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- [00:01]
Michael Popak
This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of.
- [00:05]
Ben Mycelius
The number one checkout on the planet.
- [00:07]
Michael Popak
Shop pay boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer carts going abandoned and more sales going cha ching. So if you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are. Visit shopify.com to upgrade your selling Today. Have I Got News for you Is back for another season. Roy Wood Jr. Amber Ruffin and Michael Ian Black are finding the funny in the week's biggest stories. Have I Got news for you? Return Saturday at 9 on CNN and stream next day on Max.
- [00:38]
Ben Mycelius
This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Forget the frustration of picking commerce platforms when you switch your business to Shopify, the global commerce platform that supercharges your selling. Wherever you sell with Shopify, you'll harness the same intuitive features, trusted apps and powerful analytics used by the world's leading brands. Sign up today for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.comtech all lowercase. That's shopify.comtech a tsunami of injunctions issued against the Trump administration for their unlawful acts. Whether it was the late night Friday order forcing the Treasury Department to stop Elon Musk and Musk's team from getting access to information, also compelling Musk and Musk's team to immediately destroy all of the data they've obtained. That was a big win by attorney generals across the country, led by none other than New York Attorney General Letitia James. She's back. Whether it's Trump appointed judges like Judge Carl Nichols ruling against the Trump administration on their attempt to just totally fire pretty much everybody from U.S. aid with very little notice, and thus stranding people internationally, potentially killing hundreds of thousands or thousands of people who may not get the medications that they need, an injunction was issued there. Whether it was injunctions related to the FBI class actions filed by FBI agents against the Department of Justice for trying to out their names to January 6th insurrectionists. Whether it's injunctions like the one issued from the State of Washington on the issue of birthright citizenship and that birthright citizenship is in the Constitution, hence you can't, via executive order overturn the United States Constitution. Whether it's injunctions emanating out of both Rhode island and Washington, D.C. to stop Donald Trump's government funding freeze, or whether it's an injunction also in Washington, D.C. to stop Donald Trump's cruel and unusual policy to take trans women in prison, take off their clothes and throw them in general population in male prison showers, folks, I'm not making this up. The judge said that is cruel and unusual and absolutely a villainous act to do. Federal judges are standing up. Even Trump appointed judges, Reagan appointed judges, Democratic appointed judges. We're seeing that. And as that's happening, the Trump administration is just further trying to tear down our government every single day. Tear down the guardrails of law and order, full buyouts to try to push out everybody in the CIA, trying to push out people in the counterterrorism division of the FBI, dismantling the kleptocracy unit, an elite special division within the Department of Justice that seizes Russian oligarch asset used to try to spread disinformation and try to influence and corrupt people in the United States. Is that a shocker that that's one of the first things that the Trump administration tried to dismantle? And also now we're seeing, you know, Elon Musk and his kind of band of Misfit, you know, 19 and 23 year olds trying to do this now in each agency, forcing AGs, civil rights groups to kind of play whack a mole here to stop them, identify them. And like Musk has like literally his team of kids or they're not kids, they're adults, but they act like kids sleeping in the government agencies, like with their families now restricting access to government workers. I mean, this is about we the people who are these oligarchs literally in our, our buildings that belong to we the people. Well, the law is fighting back. This is what we said was going to happen with ags and lawyers stepping up in this time. It means a lot for us to cover here on legal AF as well. Let's bring in Michael Popak. Mr. Popak, how are you doing, sir?
- [05:07]
Michael Popak
On this weekend, barely sleeping with what's happening with the winning that the rule of law is doing against the Trump administration. 41 cases in 18 days. And so far the track record is 11 wins and two temporary setbacks for the rule of law against the Trump administration. That's. Those are hall of Fame numbers right there. Never tire of that kind of winning. The 41 cases are all in the right places. They're in the original colonies of the United States from Rhode island down to New Jersey. They're in the west coast, from California up to Washington in D.C. and multiply filed on major issues that Donald Trump has put front and center in front of the American voter and the American people because of his exec. These all stem from his executive orders. Most of them signed on the 20th of January on day one. So if you're doing the scorecard at home, we're going to cover a lot of these today. You've got just on the temporary restraining order, the injunction tsunami that you let off with. We've got we had two about birthright citizenship as attempt to rip rip out the heart of the Constitution when it comes to citizenship by executive order. We have with two about cutting off the spigot in a mean spirited, inhumane way of federal funding to the states into not for profits. That's separate from the TRO about shutting off $60 billion of aid across the world to the disadvantage which also promotes our business interest and our diplomacy. Again, all done without giving anybody warning, not even saying like a sundowning, like, well, well, well, you know, six months from now or three months from now or a year from now, no overnight. So that people's lives are literally turned upside down, as is the American economy. So we got a couple of TROs about federal funding, one about the inhumanity depravity of putting transgender women in male population jails. We've got two temporary restraining orders blocking some version of Elon Musk and Doge. We've got one temporary restraining order preventing the firing of government employees with the fork memo, which we'll talk about more. We've got a temporary restraining order arising out of two FBI agent cases about their being decapitated and thrown out of out of their positions. We've got one involving USAID that you touched on, issued by a lot of them, even issued by Trump judges like Carl Nichols. We got two separate that's temporary restraining orders. Then we got two preliminary injunctions, which is the next level, soon to be three preliminary injunctions concerning two on birthright citizenship and one, I'm sure it's going to be handed down on Friday in New York about Elon Musk rummaging around our privacy, personal information, financial information, health information, all housed on Treasury Department servers. The Trump side has only gotten in their Department of Justice has only gotten two minor wins out of those cases. So it's 11 and two folks in favor. The two losses are relatively minor. One was about the Office of Personnel Management and its server and whether Elon Musk again could access it. And so Randolph Moss, a judge denied the TRO for now. And another one about Doge had a standing issue as it was being raised by labor unions, which is another element I want to continue to talk about here on Legal AF is that who are the groups that are obtaining these wins. We know the judges are, but who are the groups that are leading the charge that we're supporting? It is the attorneys general in 22 states it is which are Democratic. It is labor unions who are representing, some of which who didn't defend Biden or Kamala Harris or support them are now stepping up for their federal workers who are, you know, who are being canned left and right or the issues related to that. So you got unions joining together with attorneys generals joining together with the ACLU and the NAACP and other brand new groups that were just created, like Norm ison's Democracy Forward group, who was just created since the election almost or since the end of the campaign to do what we're doing now. This is exactly what you and I hoped would happen. But I'm seeing results that are even greater than I thought. As I told people as a historical context, first Trump administration, 1,000 cases or so were filed by some of these same groups and they were an 80% winning percentage. But because Donald Trump has gotten more unhinged and more outrageous and has decided that what the lesson that he learned from the Supreme Court decisions that benefited him in the immunity decisions and on a ballot in the criminal law area, this would, this has empowered him in his mind. The lesson he learned is I can try anything and I'm going to do anything as the executive branch to violate the separation of power, to violate the Administrative Procedures act, to violate the First Amendment, to violate the take care clause of the Constitution. So we're going to be you and I and I don't want people to think it's like a repeat episode or a repeat hot take. But, but where you're going to hear a lot of the following over the course of the next four years. Breaking news, a temporary restraining order, Trump administration under the Administrative Procedures act, the Constitution and First Amendment and these groups, because we are now averaging by my math, 18 days and 41 cases, almost three cases a day, which is about what I said it would be. And I don't think it's just the first 18 days. I think we're going to have three cases a day for the, for the whole more than 1200 or so. What is it, four times three? It's more than 1400 days of the administration because it's going to be triple what happened in the first administration because his, his outrageousness has been empowered and tripled.
