B (6:47)

33 pardon insurrectionists have since committed additional crimes since January 6, including child sexual assault, terroristic threats, domestic violence, and conspiracy to murder FBI agents, and yet pardoned Trump indiscriminately pardoned all of them. When you reward and normalize criminal behavior, of course, you invite more of it. And the president didn't just free his rioters for doing his dirty work. He punished law enforcement for doing their jobs, purging hundreds of career FBI agents and prosecutors just because they worked on J6. He installed actual participants in the attack in the Department of Justice itself. The new U.S. pardon attorney, Ed Martin, tweeted from the Capitol grounds on this day five years ago and described the mayhem as Mardi Gras in D.C. his senior counselor at the Department of Justice, Jared wise, is another J6 defendant captured on body camera footage yelling, kill him. Kill him five different times as police were being attacked right next to him. These leaders at the Department of Justice today have never once regretted their participation in this nightmare with election deniers and J6 conspiracists, Pam Bondi and Cash Patel at the top of the doj. It's like the Joker and the Riddler and the Penguin have taken over Gotham City.

A (8:23)

Yeah, I had the honor of hosting a fundraiser for the Democrats in Miami right before Eileen Higgins won the mayoral race there. Another data point against Trump and maga and hosted it. And Jamie Raskin was a keynote speaker to help Eileen Higgins get elected. And he said something that stuck with me. I want to repeat it here. I'll paraphrase it. He said that we as Democrats, the Democrats, have to regain the vocabulary that we have somehow lost about our own party. What he meant by that is we've allowed the Republicans to call the Democratic Party the Democrat Party because they don't like the fact that Democratic is in our party. And Jamie went further. He said in his research from FDR and even before fdr, the way the Democratic Party talked about itself is that they were, they referred to themselves as the democracy, not the Democratic Party, the democracy. So when FDR would give a speech, he would say, the plutocrats, meaning the Republicans, the plutocrats and the Republicans want this, but the democracy demands. And what he meant was the Democratic Party and the democracy sort of suffused and combined into one. You have to get back to that. We are the party of the democracy. We should call ourselves the party of the democracy. We should use the big D democracy to identify who we are as a people. And when somebody meets you on a street and says, what are your values? What party do you associate with? You should say, I am a representative of the democracy. And that stands in stark contrast to the other side. So I'm on a campaign, along with Jamie Raskin, to reclaim the term, the vernacular of democracy, to identify those who are opposed to maga. And so let's play, let's move to Bennie Thompson, who was the co chair along with Liz Cheney of the January 6th Committee. Remember their 600 page report, 8 days of testimony to the public about what happened, what transpired on January 6, and Donald Trump's role on it. The links in the chain of the conspiracy to try to overthrow democracy and stop the peaceful transfer of power. Here's Benny Thompson.

C (10:56)

Today, the rule of law and our oaths continue to matter, especially as we see Donald Trump pardon those who were charged or convicted in the January 6th attack, engage the military abroad while passing Congress, tears down the White House, shut a whole government agencies, order mass goons to round up and deport US Citizens and and unlawfully put his name on a memorial to a better man. The bipartisan January 6th select committee, which I was privileged to lead, was charged with uncovering the facts, circumstances and causes of what happened on that awful day and to ensure it never happens again. It was one part of ensuring our constitutional republic could withstand President Trump's repeated attacks. And it offers lessons for today. One such lesson was seeing how important it was for officials, most of them Republicans, to put their country over their party. They remembered their oath was to the Constitution and not to one man. And we need to remember that lesson today, because five years on, the danger has not dissipated. President Trump still refuses to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election. Many who promoted or litigated his big lie have been rewarded with powerful positions. Dozens of Nonpartisan career prosecutors and FBI agents who worked on January 6th cases have been summarily fired. State election officials who stood up to the Trump pressure campaign have been faced with threats and retaliation. The Department of Justice has become an instrument for retribution. The message is clear. Uphold the rule of law and you will be punished. Only loyalty to one man will be rewarded. Violence in service of Trump.

