets about it or won't find it interesting. Like, like on mainstream media, like a hundredth story about Epstein may be met especially by the editors or the, or the managing editors of that, of that entity with really, you know, is that really still a news story that people care about? Is that going to sell whatever over here with us? It's like this. We have to focus on this. I bump into people all the time that tell me, don't let up about the Epstein scandal or now the home and scandal, because not only are we gaining leverage from it, but it's important that we, at least here on Legal AF and on Midas Touch, we don't let up in our reporting and we follow the story wherever it leads, all the way through, from beginning to middle to end. So that's where we are with that. Why don't we switch gears and talk about a win for 20 states and by extension, really all states. In Donald Trump's attempts to go after sanctuary states, there's many lawsuits like this one, but this is the one involving fema, which I, which I just find to be, you know, like hurricanes and fires and mudslides.
- [50:30]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Exactly.
- [50:30]
Michael Popak
They're blue and purple, blue and blue and red. I mean, seriously, we're talking about people clinging to their rooftops by their fingernails, watching everything that they own blow away or drown or whatever it is. And Donald Trump issued an executive order on January 30, soon after being sworn in 10 days later, in which he ordered a full review at every federal agency of every federal fund that has been allocated by Congress to go to states and figure out ways to punish blue states for refusing to cooperate with federal immigration law. When I say refuse to cooperate, I don't mean they interfere. It's just that you can't, by law, by constitution, you can't compel state officers and state agents to work for and conscript them into a federal army to enforce federal law. There's state law, okay? That's our federalism system. And state law enforcement will handle state law. That's what cops and sheriffs are for, and state troopers and things like that and other agents. There's federal law, and federal law needs to be enforced as well. And they've got all their agents and officers and things, whether it's ICE or Border Patrol or FBI or you name it, they've got their abilities to enforce alcohol, tobacco and firearms, whatever it is, but you can't, by our Laws of federalism say to a state cop or deputy sheriff, hey, you over there, help me capture this person, or hey, you over there, participate in this federal drug interdiction thing, or no, you have to have your own force for that. That is well established precedent in case law in our country. So the blue states all said, I mean, we're not going to interfere with you, but we're not going to help round up and capture people and send them to ICE detention. You do that. You do you. Trump didn't like that. So he said, take away their FEMA funds. And now we've got a ruling by Judge Smith, a Republican appointee up in Rhode island, on behalf of 20 states, including Rhode island and California, New York and New Jersey. And what did you take away from that ruling, Karen?
- [52:48]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
He basically said, you can't do that. It's not appropriate. And this is a motion for summary judgment ruling, meaning the plaintiffs asked the court to declare that these several contested conditions that were attached to the award of these grants was beyond the scope of their authority and in violation of the Administrative Procedures act and to rule that it's unconstitutional and the whole. The court held that indeed it was arbitrary and capricious and thus invalid under the administrative procedures, acted in violation of the spending clause and unconstitutional and granted the motion for summary judgment. That means the case is dismissed. And that's great because, you know, I shouldn't say cases basically says you can't do that. Right. You cannot withhold the funds. And so I think that's a great thing for now. Obviously, of course, now that you see that these things go up to the Supreme Court. Ultimately Trump appeals to the Supreme Court that rules on the shadow docket, right, without full briefing and stays things or, you know, gets them to do his bidding for them. But this is a temporary, very good ruling. And you know, frankly, it is so outrageous to, as you said, withhold these funds. I mean, these are life saving emergency funds that Congress, you know, FEMA's been around since I think the 1950s and gives lots of money to states. It's almost like the country's insurance policy, like it could happen to anybody. You never know when it's going to happen to you. And when it does, FEMA steps in to help. Because today, today could be me, tomorrow could be you. I mean, this is part of the social contract we all pay into with our taxes. And this is what Congress has appropriated this money to be used for FEMA for this emergency relief. The President is not allowed to say, oh, well, I don't like you because you're a blue state and you're not following my policy. So I'm going to withhold that. I'm glad to see that the courts are holding the line still. And this is a good one.