- [12:03]
Ben Mycelius
When you talk about those three cases, by the way, those are like, I guess the three major headline grape grabbing cases that are kind of being brought as class actions but like, we could equally mention the fact that one of the members of the National Labor Relations Board, the first black female National Labor Relations Board member who Donald Trump fired, she filed a lawsuit as well, saying that her termination was not for cause, that Donald Trump did not have the right to fire her. So there's even employment actions at the highest level from appointments like, like her, you know, Donald Trump also on Friday fired one of the members of the fec, the Federal Elections Commission. Donald Trump didn't like her. A more, I guess a more liberal member or someone who I guess actually wants to enforce FEC laws. Donald Trump fired her. I expect there to be legal action there, the inspector general's legal action there. Remember, don't forget that story where one of the first actions that Donald Trump in his regime, we shouldn't call it an administration. We should use the right labels and we shouldn't be afraid to talk about that. This is a coup on our government right now. And this is an authoritarian regime. These aren't scandals in the traditional sense that are taking place. Right. This not I didn't have sex with Lewinsky. This isn't, this isn't stuff like, like Iran Contra, which is bad, you know, the bad scandals, sexual scandals. This is not that. This is the wholesale using playbooks of authoritarians that have been tried, tested and proven in places like Hungary, Viktor Orban by Vladimir Putin. It's being utilized in El Salvador. It's being used by Malay in Argentina, often places with very high poverty rates as well. And this is a playbook that they are following. And so this regime is engaged in a constant unlawful act Tsunami as well. And the last place on this battlefield because Congress, which is controlled by Republicans, spineless magas, they've given up their co equal branch role. So that was one of the checks, right? So the other check, when you don't have that co equal branch, are the courts. Now we know our Supreme Court is compromised. That's a problem. There's six right wing and then there's three liberal. Now, if you want a silver lining in the way the Supreme Court is, you have to look a little bit to Justice John Roberts, who don't. When you have to say that, you are already saying that's kind of a rough, a rough hill to fight on. Justice John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, who sided with the liberal judges to not stop Donald Trump's sentencing from taking place. They have indicated, at least through Justice John Roberts annual report. Remember, we covered that here. That's why we cover these things because Justice John Roberts seemed to put in his annual Supreme Court report that the threats of violence, dismantling law and order, not following court orders. He seemed to be talking about Donald Trump, who he gave absolute immunity to and essentially giving a warning of, hey, we gave you absolute immunity. Don't make us look stupid. Well, Donald Trump is the king of making everybody that tries to appease him look stupid. And so that's what we're going to see if that develops. But I'll tell everybody to go this, do this, go and study Viktor Orban's rise in Hungary. Viktor Orban was once a student protester. He was a liberal guy and then he changed to become very right wing. He kind of, why do people, why do all the right wing magas like Viktor Orban? Because he created in Hungary the types of gerrymandering that was then adopted in that laboratory for autocracy here in the United States, where Orban basically, when he took power, gerrymandered the liberal parties out of existence and then basically made it so he doesn't lose elections. He ripped apart all of the institutions in Hungary and started ruling like an authoritarian. That's why, whether it was Tucker Carlson or Elon Musk, why they applaud him so much, I want to share this with you as well as we try to talk about, you know, these injunctions, the big class action style lawsuits, the individual lawsuits. You know, at its core, you know, what's happening though is, you know, Elon Musk is given free reign on our government. Just think about that. Donald Trump has allowed Elon Musk to go into different agencies to take your data, to take we the people's data. Whether it's access to the trillion dollar transaction payment systems, whether it's medical information, whether it's geological, oceanic information, bank account information, you know, you name it. They go into different departments. And Elon Musk has his own oligarchical business interests as well. Elon Musk's made a lot of his money getting funded by the federal government and then, you know, turning against the federal government, recapturing the federal government now for his own oligarchical purposes. But so what Musk does is he's got his little team of like hackers and, you know, it was interesting to note that in the New York Attorney General case, in the federal opinion by the judge that was issued on Friday night, he referred to them as hackers and as what took place as hacking of your Social Security, our banking information. So Musk takes these people, they go into these various kind of Government agencies. And this is what's been reported in the agencies. They live in the agencies. They bring, like sleeping bags in the agencies. They show up and then they, like, torture the government employees and they tell the government employees, you know, hey, justify your existence. They kind of mock them, they treat them like crap, and they try to kind of push them out, make their lives miserable while gaining access to your data. And now we're learning about the types of character or the lack thereof of these people. And surprise, surprise, you know, Elon Musk, who posts this hateful, misogynistic stuff and has turned Twitter into X, which is now this fascistic, authoritarian hellhole. When you actually, like, look at what the type of content that's being flooded there by bots and being pushed and that he's reposting as well. You know, one of these people were, you know, very racist, supports eugenics, talks about, you know, how we should never, you know, negative stuff about Indian people and never marrying outside of the race. So I think Trump's chief of staff, Susan Wiles, you know, basically forced some of these, you know, racist Elon people to resign. But then during. But then J.D. vance and Elon said, bring them back in. They're just kids. They're just kids. They made a mistake. Let them get back in. Well, these, quote, unquote kids never apologized for what they did, number one. Number two, even if they did, they shouldn't get access to your data or your information. And so I'm just trying to understand this. Their kids when it comes to saying horrific racist things, and then that's okay, and then they should be brought back in. And Trump decrees they get to come back in. But they're adults when it comes to taking your data and having all this. They're so immature. But now they get all of your data. This was at the press conference with Donald Trump where he was asked about bringing back these Elon Musk thugs to take your data. And just watch how Donald Trump handles the question. Play this clip.
- [20:26]
Michael Popak
As part of this Doge cost cutting effort, one of the Doge engineers was fired for some inappropriate posts. The vice president says bring him back. What do you say? I don't know about the particular thing, but if the vice President said that.
- [20:41]
Ben Mycelius
Did you say that?
- [20:42]
Michael Popak
I'm with the vice president. Thank you, Peter.
- [20:45]
Ben Mycelius
We haven't heard anything from J.D. vance or being with the vice President, but the vice president does say, bring the racist, pro eugenics person who took your, who had access to your private information, bring him back. And then Donald Trump's I gotta listen to J.D. vance. Let's. Let's bring them back. Popak, I want to bring you in. And we got to go through all of the cases right now, one by one, the various injunctions. I just wanted to frame it that way. I want to do this. Popak, I'm going to give you the next segment. I talked way too long there. It's an appropriate time to do a quick break. I want to give you the segment, though, talking about ag, go through the injunctions, about the freeze one by one, explain to people the import. Don't worry, folks. I know I spend a lot, a long time talking there. And I got to let Popox Pop gets the whole next segment. But in addition to getting the next segment, Popak started the Popak law firm. And it's crushing it. And Popak, I think it's, it's great work. I know lots of people were asking you, hey, if I've got cases, even cases like if I, if I was in a car accident, if I was sexually harassed at work, if someone in my family suffered a catastrophic injury. You get these messages all the time. You weren't able to help. So you started the POPOC firm just to, just to help. You're working with Big Auto, who has top lawyers across the country as well. You want to make sure you get thousands of phone calls since you've announced this. So it's important that you have it all. But just again, tell people where they can call if they've either been, like, in an accident or they have someone that they know and they want the POPOC firm. Where do they go?
