C (17:32)

At the end of the meeting there was the announcement that there was going to be the renaming of the Kennedy center to the Trump Center. At that point I said I have something to say. And I was muted. And as I continued to try to unmute, to ask questions and voice my opposition to this, I received a note saying that I would not be unmuted.

B (17:54)

So to be clear, you were cut off.

C (17:55)

I was cut off. And then it was said that now the vote is unanimous. As an ex officio member, we do have a vote. I was not allowed to vote because I was muted. I would not have supported this. I would have asked several questions about this. And in traditional fashion we would have had someone talk about why they were doing this, that they had researched this. In my opinion, it is not legal for them to do this.

D (18:20)

So we oversee their finances and we believe this is also. We also believe this is illegal. This is our living monument to jfk. We didn't build him another statue on the mall. This is something that was built for him because of his dedication to the arts and creativity and free speech. So we are currently looking for any way we can push back as members of Congress, as a subcommittee that controls their finances. But we have found them very non transparent in terms of explaining exactly how they're saying spending the money they got in the big ugly bill or what ticket sales are or anything else going on there right now. As we know, they fired the entire board except the ex officio members, which they couldn't replace them with people who just went along with the President. But I think members of Congress are going to be outraged. I know we are. We're doing a sign on letter to ask our colleagues to say this is not legal, you can't do this. And it's a real insult to the Kennedy family and to jfk.

B (19:13)

In fact, Rory Kennedy, who's RF RFK Junior's sister, she said as soon as the administration is over, she is going up on the building with a pickaxe and she's going to pick the letters off the building. But first we have the lawsuit. So the lawsuit is what you would think it would be. It's been filed in the District of Columbia federal court. It's suing every member of the board, all the people that I named at the beginning. I'm looking at you, Maria Bartiromo, and and the other ones. And it is asking the court to declare a mandamus, to force the name to be changed back to force another vote to stop this type of ultra var act from happening. Because only an act of Congress can change an act of Congress. And what's to stop Donald Trump? This is slippery slope, right? We let him get away with this and what happens next, it's going to be the Trump Lincoln Memorial or, you know, fill in the blank. He's already building an arc to triumph or arc to Trump. So I'll continue to follow. There's going to be a temporary restraining order hearing on that soon. We will follow up with all of that. Let me answer a few questions and then we're going to bring in my special guest. And just a few moments. But I think these are right on target from Lori asking me how confident are you that Trump will abide by the Supreme Court rulings that we're going to talk about. Because, because I also think the National Guard ruling is a good harbinger for the ruling against Trump on tariffs. And we'll talk about that when we get in. More on the segment. And I want to get Ag Bonta's view on that because he was also in the room for the oral argument on tariffs. The he'll abide by Supreme Court rulings. I mean, his as is crazy and insane as Donald Trump is an ax at the end of the day. He knows the end of the road. The end of the the last stop on the train is the Supreme Court. And he's not going to he'll denounce them. He'll do midnight screeds about them. He'll try to influence them in other ways. But he will not. I don't think my my personal opinion. I don't think that he will defy a Supreme Court ruling or the people in his administration. Can federal Sherry asked Can federal judges unite against the Supreme Court's unconstitutional rulings? No. I mean what we're watching is a battlefield between district court judges and the United States Supreme Court acting out. Right now we're watching appellate courts and the Supreme Court having a battle in a way that I've never seen in my lifetime. And I've asked people that are even been around longer or more historians, and they said the same thing. This is an open warfare right now. But the best that courts can do is just keep their heads down and continue to chop wood, do their job. They're going to have to apply the precedent as they see fit, you know, as, as it comes down from on high. But they know they're not going to be able to band together and kind of create their own precedent and say, well, I don't agree with what they, what the Supreme Court just said on X, Y and Z. If their case is on all fours or something similar, they're going to have to be, they're going to have to be bound by it. And then lastly, M MA I1N asks, what are the rules for Supreme Court justices when they write their dissents or their concurrences? There are no rules. They can they completely dictate their own rules. The reason we've been waiting, and I'll ask Ag Bonta, who's about to join us, the reason we've been waiting so long, five, six weeks for this ruling on the National Guard, which went against Donald Trump in a big way, is apparently we were waiting around for the 10 or 12 pages of SAM Alito to cry and whine about why his, his position that Donald Trump should be able to create a national police force didn't hold sway over the other why he wasn't able to get the five votes. And then you have so he had to write that. And then Kavanaugh had to write his thing, which when I first read it, looked like a dissent, not a concurrence, including a trolling about Jan6. We'll talk about when Ag Bonta joins us. And so that has to happen. But no, there are no rules. There are no rules about anything. Everything that you would that we talk about in legal AF about procedure and customs. Sure, there's a procedural book, but most of it is the United States Supreme Court making its own rules. They want an extra brief, they get an extra brief. They don't want a roll argument. They want, they don't get oral argument. They want to do this on the shadow docket. They do it on a shadow docket. They want to do it on Saturday. They do it on Saturday. There's no, there's no but like most federal judges, there are no Other, other rules. So let's use this as an opportunity now to switch into our segment on the National Guard case and its serious implications and import by bringing in our special guest tonight, Attorney General of California, Rob Bonta.