- [54:48]
Michael Popak
Absolutely. And you know, even the Supreme Court surprises us sometimes. Like as we came on the air, we're still waiting six, seven days in to the Supreme Court making a decision about whether they're going to rule for or against Lisa Cook and the independence of the Federal Reserve. I mean, they wanted full briefing about whether they should grant a stay to block the trial judge's order keeping Lisa Cook in as Federal Reserve governor. She already has participated in one rate setting meeting. She's still working. Presumably it would disturb the status quo to take her out of her chair. And after full briefing, we're still six days out and we don't have apparently a consensus now, like later tonight or even during the show, something could come out with this Supreme Court. But I'm not sure it's a good thing for the Trump administration that it's taking this long to try to find five votes to. And that's, that's the scramble. Right. Is there five votes to find that Lisa Cook's due process was violated and that the courts can review it. We're going to talk about another case that's similar related to the Federal Trade Commission and Rebecca Slaughter later in the pod. But sometimes they surprise us. Like you would have thought if they had the votes, they would have already taken her out of her job. And I think her still being in her job is a very, very good thing. But look, if I was Donald Trump, I would keep banging away at the United States Supreme Court on an emergency docket, too. He's winning 84% of the time at the United States Supreme Court. And by comparison, for those that are wondering, I wonder what percentage Biden won. Biden won 52% of the time on emergency applications. And how would you explain the 30% difference? Politics, politics. There's a reason that, like Alito and Thomas vote with Trump 92% of the time and voted with Biden almost never. Okay. There's nothing to do with like, maybe Biden didn't have his meritorious legal arguments. Forget that. This is, this is all politics. You can see it in the numbers. But he's losing. By contrast, Trump is losing in the 90% percentile at the state court level. I mean, sorry, at the federal trial court level, like Judge Smith, a Bush appointee up in Rhode island, and in appellate courts. So you have this. This weird battle between federal district courts and appellate courts who are resoundingly rejecting Trump's doctrine of rule of law abuse and the unbridled power of the executive branch. Whereas it's their bosses at the United States Supreme Court are ruling overwhelmingly in his favor in the, you know, 20 or 30 cases that make their way there on the emergency docket.
- [57:43]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
I have a question for you.
- [57:44]
Michael Popak
Sure.
- [57:45]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
What do you think that Biden should have expanded the number of Supreme Court justices and packed the court? Now, I know there were reasons at the time that we said it would about the legitimacy of the court, and that's purely political and all that. Seeing where we are now and seeing what's happening today, does that change your view of whether he should have.
- [58:05]
Michael Popak
I don't think he had the political capital to pull that off. I mean, other than the first two years post Covid. You know, Joe, as much as he was the right person for the job at the first half of his administration, by the second half of his administration, because of his own issues that have become more public, and then the Hunter Biden thing, I think he lost a lot of the ability to swing that. It's one thing for FDR at the height of his powers during the Depression when he was so popular, that not only did he win the first two terms, he won two other terms. You have to be at the height of your political power in order to pull off something like that. Yes. The Constitution doesn't talk about how many seats there are in the United States Supreme Court. Yes, we've had more or less on the Supreme Court over time, but you have to also have the juice to pull that off. I just don't think he did. That's why he went to. Let's do a blue ribbon panel. Let's make some recommendations. Now, having said that, I do think that whoever comes into power for the Democrats, hopefully in 2028, does bump up that court to 12 or 15. 15 is a very nice sounding number because 15 gives another six, and that would give nine votes. For people that aren't named Donald Trump or Trump supporters, it would be 96 instead of the 63 thing that we're constantly seeing against most people's vision of what the United States and its constitutional republic and rule of law should be about. We gotta get rid of. We have to neutralize this group that gave Donald Trump criminal immunity and destroyed the balance of power and the three co equal branches of government, because we don't have three co equal branches of government anymore. And we have a President who doesn't believe they're co. Equal. We have to like, in order to neutralize them, we have to do what, what FDR wanted to do, pack the court. But to answer your question, I just don't think Biden had to. It would have been great, but I don't think Biden had the juice to do it. And certainly I don't think he had the. There were so many things he needed to do that he also didn't do. Like he wasn't even able to get all of his federal judges on the court. I don't know if he would have had enough. And then there's also a question of what's the role of Congress in approving that. And he certainly didn't have Congress for most of his term.
