Michael Popak (0:00)

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Chuck GPT (0:11)

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Michael Popak (1:31)

The Return of Popak Live. I've been doing a lot of work on building the legal AF YouTube channel. It's not that I'd forgotten about POPOC Live. It's just with all the other things, great things that are happening with our build of our pro democracy independent media, including the brothers winning Webby of the Year for Podcast of the Year. We now get we now got to get back to POPOC Live. It is important and the things that have happened in just the last 48 hours, 24 hours, an hour as we're recording is what I'm going to capture and talk about right here only on the Midas Touch Network and for Midas Touch and Legal af. Here's the headlines. If you're following at home, if you're playing the Save Democracy Home game, here's the five things we're going to talk about today. We have major updates. I even dare I say breaking news coming out of the Abrego Garcia media case with Judge Zinnis in Maryland. I'm not kidding. There's some new filings some new developments and we are finally going to puncture the balloon. Pop the split screen of Donald Trump lying the American public in person while secretly telling the judge that they may be obeying with the United States Supreme Court. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna unwrap that riddle for you here. Brago Garcia. Update Alien Enemies Act. I've done dozens of hot takes about Donald Trump's fraudulent use of the Alien Enemies Act. The tail wagging the dog, the creation of a phony war with Venezuela. I defy you right now. Open your window. Open your window. Stick your head outside, tell people you're mad as hell and you're not going to take it anymore. And while you're doing that, look around for enemy combatants from Venezuela. I defy you and those that come on here occasionally to troll, but only pump up our numbers. Meet me in the chat. Tell me the last time you bumped into anyone 1 degree, 5 degrees or 10 degrees of separation between you and Trend Aragua, the narco terrorist gang out of Venezuela. That's who we're at war with. Yet. Yet. While three, no, make it four federal judges have all independently in different places, Colorado, Maryland, Texas and New York have all said the same thing. This is not an enemy incursion. This is a migration. This is a gang. This is, this is criminal. You know, we can deport them under immigration law, and if they commit crimes, we can prosecute them. But it's not a war. We're not at war with Venezuela. Venezuela has not been taken over, at least today by the Trend Aragua gang. And except, of course, we got an outlier, one Trump judge who used to be in the JAG Corps, who used to be a captain in the Army. JAG Judge Haynes in Pennsylvania, the Western District. She decides in her analysis that all the other federal judges are wrong. And the way that Donald Trump described Trend Aragua and the incursion and the predatory attack is exactly why you can invoke the Alien Enemies Act. Are you effing kidding me? Are you legal AF and kidding me? Sorry, judge. Your honor, should I say, your honor before I put all that together? All right, we're going to talk about the Alien Enemies act and how we're on a fast track over the summer, probably to the United States Supreme Court weighing in. Then I got to take a step back. I was going to say, I've got to take the plane up 5,000ft because there is a plane involved here. The grift, the kleptocracy is on full display with Donald Trump. We know. We know for a fact. This is not my opinion, although I give you a lot of my opinion. I give you a lot of my commentary. This is a fact, an immutable fact. Donald Trump set up with his family a influence peddling mechanism to sell influence, to sell the presidency and get back billions of dollars to line the family pockets while he's in office. It's called cryptocurrency. It's called Meme coins. It's called using World Liberty Financial as a, effectively an exchange that Donald Trump controls and gets a commission every time there's a buy and sell of his Meme coins. He doesn't care about you. He doesn't care about the value of the Meme stock. He cares about velocity. He cares about the, the volume of sales because he gets a little piece for every one of those. So if you want to buy a presidency, it's on full display and on sale. You don't have to worry about violating campaign laws by having foreign entities that want to gain influence over Donald Trump do it by way of an illegal donation or a bribe and have them picked up by some CIA or FBI and prosecuted. No, no, no. You can just buy meme coins. You can just use your digital wallet to influence a presidency and give billions. I'm not making this number up either. And I don't want people to get fatigued when we talk about Donald Trump and stealing billions. He's already made half a billion dollars since he's been in office because he's made the Oval Office into a personal money printing machine and his family, too. So memes. Right. Controlling the liquidity pool around it. Yes. Getting a commission every time somebody buys and sells. Oh, yes. A new public company that his family has just started, it's got a great track record. They founded it in March, they're going public with it in May. Hooray. Another way people can. Another way to sell off a piece of the presidency on the taxpayer dimension. Every time Donald Trump goes somewhere as part of his pump and dump scheme, part of his money laundering, part of his tax evasion scheme, and he flies the plane or they take him in a marine helicopter or whatever, it's $40 million of your and my money to promote his personal business ventures. And I'm going to put the Cut the Cutter airplane into perspective tonight as well, because that's not just a grift that'll never work, by the way. That is also it's a tax fraud and a tax avoidance scheme and it's a money laundering Scheme. And I'm gonna talk about that as well. And then Donald Trump, you know, when you open up his tool bag, all he's got in there is sledgehammers. There's nothing else. There's no surgical tools. There's. There's no pliers. There's no wrench. Just. There's wrenches, too. I think it's filled with monkey wrenches. And sledgehammers is just destroy and throw monkey wrenches in the gears of democracy and our constitutional republic. And now he's turned. He's wheeled his cannon, his sledgehammers, to aim at Congress. I don't know why they thought they'd be immune, you know, MAGA Congress, which controls both. Well, he's going after law firms, he's going after judges, he's going after the judicial system. He's going after the judicial branch, he's going after hospitals, he's going to. He's going after universities. We're safe. No, you're not. Because Donald Trump just decided that not only could he fire the person who is responsible for the Library of Congress, which is right in the title, it's the Congress's library. It's their research institute. It is to help them be legislators and make legislation. Besides the fact it has an archive and, you know, a lot of things are reposited there. But know and the copyright division is there. And so movies, you know, classic movies and books and things