A (24:17)

Hi, Michael, Good to see you.

B (24:19)

General Banta, Thanks. As soon as I saw the ruling, the opinion that popped out for the United States Supreme Court, you know, you and I just had a conversation with our audience a couple of days ago. I said, oh, we got to see if I can get Ag Bonta back here to talk about it. So let me, let me frame it for our audience because some of them may not have, may not know what have happened. But in a 6 to 3 decision, yes, even though Kavanaugh, I look like a descent, he finally cited with the majority, including Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett and the liberal moderate wing to stop Donald Trump from, from doing what he has been doing. His recipe, they've said his recipe for taking over the state militia is wrong because the way they define what are the regular forces that he needs to be able to use under some limited circumstances before he can call for the backup and cross over state sovereignty and grab the state militia and federalize it. But because the debate had some people said to me, Popak, this thing's been on the books, this 10 USC section 124 06, for like 150 years. The definition of regular forces, this is just coming up now. Yes. And so there was a battle, right. You had the Trump administration saying, oh, the regular forces, that just means the federal security forces and maybe local law enforcement and the states, like yours were saying, no, it's historically been the armed forces. And you can only use the armed forces under limited circumstances on a delegation from Congress. So you have all of that. So with that and you being in the room for a lot of these things, tell me how you interpret how the ruling and its impact on 9th Circuit, the 9th Circuit cases like in Oregon and in your California.

A (26:06)

Well, first, this case is a huge win for the rule of law for America and Americans, the Constitution and for common sense, frankly. And a huge defeat for Trump, who was betting, you know, all his marbles for his multiple deployments on 10 USC 124 06, with the minor exception of DC which has some different rules. And, you know, he was banking all of his federalizations and deployments on 10 USC 124 06. And they always believed that if they went to the U.S. supreme Court, especially on the emergency docket, they would prevail. That was always their salvation. If they lost in the trial court below, and they lost. In the intermediate appellate court, there's always the Supreme Court quickly on the emergency docket. And up to now, they have had a very high rate of success. But the order today, the ruling today, could not have been more favorable for the states. For Illinois and the 23 Democratic states that supported their position, it was a complete rejection, a slap down, a complete failure to accept any of the arguments from the Trump administration because they're not acceptable. They just don't make sense. And there's this ongoing idea from the Trump administration that they can deploy the National Guard where they want, when they want, for as long as they want, for whatever reason they want, and that the courts can't review it. The US Supreme Court definitely reviewed their position and rejected it. And so more than we could have hoped for, based on the sort of shadow docket, emergency docket record of the Supreme Court. And I think really important, really, I think exciting for what might come next. I know this might have surprised a lot of people. I think a lot of people were resigned to the belief that the U.S. supreme Court and the shadow docket was always going to side with Trump. I didn't believe that, but I didn't have a lot of data points until now. But I'm grateful that the six justices who looked at this, looked at it the way they did. They found that the Regular forces in 10 USC 12406 are the military forces. And they found that you have to have, under the Posse Comitatus act, some law that allows you to marshal the military forces. And that Trump failed on both counts. They failed to show that the regular military forces were unable to get the job done here in Chicago. And they failed to show that there was any exception to Posse Comitatus that allowed the military forces to even be deployed. And they finally rejected one more thing, which is the Trump administration's belief that they have inherent authority to protect federal personnel and property with the National Guard. And they looked at the word execute the laws, the phrase execute the laws, which appears both in Posse Comitatus, Posse Comitatus act, and 10 USC 124 06, and they kind of hoisted the Trump administration on its own petard. There was and said, if protecting personnel and property is not executing the laws under the Posse Comitatus act, then there's no justification under 10 USC 12406 for executing the laws, the inability to execute laws with the regular forces. So a really good majority opinion. Kavanaugh wanted to find the same way on narrower grounds. And one thing I thought was really interesting There was a lot of lamenting by the justices of the use of the emergency docket. And yeah, I lamented too, stop using it. A lot of us have been lamenting it for a long time. You know, they seem to be fine with it at times when the outcome was one that they supported and could live with. But now then it's, it's when it's not and they're lamenting it. And these are really important issues. They should be fully briefed, have amicus insight input. They should have a full oral argument and a full vetting and analysis. So maybe this will slow down the use of the emergency docket in the future. One can only hope.