- [60:31]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Yeah.
- [60:31]
Michael Popak
You know, so that's.
- [60:33]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Yeah. It's just such a disaster.
- [60:35]
Michael Popak
Right. But hopefully, if we sweep in and control the three branches of government, that is certainly a legitimate discussion to have is should we have a 15 person Supreme Court like other countries do? And because there's. No, nine is not a magic number. I mean, it's not even the number of. On a baseball team. It's like this is nine and like it could be six. It was, it was lower in the.
- [60:56]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
I think it should be an odd number.
- [60:58]
Michael Popak
No, it should be an odd number. 15 is an odd number. Right. As far as less than.
- [61:01]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Well, no, I know, but that's why, like 6, 12. I'm just saying ultimately it should be an odd number.
- [61:06]
Michael Popak
Yeah, it can't be. It can't be 12. Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with all that. So when we come back from our last break in which we're supported by our sponsors here. Thank you to our legal AF sponsors, we're going to talk about something related to waiting on the United States Supreme Court for its decision about Lisa Cook on the Federal Reserve this time about this. What was like, I didn't even study Humphrey's executory or if I did, I forgot. I studied it in law school. Unless you're in kind of that world, that rarefied world, there are lawyers who are that handle kind of this administrative error area. You know, it was sort of like the, you know, the rap, the rule against perpetuity, the rule in Shelley's case, you know, like you heard it, but you never in 35 years ever thought you'd have to deal with it. And with Donald Trump, we have so many firsts. And now the question is, is the United States Supreme Court going to throw away a 95 year old precedent. Spoiler alert. They are to allow Donald Trump just to pack all of these commissions and agencies, the sec, the ftc, the cftc, you know, the nlrb. Well, we'll define all those later and just pack them filled with baga. And the answer to that is going to be yes, but we'll talk about the reason why. But of course we've got ways to support Legal AF. Become a member of Legal AF YouTube, become a member. There it is. Of the Legal AF substack. Support the Legal AF YouTube channel. Five years in the making, both audio and video that the reason we are in the top 50 in all the charts that matter about on Legal after this amount of time is has yes, something to do with the content, but mostly to do with the audience. Being so fervently in the community that we've built being so fervently in support of what we do and how we do it and we appreciate it, but we still still need to keep growing. You know, this, this world that we live in. We don't have an outside marketing firm and we do the best that we can, but we really rely on everybody in the audience to bring in new members, new friends, new families, you know, children and college students and different things that are, that are, that are hurting and struggling in this, in this world that Donald Trump is trying to create. And Legal AF is a home for people that feel abandoned and feel powerless. And we're glad that you're here. So let's take our last break. If you've been noticing hair loss, thinning or shedding lately, you have to hear this. The scientists at One Skin have developed a scalp serum called OS one Hair that targets the dysfunctional aging cells that cause hair loss. In clinical studies, participants saw an average 40% increase in hair density after six months. And in a consumer perception study, 75% noticed new hair growth after just three months. As someone who's tried one skin before, I can say the results are impressive. I wasn't sure what to expect at first, but the lightweight water like texture makes it so easy to use and it doesn't interfere with styling at all. I personally noticed my hair feeling fuller and healthier. And seeing baby hairs start to grow around my hairline was a pleasant surprise for those familiar with one skin. You know, their patented OS1 peptide is scientifically proven to target aging at the cellular level. It's what powers their skin and sun care. Now it's targeting age related hair loss and thinning and customers are loving it. One Skin is the World's first skin longevity company. And by focusing on cellular aging, they help your hair and your skin look and act younger for longer. For a limited time, try OS1 hair and get 15% off your first three months supply with code legal AF at OneSkin co. That's 15% off at OneSkin co with code legal AF. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support the show and tell them we sent you.
- [64:59]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
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- [66:49]
Michael Popak
Welcome back. Thank you for being so supportive of all the things we do here on Legal af. All right, Karen, home stretch. Why don't you tell the audience about Humphrey's executor and what the Supreme Court has just done, which indicates, I think, to both of us that Humphrey's executor is not long for this world. And what is its impact on federal agencies and commissions and regulatory bodies created by Congress, but. But are part of the executive branch.