like a time capsule is preserved at the Library of Congress. I'm hoping one day that legal A After podcast, along with the Midas. Midas Touch podcast, are going to be preserved, you know, trapped in amber, like my glasses at the Library of Congress. But Donald Trump didn't just fire the person, had been in that job for almost 10 years, the first African American to ever hold the job. But then he tried to do a hostile takeover of the Library of Congress through the Department of Justice and sending down his main henchman, Todd Blanche, his former criminal defense lawyer, to go down and do battle and become the acting Library of Congress librarian. Like, he doesn't have a day job. And there was a standoff. I never thought my mouth would form these words. There is a standoff at the Library of Congress. One side of the battle. Librarians. I'm picturing pocket protectors and pencils and Dewey Decimal somehow. And on the other side, the Department of Justice, feckless for Donald Trump. And the Capitol Police, of all entities, had to come out. Imagine what the Capitol Police is thinking these days. Their service, they're serving ultimately A MAGA Senate, a MAGA House, and a MAGA Trump who did not have their back, literally, and gave reprieve to 1600 insurrectionists that attacked the Capitol Police and the Metro Police. And now, because they're civil, because they're servants, civil servants and law enforcement, they got no choice. They gotta go now and bail out these yahoos. When almost a fist fight breaks out, metaphorically speaking, between the Department of Justice and the Library and the acting interim head of the Library of Congress as they're trying to sort things out, what is going on, on, besides utter and sheer unhinged madness by the Trump administration? And I don't want you to come away from POPOC live going, oh, my God, it's like drinking from a fire hose. It's hopeless. It's not hopeless. Every day we're one day closer to the midterms, and every day don't even wait that long. I assure you there has been a major change in your state's voter registration obligations or requirements. If you, especially if you're in a red state, I assure you that if you think you're registered, 50, 50, you're not. Something's happened. Or, or they, or they've taken away your mail, your mail in ballot, right? Or they've. Without jumping through 17 more hoops, or they've taken away your absentee ballot, right? Or your ability to vote overseas if you're in the military. Military, they've done it. They have done it. And you've got time now to go down and fix it so that you can vote the way you want to vote, the way you're entitled to vote. But you got to do it now. Don't wait around for a day before the election when it's too late. Do it now. That's one. Besides the rallies in the streets, which I love, you know, and the acting out of the Supreme Court justices, which I love, there's ways, there's resistance, you know, and we're starting, and let me just before we transition, to start the show, this is sort of my warmup. This is what happens when I'm the sole, the sole anchor. There is resistance that we are seeing within the Trump administration in many forms. Not only reporting that Salon did recently, and I did a hot take on it, about people inside are now going to reporters saying, we don't know what to do. We're watching criminality, their words, not mine. We're watching lawlessness on the Trump administration. But we don't trust Congress, obviously, and we really don't trust you in the media and the courts, you know, everything's sort of tied up in the courts right now. What do we do? Very interesting. The other way we're seeing the leaks. The other way we're seeing resistance is through the leaks. This has got to be the leakiest administration I have ever seen, I've ever experienced in my life. And I've been around for a minute, okay. And I've been studying American government and the American presidency since I was in college. This is. And the more they try to whack a mole and find the mole and shut down the leak and prosecute the journalists and take away the privilege, the leakier they get, the more people go out to the press and say, hey, Elon Musk is meeting with the Department of Defense and Pete Hegseth, I think they're going to talk about China. Boom. Ends up. We talk about it, it ends up in the media. Oh, we're gonna go after that person. Yeah. All the news you're hearing about Pete Hegseth circling the drain, not being able to pick out his own chief of staff because they put him in a rubber room with, With. With, you know, rounded, rounded scissors so he doesn't hurt himself. That's all leaks. All the stuff we're getting out of. About the cutter gift of the $400 million plane. First it was announced by Donald Trump. Oh, I just got a big, beautiful plane. A big, beautiful gift of a plane. It's going to be free to the taxpayer. Major lie. It's not going to cost them anything. Major lie. And then I'm going to take it with me when I leave. That's true, but Democrats could never swing a deal like this. Like all of. I don't know, I still. Like I saw. You sound like Michael Cohen and Ben Mesalis had a baby with that impersonation. Sorry, folks. So you have that, but all the leaks started coming out. Well, maybe the paperwork's not really done. Maybe Pam Bondi and the other lawyers haven't really figured it out. Maybe there's no contract. Maybe Qatar is having second thoughts of being involved with a major league bribe scandal before our very eyes. And they're saying, pump the brakes. Maybe this is all a ridiculous troll to take away from the fact that Donald Trump has other problems, like he lost the trade war with China. Yeah. And of course, they want to use these things distractingly. Like, you know, the new book that comes out about Joe Biden. Oh, we talk. You know, listen, whatever Joe Biden's deal was during his presidency, that's between him, his God, and the American people. We voted him in. We liked the job he did. Everybody thought he was going to be a one termer anyway. Should he have left a little bit earlier? Probably. Would that have changed the outcome? Maybe if we had a primary. I like Kamala Harris like the next person, but she would have been a better candidate and we would have been more connected to her had she gone through a primary. There's no doubt about that. Say what you want about the. Say what you want about the American people, but we like process and we like primaries. It's just, just been going on forever. So leaky, leaky. Leaky is the watchword because this is an act of resistance. This is a way that people inside can undermine or restrain the worst instincts of Donald Trump and those around him. Okay, so that's the show. Everybody stick around. You come for that long winded intro. But just stay for when I get into each topic one by one. I'm gonna, I'm gonna. As I said, I'm gonna start with Abrego Garcia. Let me start there and then we'll get into the rest. So to remind everybody or to bring everybody up to speed, Armando Abrego Garcia, guy living in Maryland, picked up by immigration had an order in his back pocket from an immigration judge that said if you ever deport this guy, you can't deport him to El Salvador because they'll kill him. Went through an appeal process and he's got his get out of jail free card. They pick him up in front of his kid, 5 year old US citizen, daughter or son. He says to ICE, I've got this piece of paper. They say it's revoked. Talk about judge, jury and executioner on the streets. And they load him in to a van, whisk him off to two detention centers before his wife even knows where he is. She's a US Citizen too. And now he's got a head shaved and he's being shackled. And she sees him in a picture being loaded into Sea Cot, the now infamous El Salvadoran maximum security prison. She sees him. And then we start the process. Every judge that's looked at the issue, from Judge Sinnis in Maryland to the two different panels of the fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, one led by Judge Wilkinson, a major Republican icon, and nine zero at the United States Supreme Court. So let's do the math. 90 plus 60 is 150 plus Judge Sinnis. 