B (30:16)

Yeah. The way that I now in retrospect, one of the reasons, again, this is only 2020 hindsight, one of the reasons why you and I were scratching our head with what's taking them so long. And look at all the rulings that are coming out like at the Ninth Circuit for you, in your favor, that they seem to be just sitting and allowing to happen. It's a lot of things to have to unscramble. So maybe in retrospect, they knew they had the numbers. They were okay with the Ninth Circuits ruling in your favor and some of these other courts because they knew they may not have had the opinions written, but they knew it was going to be about a 5 to 4, 6 to 3 decision that was going to be supportive of these other rulings. That's one observation. Let me read to the, to the audience, to our audience tonight, the key paragraph in the majority opinion. Again, we don't know who wrote it. We just know who joined it. And that would be Sotomayor, Kagan, Ketanji, Brown, Jackson, Chief Justice Roberts and Amy Coney, Barrett and Kavanaugh. And here's the statement. Because the statute requires an assessment of the military's ability to execute the laws, it is likely applies only where the military could legally execute the laws. Such circumstances are exceptional. Talking to you, Trump. Under the Posse Combatas act, the military is prohibited from executing the laws except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or an act of Congress. So before the president can federalize the guard under 124063, he likely must have statutory or constitutional authority to execute the laws with the regular military and must be unable with those forces to perform that function. Now, Sam Alito in his dissent made it into a circular logic. He said, 124063 is the congressional delegation of authority. I'm like, what? I mean that his argument Made absolutely no sense. So. But they were very clear. The only problem, before I turn to Kavanaugh with you, and then I want to talk about, I want to do a little tea leaf reading about the tariffs. Having taken this position, the only, the only problem I have with this, it sort of invites Donald Trump to try to use the Insurrection Act. Yeah, right. Because the Insurrection act, which Donald Trump has threatened and flirted with it for a long time, including in the first administration, like those, let's take the voting machines under the Insurrection act. Or I don't want to do the Insurrection Act. I've heard him say before, but if he does the Insurrection act, which is a, a one of those limited exceptions, if the grounds are proper to use the military, the armed forces on U.S. soil, I mean, are you troubled by the fact that they've sort of invited, potentially or debated him to do the Insurrection Act?

A (33:06)

Yeah, there's a, there's a couple odd and not desired potential outcomes here. If, if the regular forces means the military forces and you need to exhaust the use of the military, military's regular forces first, before you bring in the National Guard, then assuming there's a justification for military to be deployed on American soil in the first place, then that means you're likely to see military, you know, Army, Marines before you see National Guard, and probably that's not preferred. I think people would rather see National Guard if they're going to see anyone before they see Marines and members of the Army. So there's that and then there's also, you know, the, the point that, that you're making, that if they, they, you know, I can imagine Trump huddling with his team, responding to this Supreme Court ruling and saying, we want the same outcome. I want National Guard in blue cities, in Democratic cities that didn't vote for me. How do we get them there? And the one logical response is the Insurrection Act. And he's kind of banding it, bandied it out there and kind of threatened to deploy it and to apply it, but never has he kind of says it's there, I can use it if I want, but I don't want to. And maybe he will now. And it still has a high threshold, a high factual underpinning and predicate and basis that's required to use it. You need to have, you know, essentially the equivalent of an invasion or a rebellion. And, you know, an armed attempt to overthrow the government is what an insurrection is, essentially. So he's very unlikely to have that, hasn't had that in D.C. louisiana, Portland or Chicago. But it does kind of. Kind of push him towards the Insurrection act if his desire is to legally, in the eyes of the U.S. supreme Court, deploy National Guard.

B (35:06)

Even the Biden prosecutors didn't use the Insurrection act against the insurrectionist on January 6th. Right. They used sedition, seditious conspiracy, even. They didn't do. Even. They didn't use the I word. But listen to this in Kavanaugh, you know, because Kavanaugh, like, it's almost like, oh, well, I'm gonna side with them to, you know, to block Trump on this. But, you know, let me. Let me troll while I'm doing it. So in footnote two and his dissent, his descent, his concurrence, Kavanaugh says, as I read it, the court's opinion does not address the president's authority under the Insurrection Act. Yeah, okay, we got it, Brett. We know where your head's at, right?

A (35:46)

Wink, wink. Maybe you want to consider that, then.

B (35:49)

The part that really galled me is in the way I read it. Let me just read it to our audience. Is the hypothetical that he used, which is right out. It's a John Six hypothetical, but rewrites history to make a president actually send in the National Guard and. Or the armed forces to protect the Capitol, when we know that's exactly the opposite of what Donald Trump, his patron, did. So here's what he says. He says the court's. This on page five. The court's legal interpretation, as I understand it, could lead to potentially significant implications for future crises that we cannot foresee. Consider a hypothetical. I'm like, okay, go ahead. Suppose a mob rapidly gathers outside the U.S. courthouse in Philadelphia in response to an unpopular decision or. Or to influence an outcome of a pending matter. Oh, you mean like the mob outside of the Capitol to try to stop the certification. Okay, you got me. Keep going. Suppose the mob is threatening to storm the courthouse and attack the federal judges, prosecutors, and others inside. Oh, like the legislators and their staff. And to damage or burn down the building, thereby preventing the execution of federal law. Does anybody think this sounds familiar? Suppose further, the US Military forces cannot readily mobilize to deploy to the site. Or the president doesn't call him because he's busy fuming in the dining room. That the local police and federal court security officers are outnumbered. Oh, like the Metro Police and the Capitol and the Capitol Police, who can't hold the line under the court's order today, even under those circumstances, the president presumably could not federalize the National Guard. Donald Trump famously, as the Jan6 committee determined, never called The National Guard, the. Never called out the military to protect the cradle of our democracy. But look how Kavanaugh subtly, subtly says to the, to the Democrats, is that what you want for the next January 6th?