- [22:23]
Michael Popak
Yeah, I really appreciate. Everybody's very, very supportive of it. People know that I'm a practicing lawyer for last 35 years. I was in bigger firms and big firms. You and I litigated cases together and separately and all of that. And, and I get. And I've always gotten a lot of phone calls and contacts and DMS from people about their cases. And certain. And, you know, it wasn't doing those because we were sort of dedicated here to the Midas Touch network. And at certain point, as I've said, I've just decided, all right, people want me to be involved in cases. People want me to help them with their cases. There's a natural fit to do it. But let's be frank, I'm one guy, and I don't have a thousand people and a thousand lawyers to work with. And so, you know, I searched around for a good, a good collaborator and knew the guys and the people at Big Auto and Big Auto has these amazing personal injury and other types of injury damage type lawyers around the country which kind of gave me instant 50 state presence if you will, which I think I needed for you know, our type of show and our type of audience which Is in all 50 states and 138 countries. So it was really by to demand. I was like, I'm going to set up this firm because people are asking about it and asking for it and its focus is on all sorts of ways that you can get injured. As you outlined it doesn't. It could be Auto which is, which is a natural for Big Auto. But they do everything else that we do, you know, civil rights violations, employment law cases, you know, constitutional, you know, issues. So whatever it is that you know, you can come to 1-877-popak-1877, popak or come hit website@www.thepopoc firm.com and I'm all over it. And it's just a way to kind of continue what we started together as a legal AF audience and building on that and we're always very loyal and appreciative to our audience. We thought this is something that they've wanted and so, you know, I set it up.
- [24:21]
Ben Mycelius
Amazing. Everybody hit subscribe right now on our YouTube channel. We're getting close to 4 million subscribers. When we get back, we're gonna talk about every one of those injunctions. You may wanna get a pen when we go back so you can take notes to follow all of this. A lot happening. Let's take our first break of the show.
- [24:39]
Michael Popak
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- [28:40]
Ben Mycelius
Welcome back to Legal af. Thank you to our pro democracy sponsors right there. Michael Popak. Let's just get into it right away.
- [28:48]
Michael Popak
Yeah.
- [28:48]
Ben Mycelius
There have been numerous injunctions filed. We talked in brief about them at the beginning. We spent five to seven minutes on them. Repetition is the best form of trying to keep track of all of these. So why don't we start with the one, the most recent one, I guess from Friday night, one of the most recent big ones. New York Attorney General Letitia James, she announces this big win. Why don't we start there and go through the others?
- [29:14]
Michael Popak
Sure. And look, we have to talk truth to each other before we can truth. Talk truth to power. And so that's one of the reasons that you and I established this, this venue of Legal af. And now, and now's the moment. Now's the moment for us to keep track with our analysis and our commentary for our audience. And so let's do it. We. You know, I joked on a recent hot take, it's like, I know you think this is a repeat. This is not a repeat. News flash. Temporary restraining order from a federal judge against a Trump administration policy that maybe involves Elon Musk. We're going to be talking a lot about that over the next four years, unfortunately, as Donald Trump has completely abdicated his responsibility as the constitutionally appointed President of the United States to an outsider who was not confirmed by the Senate. Or as Letitia James, the New York Attorney general, said in our own website posting, the world's richest man is no longer going to have access, at least for now, to our most sensitive and private financial and health data. Think about out there what you've had to provide the government in order to get your benefits or in order to get, you know, the things that you're entitled to. Social Security, disability, veterans benefits, student loans. Think of the medical information you've had to provide to them. Scott Beset, who's our treasury secretary in name only. He's a puppet, apparently, for Donald Trump and his worst urgings. And for Elon Musk, ultimately immediately threw the keys to the kingdom over to Elon Musk, not confirmed by the Senate. You know, running around with a phony organization called doge, just said, sure, you can rummage through the servers containing the confidential information. The privacy breach of, of a, of a level we've never seen. And we were all like, no, no, you can't do that. And a couple of federal suits got filed back to back. You and I talked about. Just. This is actually the second temporary restraining order in 48 hours. Judge. Judge Kolar Catelli, a senior judge in the District of Columbia, stampeded the Department of Justice and the lawyers for the other side into a temporary restraining order that was agreed upon, that was in place, that covered most of what just happened in New York in terms of stopping Elon Musk from doing it. Scott Bessette, who I mentioned before, I lost track of my thought there, he actually had the nerve, I couldn't think of the word to tell Bloomberg News that, don't worry about Elon Musk. They're just trying to figure out how to make it run more efficiently and save us money. They're not just a roving band. No, they are a roving band of rogues who are. Who are rooting around in our most private information. Scott, I hate to differ with you and debate you on this, but that's exactly what they're doing. And nobody buys that. This is all about making your check show up more efficiently in your bank account. I. With nobody who gets benefits or entitlements from the government, we've never had a problem. My mother gets her Social Security deposited in her bank account on a regular basis. Anybody else does, too. So what's more efficient about how the payment system's being made? That's not what they're doing with their sleeping bags and their, their keggers and their foosball tables or whatever else they're moving in, creating some sort of, you know, Twitter, Tesla, we work thing in the middle of my Treasury Department, like, get your mitts off of my federal funds and off of my information. I mean, that is the, the thematic here. So Kohler, Catelli, she, she gets them into a tro. And to answer a question that often comes up in the chats, and it came up with me on Popoc Live on Tuesday, the new podcast. Why. Why are there multiple lawsuits and why are there multiple injunctions? And what do you do about them? The reason that you and I are reporting on multiple injunctions about the same topics is because they're brought by different groups courts in sort of a portfolio method. You file in various courts hoping that you'll. Then if you get a loss here or there, you still have a win, and you can take that to the right appellate court. So you'll do west coast, east coast, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Illinois, D.C. and then see where you are right now. It's an embarrassment of wins of riches for the rule of law and democracy because they're 11 and 2 and they're getting double injunctions on the almost the exact same topic. So how it works is those injunctions, they can both be nationwide. They both, they may not be exact. As the lawyer, the judges are not drafting them exactly the same way, but they will stop and block and enjoin the Trump administration and that particular policy until the next round, which is the preliminary injunction round. First stop is like an administrative stay, maybe on an emergency basis, then a tro, temporary restraining order on certain factors, and then a preliminary injunction a week, two weeks, three weeks, a month later, which then, if it's granted, keeps the stay in place for the duration of the case. Effectively, it is the case because, yeah, you can keep trying the case and have a trial, but really these cases rise and fall on the injunction or the TRO method mechanism, and then they go up to appeals. So that's why when I round this out, we'll eventually talk about the birthright citizenship started as a TRO in two places by Judge Kofador in Seattle and, and, and another judge in Mass in, in Maryland, and then got converted into preliminary injunctions. And then one has already been up on appeal, like the Trump administration is taking it to the ninth, which is just where we want to take it for an appeal from a rule of law side of the equation, as opposed to taking it to the fifth in Texas. So back to, and then Popak, when.