16 0, 16 different judges, 1616 events have all said Judge Zinnis is right. Due process rights of Abrego Garcia violated. He was illegally their term, not mine, deported and removed to El Salvador. And Judge Zinnis was right, as The Supreme Court said 90 that Donald Trump and his administration must, must command, must facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia and his release from an El Salvador in prison. And ever since then, Donald Trump has done everything to contort himself to avoid doing exactly that. Although we have the new reporting that while publicly they're mocking and trolling the American people and the judiciary at their own risk, by the way, because they need the Supreme Court and all those votes for other major issues like Thursday's oral argument on birthright citizenship, I'll talk about. But there. But you see all the mocking. Senator Van Holland from Maryland goes to see cot they post a New York Times article which Stephen Miller, I'm sure with a red pen said, we've edited it for you. You'll never see this illegal guy ever again. Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, asked if we'll ever see a Brago Garcia again. If there's any diplomatic efforts being used as ordered by the Supreme Court, I'll never tell you and I'll never tell federal judge, you know, Kristi Noem, you'll never see a Brago Garcia ever come back to the United States. Donald Trump in two separate interviews. Actually, three separate interviews. Time magazine, first hundred days. Terry Moran, first hundred days. Christine Kristen Welker, first hundred days. And he flip flopped all along the way for the time. The first interview with Time magazine, he said, no one's ever asked me. They said, will, well, why don't you pick up the phone and call the dictator of El Salvador as part of facilitating his release? Nobody's ever asked me to do that. That was such a lie. What do you mean? No one but you, the interviewer, has ever asked me to do that. If somebody asked me, I'd have to think about it. I have very brilliant lawyers. Okay, so that went over not well, especially with courts, because every time Donald Trump makes a confession in a speech like that or an interview, it shows up in courtrooms. Like Judge Boasberg, who's presiding over another aspect of this case, says, I saw the president. He said he could pick up the phone and bring him back. He just doesn't want to. Was he telling the truth or was he lying? See, federal judges are human beings and they read social media and they read YouTube and they watch YouTube. They also read YouTube and they watch the Midas Touch network. We know that for a fact in some cases. So Donald, so Donald, that was the first position, second position with Terry Moran. Terry Moran says to Trump in an interview, he's in the Oval Office. I love, I love Terry because it was very dramatic and I'm a trial lawyer and I like that kind of drama. He said, you got a phone? You got a phone right there. You have a phone, Mr. President, Buelli has a phone. Pick up the phone. Call each. You call Buelli. No, I could, Terry, I certainly could do that if he was as nice a person as you say he is. But he's got MS.13 tattooed on his fingers. He doesn't. But he has MS.13 tattooed on his fingers. That's a, that's a, that's a fake meme. That's a deep fake that you, that you recycle. Well, nevertheless, I could do it, but I don't want to. And I have lawyers. They haven't told me to do it. And then we fast forward to Kristen Welker in the interview a couple days ago, and he says, yeah, I could do it. I could make the phone call. Yeah. So all these judges are watching this. And now the lawyers for Abrego Garcia are filing with the court, with Judge Zinnis, a piece of paper that calls out all the lies. And they say in their filing, we got a problem judge. In public, they say they'll never bring back Abrego Garcia. And they troll and they laugh about it. Marco Rubio, who's filing all these affidavits and declarations in court, he says he's never going to bring him back. And yet in court filings, in secret, in sealed cover of the night, they tell you what we only can presume because we haven't seen it, that they're working on diplomatic channels to bring him back. But how can we trust them and how can we believe them? And you need to administer justice in this courtroom. Strip them away of all their privilege assertions. Don't let them hide the ball. I mean, 14 different media organizations have all tried to intervene in the case to rip off all of this black tape off of everything that's been filed, especially over diplomatic channels. And then just today, Trump in one line on page two of a two page filing says, well, you shouldn't take the privilege away because it would really interfere with diplomatic activities that we're taking. How coy, how coy of you. Diplomatic activities. Maybe you should do what the Supreme Court told you to do. And what they told the judge to do is that she get to the bottom and get reports about what you are doing to bring Back Abrego Garcia, we do not trust you. We do not trust you with implementing and executing on immigration and deportation policy. You are untrustworthy. That's effectively they're filing. So Judge Zinnis is going to have to make a decision. And the backdrop of the whole Zinnis thing is she's trying to figure out, I don't think it's if anymore. It's when, when she's going to find the Trump administration in contempt. That's what a lot of this is about. You know, are they complying? And I know she's getting the sinking suspicion that they are not. And she's getting impatient with that. And then we move she could be the second judge after Boasberg to find this administration in criminal contempt about, or a probable cause for criminal contempt about not complying with a court order. And, and she's pretty powerful right now. She got defended by nine zero by the US Supreme Court. You know, she is completely in the driver's seat here. And I'm sure that's driving Donald Trump mad. You know what's driving hopefully not driving you mad? The Legal AF content. You're here on Midas Touch. Michael Popak, I do a lot of work On Midas Touch, 1415 videos a week at the intersection of law and politics. And then in collaboration with the Midas Brothers, winners of the Webby of the Year, we formed Legal AF, the YouTube channel. Legal