A (37:39)

Right, right. And rewrites Trump as the savior here, the white hat in the revision in the revisionist history here. Yeah. Interesting. I thought Kavanaugh's concurrence, you know, definitely read like a descent at times. I thought his footnotes were really interesting. And, you know, in particular, the one that you just read and the very, you know, the strong calling out and illumination of the Insurrection act in case the Trump administration had missed that pathway. And, you know, you had asked earlier, what do I think the implication is of these cases on our, of this case, on our case? I think it ends them. You know, every, every case is based on the very expansive authority that the federal government thought they had under 10 USC 12, 4 06. Supreme Court just said that you don't have it. And so I think every. Maybe they go back and, you know, with this guidance, they try to show that all the military locally in LA or in Portland or, you know, everyone stationed in the different bases where we're unable to address the, you know, the dancing dinosaurs in Portland or whatever it is, but they try to make a factual argument consistent with the, the military not being able to execute the laws. But I just don't see it. I think this, this. I think they're gonna, they're gonna pivot away from 10 USC 12 or 406.

B (39:00)

I like the headline that Ag Bonte you just made. I think it ends the cases in every way, shape and form. Let me pivot for one moment while, while. And I'll just. If you'll indulge us first for a few more minutes with our audience, we got a great crowd tonight. Got almost 11,000 people here just in the live chat alone, which is really heartwarming to see people taking time out of their holidays and holiday shopping and all that good stuff. You were in the room, literally where it happened, the oral argument on the tariffs. You got Donald Trump, which he was increasingly getting very, very anxious about. I'm sure he's been briefed that he's got a very, very good chance of losing, which is why we're seeing these midnight screeds. I just picture him with like a sleeve of Oreo cookies or a box, a gallon of whatever, and he's just like sitting on the, in the bathroom hitting it. And everything is like, God bless the, God bless the Supreme Court and the tariffs are making our country great. Don't let them go away. You know, it's hard to go from one case to another, but they just did a very hard thing. Six to three, the Supreme Court in ruling against Donald Trump, with a number of the right, right wing moving over to the other side. It would have been five to four even if Kavanaugh had stayed with, with Gorsuch and Alito and Thomas. Do you think there, what do you think this means, if anything, for a likely outcome for Trump that's not, it's not good, like a ruling against him on tariffs, I think he's going to.

A (40:30)

Get a ruling against the Montarists.

B (40:32)

Right.

A (40:32)

And, you know, having been in the courtroom, seen the, the, you know, read the briefs and seen the oral argument, saw the engagement from the bench. It was a hot bench. They were active. They were very dubious of and suspicious of the arguments of the federal government. And the right was very engaged. Barrett was engaged and Gorsuch was engaged, in addition to Sotomayor and Jackson and Kagan. So I thought that could, I thought I saw a clear 5, 4. Just from my own observation, maybe I'm biased. Of course I have a position on this, so maybe I didn't see it the way others did, but it could even be six, three. And I think that when it's quick justice on the emergency docket and there's a lot of deference to the federal government and there's some discretion, some wiggle room, then maybe there's a bigger likelihood, a greater likelihood that they side with the Trump administration. But when they're in deep, when they're looking at the cases and doing the analysis and looking at the core authority of Congress vis a vis the executive branch and looking at separation of powers and know that this is an important case for the future and they have their own precedent that they've been a part of when it comes to the major questions doctrine, I don't see how they don't find for the states and the private plaintiffs here that the tariffs are unlawful. So I think Trump sees it coming. He is getting more desperate. He is getting more concerned. His polling is in the tank. He's losing major cases in front of the U.S. supreme Court, the place where he thought he would never lose and hoped he would never lose. And so he's getting more desperate, and that's not necessarily a good thing. His desperation could mean more extreme actions. I think, you know, the actions are already extreme in many ways, and we're able to bat them down and block them and stop them in court. But, you know, maybe he does invoke the Insurrection act, maybe he does pivot and try to impose additional tariffs under other authority. But, you know, a desperate Trump is not good for the United States of America. A non desperate Trump is not good for the United States of America, in my opinion. But I think he's going to lose the tariffs case and that'll be another U.S. supreme Court case that kind of aligns with my hard wired, hardwired, hopeful position. You know, I think if they just engage the law and the facts and just stick to that, let the chips fall where they may, the people, you know, the states, those that are holding the federal government accountable, are going to win most of the time.