- [35:15]
Ben Mycelius
You'Re talking about the 9th and the 5th, just so everybody knows you're talking about the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, as you start going through all these other cases. One other point, sometimes these lawsuits are filed in different courts because different groups have different interests. Right? The unions are representing the injuries to the union members. So when the SEIU or when AFL CIO's filing, they may enter a stipulation that's going to help the union workers who they're representing. And it's great if it has an effect on more people, but they're focused on their group. So when the AGs are filing, they may want to have a broader scope more than just the unions, everybody in their state who's going to be impacted. So if, let's say the unions enter into a stipulation, that's a win for them, the AGs may say, well, actually we need a court order that's more expansive. And in the case of, as you talk about these other cases, like Letitia James got the judge to force musk's team to destroy anything that they got which went beyond what the stipulation was by the unions. I'll let you go. Sorry.
- [36:29]
Michael Popak
Yeah, yeah. No, it's not, you know, don't apologize. You're right. We're all. We always like to do legal AF law school kind of in the middle of these things. And that's the other reason that they're multiply filed and we had multiple overlapping injunctions. So now that's, that's the way to turn back to the New York case. So they ran. And we'll do a little procedural breakout session here as well. They ran in kind of with a temporary Restraining order request. 2019. Sorry. Attorneys General, really led by Letitia James of New York, who people will hopefully remember and find to be heroic because she took down Donald Trump personally a number of times, including a $450 million civil fraud judgment that she obtained after a 12 week trial that we're still waiting on an appellate court to rule on. How much of that 450 is going to remain, but substantial win for Letitia James. MAGA and Donald Trump. Hate hate. I mean, hate Letitia James. People within his inner circle during the campaign actually said out loud on television that they wanted, they had no, their major desire was to get Letitia James's, quote, fat ass into jail. Okay, and does anybody think that backed off Letitia James? No. She's out front and center with a press conference saying, we just won a major temporary restraining order against Elon Musk and against Donald Trump. So it ends up with, with Judge Engelmeier. Why not? Because he's the judge assigned to the case. He's not the judge that's assigned to this case about blocking Elon Musk and anybody else from rummaging around the Treasury Department servers is going to be in front of Judge Vargas. But we can't wait for Judge Vargas because it looks like her, she wanted the briefing schedule for the preliminary injunction one level up from temporary restraining order to be this Friday. So we can't just sit around and let harm happen, irreparable harm happen between, you know, between Friday night and next Friday, a week. So a judge who's sort of the duty judge for emergencies or what he referred to as the part one judge, he looked at the papers, kind of looked under the hood of what the arguments were and said, yeah, this looks like a violation of the Administrative Procedures act because you can't change your privacy and data disclosure regulations by just tossing Elon Musk the keys. There's a Procedure, if you're going to. Because people need to know about it in order to publicly comment on it. If you're going to change that rule or regulation of the IRS code because this Bureau of Financial Services covers the Internal Revenue Service, disability, all the places that matter. It's probably, even though you and I never talked about it in five years on Legal af, it is probably the most important federal agency or bureau that touches more lives. That's important to our audience than any other we've ever talked about. It takes in $5 trillion worth of revenue from various sources, mainly internal revenue, IRS, you know, collections and loan repayment and that kind of thing. It doles out because Congress tells them to dole it out through funding, about 4.3 to 4.5 or even $5 trillion per year of funding. That's why it drives MAGA and Elon Musk nuts. Gotta. We gotta kill the checkbook because we can't kill the fundings because we're dying, you know, in the courthouses. So let's get to the back door and get to the computers. Like, no. So the judge took a look and said, this looks like an Administrative Procedures act violation. Most of Donald Trump's executive orders are just that. This also looks like a Take Care Clause violation and a separation of powers violation under the Constitution. And all of those things together signal to me that you're more likely than not to win. So I'm going to give you your temporary restraining order right now. And here are the contours of it. And this is really what the all of what the 19 attorneys general wanted. Broad. Stop what you're doing right now. And to the extent since January 20th you've gotten anything off those servers, you are to destroy that information and not use it. Now, some people might say, well, how do we know they're going to do that? That's a good question. They're going to have to file a certification ultimately, probably with Judge Vargas, to show compliance with this order, even though the order doesn't technically say that. We as federal court officers know that's what it means. So they better be prepared at the Friday hearing in front of Judge Vargas that you and I'll report on to tell how they've complied with Judge Engelmeier's ruling about destruction and he's serious about it. And people say, well, what if they don't do that? Okay, then the judge will hold a contempt hearing and it'll probably be Judge Engelmeier, although it could be Judge Vargas about non compliance. And you'll see Cabinet like, like Scott Bessette, the Treasury secretary who's been sued is going to have to show up and explain why the things weren't taken out of Elon Musk's hands. So this is all important because it's a blueprint for how we win and how we beat a presidency that's trying to rule only through fiat and executive order. The silver lining of that is because Donald Trump doesn't color within the lines and doesn't understand the limits of executive orders. He's constantly touching the third rail of constitutional violation and or administrative procedures act violation or all, or all two of those things which gives us the wind at our sail in all of these 41 cases that you and I over time will talk about many, many tonight. Lastly, on that point, before I give you the the others, before we move on to the others, is the that is stands in stark contrast just to switch to politics for a minute to the Do Nothing 119th Congress. They can't get a darn thing passed. They're not even trying. But they're basically become, you know, it's like, what's it, Mr. Irrelevant. The last pick in the draft, they become completely irrelevant. Donald Trump ignores them except when he tries to use them for blocking and tackling for any of his crazy policies. But otherwise they, you know, we, we don't talk about policies that they passed or laws that they passed because they haven't done any. It's all watching this play out and trying to get Donald Trump's most obscenely unqualified cabinet picks confirmed. We'll talk later about Pam Bondi already being confirmed to what she did on day one. And I'll do some criticism about the confirmation process when we get there. So that's Elon Musk being blocked on that and Elon Musk getting blocked again by another federal judge. We haven't had an overlap of judges yet about his putting in his words US aid. And it's $60 billion that it gives out as part of our diplomacy and promotion of interest and economic interest worldwide through a wood chipper. He actually used that reference from Fargo. I assume he loves that phrase. He just, he just destroyed and fired over a thousand people. This is Elon Musk making his own decisions about things without reference to the apa, Constitutional law or any or the Congress or anything else, fired everybody, turned it over to Marco Rubio and just in a very inhumane way, turned off federal funding to everything overseas, including those that promote our interests. And all that's done besides the inhumanity of it. Besides the people that are literally going to die because of they don't have food, water, shelter, disease control or anything else. And doing it, I just want to make a point here. Doing it is not only Russia's wet dream, but it was part of the rationale they've been using. Both Trump and Musk is quoting Russian troll and Russian disinformation that's been up on the Internet feeding, right, playing right into their hands. Elon Musk said one of the reasons he was getting rid of US aid is because he said $40 million was given to Hollywood actors to go overseas. That is a Russian troll bold face lie. And Donald Trump said condoms to Gaza before he was talking about building condos in Gaza. That's a whole nother issue of him being unhinged. The both of those things are complete lies. In fact, usaid before Trump takeover must take over, had a debunking section on their website about the condoms and the Hollywood bs, which has now been taken down. That's the other thing that fascists do, right? They scrub the website in an Orwellian fashion of anything that doesn't fit with their new narrative, their new false truth. Right. The new Pravda. So USAID goes out of business at the same time that American aid, through states and not for profits, gets shut off, except for judges stepping in and stopping that from happening. So TRO is related to that as well. Every major financial, economic thing that Donald Trump has tried to try has been stopped in its tracks by a federal judge with more to come. Where do you want to go next, Ben? I'm going to keep you on your track. Where do we want to go?