A (13:15)

We have a lot of soul searching to do in this country at the end of this Trump administration, perhaps beginning at the midterms, when Donald Trump becomes the lamest of lame ducks. How did we let this person get back into the White House with his criminal element and, and the most corrupt cabinet in history, the most corrupt Department of Justice in history? How did we let it happen and what do we do about it in the future? I mean, we're in it right now. You know, it's hard to build the airplane while you're flying it. But we're going to have to get a quick historical lens here to make changes when the Democrats take back power. They're going to have to have another Jan6 light committee, blue ribbon committee made up of partis bipartisan people to talk about what happened, what just happened with the capture of the Department of Justice and the capture of the FBI and every other independent agency and cap and department by this president. And how do we make the changes to ensure it never happens again from a Congress who has the, the, the balls and the brass ones and the conviction and the mandate from the people to reign in the next attempted future Donald Trump? If you think this one's bad, could you imagine somebody using the precedent set by Donald Trump to go even further? And I can't envision what even further would look like. But I also don't want to envision it. And that's where Congress properly run by adults who are patriots, who are states people who care about doing the people's business and representing the people will make that will make that difference. Adam Kinzinger, who's going to be on my who's going to be interviewing on Legal af, I think next week also gave a poignant reminder of why it's necessary to talk about this issue and continue to pin this on MAGA and Donald Trump, especially on the five year anniversary. Let's play his statement. Many of my fellow Republicans even want to pretend that Donald Trump wasn't responsible for it and that he did not condone the violence on January 6, even though we all can plainly see that it was Donald Trump who called on his supporters to march down Pennsylvania Avenue and fight like hell. It was Donald Trump who sat in the White House, as we discussed, for 187 minutes watching the attack unfold, throwing gasoline on the flames with this 2:24pm tweet targeting Vice President Pence in the middle of it. Right. So I, I could go on this one. And I have the live feed for today up as a video on Legal AF YouTube channel. You can just go over to the live tab and you'll find it there and you can listen to it in its entirety. And I'll be doing clips from it with hot takes and analysis on legal AF, YouTube and Midas, you know, throughout the week. But let me while we, while I've got you and we've got a nice crowd that showed up for today, let's talk briefly about Melania and what she's trying to do. It's a new year, but the same old Melania, she's not going to allow without a fight, not going to allow the lawsuit. That Michael Wolf, a very popular guy today. Let me shut off all of my phones here. She's not going to allow the intrepid reporter Michael Wolf, who beat her to the punch and filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court, the trial court level to cut off her defamation demand on him for a billion dollars. She's trying to get that case filled. First of all, she's dodging service. You know, she's like, I think it's Evander Holyfield, who's the fighter, is either Tyson or Holyfield that like just dodged the process server on a lawsuit against him. If, you know, put it in comments. That's what she's doing. It's like, you know, she's at Mar a Lago. No, she's at Bedminster. No, she's at the White House. No, she's back at Trump Tower and, you know, trying to get processed. See, federal courts and federal judges, even ones appointed by Donald Trump, like Judge Vocasil in New York, they don't like dodging, evading defendants. The way a lawsuit works is you the filing of the lawsuit does not commence the action. I mean, it gets the case up, up and running. You pay your fee to your clerk and, and the cases on the public docket. But it's got to be served, usually personally served on the person who's the defendant. And until it is, there's no really, there's no action. Statute of limitations, haven't stopped and judges don't have jurisdiction. It's a whole, it's a whole mess. But when you have A party who's trying to evade service. Then you can ask a judge for constructive service or serve the Secretary of state or do a nail on the door and mail it later. Apparently, Michael Wolf's people serve the doorman. I've done work in New York City. Serving the doorman is a big issue because you never can get past the doorman to get, you know, to get into the building, to get to the front door, to get somebody of suitable age and discretion to take the package. So you got to catch him on the street, which happens, right? She steps out for a shopping spree at Bergdorf Goodman's and some process server walks by and goes, you're served. That could happen, too. But why is she fighting service? Take