- [67:17]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Yeah. So there's certain agencies created by Congress that were meant to be bipartisan or nonpartisan. Right. You want to have the this, you don't want politics infecting decision making in certain agencies. And one of those agencies here is the Federal Trade Commission. And the Federal Trade Commission is an agency that is supposed to be doing what's in the best interest of trade, of consumers, of business, and not necessarily be at the whim of whatever political party is in power. And essentially what it looks like is they are going to there's a case from almost 100 years ago that people call the Humphreys executor case involving an FTC commissioner. And basically the case says can only fire one of these individuals for cause. This is who's, who's sort of one of the commissioners, one of these neutral commissioners. And you can only fire them for cause, meaning they did something wrong while they were on the job or they're somehow not qualified while they're on the job. They have to have done something wrong. There has to be a reason. And what Donald Trump has been doing, and frankly the Supreme Court's been allowing in many cases is that he can fire these commissioners or these board members who are supposed to be protected and who are not supposed to be able to be fired unless there is some sort of cause. And so everyone's been kind of hinting that this Humphreys executor, this case, this law that is existed, it's going to be overturned because they're hinting at that by allowing certain individuals to be fired by Trump for no reason. And so what is happening now is on an emergency docket, he basically said that in an FTC particular commissioner essentially said, you know what, you can fire her, that you can absolutely fire her. And you know, in the emergency docket, which means it was not fully briefed, it's not fully argued, it's just one of these emergency kind of no, there's a stay, I'm staying the stay and I'm keeping the stay in place. You know, of. That's how these things bubble up. And the three liberal justices And Judge Justice Kagan wrote the dissent, but was joined by Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, who basically said, we all know what you're doing, but do it the right way. At least do it fully briefed. We know you're overruling Humphrey's executor. We know you're basically saying, you know what, this, Congress created this law in establishing this agency, but the agency has expanded its powers over all these years since Congress created it, and now it's much more executive branch like. And we know. And so therefore this, this doesn't apply anymore and you can do this. And they basically said, look, then do it the right way. Don't do it in this emergency shadow docket here where nothing's brief, no one knows the reason why. And essentially, they essentially overruled a historical precedent, a very, very established precedent that's been around for a long time. And without any briefing, without any reason, without anything. And that's essentially what's happening. And she called them out on it like she has been all along. So I think this is what's happening here. I'm curious to hear from you, though, why this is different than who you just talked about. Right. Why is it that this one they're allowing to be fired, but the other they.
- [71:12]
Michael Popak
Well, I mean, yeah, okay, so there seems to be a limit to how much they are willing to give Donald Trump in terms of power to fire at will everybody in the executive branch. See, the problem is that while Congress creates agencies and departments and will be Congress to create another agency or department anytime soon, because now they have to understand that whoever the President is at the time will automatically pack it with political cronies and there will never be any longer a bipartisan or nonpartisan regulatory agency or commission ever, because of the rulings by the United States Supreme Court. Because having granted this stay, keeping Rebecca Slaughter off the CFTC and asking people to brief for November and December term, the issue of whether Humphrey's executor is inconsistent with executive power. Just saying it, just saying it out loud now, every time Congress creates one of these things, if they ever do it again, they have to acknowledge that they can never require bipartisan, nonpartisan people on there, which I've said, rather than wring our hands as Democrats and non maga and say, oh, another loss at the Supreme Court, Donald Trump won again. He gets everything. I got it. I look at it a different way. I see it as a gift that now we're going to use. Okay, we know we had our upset day that there's no longer nonpartisan commissions and agencies. Okay. Get over it. There isn't. And so if the Democrats come back into power, or when they do in 2028, every board and commission from the NLRB to the securities and Exchange Commission to the Commodities Futures and Trade Commission to the Federal Trade Commission to the FCC and the rest, except for the Federal Reserve, are going to be occupied with Democrats and every Republican will be fired on site. That is what the Supreme Court has allowed us to do, and we now should take full advantage of it and stop wringing our hands over it. So that's that. As to the Federal Reserve.