AF YouTube. We're well on our way to 700,000 subscribers by May. We formed right before the election because we thought we needed to break the glass emergency moment, and we wanted to be ready for it. And so I've got about a dozen great contributors. I do a lot of the work there, but I curate it all for you at that same intersection of law and politics. We got Sydney Blumenthal and Sean Wallenz, who just recently joined our two most recent people. They're doing Court of History as our historians to what everything Donald Trump is doing in historical context. Can't think of two better people to do that. We've got Court Accountability Action, Alex Aronson, Lisa Graves and Mike Sachs. They look at corruption in the federal court system all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. And they bring in some amazing guests for interviews as well. Got Dina Dahl, who does a show with me called Unprecedented about the United States Supreme Court. I got Melba Pearson, formerly of the aclu, Dave Aronberg, former state attorney for Palm Beach County, Florida, Florida Law man, all here on Legal af. You want to support us Take a moment. I'll actually give you a moment. Go over to the other on another device, go over to the YouTube channel for legal AF and hit the subscribe button because that'll help us continue to grow and build all of that. Then, then we've got a new substack there. Look at that B roll. Thank you, producers. Legal af, the substack. And you know what you can get there? We've got a special section, we call it what else? Filings af. Every court filing that I talk about in hot takes and that matter at the intersection of law, politics. We post them there, you click them, you can read them right there along with ad free versions of the podcast. I do a morning briefing called Morning AF about what I saw yesterday and what I think's coming up tomorrow. And then we've got other contributions and videos there. Legal, a substack. We're up to about 40,000 subscribers. We're only about 10 days old. That's all because of you. And if you can't get your fill of all that, of course we've got Legal A off the podcast. These are the ways to support us. And it doesn't cost you anything. And we've got some amazing pro democracy sponsors. You know what that means? That phrase gets a little hackneyed. You know what pro democracy means? It means they're in favor of independent journalism and commentating like we do here. They don't tell us what to say. No, the opposite. They know what we're going to say in terms of broad strokes and they're here for it. And they know what our audience is all about and they're here for them. You know, and if any, if any advertiser told us what to say or tried to change our subject matter or our point of view, we would drop like a hot potato. And we have to be frank. So the other way to support the show is we've got these advertisers watch it. You know, we do the ad reads ourselves, we try to make it enjoyable. We try these products ourselves. But it's very important. I'm not telling you to spend money you don't have. Lord knows in this, I would never do that. But if you have a couple of extra shekels, disposable income and you find the product interesting, give it a whirl. That's how this whole, that's how this whole thing works here on YouTube. So let's take a break from. And when we come back, we going to talk about the Alien Enemies act, the cutter gift in crypto, the takeover of the Library of Congress, and a little teaser about birthright citizenship. And I'll do it in less than 20 minutes. Let's take our ad break. You insure your car, your phone, your home because if something bad happens, you want to be protected, right? But what about you? What about your income? Your family's future? This is where Policy Genius comes in. They're not an insurance company. They're a marketplace that helps people find and buy the coverage they need. And they make it simple. You can compare quotes from top insurers side by side and find coverage that fits your needs and your budget. With Policygenius, you can find life insurance policies starting at just $276 a year for $1 million in coverage. It's an easy way to protect the people you love and feel good about the future. I've seen firsthand how valuable life insurance can be when a family loses a breadwinner. 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It's got that classic relaxed linen vibe, but upgraded with Cool Max technology so you stay cool, dry and comfortable no matter what the forecast decides to do. I've got the Tech Linen polo and hoodie, and honestly, the fit is spot on. Tailored without being too tight. It's one of those outfits where you look good without even trying. The material feels super breathable and it's lightweight enough to layer, which makes it perfect for this roller coaster weather. Personally, I got my eye on their Tech Linen crew neck next. And if you're more of an understated style guy like me, Mack weldon really gets it. Classic clean lines. Nothing flashy, just really well made clothes that feel like a serious upgrade to your wardrobe. Give your closet a breath of fresh air for spring. Go to Macweldon.com and get 25% off your first order of $125 or more with promo code LEGAL AF, that's M A C K W-E-L-O-N.com promo code LEGAL A F. Welcome back. Alien Enemies act is all in the news. You know, Donald Trump has won. Interesting knack. He'll tell you exactly what he's going to do in any given moment. And, and he'll, he'll do it. They are, there's a, there's a simple evil genius to it. He told us he was going to use the Alien Enemies act on the campaign trail, and we ran a lot of hot takes and analysis about it. He said he was considering suspending the Constitution and martial law and habeas corpus. And he's now come out saying exactly that. He's got that befuddled thing with Kristen Welker. Due process, Fifth Amendment. Do I have to give due process to these people? I have some very fine lawyers. I don't know. He's got, like, an allergy with the Constitution. That's a problem for the person who's supposed to occupy the chair to defend and preserve and protect the Constitution. And the fact that he doesn't know that there's due process requirements, which is the bedrock of our criminal justice system, should give everybody a little bit of a pause that we're slipping into tyranny in this country. And then just when I thought that was the breaking news from last week, Stephen Miller, Stephen Miller holds a press conference on the gravel dirt road somewhere at the White House. And he just blithe fully says out loud, yeah, we're strongly considering suspending the writ of habeas corpus. I mean, I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my head, you know, like, like that Jim Carrey movie. Like, like. Did you just say that out loud? Yes. It's not the first time they considered it. They were going to suspend the Constitution and seize voting machines, and they had an executive order all ready to go with the first administration. We learned that from the Jan.6 committee and from Jack Smith's work. And so, no, you're not going to suspend the writ of habeas corpus under a false claim of a war with Venezuela. So you don't have to use due process. But so that, so that happened. Foreign. It's