it like a first lady. Accept the service. Michael filed after receiving in October a $1 billion demand letter that he needed to retract and apologize because he did reporting, based on his interview with Jeffrey Epstein, that connected Melania to Jeffrey Epstein to Donald Trump, to young models, to modeling agencies owned by Epstein and Trump to Melania to Melania, her agent. Back to Michael, back to Donald Trump to Epstein to the Lolita Express airplane to Donald Trump to Melania. He just recently said on an interview on. On Legal af. That's up now, Michael Wolf or up. It's up recently that he. He wouldn't be surprised if Melania's names are in the Epstein files. There was that close of a relationship. Well, she didn't like that. She wanted a retraction. So she. So she hired her. Her husband's law firms, DLA Piper, a law firm in New York that does all of the corporate transactional work for Donald Trump's Truth Social. That's a set of cowards. In 2021, they said out loud that Donald Trump wasn't fit to be president of the United states because of Jan 6th. And now look at them. So they're representing it. And. And she also hired Trump's lawyer of last resort on defamation cases, Alejandro Brito out of Coral Gables, Florida, to file a. To represent her. So they are trying to move the case from state Supreme Court. The case is trying to have a judge declare that everything that Michael reported is either true, so can't be defamatory, or is, you know, covered by the fair reporting privilege or his opinion or was taken out of context. But it can't be. It can't support a defamation case that she's threatening. That's smart, right? Get a judge to say that can't be defamation before she files her defamation case. And Also arguing that she's just threatening the case in order to chill his First Amendment rights as a reporter. Melanie didn't like that. So without appearing in the case, she had her lawyers try to remove it to federal court. Now they got Judge Vocasil, who's like one of the only Trump judges appointed in the Southern District of. Of New York in Manhattan. And she sort of sided with. With MAGA in a case in the past, which I won't bore you with the details of right now, but not the greatest judge for this, but there's now going to be a fight over whether Melania is entitled to take the case to federal court at all. The only way she can take it to federal court is to argue that she is a resident of Florida, not of New York. Because if she's a resident of New York, then under what we call diversity jurisdiction analysis, it's New York plaintiff, that's Michael, New York defendant Melania. New York, New York gets you out of federal court. New York, Florida, you. You can. You can go to. You can go to federal court. Has to be complete diversity. Two different states or countries. So she's arguing, I live at Mar a Lago now. Look, I live in. I've lived in New York. I go back to New York frequently. I have friends in New York. I have lawyer colleagues in New York. And I was in New York for a long, long time. Melania lives in New York. Her name's on the building. Okay? She lives on 5th Avenue on the corner of 57th and 5th, next to Tiffany's. It's a big building. It has her name on it. It's called Trump Tower. It's diagonally across from Bergdorf Goodman, where a jury adjudged her husband, a sex abuser of Eugene. Carol. Can't miss it. Down the street about 45 blocks, is her son, goes to college at NYU, my old alma mater down on 5th Avenue and 10th Street, University Place and all that. She lives in New York. That's where she does her spa day, her shopping sprees, friends with, you know, lunches with the girls. Come on. Gets her hair done. And then occasionally she's at Mar a Lago when she really has to be, when Trump wants her to be, and. Or at the White House when there's, like, a steak dinner. That's where she lives. She's gonna have to tell the truth about what bed she sleeps in, produce her travel records to show it. She's opened up a can of worms here. But buried in this new letter, that's up on legal AF substack that they just filed. And la there it is. That they just filed yesterday is really what they want. They want Judge Vocasil to send the case ultimately to Florida because they say. And lastly, the case should be sent to Florida if it stays in federal court. Right. So who's in the Southern District of Florida in the West Palm beach area? Let me think now. Oh, I got it. There's three judges, two in West Palm, across the bridge from Palm beach in Mar a Lago and one in Fort Pierce, which is the upper north region of the a Southern District of Florida. Middlebrooks, Rosenberg are in West Palm Beach. Judge Middlebrooks is, I think semi retired or at least senior status. And then there's Eileen aileen cannon. So it's 50, 50 shot between Rosenberg and Cannon at this case is going to sign randomly to one of these two judges and you know, they're pulling for Cannon. That's what this is all about. And then try to convince Cannon, who's not a very good judge, that Michael Wolf can't bring suit first and that it's not a strategic case to chill his First Amendment