B (43:17)

Yeah. And thank you for being there. You were on with me the other day and we were celebrating, although celebrating is the wrong word. We were acknowledging the milestone that the Democratic attorneys general had filed their fifth 50th case this year in 10 months, 11 months against Trump administration with an amazing historic winning percentage against the Trump administration. And you, you said something that we, we circulated through social media which made everybody feel a lot better. And I don't want to paraphrase it, you said something about being ready for the next 50. I'll leave it to you.

A (43:52)

We got a full tank of gas, full of energy, ready to roll. Whatever comes next, it's up to pump. How many times he wants to get sued?

B (44:00)

Twice a week. Fine.

A (44:02)

If he wants to stop breaking the law, we can live with that, too. But yeah, no passes. Each and every time he breaks the law, hurts our states, we sue him. We're ready to go.

B (44:09)

Yeah, absolutely. And we're so glad that you're ready to go and you're always so kind with your time and generous with your time here to brief our audience whether it's legal, AF or on the intersection. Attorney General Rob Bonta of the great state of California, who has joined the Intersection to talk about the results of the United States Supreme Court decision against Donald Trump on the National Guard. And also congratulations on getting the National Guard through your efforts and the work of your team off the streets of Los Angeles and other places in California with a recent win at the Ninth Circuit.

A (44:40)

Thank you, Michael. An honor to fight for the people of the state and this nation. I'm going to keep doing it and grateful for all you're doing. Thanks for having me and your entire audience. Happy holidays, everybody.

B (44:49)

Thank you. You as well, to your family as well, AG Rob Banta.

A (44:52)

Thank you.

B (44:54)