not even A slippery slope between that and declaring martial law and suspending the Constitution. It's not because a slope implies that you have to travel a distance. We've traveled. We've crossed the Rubicon. There is. That's it, man. We're there now. That's why we got to use the court systems for emergency applications and emergency filings. And trust me, and we have many of them on the Midas touch network and illegal af. We are ready. We are ready to file those lawsuits to stop Donald Trump trying to assert martial law and suspend the Constitution and take away habeas corpus rights, which is the only thing that stands between not just them, them, the foreigner, the undocumented you, you and me and the dark, damp recesses of a prison or detention center and never seeing the light of day or a federal judge. The only thing that stands between you and that scenario is the writ of habeas corpus. And so when he says that, which I'm sure was done to distract from something else going on at the moment, we have to take, we have to take it seriously. The every judge until today that looked at the Alien Enemies act and Donald Trump's phony proclamation of war, not declaration of war, that has to come from Congress. I'm still waiting. It's been almost 60 days. I still don't have a declaration that we're at war with Venezuela, which would also be news to Venezuela. And so much has come out that we know that's that has proven the lie put a lie to Donald Trump in his argument like his own internal memo with the intelligence community that we've now seen that says that Venezuelan's government and the Maduro regime is not has not been taken over by trend Aragua, nor has trender so trend of Aragua. The narco gang, drug gang does not operate. The Maduro regime, they're afraid of the narco gang. They're afraid of getting toppled by the narco gang. And they're in business a little bit with the narco gang, but they're not using them as enemy combatants to take down the United States of America. And without that, then you don't have the Alien Enemies act ability to trigger its use to deport people summarily without due process. Even then the Supreme Court has said even if you use the Alien Enemies act, you got to give notice in due process by and you got to do it by writ of habeas corpus. That's the Supreme Court. So you see the rock in our place. The Trump administration is in. They say all this crazy Shit in the, in the driveway of the White House. But in court filings, they would never say this, and they haven't said it. So we got our first judge who's decided that. And this is Judge Haynes, a Trump appointee. Very interesting background. She was a captain in the Army. She was in the Judge Advocates General's office, JAG Corps, the Army version of the JAG Corps. And so I guess she's, you know, rock solid military. But she is the only person that has decided that having random un decentralized gangs that used to live in Venezuela that have come to America is the equivalent of a predatory incursion to allow Donald Trump to repel them as military combatants. She's found a war effectively. And what it means is we've got Texas a Trump, Judge Rodriguez, who ruled against Donald Trump and found the Alien Enemies act not properly, not constitutionally or statutorily exercised. Judge Hellerstein in New York, same. Judge Sweeney in Colorado, the same. And judges in Maryland as well. And now you got this one outlier. So now they got to go up to their respective appellate courts. You know, it's got to go to the fifth for Rodriguez, it's got to go to the fourth for Maryland, it's got to go to the sixth for Colorado, and it's got to go to the second for New York and then those courts. And now Pennsylvania is in the third. So we're going to have the second, the third, the sixth, follow along at home. The second, the second, the third, the 6th, the 4th and second. I think that's it. Colorado, Maryland. Yeah, that's it. And if any of those appellate courts take a different position or they split in some way, it will then fast track and combine to the United States Supreme Court could be as early in the summer because Donald Trump keeps pressing what I call this losing hand. That's where we are with Alien Enemies Act. Let me move on to gifts and Griffs and planes and crypto quick. I've done plenty of hot takes. You can find my library, my Playlist on Legal AF, the YouTube channel. And I recommend and commend you to go over there. Donald Trump figured out early on, before he even became president, the second time, that people wanted to buy a piece of him. And cryptocurrency was the best way to do it because it's almost untraceable and digital wallets are out there. And it's. So this is a way to sell the presidency. He figured that out. And so he and his sons, including Baron, apparently, or as I like to call the three sons, three freightos of the crime family. I never knew a crime family that actually had three Freightos. Baron, Eric and Don Jr. They get into the cryptocurrency business because why else they're playboy ne' er do wells who live it off daddy's money. And so they had nothing better to do. Steve Witkoff, you're in my shadow. Secretary of State. He's Forget Marco Rubio. Marco Rubio is just window dressing. He's not really the Secretary of State. I don't care what his official portrait says. I don't care what his office says. The Secretary of State for America is Donald Trump's golfing buddy, Steve Witkoff. He's the guy that meets with Putin. Not Marco Rubio. He's the guy that met with Hamas. Not Marco Rubio. He's the one that negotiated with the Yemenis to stop the Houthis from firing on US Ships. Not Marco Rubio. Steve Witkoff. Right. And Steve, I think Steve Wyckoff, he might have gone to the Pope funeral. So that guy got Donald Trump and his family into crypto. He introduced him to two crypto bros. One who was in prison. I'm not making this up. And they created World Liberty Financial. That was like their first foray on. Along with the predecessor, the precursor to cryptocurrency and meme coins. Non fungible tokens. NFTs. Remember when he was selling those, you know, cartoonish figures of Donald Trump and all sorts of cosplay that you too could buy and then lose value with. Besides the sneakers in the back of the van, besides the, besides the Bibles, you know, all of that, it just grift, grift, grift, grift, grift, kleptocracy, kleptocracy, kleptocracy. And then he figured out meme coins, which is the cryptocurrency equivalent of NFTs, memes, you know, him dressed as whoever and has no value on it. There's nothing behind it. It's just people as it's like a novelty crypto, which is I think recorded on the. On the blockchain. But it's still novelty and he doesn't care about the value of it, even though he's pumping and dumping it. Big dinner. Top 250 wallets that have my meme coin. I'll pick the best meme. Oh, you're so close. An email that went to one of these people. Oh, you're so close. You may be in the top 250 top 20. You get to actually sit at his table. All they want is the vig. They just want the volume, the sale, the velocity. Because he's created the liquidity pool that's necessary because there's no, there's no, like there's a stock market with a ticker price and you can figure out, oh, right now