rights. But then they're going to have to litigate all of the, you know, Michael has said in his filing that the things that he's written are true, like comments about what happened on the Lolita Express between Trump and Melania. I wasn't there, but he did his reporting off of Jeffrey Epstein, who he was doing a biography of. So be careful what you ask for. But I wanted to call out now that this is what she's trying for. She's trying for a one, two step. It's like a dance to get to Florida and get the case in front of Judge Cannon. That is for sure. So when we come back, I want to talk about the case involving Wyoming and abortion rights. I want to touch on Judge Boasberg rejecting the Trump administration's attempt to use Venezuela as an excuse not to give due process to 137 people. And, you know, a bunch of other things that'll pop into my brain. But there's certain ways to support. And we got a great crowd tonight pushing 10,000 that to support this. The intersection Midas touch at Legal AF. First of all, we've got the Legal AF YouTube channel, which has just crossed a million people. With your help, we'll get to 2 million this year. I got some great announcements. We've got the American Civil Liberties Union joining us for regular reporting on their cases. Regular, you know, starting, I think, on Monday I talked to them today. American Civil and when you combine the American Civil Liberties Union, Democracy Forward, and all the interviews we have of the Democratic attorneys general, we will have three quarters of the public interest in other groups that are suing Donald Trump under one roof on Legal. And we worked hard for that. And that's a testament as much to our audience as it is to the work behind the scenes. Because if we didn't get to a certain size, like a million subscribers and we didn't start being known where Legal AF became a brand and had street credibility, we're not getting Adam Kinzinger to join us, we're not getting Jamie Raskin, we're not getting James Carville, we're not getting former, former federal judges, we're not getting senators, and we're not getting the American Civil Liberties Union or Democracy Forward to join us. But thank you because you gave us that power and we're using it on your behalf on Legal AF. So become a subscriber on Legal AF. Then we set up Legal AF substack. What an amazing community. Over at Legal AF substack, we, we were just the last two days number one and rising in all US politics substacks. We're in the top 50 in general. And there I do two live reports every day. I do one at 12:00pm Eastern time and one at 7:45pm Eastern time. And I bring in interviews. We just had Adam Classfeld who literally, I'll just wait for the ad to run. Who literally stepped out of the Maduro indictment, sorry, arraignment in New York, walked out onto the street and within a minute was briefing our audience on Legal AF Substack with a live report with me, which we then made into a YouTube video and sent it back. But that's the place to be. And if people are always like, how do we keep Legal AF on the air and everything that Popox doing, this is the way to do it. This is where independent media and journalism is living and being protected in its over on Substack. So become a member. And I'm running a sale, everybody, in honor of January 6th and the Democrats hard work there. 20% off annual membership. Legal AF substack. And that's a great way to support us. And then of course, we've got our sponsors. They're just people that know our audience, want to be with our audience and our sponsors. And we have some tonight. So here's a word from our sponsors. 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Every product is clean, label, certified and entirely free from gluten, dairy, soy, GMOs and artificial ingredients. Packed with brain friendly ingredients like magnesium and lion's mane, the New year gives us all a chance to reset. Maximize your brain and body's potential with IQ Bars, protein bars, hydration mixes and mushroom coffees. Their Ultimate Sampler pack includes all three and right now IQ Bar is offering our special podcast listeners 20% off all IQ Bar products including the ultimate sampler pack plus free shipping. To get your 20% off, text legal AF to 64,000 text legal AF to 64,000 that's legal AF to 64,000. Message and data rates may apply seat terms for details and welcome back to the Intersection with Michael Popak I'm going to take some questions now from the audience, so to speak, from our chat tonight. Got about 10 almost I think we're over 10,000 at one point. Here's some things that I'm going to try to answer here. Wrong, wrong one right day asked will anyone in the Cabinet ever be held to account or will he just give blanket pardons and are they scot free? Well, it depends on how you define scot free. Yes, I think Donald Trump is going to try to pardon everybody in his Cabinet, including himself on the way out the door, I think, and, and beyond the Cabinet, you know, anybody in and around his administration, it's going to be another one of those 1800 blanket pardon things that he's going to use an auto