- [46:08]
Ben Mycelius
Yeah, let's talk about FBI agents, let's talk about the buyout offer. But first, I think let's take a quick break. I want to remind everybody about, you know, your new venture. Whenever anybody in my midas orbit is, is taking a big swing doing something new. I know you've always wanted to start your own firm. Just get, give everybody that number just in case they've got, you know, a personal issue, whether it's anything like a car accident or their own employment issue. And they want to get Popoc and the network of Popoc lawyers that they go to. Where do they go?
- [46:40]
Michael Popak
And let me do one pitch also for Legal AF, the YouTube channel. We haven't talked about it tonight. We're, we're, we're going to hit 500,000 in, in less than six months. And that's a testament to the, our audience, how engaged they are, how loyal they are and how hungry they are to help us build another pro democracy channel. I curate it for sure in collaboration with Midas Touch, but can't do it without them. And we've just been overwhelmed with, with the support that we're getting there. And then we're doing our part putting out the content on a regular basis. Six, eight, ten videos a day, every day over on Legal AF mtn. Yeah, I mean, look, it was a natural segue for me after you and I built Legal af, especially post election is like to leave my day job. You know, it's a big leap. But leave my day job inside of a firm that wasn't doing these things. And so I can direct a firm in my own image the way I wanted it to. That's consistent with the ethos and the ideals of what I do here on legal af. And so the popoc firm.com is where to go. You'll see. We've got about 15 different types of cases that we're interested in helping you with and you can flip through all of those and then, you know, so I can't be everywhere at once. So I'm only one guy and I am committed to you and your brothers to go full time really with Midas Touch and Legal af. And so the law career, I wanted to be able to kind of stand up quickly a law firm. And so after doing a lot of searching, we decided, I decided to do a collaboration with Big Auto, which is just a name for a group, a network of really sophisticated high end lawyers in your towns, in your cities, in your courthouses. And so that's why that collaboration there just made perfect sense, kind of gave me instant breadth and depth in areas and frankly in states where I don't regularly practice. So, and the 800 number is easy. It's 1-877-popak AF. 1-877-popak AF.
- [48:41]
Ben Mycelius
Everybody make sure you hit subscribe now. Help the Midas Touch YouTube channel get to 4 million subscribers. We're almost there. Let's take our last quick break of the show.
- [48:50]
Michael Popak
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- [52:57]
Ben Mycelius
Welcome back to legal af. Thank you to those pro democracy sponsors. Jordy spends a long time negotiating those deals with those pro democracy sponsors. So the discount codes that he gets for our Legal AF viewers, it's in the description below. Make sure you click the link. We appreciate those pro democracy sponsors. A lot going on in a lot of different courthouses. Let's talk about first, let's talk about the federal judge in Boston who has temporarily it's Judge O'Toole who temporarily enjoined the federal government from implementing mass buyouts at federal agencies until at least this week, the U.S. district Judge, George A. O'Toole Jr. Announced he was blocking the, quote, fork in the road buyout program temporarily to allow the parties more time to brief their arguments. Now, lawyers from the various unions and other groups that were filing this lawsuit said that, number one, it's an unlawful buyout because there's no appropriation money for it. So if you take the buyout, there's no money from Congress to actually pay you for it. So where's that money coming from? The way a country exists, that's a democracy, laws have to be passed and then the money goes to those buyouts, if that's what Congress actually wanted to happen. Then they also argued that the buyouts were coercive in nature, not actual buyouts, because they were also joined with the threat if you don't take the buyout you get fired. So that's not an actual buyout. That just literally a shakedown different than a buyout. And so those were the main arguments made there. The judge pressed, paused on the buyouts. We're also seeing the fact that those buyouts have already been demonstrated. I wonder if we're going to see this in the future briefing on Monday. But the buyouts have already been proven to be, you know, kind of fabrications, at least with respect to a bunch of IRS workers who took the buyout. Donald Trump said he's going to fire all the IRS agents anyway. So a bunch of IRS agents said, all right, screw it, we'll take the buyout, I guess. And then they were told, actually you have to work through tax season because we actually need you there. And they were like, what? I thought you said you were abolishing the IRS and you were going to start the External Revenue Service and that all the money was going to come from the tariffs that were going to come from Canada and Mexico and, and, and Colombia, apparently, and Panama and Europe and all these other places you were going to tariff. So you said you didn't need an irs, but now they apparently need an IRS for tax season. So it just goes to show you that these buyout offers are kind of bs, not kind of our bs. And here's another point that I'll make as well, and that is, look, the bottom line is that we live in a democracy. So if Congress wants to pass laws and that the laws say we are defunding usaid, you know, the Congress says we're getting rid of, you know, all of these agencies, we hereby. It goes to the House. Republicans control it. Right? It goes to the Senate. Republicans control it.
- [56:19]
Michael Popak
Right?
- [56:19]
Ben Mycelius
It gets signed by a president. Republicans control it.
- [56:23]
Michael Popak
Right?