- [73:34]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Yeah. Like why, why is that one different?
- [73:37]
Michael Popak
Okay, well, you remember the case from May in Gwen Wilcox, in the NLRB case. Technically, from an analytical standpoint, there is no difference.
- [73:46]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Right.
- [73:46]
Michael Popak
They have a sliding scale that they use. They say the more executive power that an executive agency or commission created by Congress exercises, the more they're going to allow the President to fire at will and not have any of these things like staggered terms. And no one party can occupy more chairs than the other over a period of time. All that's gone. If they are found to exercise a lot of executive power because they think that's inconsistent with, with the unitary executive model, which means all, all power is reposited in the, in the, in the office of the president for that branch. So, however, having said that, and so far, no agency or commission has passed the test, all of, they found, all of them exercised too much executive power to not allow Donald Trump to fire them and reshape those commissions. He hasn't even reshaped them. Some of them he's put out of business. There is no Merit Systems Protection Board because there's only one person on it. And there's no quorum, and he hasn't replaced any of the other people. The National Labor Relations Board has no quorum because he hasn't replaced it. They're out of business, which is what he really wanted to do. And I would have thought that on the Federal Reserve, even though it's independent and it was created bipartisan and it's the central bank, that they would bend over backwards to find a way to give it to the president, but they didn't. So when Gwen Wilcox, who was the head of the National Labor Relations Board, argued, if you allow Trump to fire me, what's next? The Federal Reserve, that could be next, because they kind of threw that argument in there. So when they wrote the decision in May in allowing Donald Trump to fire Gwen Wilcox, they effectively said, no, no, you're fired. But the Federal Reserve that you raised as an example, we're going to spend a whole paragraph talking about we're going to protect the Federal Reserve because they were worried about Donald Trump. That was the last line firewall that the Supreme Court put up for whatever reason. And they started with really a historical, a misapplication of history, if that's possible. They said, well, the Federal Reserve is very similar to our first and second banks of the United States, you know, like the Alexander Hamilton banks. And because of that and their unique role in American, in the American government and their, and their independence, we're not going to allow those were created differently and we're not going to allow the President to fire them except for cause. And then without defining what for cause was. So when we read that, we were like, oh, they're trying to protect Jay Powell. They don't want Jay Powell fired. The question is, what are they going to do with the governor right below Jay Powell? There's seven of them on the Board of Governors. And so only if we didn't have the Wilcox decision from May, which gave us a window into the thinking of at least five, if not six Supreme Court justices, I would tell you that Lisa Cook's on life support. But we have the benefit of the May decision, which I think is tying them up in knots about how I think some of them want Lisa Cook on the Supreme Court. They want him to be able to fire him. But others are saying, is that what we want when the President is a Democrat? And so there's that struggle going on. And this is not just, just to leave it at this, Karen, this is not about Wilcox, a one person, this is about gaining nine. He gets Gwen Wilcox, he gets nine out of the 12 votes on the Federal Open Markets Committee, which is more than enough to set interest rates, which is what he wants to do in getting control of monetary. Because the seven board of governors by majority pick the 12 members of the Federal Reserve regional banks. And from that 12, 5 serve on the Federal Open Markets Committee along with the seven board of governors making a new committee of 12. And right now he's only got three votes out of 12. So he loses every time, nine to three or whatever it's going to be. He wants to flip it the other way. He gets rid of Lisa Cook, he gets nine votes, he sets interest rates. And then, you know, start, start bringing, you'll start bringing in a shopping cart filled with cash to pay for your groceries because that's what's going to happen with hyperinflation in this country if Donald Trump gets control of the. The money spigot by setting interest rates at like 1 or 2%. Right.
- [78:21]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Wow.
- [78:22]
Michael Popak
Yeah, it's bad.
- [78:26]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
So, changing the subject, did you see the Jimmy Kimmel? Did you see Jimmy Kimmel last night?
- [78:31]
Michael Popak
I read a transcript of what he said.
- [78:34]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Do you have. I thought he was great. I don't know what people.