Well, we're going to take a quick Break. Sort of the word from our sponsors. We got a great audience tonight. Some questions that are accumulating. I'm going to answer them when we come back from the break. First, again, heartfelt, Heartfelt love here to all of our audience that also overlap with the Legal AF YouTube channel. We got to our 1 million subscribers this past weekend. We were all watching it very well. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? We're there. Okay, great. And now, as we like to say in the world of Midas, we're on our way to 2 million. So take a moment and come over to Legal F YouTube channel. It's all free, no outside investors, no paywall. And now, more than ever, we need your support. You see what's happening to mainstream media. You see what's happening to corporate media? 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Now we know why the first tranche of documents that came out the other day, everybody's talking about the Bill Clinton in a hot tub photo because Donald Trump wanted to distract from the, from the tranche that was dropped today. There's just, there's, there's three or four pieces of paper in there alone that would be enough to scuttle any presidency. And, and should this one. Let me, let me take it in no particular order. They're all important. Maria, Maria Farmer, who is the sister of Annie Farmer, one of the survivors of the Epstein child sex trafficking ring. And it's a ring. I just interviewed Lisa Phillips, who's going to be a regular with us on Legal af, who's also a survivor. This is a ring that involved 1200 girls and young women who were being trafficked by dozens of men, including Jeffrey Epstein by way of Ghislaine Maxwell and others. That's, that's what's been, that's what we want to, we want to get justice over and what we want to prevent from happening in the future. And we'll talk about the different ways that happens. So Annie Farmer's sister, Maria Farmer, we'd always heard, and she said that she filed a report back in 1996, 10 years before Jeffrey Epstein was finally investigated by the Southern District of Florida, a U.S. attorney's office and FBI. I'm talking a thousand victims between 1996 and the, and the opening of that investigation. 96 she said she went to the FBI and reported that she worked for Epstein, that he had stolen photographs that she had taken, including the negatives, old school photographs of her 14 and, and, and 12 year old sisters, including Annie Farmer, and that he had taken those photos, had hired her to take photos at a local pool of young girls and that he had sold the photos and, and he, she went to the FBI on A claim of pornography and illegal activity. Okay. And you know what's in the batch that just came out today? Maria Farmers, FBI report. Okay, that was, that was intaked in Miami and was sent to New York. And then Nothing happened for 10 years because Donald Trump, because Epstein had friends named Donald Trump and Bill Clinton and others. And that 10 years isn't just a passage of time. That is victim. Thousand victims that could have been saved had the FBI done their job. In fact, the House Oversight Committee and the Democrats on it have sent a letter to the inspector general for the Department of Justice, said, where's the justice? What happened? Why wasn't this investigated? Who is responsible for not investigating it and the rest to try to get justice for the victims. And Maria Farmer has, you know, the way we know it's hers, I think we have a copy of it somewhere. We can put it up on the screen while I'm talking about it. The way we know it's hers is that it's got redactions, but it is. She has outed it with her lawyer and said, yeah, that, that's my FBI report about, about my sister's photos. My, my kid's sister's photos being taken. Think about it. Then he, even then he was taking. There it is. He was taking. Is that the one that unclassified. No, that's a different one. Keep looking. I said that's 2020. This is 1996. But you get the point. The fact that, that he was selling or, or giving these photos to others in the ring, in the traffic ring is just really disgusting. Now, there's also a handwritten note that's getting a lot of publicity and, and, and set the Trump administration's hair on fire. There it is. Leave it up on the screen. So this is allegedly from, from Jeffrey Epstein, written several days before he hanged himself, written to Larry Nasser, who was the doc disgraced doctor who was a rapist and a child sex molester of the. And a young girl abuser of the women's Olympic gymnastics team. Yes, they're friends. That's a, that's a stated fact that they were friends. And in it, he makes references to Donald Trump liking young, nubile women that he could grab by their genitalia. And while that's going on, he and Larry are grabbing grub in the prison commissary. And life is unfortunate. Death, death, Dead man's confession. Now you can see the Department of Justice, without any time on the clock, has already come out and called it an unfounded. Oh, there's Handwriting analysis that needs to be done. Oh, the, the postmark on the envelope says Virginia. And, and maybe it's not Virginia and it's really supposed to be New York and humda, humda, humna. And all that may be true, but they're in no position to. To make a statement that things that are in the release are somehow unfounded. It went so far that even the New York Post was like, they're already clearing Donald Trump. How could, how could that possibly be so quickly related to this? So you. The Department of Justice is not supposed to be defending Donald Trump. Right. Except they are just a law firm devoted to Donald Trump's criminal defense and a political arm of the Trump administration. They're not an independent justice system. Justice agency. No independent justice. You think Merrick Garland say what you want about him. You think he posts something that says, here's some documents that we posted, but we're just letting you know they're unfounded and baseless. How do you know that? I mean, it's just, it's just remarkable the, the lengths at which Donald Trump makes this Department of Justice jump. And, and yet they still somehow sleep at night. I'm talking about Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche. They still think they're officers of the court that are complying with ethics that are, that are. That have sworn to uphold the Constitution. I just don't understand it. Then there's a email from 2020, obviously from a U.S. attorney, Assistant U.S. attorney in New York, working on the Maxwell prosecution, least we forget. But she was prosecuted. There it is. She was prosecuted by. By James Comey's daughter, Maureen, a lifelong prosecutor in that office, convicted five felony counts, sentenced to 20 years for child sex trafficking. And, and you could tell this is part of that investigation because here's what it says. I'll just round it out for you. Donald Trump was on the plane a lot more with Epstein than first thought because they stumbled into a lot of the flight blogs and photos when they were getting ready to try the Maxwell case. So it says, for your situational awareness, I'm not sure who he's writing to or she's writing to. We wanted to let you know that the flight records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump traveled on Epstein's private jet many more times than had previously been reported or