- [56:24]
Ben Mycelius
So just go through the process. Why do they not want to go through the process? Because they know that they actually can pass it despite controlling all branches. So they're going through a system that's called dictatorship. In dictatorships, somebody Trump or Elon Musk decrees it. And then it happens. That's not our system. Our system is slower and messier, but it relies. But ultimately it is to build coalitions and ultimately try to express the will of the people because we know the history of authoritarians and dictators doesn't end well for the populations that they rule. America is a reaction that we don't want that. And that's precisely what they're doing. So I think it's important that I make that point there. Also, I want to talk about the fact that there's another case, multiple cases filed actually by FBI agents against the Department of Justice, because the DOJ wants to publish the names of the FBI agents so that the jet. Let's be clear why. So that the January 6th insurrectionist can get their hands on the information and retaliate against the FBI agents. If any FBI agent was involved somehow, some way, even Tangentially, in a January 6 related case, which counterterrorism and espionage and top FBI agents would ostensibly be working on. Because we all saw with our eyes that there was an insurrection attempt of the Capitol Building. They've been getting fired, but not only that, or being placed on leave. They want, the DOJ wants to just make their names publicly available. And, you know, all of these FBI agents have said, look, these insurrectionists, these bad people, these Oath Keepers, these proud boys who Donald Trump pardoned, they're going to go, they're going to kill me. They're going to try to kill my family members, they're going to try to kill people that I, you know, people that I know, my kids. And then what? Trump's just going to pardon them again? Apparently. Because Trump pardons these violent insurrectionists who tried to kill cops before. So it's not like there's a legal process anymore. Trump has his thugs running around on the street, making this all less safe as he guts the FAA and guts all our government agencies, making us all less safe in general. Biggest flu season ever, by the way. Ebola case in Africa, by the way. Seems like every day there's another plane crash or there's a train being, you know, you know, imploding or something that I'm seeing, you know, or that we're reporting on every single day we're being, we're less safe in general. Sorry, I digress there, but I think it's important to connect all of us to we are less safe under the Trump administration. But these FBI agents saying we're not safe. And by the way, we the people are less safe when our top FBI agents, who are the ones who investigate trafficking, who investigate drugs, who, you know, who do the fentanyl seizures, they're all getting fired. And so is our CIA. CIA in any event, Judge Boasberg, remember that name, he's the chief judge in Washington, D.C. he made findings that there's real, credible threats to FBI agents. There's now a process in place where, you know, pending a more preliminary injunction, but at the emergency stage, that if any names are going to be leaked, each FBI agent has a two day Period to bring a writ or to file some documents before the judge to stop it from happening. So it was a win for the FBI, a win for the FBI agents there. Popak, there's a few other injunctions that we could talk about. I mean, this, this injunction that was issued by Republican Judge Lamberth Reagan appointee on what Donald Trump was trying to do with the transgender women in prison populations. And I should mention as well, I mean, you know, you know, cruelty is the point here. I don't know if anybody saw this. We posted it. Not a lot of news is covering it. But we cover that. We cover important news on the Midas Dutch network. So Congresswoman McBride, the first transgender woman congresswoman from Delaware and she doesn't like, like her whole thing too is people elected me because I helped Delaware, not because I'm a transgender woman. So just, I'm not making identity part of my representation of Delaware. I'm just trying to represent the people. But popac, they try to torture her, the Republicans in the House of Representatives. So one of the things they always do now to bully her is they'll always refer to her as the gentleman or the Congressman or Mr. And so when they, you know, there'll always be a presiding pro tem speaker and whenever they have Congresswoman McBride speak, they'll say, what would the gentleman like to say? Mr. McBride, you may speak. And so they're doing that. That's what the Republicans are doing in this moment of history. Just cruel for the sake of cruelty. Like, again, even if it's hard for me to wrap my head around the cruelty. But just why, why, why just be jerks like that, just be normal and, and treat her with respect, number one. Number two, you have in the prisons. Donald Trump's executive order would take the transgender women out of the people. Women who have been there, transgender women who have been in women prisons their life, remove their medications, stop them from getting medication. And these are transgender women who have women genitals, breast and vaginas, move them into the male population, force them to shower with the men, live with the men and take them off their medication. The finding by this Reagan appointed judge, cruel and unusual punishment. Cruel and unusual punishment under the United States Constitution. And that's similar language to the Republican judge in Washington who blocked the birthright citizenship executive order of Donald Trump banning birthright citizenship. Where that judge said something like, we know that Donald Trump will refuse to follow the law. And this is the, one of the most egregious examples of that. So interesting, right, that Washington State Judge Reagan, Lamberth Reagan appointed judges, almost the Reagan judges, using some of the strongest language there, huh?
- [62:57]
Michael Popak
Yeah. And Nichols, who's a, who's a Trump appointee on the US Aid issue. Yeah. The cruel and unusual punishment. It also just shows you that the Trump administration and MAGA and the Republican Party. I'm not going to call it MAGA anymore. I'm going to call them the Republican Party. It lets the Republican Party off the hook to call it maga. Republican Party has a perverse, a use of discrimination against transgender people, which they use as a cudgel to go after all of the woke liberal, moderate, progressive ideals that are in and embodied in our government. There are only 18 transgender people in the prison system. Okay. So to change, I'm not saying it doesn't matter. Those 18. It does. But to like change a policy to, to force transgender women to be in a male population, you know, to go after these, I mean, this is, this is the, this is the right, this is the way the bully pulpit of the presidency and the allocation of resources for our government should be. That, that's our focus to taking away transgender rights, transgender people rights in university settings through the, through changes to Title VII and sports inequality. This is, this is what Donald Trump should be focused on. And Nancy Mace attacking her colleague from Delaware saying, oh, she didn't. She's not historic. There have been men serving in our Congress since its founding. It's just me, as you said, mean spirited, depraved things. It is hitting a wall that we expected this type of argument, this type of animus driven policy at the, it's, it's hitting a wall now in front of federal courts, both Republican judges and even Trump appointees and others. And, and it shows you how, how thin gruel the intellectual and legal basis for all of the Trump positions that their Department of Justice is taking. You see it, it's so threadbare that even judges, it's not even passing what you and I have always referred to coming out of law school as the straight face test, which is, can you say this argument with a straight face? And it's barely that. There was a, there was a court appearance recently about back to transgender in the military. Transgender people in the military. And I, the Department of justice for Trump attorney, actually told a federal judge that even if Donald Trump's actions to ban or reassign transgender people in the military was animated by hatred and animus, it would be okay. And the judge says, sorry, I mean, that's not okay. And here's the four United States Supreme Court cases that says it's not okay. But this is what they're trotting out and running up the flagpole, losing. The other losing that's going on as we talk about these cases is the loss of credibility and respect for the Trump Department of Justice people. And that's all you have as an attorney. You, if you lose your credibility with the jury, with the judge, with the, you know, here for, with us, with our audience, you don't have anything. You don't have anything. And so for them, this is going to pay dividends into the future for those attorneys general and those unions and those other groups, because these judges in these courthouses that we're talking about, and there's a reason half of these 41 cases are filed in the District of Columbia. This is the, as I joke, this is the revenge of not only the democratically appointed judges, it's the revenge of the Jan.6 judges who all watched in shock and horror as Donald Trump opened the jails and let the criminals out, who attacked our Capitol. After all the hard work the jury and the judges did, including through sentencing. And now these are the same judges. That's why when you mentioned earlier, Judge Boasberg, who's the chief judge and others, we're going to hear about Judge Chutkan again and a Judge Amy Berman Jackson again and Judge Mayta again and all those. And Kolar Catelli again and all the ones that because every one of those judges, people forget, this is not those 1600 cases that went through the D.C. courthouse. That was one courthouse that wasn't like spread out around America. It was the largest prosecution and investigation in our Nation's history, the Jan.6. Every judge had dozens of those cases on their docket. And so, you know, they've got, let's just say they got a little bit of an ax to grind here. They're fair, they're impartial. Yes, for sure. Including Reagan appointees. But we are watching the loss and the diminishment of the Department of Justice when they need it most as advocates, which is great because this will only help us as these cases continue. Wait, just wait until John Sauer, whose claim to fame is he was a successful criminal defense lawyer for Donald Trump and the appeals. Wait till he's confirmed as the solicitor general arguing on behalf of the United States of America on these cases at the United States Supreme Court. Because he's out. He's outlandish now. Yes, I'm going to give him credit. He won a couple of cases that were very important to Donald Trump and terrible for our constitutional democracy. But, but he takes some crazy, outlandish positions. And on these civil cases, I don't think he's going to have the buy in that he may think he has at the United States Supreme Court level. It is John Roberts, but it's also Amy Cody Barrett who's already starting to make her own kind of moving away from the orbit of Gorsuch, Alito and Thomas and, and standing in the center. Center right. Center right, right. But standing away from those guys. And that's where we have to, we have to aim for. Why don't we switch gears for a minute on the same note, Ben, and talk about Pam Bondi's first day after being confirmed when she's decided that we're getting out of the going after kleptocr. We're not going to go after oligarchs in Russia anymore and all of their yachts and the hundreds of billions of dollars that we've been able to collect there. We go collect on them and maybe even drop those lawsuits. But we're going to go after terrorist or I don't know what we're going to go after. But it looks like we're not going after Donald Trump's friends anymore and we're going to get out of the kleptocracy busting business and we're going to re. And my problem, I want to leave, I want to throw it to you this way. Bed. One thing about cross examining these people that's not going over well in the confirmation process is I would like somebody to ask the following question. What are your day one plans? You've been planning? You worked on the Heritage Foundation. You were in the America First Policy Institute. I'm sure you've got a script already of what you want to accomplish on day one, including things that have already been drafted. What are they? I want to know what they are right now. And nobody ever asked that question. So everyone's like shocked when she gets in and goes, here's the 26 things I'm going to do. I'm going to set up a weaponization of blue ribbon panel to look into weaponization for retribution purposes. I'm going to get rid of the kleptocracy going after money. I don't know where this government gets money from, by the way. If we don't go after them and we turn off the spigot of the Internal Revenue Service, I don't know how we bring in $5 trillion a year to pay. To pay for.