pen for, I'm sure on the way out. But that doesn't, you know, that's, that's he's going to do that on day one. That doesn't mean that at midterms the con the Congress now in control of the Democrats can't do impeachment and removal proceedings. Emil Bovey, 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, Come on down. You've been impeached and removed for everything that you did prior to getting on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals to obstruct justice. Todd Blanch, same thing. You know, Pam Bondi, Cash Patel, Stephen Miller, you know, there's ways to get rid of people and that is through an impeachment and removal process, you know, showing high crimes and misdemeanors and other things like that. So have I stressed enough the importance of, of this midterm election? So for criminal prosecution, you're right. If by the time the Department of Justice gets there, the new Department of Justice, doesn't that sound sweet? The new Department of Justice in 2028, if they already have in their back pocket pardons, you know, they could start the prosecution, but they're going to pull out the pardon as a defense in history. So I think that answered your question. And certainly, as you know, state charges can't be and bar investigations can't be stopped by a federal pardon, despite the fact that Donald Trump is trying to use a pardon to help Tina Peters in Colorado. We're still waiting for the Colorado Appellate Court to reject the argument raised by Donald Trump's high school roommate that he can pardon state offenses as well. Citing to George Washington Butterfly Life 68 asked Popoc, how do we get the immunity decision reversed? Oh, that's going to take a bit. That's going to be packing the United States Supreme Court with three to five additional people and having that group now 12 or 15 in terms of size and people appointed by Democrats, revisit the issue and overturn that precedent. I mean we have a, we have a precedent for that. The Supreme Court has been reevaluating its own precedent frequently, including cases they just decided five to 10 years ago. So it, but that's how it's going to have to happen. There's no other, there's no other way. Even if Congress tried to pass an act that took away the immunity of the president that would be found automatically to have violated the separation of powers and the article, the Article 2 powers of the presidency. So that's not going to happen. It's going to have to be a new Supreme Court or one that's bigger and bolder and Democrat led. So that's the way that's going to have to happen. Gabriel Clotier, or Clotier depending upon where he lives 3686 asked Popac, how soon can we expect the SCOTUS ruling on tariffs? I think this Friday. They've announced today that the Supreme Court is going to make a ruling a they're going to drop some decisions on Friday. We've been waiting for that one. It could be the Voting Rights act which is on life support and probably going to be put out of our misery or their misery on, on Friday. It could be both, you know, and that, you know. So the Voting Rights act is the, the case that's coming out of New Orleans involving maps and whether racial gerrymandering to ensure racial balance in a state is a violation of the 14th Amendment or not turning the Voting Rights act on its head. So we're waiting for that case and we're waiting for tariffs 1, 2 or both I think get dropped on Friday and you know where to go. You know where to go for that unprecedented a podcast I do with Dina Doll that's now up on audio as of today. You want to be the first one put a five star review down. Now would be a good time on Apple Pod and every and it's also on a playlist that we have on Legal AF YouTube channel. So I hope that answers your question. Let me turn to Wyoming because it was a little bit of a shock but this is what's happening. It's all, it's hand to hand combat in states over a woman's right to choose. And we were, I think we were, I think women and those that support women and to restore them to first class citizenship in America and Not second class citizenship in red states that have taken away their reproductive rights along with the United States Supreme Court. I think we were heartened today by the 4 to 1 decision by the Wyoming ruby red Wyoming supreme court striking down two statutes that were passed in 2023 in the wave of, you know, excitement by MAGA after the Dobbs decision ripped away for the first time in history a constitutional right that was given ripped it away from a woman and a right to choose. And states like Wyoming quickly put on the books in this case that abortion was banned except in the in terms of a woman's health or life and rape and incest and abort and medicated abortion or abortion pills were banned. But the problem is Wyoming has a constitution. And in Article 1, Section 38 of their Constitution, it said everybody has the right to make health care decisions for themselves. Now, how the state wiggled their way around it is they stuck in language in the bands that said that the decision to terminate a unborn child, you love using the wrong