- [78:37]
Michael Popak
Doesn't solve the problem. First of all, you know, he still wasn't on 50 or 60 ABC affiliates because, you know, we're all learning about how affiliates work and they're in control of a company. And that company also is in control of papers like the Hill, news media outlets, like People. And I read the Hill sometimes that's owned by Jen Star, Star General or whatever the heck it is that owns all of those 200 TV stations. And who is, you know, so he's not. Everybody got to see Jimmy Kimmel last night.
- [79:08]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Well, they could go on YouTube, which has like, he has like 8 million views last night. I mean, he's got the most views. I think you think he broke the record. I think he beat everything. His YouTube, it's probably even higher now, so I think everyone can see it. I think he was pitch perfect. I think he was great. But what I love the most about it is you kind of watch democracy work differently, right? Is people started canceling their subscriptions and then they listened. And it just, I bring it up because it shows the power we all still have, Right? It's not just to vote. It's also not just at the ballot box. It's in decisions like this. And when you come together and you make intentional decisions like that, I do think our voices were heard. And this problem's not solved. It's still going. It's still, you know, the whole FCC thing is a shit show and Brendan Carr is a disaster and it's like a mafia boss. But it was a glimmer of, of hope and happiness for me to watch it. I liked it. Yeah.
- [80:11]
Michael Popak
Hope and happiness. I mean, the question is how is what. What was the deal, which we don't know about, to get Kimmel back on the air? Was there a deal? Is he going to temper his comments? Are we going to see over time the same Jimmy Kimmel being a critic to this administration, or is he going to, quote, unquote, tone it down?
- [80:29]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
I don't tone it down. Last night.
- [80:32]
Michael Popak
We're going to see. We're going to see what he's going to do. I mean, yeah, as we're on the air. You know, Comedy Central still up and running. South park is still up and running. John Stewart and John Oliver are still up and running. You know, so, yes, it's, it's, it's a, it was a positive result that. But we know why abc, as you said, why ABC did it. They didn't do it because they're the bastions to protect First Amendment.
- [80:56]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Oh, God, no.
- [80:57]
Michael Popak
Disney. They did it because Hulu got canceled around the country.
- [81:02]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
But that's my point, is that we have to call out all the people, like, because a lot of those people are people who are watching this very show. I could tell you that right now. And so I think it's amazing. And I want to just shout out to the people who, who, you know, who are making a difference.
- [81:15]
Michael Popak
Yeah, and Hollywood did it, too. The agents called. 400 actors that signed the ACLU letter spoke, and they all said, you're going to be a pariah. We're not going to do. No one's going to want to appear on Disney or Hulu or ABC at this rate. They were like, we better put Jimmy Kimmel back on the air. Like, well, obviously. But you're right. We are bigger than, than them. We. I'm going to say it again. We. I don't just mean the legal AF community or Midas touch. We are bigger than them. And it's time for the sleeping giant to be. To be awoke. To be awake. To be awake. Now, I don't know what that phrase I was trying to use to wake up. It's time. But, but our problem, I guess it's not a problem, is a timing issue. There's ways that we can act out as we just did. There's ways, but the voting doesn't start for another year. And I know we're chomping at the bit, we're frustrated, but that's the binary political system that we have. Polling is great. His poll numbers, Trump's poll numbers are in the trash can. I mean, if the vote was held today, he would go down, I believe, in flames. Although the Democrats still have some issues, as you pointed out earlier, and their polling is not great on. He's still polling higher. Republican brand is still pulling higher. The Democratic brand on the economy and immigration and crime. We gotta fix that. We gotta show that. We gotta remind people what the Democratic brand is all about. But no, I'm not gonna crap all over Jimmy Kimmel's return. I'm glad that Jimmy Kimmel's back. I did my show. The intersection Yesterday. And I said there's two shows hopefully you like watching on Tuesday nights. And one just returned, Kimmel. And that's a good thing. But Kimmel's become more than that. He's become a martyr. You know, Donald Trump made Jimmy Kimmel into the martyr, not, not Charlie Kirk in the way he handled this. And he's become the vessel through which all of our frustration and all of our fear and our criticism of the Trump administration about the First Amendment now rests on the slender shoulders of Jimmy Kimmel. They'll be forever linked, Charlie Kirk and Jimmy Kimmel, whenever the history writes that chapter. And now what side were you on? That's what history is going to judge you on. What side are you on? And I think I'm glad that our Legal AF community is here with us. I'm glad that we had a hand in, however small in building this community. I always, you know, I subscribe to the hummingbird theory. Every little thing helps. Being here, being in the chat, watching the audio, watching the video, being on legal AF, YouTube, being on the Midas Touch network, you know, being on our sub stack, you know, being with like minded people that vibrate on the same frequency. That all helps accomplish and focus our attention on places that we can make change. And I think that's why we're here together. Karen, it's the new year, so you get your. Although that might have been your final word.