- [70:48]
Ben Mycelius
You want me to answer that?
- [70:50]
Michael Popak
Yeah. We don't pay it.
- [70:51]
Ben Mycelius
We take it from your Social Security.
- [70:53]
Michael Popak
Right. Entitlement. Exactly.
- [70:54]
Ben Mycelius
We take it from the people who need it. We trans. We transfer it over to the wealthy people and the government for the purpose of attacking the media. Going after people who speak out against Elon Musk and Donald Trump on social media. The money's been used.
- [71:19]
Michael Popak
It's Robin Hood in reverse. They steal from the poor to give to the rich.
- [71:23]
Ben Mycelius
I mean, it should be so obvious that that's like they're literally doing it in front of our faces. And when people are like, oh well, the whole government's like this. It's like, actually no, that's not the way it works. But you know, they've lived so much in their rage algorithm that Fox and these other right wing propagandas have had them in that some people who are, you know, MAGA supporters just say, hey, this is, this is the game. This is the hustle. This is what Biden and Obama did. So now Trump's just. Which is, no, that's not what they did at all. That this never happened. We were leading our NATO alliances, we were leading in law and order. We were supporting law enforcement. But you know, can I use, can.
- [72:02]
Michael Popak
I use one example before you transition and talk about the kleptocracy, there was all this misinformation about Joe Biden and the Biden crime family and, and money that the hunter made or didn't make representing Burisma. All this stuff. Kash Patel. I just did a hot take on this. Kash Patel, who's this close to being our FBI Director has between 1 and 5 million. This is self disclosed. 1 in $5 million of a parent company who's in China because he did consulting for them, whose main business is making fashion in China using forced labor of the Igar minority in exploiting the Igar minority in China. Eagers. Yeah. So yeah, you and me with pronunciation sometimes. But right. So he own. He owns stock in. He's got. He's was given stock as his fee in Sheehan. Right. And then. And nobody cares. Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton. Maga. Maga. And our Secretary of State did a whole expose about Sheehan and blocking them from getting SEC approval for going public because of forced labor use. The America First Policy Institute formed by Stephen Miller. Where all these people were in their shadow government days where all they had. Where they were all fellows, including Pam Bondi and this one, Kash Patel wrote a whole white paper about genocide and focused on Sheehan. And yet this guy says he's not going to sell the stock that he hasn't yet earned. It's still being paid out to him investing, because he doesn't see how that would impact anything that he would have to do in the remit of being the FBI director. I don't know, human trafficking, I mean, the level of denial, this is beyond not passing the straight face test. So we're okay with that with him becoming the FBI director, but we were worried about Hunter Biden being on a board.
- [74:05]
Ben Mycelius
You know, look, I don't want to fully get into the Hunter Biden stuff because then I get into a both sides ism and then I elevate. Hunter never served in a government position under the Biden administration. He never had any position of power to do anything, period, Full stop. He didn't make millions of dollars, you know, full stop. And also the Burisma board was actually, the purpose of it was to put somebody who was more reflective of democracy to push Burisma away from Russian oligarchs a little bit towards the West. And Hunter was recruited by the Democratic president, pro democracy, former president of Poland, to do it. And it was at a time when everybody thought Biden was never going to run again. So I just, I just want to give those facts. And he never had a position in the Biden White House. Pam Bondi. Pam Bondi was in the Oval Office chilling with Donald Trump and Clarence Thomas when all of this was announced, just as Clarence Thomas was hanging out in the, in the Oval Office with Trump and Bondi. There's a photo of them together. So literally a judge who has been bribed off by the oligarchs next to the Attorney General, Pam Bondi and Donald Trump all there together. This as they dismantled the kleptocracy unit that went after the Russian oligarchs money in the United States. So that's gone. So what does that mean? That means that there's nobody who's going to be able to prosecute the Russians going around the sanctions. So right now you know how Donald Trump's like, I guess I'm going to have to tariff Russia. There's. You don't need to tariff Russia. Tariffs on Russia would be a benefit to Russia because that implies they could open up their trade into the United States, which they're sanctioned from doing. So the kleptocracy unit would seize the yachts, seize the money that was being laundered into the United States. So now Russia is going to push all of this was a major win to Russia to evade the sanctions, push their money into the United States. And now there was a slush fund of money that, you know, billions of dollars that was already taken from oligarchs that now is going to be used. We don't know what. In a cryptic memo, Bondi says for other purposes. But one can assume that because Trump's talked about creating a sovereign wealth fund.
- [76:29]
Michael Popak
With Elon Musk, which basically means, let me pick up.
- [76:34]
Ben Mycelius
That's probably, you know, and look, if America is running, if Trump is adding trillions of dollars in debt, you, you don't do sovereign wealth funds in the United States of America. We would not want state run sovereign wealth funds are, you know, they betray everything that they claim that they stand for. It's not about governments taking sovereign wealth funds and doing good projects and taking your Social Security money to do that.