that we were aware, including during the period we would expect a charge in a Maxwell case. So this is pre indictment of Ghislaine Maxwell and a prosecutor talking to somebody, I assume in his office or at the FBI in particular. He Goes on or she goes on. He is listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 93 and 96, including at least four flights on which Maxwell was present. It gets better, folks. He's listed as having traveled with, among others, and at various times, Marla Maples. All right, that was his future wife or wife, his daughter Tiffany and his son Eric. Well, nothing like putting your young daughter and your young son on an airplane with a child sex trafficker. On one flight in 1993, he and Epstein are the only two listed passengers. On another, the only three passengers are Epstein, Trump and a then 20 year old name blacked out. But the prosecutor thought enough of putting in the H. On the other two flights, two of the passengers respectively were women who could be possible witnesses in a Maxwell case. That sounds like young girls to me. We've just finished reviewing the full records, more than 100 pages of very small scripts, and didn't want any of this to be a surprise down the road. Thank you, Assistant U.S. attorney, Southern District of New York, whoever you are. So we got that going on. Remember, this is against the backdrop of Donald Trump constantly rewriting and revising history to say, I never liked a guy. He was a creep. He was a Trump. I threw him out of Mar A Lago. He's like collapsing like 10 years of relationship down to the final how the friendship ended. You know, we've all had friendships that ended. Yeah, but you can't point to the end of the friendship to say I, oh, that that thing in the bar in Vegas also didn't happen five years earlier. You know, that doesn't work that way. Time doesn't run backwards that way. So you've got that. And then I didn't know and nobody knew until we saw it. Maybe we knew it. But it was good to see in the pile that the Mar A Lago club was subpoenaed for the Maxwell trial to appear in November of 2021 and bring with it all employment records related to blank. All right, let's fill in the blank without naming names. Why are you. Why are you subpoenaing records for Mar A Lago? We know from other reporting that Mar A Lago was the happy hunting ground for Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein to look for young girls, including ones that worked in the club or in the, in the spa for Donald Trump and then bring them into the web of, of Jeffrey Epstein and sex traffic them. So somebody employed there is important to the prosecution about Ghislaine Maxwell and Mar A Lago and the link between the two. Look, we've got another one. This is one of the ones, I guess the Department of Justice was talking about when they said there were a whole bunch of baseless, baseless accusations around the time of the election that all came in. We got this one from 2020 where a woman claims that Ghislaine Maxwell solicited prostitution and drug use at Mar a Lago. I now, do I know if this is true or not? No, but neither does the Department of Justice. And that's the point. I'm just Michael Popo. I'm not stating that this is true or not true. Department of justice is saying emphatically this cannot be true. Why? Because our boss is standing right behind us. Right, exactly. So that's the, this is not going to be the last of the Epstein follow ups. You're going to see an interview that I just conducted today of Lisa Phillips because there's something we, we haven't really talked about, which is what happens when the 1200 victims who have all sort of, many of them have gotten together and compared notes and I mean literally decide that the pace of the disclosures and the pace of the Trump administration is too slow for their liking. And they want justice not just in the release of the files, but a justice that only a civil lawsuit against the perpetrators can bring. So forget Donald Trump for now, although you can bring a civil suit against Donald Trump, you can prosecute that civil suit. He brings civil suits all the time while he's president. He's not too busy playing, you know, between his golf game and his, and his Kennedy center and his casino visits. You know, he's got time to file lawsuits against the New York Times, against the Washington Post, against the Wall Street Journal, against the BBC. So you, we call it the goose gander doctrine. It's good for the goose, is good for the gander. So wait for these victims to start suing not just Trump potentially, but Epstein's estate and others. Prince Andrew, former Prince the, the Prince formerly the Andrew formerly known as Prince, I guess is the right way to put it. He's going, I mean, now you see why they kicked him out of the house recently because things that have come out now are like worse for him. He's still, he still can be sued. He settled with, with people. The. And, and we, we're working with a team at the Popoc firm, Legal af. We're working with a team called Survivor Strategies, led by Senator Joe Dunn, former Senator Joe Dunn and Sam Maloney and Lisa Phillips to help bring justice to these people. With the filing of civil lawsuits, many states, including blue states like California recently have opened a window to allow adult survivors who are now adults but were children then or otherwise to bring or adult survivors or survivors of child molestation or rape to bring civil cases in a two year window period of time with a look back as far back as possible, in other words, lifting the statute of limitations and allowing for these filings. And Joe Dunn lobbied and successfully obtained, along with Lisa Phillips, just as they had in New York, a reopening of a opening of a window at California. So start January 1st. Boy, that's right around the corner. Get ready. I can't reveal it. I don't have exactly. I'm just telling you it's coming. There's going to be a handful of lawsuits filed on January 1st coming out of the Epstein documents and the victims and survivors of Epstein in California. Not saying it's against Donald Trump. I'm just saying cases are coming. Okay, Just like they did in the hashtag me too era. They're coming out of this Epstein thing. That's the next thing that happens in the pursuit of justice for the survivors. And I talk about it more in an interview you'll see in the next day or two with Lisa Phillips. So that's where we are with Epstein now. I want to just round out our show with quickly on Abrego Garcia and Judge Dennis and Judge Boasberg in a case we call JGG because they're linked prego. Garcia has been breathing free air for the last couple of weeks. And he got to go to court and sit without shackles, without handcuffs with his family in a courtroom yesterday anyway, with Judge Zinnis about whether her order blocking him from being picked up again by ICE and thrown into detention while she makes decisions about his habeas corpus petition should be extended. And the judge was pretty jocular and friendly to that side of the table. In fact, she joked, Judge Zenis joked when she saw Abrego Garcia there and his 10 lawyers that he had enough lawyers to field a baseball team. She then looked over at poor Mr. Molina by himself for the Department of Justice, with others listening on the phone. She was not too pleased with the Department of Justice. She scolded the Department of Justice for effectively lying to her, for misrepresenting facts to her, to misrepresenting documents to her. And she said it out loud. She said, why should I trust anything that you say? You say that this document is new and it was a mistake or a clerical error. Why should I Do that. I have another bone to pick with you. This. This is the judge. She said that you referred to my order in the middle of the month granting a temporary restraining order to block Mr. Abrego. Garcia being picked up again by ICE as an ex parte order. Ex parte means that there's only one party there. It's you and the judge. It happens in rare circumstances. I think in my entire 35 years career. 