- [84:08]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
No, I have one more thing I want to say. You know, something happened this week that really hit home, hit hard for me in a really difficult way, which was the terrible autism press conference with the Tylenol and all the words that were used to describe people who have autism and families who live with autism and the lack of science pseudoscience that was being touted as if this is somehow something that people should listen to. Well, meanwhile, the weirdest RFK junior who I don't know, he looks like he's going to a tanning salon or something like, and cooking his skin. He's like, has this like over charred skin in the background. I don't know what he's doing. Clearly that's not healthy. But, but the language that was being used, how they were talking about people who, who are autistic or who have family members who are autistic was just so upsetting and so offensive. And you know, I've spoken about it before. You know, one of my children is on the autism spectrum and she's the light of my life and the delight and I wouldn't change a thing about her and I know millions of other people feel the same way. And I think it's dangerous to start talking about things like this and to really give misinformation that has no basis in science to women who are pregnant. And so I just wanted to mention it because, frankly, my favorite people in the world have autism. Autism. I think they're the most interesting and the most spicy and have the coolest brains I've ever met in my life. There's nothing better than talking to someone who has autism. So I wanted to thank you for sharing that.
- [85:57]
Michael Popak
I would. You know, I was, I was thinking about it with you about covering the RFK Jr. Trump Tylenol press conference, and I. Because I knew of your, your link to it. But, you know, I'm glad, I'm glad you, I'm glad you brought it up. You know, it's such utter and complete unscientific. And now that may be the final nail in JFK Junior's coffin because if he loses the MAGA doctors that are on the oversight committee, which it looks like he's. He has, who are now demanding to see the science, no science behind that attack on Tylenol. If I were Tylenol, I would like sue the government for defamation. For defamation.
- [86:36]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
I know. I was wondering when they're going to do that.
- [86:38]
Michael Popak
They told them not. They went to Tylenol and said, we're about to issue this release. They said, don't do that. You know, Tylenol, you know, when you and I were, were younger, you know, already had a major issue where somebody was tampering with Tylenol and people died as a result. They recovered from that. You know, it was a case study on how to, how to save your brand. Now they have to do it all over again because RFK Jr. Woke up one day and said, there's a link between. And my wife used my use. My wife used Tylenol during, not every day, but during her pregnancy. And you know, these ridiculous linkages. This is why Dr. Mataraz left after three weeks, because he wanted her to endorse this. It's not even pseudoscience is giving too much credit to the pseudo or the science. You know, he, Rafk Jr. Wanted a real live doctor and scientist who was the head of the CDC to endorse these, these ridiculous connections. You know, he should, he. If he wants to make these connections, he should go back where he came from, go on QAnon and go slide down the dark web. And he can make these comments every day, but for him, it's criminal malpractice for him to kill Americans and to make these kind of connections while he's our public health official. And hopefully this will be the wake up call for even MAGA in Congress to get RFK Jr. Out. I mean, if this was just to show you the benefit of winning in the midterms, he would be impeached. This would be an impeachable offense and hopefully convicted and removed. But for now, we're gonna have to rely on maga. So I'm so glad you shared that with us.
- [88:14]
Karen Freeman McNifolo
Yeah.
- [88:15]
Michael Popak
Yeah. So we've reached the end of another legal AF midweek. Michael Popak and Karen Freeman ignifolo this video, of course people are watching. Appreciate each and every one of you. Video goes up on Midas touch. And then we have the substack for legal af, the YouTube for legal af. And of course our pro democracy sponsors shout out to the midas mighty and illegal afores.