this stock is trading at whatever in real time. There's no stock market or market equivalent in crypto. There's no market equivalent in bonds either. So you need market makers to make the market and to face off against the buy and the sell. And you need a pool of liquidity. He controls the pool of liquidity and so he controls the market and he gets a commission on the buy and the sell. So that's the pump and dump. And then his sons just formed a new company, zero track record, formed in March to be a crypto miner, right? To use huge data processing facilities and huge amounts of electric and water and cooling to create a cryptocurrency from an algorithm using a math formula. That's mining. So when you think mining, don't think coal miners of Pennsylvania think, know just a field of supercomputers and servers, you know, in a, you know, in a, in a room somewhere. And that's the business that they're in for like 10 minutes. Then they found a shell. Well, I don't know if it's a shell company, but it's a small publicly traded company based in Vegas called Griffin that was trading for a dollar. And it was an easy way to go fast public and sell their bullshit to the, to the investing market. So they merged with Griffin today and they started trading as American Bitcoin. Abtc. Don't buy the stock. I'm not touting it. I'm not, I'm not roaring kitty. I'm just telling you what it's trading as. It's just another way to sell Trump. You want to curry favor with Trump, do a real estate deal with him. You don't have enough money for a real estate deal. Buy a hundred thousand dollars worth of meme coins or cryptocurrency or other things, right? We've already got. It's a scandal a day with this administration. You know, like SoftBank is going to take in an investment, but it's going to be done through stablecoins that are controlled by Donald Trump so that he gets a percentage while he's the President of the United States. This is why the Democrats in the Senate are so up in arms. This is why there's legislation that's been proposed to impeach Donald Trump, among other things, for this very reason. So this is how he's grifting. And the cutter plain thing is just a tax evasion scheme. It's just a money laundering scheme. Here's what happened. End of April, the Trump family announces that they cut a deal in Qatar. Some people say it's Qatar, but I'm from the Qatar school in Qatar, which is that country that's our frenemy, that also put money in the pockets of terrorists that harm the Americans. But leave that out for a minute. And it was also Pam Bondi, you're my attorney general, she used to lobby for Qatar. And so Qatar and the Trump family do a deal, 5 billion with a B deal to develop a golf course on the water somewhere in Qatar. That's announced at the end of April. $5 billion, 10 days later, Qatar decides to give effectively a success fee to Donald Trump and his family of a $400 million 13 year old jumbo jet. If I'm the investors with Donald Trump, because he never uses his own money, it's always other people's money. So he's got limited partners for that investment. I would say, why is there money going away from the investment that should have come to our bottom line, where's my $400 million? Why does he get the $400 million in the form of a plane? So that was a way to screw the investors and put the money only in Don. Because to paraphrase, when George Steinbrenner of the New York Yankees was alive and he and the Yankees are owned as a limited partnership as well. And the joke was there is no more limited partner than a limited partner of George Steinbrenner. There is no more limited partner than a limited partner is a business. With Donald Trump, you were about as limited as. He'll just take your money, thank you very much. But you have no say about anything else. And what would appear to be a breach of fiduciary duty that you took money away from the investment is just touted as we're getting a new Air Force One. But we're not really. But we're not really. First of all, there is an Air Force One that's being built. It's just not going to be ready in time. That's what Boeing is working on. It's just not. It's not going to be ready in time for this administration. But it's already under construction. It takes years to build. It's got to be bomb proof. It's got to survive a nuclear blast. It has to be bug free. I mean that in every way, okay? Before it gets, it has to be tested before you can put the President and the Cabinet inside of it. Okay? So we're years away from that. And this is not a fix to get a loaner plane from Donald Trump which he's going to take with him when he leaves to the Presidential library. It's only going to be temporarily at our expense, but they'll never be able to do it in time because there's entire statutes that govern and protocol that govern how safe this has to be made. You know, it's like he can't ride around. It's like if it was a limousine. That's why there's a beast that has to be bulletproof and armored and bomb proof. You can't just go, hey, I just went down to my local dealership and they gave me a deal in a Suburban and I'm gonna start using it as the President. That's not how that works. So this whole. So it's just a tax dodge to get a gift over so when he's no longer president, his, his Trump Force One, which is old, so he can retire it and use this plane while you and I spend hundreds of billions of dollars a month preparing and maintaining this monstrosity. I got an idea. I thought you wanted to save money for the American people, fly around in Air Force One the way it is. How about that big, beautiful baby blue plane, the symbol of, of power in the. For America around the world. Just use that and stop trying to do a money laundering scheme. And now Qatar's backing off, too. They're like, well, we haven't really figured it all out yet. And the contract's not signed and we're still waiting for the White House. That's where all the leaks started coming out. Okay, so when I come back from my next break, I'm going to talk about the ways to support POPAC and Legal AF and the rest. I'm going to talk about Trump's attempt to take over of Congress, the Library Edition and Birthright Citizenship. We're going to have a live feed, live feed on Legal AF, the YouTube channel Legal AFMTN. We're going to, I think we put it up today or we'll put it up tomorrow with Set your reminder for Thursday. I believe it's going to start at 10am we're going to do a pregame show with Dina Dahl. We're going to do a post game. I jump into the chat at the time, it's going to be an hour and a half oral argument about birthright citizenship, but really about something really fundamentally important, which sounds boring, but it's not. It's whether one federal judge has the right to use a nationwide injunction or a universal injunction, depending upon what the constitutional violation is. When Trump, when the Trumpers wanted to pin down Joe Biden, they loved nationwide injunctions. Oh, the Texas two step. We file in a one judge, one horse town. We get the one judge we wanted, we then take it to the Fifth Circuit, which leans all the way to the right. Okay. And then off to the Supreme Court, and we get nationwide injunctions all along the way. Whether it's Reed o' Connor or whether it's Matt