35 year career, I've done it five times. Maybe five times. You get a. You get a restraining order. It's usually if you think like a boat, a plane, big money is about to leave or something's going to happen. You don't even have time to tell the other side or if you tell the other side, it's going to. They're going to secrete the asset or hide it or this or that. So you run and you get a temporary restraining order without notice. Judge says, fine. But now give them notice of the temporary restraining order and we'll bring everybody together in three days or four days and they can move to dissolve it. That's the backstop to that. That's ex part day. That's not what this was. When she issued her order, that was on full briefing. That was on an emergency briefing, but on full briefing, that wasn't ex part day. And she said, I'm not happy that you wrote ex part day. And I want a declaration to tell me who made the decision of the four lawyers that signed this piece of paper, who didn't catch or who made the decision to call it ex parte. So she's pissed about a lot of things. She said, I'm keeping you out, Mr. Abrego, or Garcia until after the holidays. Will full brief everything in the meantime. And by. And then she issued another order. I don't want nobody records me, she said, I don't want smart watches, smartphones, smart glasses, recording devices, nothing in my courtroom. Something happened. I just don't know quite what it was that led her to issue that. That order. Somebody in the Department of Justice side did something wrong. And of course, another series of bumbling errors by the Department of Justice. And she's Judge, Judge Zinnis. It's a rock star. You know, they like to call her a Marxist leftist. I don't know about all that. All I know is a 90 United States Supreme Court supported her decision to order Abrego Garcia to have his return facilitated by the US Government. And the reason I mention that is that Judge Boberg in District of Columbia Chief Judge Boberg, he just issued an order today as we were coming on the air, summary judgment concerning the 250 people disappeared in the middle of the night without due process, who they branded Trend Aragua Venezuelan gang members. Most of them are not, by the way, the way, violent criminals. 92% of them are not. And then just whisk them away during a hearing without federal oversight or due process and put them in the torture prison of El Salvador in Seot. And Boseberg has not been happy since. He's. He's the one that started the criminal contempt proceedings that have been blocked by an appellate court led by Trumpers and different things. The Supreme Court told Boasberg, we like your process, but you're in the wrong court potentially, because you got to do it by writ of habeas corpus. And that has to be where the people were last incarcerated. And that was in Washington. That was like Texas or this or that. Now they've been sent to El Salvador, but they're not even in El Salvador any longer. Pardon me, folks. There was traded a prisoner exchange with Venezuela to send them back to Venezuela. I thought we're at war with Venezuela. I thought they're, they're enemy combatants that we just gave back to the enemy. See how there's no consistency because it's all lies by the Trump administration. So the judge Boasberg said, if I determine, and he did, that the prison of El Salvador is under the custodial control of the Trump administration, then that's the last place they were. That's federal soil, and that gives me my jurisdiction for habeas corpus. And under the Abrego Garcia ruling that Judge Zinnis obtained through the Supreme Court that he cited Abrego Garcia, I'm going to order that the government give those 250 people now sitting in Venezuela a habeas corpus due process mechanism that they can use. That's his ruling. Summary judgment. Case closed. They're gonna have to take the appeal. They'll take it up to D.C. hopefully they won't get two Trump judges at the Court of Appeal. We'll see what the United States Supreme Court does. They're a wily bunch at the Supreme Court. You don't know what they're going to do in any given time. Look what they just did today with the, with the, with the National Guard troops. And I'm hoping that as we head into the new year, in the first quarter, Donald Trump gets on a little bit of a losing streak at the U.S. supreme Court. National Guard case against him, hopefully the tariff case against him. And then we got birthright citizenship. We're going to have to see what that's going to be all about. On the 14th amendment, you got Lisa Cook at the Federal Reserve. Does she stay or does she go? Got a lot of big issues about presidential power and more importantly, the ability of the federal judiciary and Congress to control an out of control lawless president. But we do it here. I'm so happy that we had such an amazing audience tonight for our special guest, Rob Bonta. Holidays are upon us. We're going to be doing regular programming on Legal AF, the YouTube channel, right through the holidays with all new videos. Pardon me, straight out until the new year. And we're celebrating our 1 millionth subscriber on the YouTube channel for legal AF in record time. Join us, help us get to our next million. It's that important. The bigger we get, the more robust we get, the more muscular we get, the better we are for the most pivotal year in my lifetime, 2026. And you can help us by hitting the free subscribe button and then joining Legal AF sub stack where you'll get some additional information and training. It's like a TED Talk meets a law school class all in legal af substack. I'm running a sale 30 off on our a monthly subscription. It'll bring it down to about, I don't know, $6 a month. And for that, that's the way to support all that we do, our editors, our producers, keeps us on the air. This is the way you support independent journalism and independent media. And I really do appreciate it. So happy holidays for those that celebrated Hanukkah, for those who have Christmas and Orthodox Christmas coming up and the New Year and Kwanzaa and whatever else is your holiday or no holiday at all. Just, you know, love your family, bring your friends and family even closer at this moment because together, together, we're going to shorten that tunnel and the light is on the other side, I promise you. I'm Michael Popak until my next report. Can't get your fill of Legal af. Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF sub stack. 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. Today we'll attempt a feat once thought impossible, overcoming high interest cross credit card debt. It requires merely one thing. A SoFi personal loan. 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