- [77:01]
Michael Popak
So with it. So, so when you talked about the Clarence Thomas. Let's keep Ben up there for a minute. When you talk about the Clarence Thomas photo with Pam Bondi and Trump. I have a photo in my office, a famous photo in Havana of Al Capone with the chief judge of the Miami Dade Circuit Court and the mayor of Havana. It's a very famous photo. And it just sort of reminded me of that. This sovereign wealth fund boondoggle, just so people know it is where the government uses your taxpayer dollars and funds that they have to invest in private companies like Saudi Arabia, Norway and other places that have a surplus. In other words, they take in more money than they spend on social services and other programs. They sometimes do that when their economies are not our size and otherwise oligarchs do it. It's an avenue for corruption. It's a way for Donald Trump to avoid Congress and its appropriations role under our Constitution and have a slush fund through sovereign wealth that he can dole out by avoiding Congress directly to his friends, investors and special projects like TikTok. He even mentioned maybe the sovereign wealth fund, meaning you and I are going to buy a Chinese entity off of China called TikTok because Donald Trump wants you to. And so even the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch came out and said, this is a destroyer of wealth. That was the headline. Donald Trump destroyer of wealth. And, but, but, but every time you hear we're going to get rid of a fund of money coming in or divert it, then it's, you're going to see it in places popping back up where Donald Trump can control it. He doesn't want to turn it back to the general Treasury. He doesn't want to turn it back where, where it's supposed to be constitutionally for the Congress to handle. He wants a presidential slush fund. And that's why this, the sovereign wealth thing is so shocking. And then they're lying about it on top of it. Scott Bessant, the Treasury Secretary, said, well, we'll just monetize our assets. Okay? The United States has $5 trillion worth of assets on a balance sheet. Yes, there's a balance sheet, but like half of it is equipment and property it owns. How are you going to monetize that? Put it on a collateralized shelf and sell stock in it. I mean, I mean, you could try to do it like a collateralized mortgage unit and try to sell it off or. And then the other half of it is student loans. So how, I mean, are you going to package them all up and sell off people's student loans so people can invest in it? It's just, it's just, it's just nonsense. It's like using our money to buy Bitcoin and cryptocurrency to benefit Donald Trump and others, to create a strategic stockpile. You know, this is not where, as I said in a hot take, get your hands in your mitts of my public money. If you want to go, you all came from business. If you want to stay in business and go with accredited investors who have money and you want to go sell them on, whatever, you want to go do it. But, but the treasury, the US treasury is not your plaything, is not your personal piggy bank. And that's why we have to call out every one of this. But all we're watching, whether you put the name Pam Bondian or you put the name Scott Vicentin or Marco Rubio, these are all meat puppets. These, these people don't have any real power whatsoever. This is Donald Trump with his small band of Heritage Foundation Project 2025 and Elon Musk. This is where the, it's coming out of that stew of the brain there. And he's just directing traffic, telling Bondi what to do and Scott Beset what to do. And Elon Musk is doing the bidding, as you and I predicted. Elon Musk has effectively become the co president. I mean, you hear things like the, the press secretary, what's her name, Carolyn Levette, say out loud, well, we're going to let Elon Musk decide if he has any conflicts of interest of his own economics with government service. I'm like, sorry, Elon Musk is going to decide if he's in conflict or Elon Musk is going to make direct referrals to the FBI for investigations related to corruption. I'm like, I'm sorry, who voted for this guy?
- [81:42]
Ben Mycelius
You know, did you see this? Popak, the United states attorney in D.C. i think we have a copy of that memo from the DC Attorney and it just says via X Elon Musk's platform that. Dear Mr. Musk, we've gotten your referrals. We will be investigating all of the networks and all of the people who have. Not that one. It's the one that has the DC Letterhead on it. It's from Ed Martin, who's the United States attorney now from D.C. and he's someone who said that the January 6th insurrectionist should be revered. And, you know, and he put that memo up. Popak, let me leave us with this right here. Sure. The Wall Street Journal headline from April in the Biden administration. The Wall Street Journal headline today, United States economy the envy of the world last April. Today the mood of the American consumer is souring. Tariff threats, market turbulence, calling jitters early in Trump's second term. This is supposed to be the honeymoon period. America already wants a divorce or a restraining order, and lots of groups are getting that restraining order. This is supposed to be the time where you rally around whose ever was just elected, kind of regardless of your political party. And you cheer the person on as they, you know, it's supposed to be the victory lap. They walk around. They do, you know, they, they do these appearances and I guess because the Super Bowls tomorrow, I will, I'll leave everybody with this, you know, point. I represented Colin Kaepernick in his case against the NFL. And I saw a lot of players being asked questions of like, well, what do you think it's like with, with, you know, Trump being in. With Trump being in, you know, being at the game, how does that make you feel? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, Colin took a knee, stood up Donald Trump called him SOB Told him to get off the field. Colin stood up for his values. He never got a job again. But Colin can look himself in the mirror and Colin can know where he stood in history. And to all of these, you know, players and coaches and others who are normalizing this fascistic takeover of our country, those who are normalizing this when it's hurting them in their communities and their families, you know, I'll just say to you that there's going to be a time where you're going to have to explain to, you know, your kids or grandkids or others in your life in general where you were in this time of history and what did you do and were you complicit? Did you obey and did you comply with the orders of the oligarchs? Were you tools of the oligarchs? And when you see Donald Trump sitting in that box looking down at you, he sees you as his playthings. He sees you as his propaganda tools. And you should know that take, take what you want from it, but know that you're going to have to look at yourself in the mirror. And you know that's for you and whoever, whoever else you think that you answer to, judge that. But you live once and you know, and we're all going to unfortunately leave this earth at some period of time. So I think you should rather want to live with courage and with dignity than with constant cuts of humiliation over and over again at the expense of this orange blob thing that is seeking to destroy what we all cherished about our great country. I'll tell you where we stand here at the Midas Touch Network and Legal af. That's with our democracy. That's with we the the people. We will fearlessly fight every single day until they literally rip this microphone from my very hands. We will be here fighting with you, bringing attention to these issues. And as I think we're going to start to see peaceful protests taking place across the country, it's important that we keep growing this network so we know where and how to organize best. So please make sure you hit subscribe. Let's grow this to 4 million subscribers. Check out Michael Popo's YouTube channel, the Legal AF YouTube channel. It's great. It gets all of the legal takes in case we miss any here and you want to dig deeper into the legal issues. Legal af, it's a rocket ship. It's growing like crazy. Check out patreon.com legalaf as well. We don't have outside investors here, so that helps grow this show. That's patreon.com legal AF subscribe on audio podcast to legal AF as well. The Midas Touch podcast actually beating the Joe Rogan show right now was number one of all news and it was number two of all podcasts in general across all categories. Thanks to you. And make Legal AF go up on the charts there as well. Popa quickly, the phone number if they wanted to reach out to the law firm, if there's car accident, employment case, what have you.
- [86:41]
Michael Popak
What's the phone number, it's 1-877-POPAK AF and the law firm's website is pop pope the popoc firm.com. let me just say one thing as you gave statistics and talk about our ratings. Let me talk about on the way out. The good news is America is not buying whatever Donald Trump is selling and he has already, according to the Gallup poll, he's already at the bottom, as you said, the honeymoon period of ratings for a president to start his administration. And it's only going to get worse. He's at 47% which actually sound high me and it's the lowest of any president since 1953. It's 10 points lower than Joe Biden. It should be in the 60s and 70% during the honeymoon period. So he comes in at the lowest historical ratings in the history of the start of a presidency. And it's only going to go downhill from there. We'll continue to cover all it from how the how the lawyers, public interest groups, attorneys general, unions, you name it. Midas Touch Legal AF and how we're winning in courts, the right courts around America.
- [87:49]
Ben Mycelius
Thank you for watching Legal af. We appreciate you legal efforts. Thank you to our mods. Thanks to this incredible community. You are critical to our growth. You're critical for the safety and security of our democracy here and abroad. Keep telling friends, family, co workers about this show. Keep spreading the truth. Keep your courage, keep your power. We'll keep fighting for you. Shout out Legal A Effers Shout out Midas Mighty. You are no dummy, but you're kind of acting like one.
- [88:31]
Michael Popak
You used to crush it in school.
- [88:33]
Ben Mycelius
Outsmarting opponents on the field. And now, well, you're still smart, but.
- [88:37]
Michael Popak
Not exactly challenging yourself. You could be advancing nuclear engineering in the world's most powerful Navy. You were born for it. So make the smart choice.
- [88:47]
Ben Mycelius
You can be smart or you can be nuke smart.
- [88:50]
Michael Popak
Become a nuclear engineer@navy.com nukesmart America's Navy forged by the sea.