Kaczmarek. These are the judges. They loved it. They loved it, loved it, loved it. But now it's like, oh, we can't have, we can't have these nationwide injunctions. One single federal judge beholden to no one. This is going to be the major topic and it's going to have, it's going to change the face of American jurisprudence if they rule the wrong way, which is to take that power away from federal judges. And we're going to know within the first 20 minutes of that oral argument you're going to want to be there. I'm glad you're here on the Midas Touch network. Take a moment, hit the free subscribe button. That's one way Legal AF, the podcast, every Wednesday and Saturday at 8pm Eastern Time on this Midas Touch channel. Then we do ad free versions on places like Legal A after substack. That's a way to support us, listen to us on the audio podcast platforms. Listen, I'm jealous. I want to be podcast of the Year next year. I already downloaded the forms. There's a number of, there's a number of awards out there that you know I'm going to try for. You know what I'm talking. I need some hardware, don't you think? Leave a note in comments if you're going to support that, then the other way to support us is I've got a brand new shiny substack called Legal AF substack, we're posting five, six times a day. The other contributors are as well. And all of these legal filings that I talk about, the 30, 40, 50, 60 pages, whatever it is, the orders, they're there under. What else filings af and my white paper or briefing every day called Morning AF is there as well, along with videos, articles that are written and ad free versions of the podcast. So it's really important we're continuing where I think we're top 10 in news or bestsellers right now in substack. And it's really important that you help us build that pro democracy outlet as well. And then of course We've got Legal AF, the YouTube channel, Legal AF MTN that signals our devotion and commitment to the Midas Dutch network. I curate the channel in collaboration with the brothers. Come on over to Legal AF, the YouTube channel as well. Then of course we would not be who we are. We wouldn't be able to do what we do. We wouldn't be able to be independent. If we didn't have outside or we didn't have sponsors, I would say outside investors. We don't have outside investors, but we do have sponsors and they love us and we love them. And again, I'm not pushing it. And if you don't have the disposable income or you don't need the product, it's not the product for you. But we vetted these things. Jordy on the might, you know, the Midas touch. Jordy, the one of the brothers, he vets it, we try it, we like it. If we don't like it, we don't do it. But these are the ones that I can definitely get behind. So here's the last word from our sponsors. Did you know Fast Growing Trees is the biggest online nursery in the US with thousands of different plants and over 2 million happy customers. 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They have the best deals for your yard, up to half off on select plants and other deals. And listeners to our show get 15% off their first purchase when using the code legal AF at checkout. That's an additional 15% off at fast growingtrees.com using the code legal AF at checkout fast growingtrees.com code legal AF now's the perfect time to plant use legal AF to save today offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. All right, welcome back and thank you to our pro democracy sponsors. So Library of Congress, very important and Donald Trump society is going to take it over. It is since 1800 the place to support congressional lawmaking. So other way to put it, it sits in the legislative branch, not the executive branch. The Library of Congress is headed by the head librarian. And Donald Trump just decided as he's done with every department head, every agency head, regardless of whether it's executive or legislative branch. He fired her. She was 10 years in nine years in her 10 year Obama appointed position. She's a former educator from Chicago and she's responsible for the archive section of the of the Library of Congress and of course the research arm which helps Congress do its job. And Donald Trump wants to take it over. So not only did he fire her, which maybe he's allowed to do, and he can also appoint somebody else for permanent confirmation through set through the Senate and Congress having its own powers, separate and equal, but what he can't do is send down his his pit bull Todd Blanche, his criminal defense lawyer, his number two in the Department of Justice, to go be the acting interim head of the Library of Congress with a bunch of goons from the Department of Justice. And they were met with resistance from the Department of Justice, from the librarians who all rallied together, called the Capitol Police and they were able to throw, throw the bastards out and repel the barbarians at the gate at the Copyright Office, too, because the Copyright Office sits under the Library of Congress. And so they, they repelled those attacks. And now MAGA Congress and MAGA senators like Thune, John Thune is the head of the Senate. He came out and said, well, we got to take a look at this. The congressional equities is very important. See, they do know the word equities. They just don't like it in the phrase diversity, equity and inclusion. But what he's talking about in equities is we are a co equal branch of government. It's our library. It's right there in the title. You can't take it over. You can't get your, this is my interpretation. You can't get your sticky little mitts on our research, on our private proprietary research that goes into our co equal branch of government. So now we're going to have a fight. It's going to end up in a lawsuit going to be filed. I'm sure, if not today, sometime tomorrow, there's going to be a lawsuit about the takeover of the Library of Congress and Donald Trump breaching separation of powers and statutes related to it. And we're here for it and we're going to continue to, to, to follow it. And then lastly, I want to do a quick primer about the Thursday Supreme Court hearing. I know it starts early for a lot of people because we have a global audience. 10:00am we'll have it up after that as a video, but if you can join and join us in the live chat. We had about 10,000 people the last time. Just join us for the chat. And we have a way to do it on Legal af, where when one of the, just one of the justices is speaking, boom, boom, boom. We can put up their photo, especially when it's not obvious who's speaking. Some of the voices, as they're getting older, are starting to merge into one voice, but we're able to pick out who it is. And then I do commentary about it. And, and then we'll do Dina Dahl in the beginning and we'll do Dina Doll at the end with some commentary. It'll be very interesting. Watching oral arguments is a great teachable moment for our democracy. John Roberts just gave yet another interview. We've had our, you know, it's just, they're still in session. The Supreme Court justices are just standing up against Donald Trump in their own way. Rule of law is under attack. Judiciary is under attack. These are Supreme Court justices in the last month. You know, lawyers are under attack. We're under attack. Of course, they never named Donald Trump by name, but we all know, you know who they're talking about. And John Roberts just said at Georgetown University in an interview, he just said a version of, we need to teach more civics classes to kids in school because they don't understand what the rule of law is about. I think he's talking to Donald Trump. We have the only president in history that literally does not understand how the Constitution works or how the separation of powers work or what his job is. I've never thought. I never thought I would say that it didn't matter who the president was before Trump twice. I always respected the. The institution of the office of the presidency, regardless of my politics. I might had to bite my tongue and bite my lip before I had a podcast for four years, like if it was George W. Bush or something. But I never saw that he or that person dishonored the office the way that Donald Trump does, which he just drops his pants every day. It takes a big dump on the American people and on the Resolute desk almost every day, you know, almost every day. And so this hearing is going to be very, very important. It is. I know people are like, there's Popox. You told us there's 13 or 14 different emergency applications to the United States Supreme Court. There are. And you've told us there's other oral arguments that have happened already. There have. Then how can you tell us that this is the first oral argument about something substantive in the Trump administration? Because it is. Because in the emergency applications, there are no oral arguments, because the prior oral arguments were about stuff during the Biden administration with the Trump administration taking a position here or there. This is the first one out of the 200 lawsuits against Donald Trump where the Supreme Court is actually going to make a decision. Now, I'm not sure it's about birthright citizenship, which is Donald Trump trying to rip the beating heart of birthright citizenship out of the 14th Amendment and declare by an executive order that you are not a citizen even though you were born here. I'm not sure it's that. I think they're going to be focusing based on the way that the question was framed on the nationwide injunction power of a federal judge. Either way, we need to watch this and see how, now that they're all back together wearing the black robes and on the bench, how they're going to sort through this. This is. They've now watched 120 days or whatever it is of Donald Trump bashing them, bashing the federal judiciary, putting his middle finger up, trolling them, teasing them, tormenting them. And now he needs them at the Supreme Court. So and I've said it before, watch Amy Coney Barrett and how she handles this hearing. The last oral argument, she wasn't there. We only had eight because it was about a religious issue that she was involved with in the past or knew, pardon me, one of the advocates, she's back. It's her court because she's the right, right of center. You know, we know that Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Alito and Thomas are going to be against injunct nationwide injunctions by way of federal courts. Gorsuch is written about it. Roberts is in the center, but he's feckless. And Amy Cody Barrett is, you know, it's quickly becoming her court because she rules more in the majority than anybody else. She makes the majority. While whereas Kitanji, Brown, Jackson, I am sure Sotomayor and Kagan are going to rule that a judge has the right, depending upon the breach that's been alleged, that statutory violation or the constitutional violation to issue a nationwide injunction. What does Amy Coney Barrett thinks? You'll know it and I'll comment on it during the oral argument. Really, really important. It is officially the last oral argument of this term. We are delayed in getting by now. We normally have about 20 or 30 more opinions. The reason we don't have more opinions, official 30, 40, 100 page opinions by the United States supreme court on the 60 or 70 cases they handled this term that didn't have Donald Trump's name on it is because they're delayed with these 13 applications by Donald Trump and it is slowed them to a crawl to do their regular business of the court. So we're going to normally we have all their decisions by June 1st, mid June tops. We're going to get decisions into July and August. I told Dina Dahl who does unprecedented with me illegal af, cancel your summer plans because normally in the summer we talk about wasn't that an interesting last term and and here's the win loss record and the scorecard for Donald Trump. And there's here's the things that they're taking up for next term. Forget all that. We got 13 emergency applications and more to come over the summer and they could hold oral argument, although they generally don't. They could. So we could see one or two oral arguments over the summer and then come back to legal AF and the substack because we're going to be reporting on the 30 or 40 opinions that haven't come out yet. Really, really important. And then very little gap. We start back up again the first Monday in October with the new Supreme Court coming back with everybody a year older, including Amy Coney Barrett. I assure you, Amy Coney Barrett, it's quickly becoming her court until the Democrats get the White House back and can make Tanji Brown Jackson the chief justice. You like that? Like the sound of that? Then we're back to the call for action. Then we're called. We're back to voting. Run the bastards out on a rail at midterms. Get back the House and the Senate. Give me the House. I feel like Patrick Henry. Give me liberty or give me death. Give me the House and the Senate and I'll give you an impeachment and a removal of Donald Trump. You can't rely on the 25th Amendment because the vice president and the majority of the cabinet are never going to go along with it. Okay? So don't count on that. Active action in the street. Participatory democracy in the street's important because it pressures Donald Trump. Polling is important because it pressures Donald Trump. But we got to take him out at the midterms. I mean, the party, the Republican Party. And so let's do it here first. Join in fellowship, shoulder to shoulder on the Midas Touch Network on Popoc Live on Tuesdays on Legal AF, the substack on Legal AF, the YouTube channel, on Legal AF, the podcast. We do it together. Got to talk truth to each other first before we can even think about talking truth to power. I'm so humbled by the support I have for this regular show. I won't let you down. I'm sorry we took a couple of weeks off. It won't happen again. But in the meantime, I'm Michael Popak. I'll see you on the midweek edition of Legal AF, the Saturday edition of Legal AF, and everything over on Legal AF, the YouTube channel. So do a quick shout out to the Midas mighty and the Legal lay effers. Can't get your fill of Legal af. Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do called Wait for it Morning af. What else? All the other contributors from Legal AO are there as well. We got some new reporting, we got interviews, we got ad free versions of the podcast and hot takes where legal AF on substack. Come over now to free subscribe.