vocabulary, is not a health care decision. It's a right. It's just a decision to terminate an unborn child. And the four justices of the Supreme Court in Wyoming said, no, this is the most fundamental and personal right of a woman and it goes to her health and health care. I mean, even the ban, even the exception to the ban demonstrates that as they pointed out their 70 page order, it says it's a total ban on abortion except to protect the life of the mother. Life, health kind of goes together, don't you think? Here's what the, here's what the Wyoming Supreme Court said in their ruling and then I'll read you what some of the opponents, usually white guys who can't carry children, how to say about that. Let me read it to you. Here a woman, this is from the 4 to 1 decision written by Chief Judge Boom Garden. A woman has a fundamental right to make her own health care decisions, including the decision to have an abortion. The state did not meet its burden of demonstrating the abortion laws further the compelling interest of protecting unborn life without unduly infringing upon the woman's fundamental right to make her own health care decisions. As such, the abortion laws do not constitute reasonable and necessary restrictions on a pregnant woman's right to make her own health care decisions. Now, of course, right on cue, you had the American Civil Liberties Union, the only abortion provider in the entire state, you know, celebrate along with obstetricians and other women who were plaintiffs in the case. And right on, right on cue to you know pee in their cornflakes. Was a guy a Speaker of the House and remember his name because you need to defeat him in Wyoming. Chip Nyman, who is a Republican from and you can help me in the chat tonight if you live in Wyoming. Is it Hullitt or Hewlett county, told the Wyoming Public Radio. Isn't that adorable? Public radio still exists in Wyoming that he's in disbelief but listen to his disgusting Orwellian vocabulary quote those little unborn human beings, those little men and women. Is that. Did he fall asleep during health class? That's what he thinks inside he that was inside his mommy. Little men and women, those girls and boys in the wombs have rights. Who's listening to their voices now? They have voices. Okay. According to Now, I don't think it's that far of a stretch to think that Chip Nyman would also support counting them in the census for the state and maybe giving them a mail in ballot. Why not these little men and women with voices inside of the woman's womb since this is the false equivalency to put a embryo Because a lot of these states, it's six to 12 weeks, not even a fetus on the same par as a born living adult human being who happens to be a woman. This is, is this not our, our problem here? The Freedom Caucus, I don't know how they stole that name, marked it as a dark day in Wyoming history after decades of liberal leadership in the governor's office. They said the state Supreme Court has been filled with jurists who reject biology and human dignity. No, I think they have jurists who are human beings who are apolitical and impartial and are not trying to shove other people's morality or, or religious beliefs down our throat or up a woman's. We'll leave it at that. Maybe that's what's going on in Wyoming. But for me it's another data point that Trump and MAGA are in serious trouble. Like the last special election a week or so ago, a Democrat won Election Night in America six weeks ago, Blue wave. Every election since Donald Trump's been in has either been a Democratic win and flipping a seat or over performance by a Democrat substantially over what Kamala Harris did against Donald Trump. Like Donald Trump had won, you know, a district, let's say by 22 points. But now the Democrat only lost by four or six. There's a pent up demand to vote in this country. Polling is great, marching in the street, can't beat it. But we are ready to vote and if we were a country like a parliamentarian country and we had votes of no confidence, Trump would already be gone. Trump would already be gone. We don't have to wait around to see him try a military takeover of Greenland and a destruction of NATO and a takeover of Venezuela to suck its oil money into his coffers. We don't have to wait around for that. There has been enough other things to destroy and try to crush the hopes and dreams of America and destroy our patriotism and our values to have him lose a vote of no confidence. The polling says he's lost a vote of no confidence when 65% of Americans and we'll see the new polling off of Venezuela. But I'm not sure that helps him when 65% of Americans reject Donald Trump and hate Donald Trump and his policies, including the things that he holds dear, like immigration policy and foreign policy. And it's worse with the Republican, with The independents who 75% reject Donald Trump and want their vote back. And people under 30, 30 and under, it's like 82% have said no. That's why Mum Dabi won in New York City and Spamberger in Virginia and Cheryl in New Jersey and the rest. So big win. And it means a lot. And I think it's not an outlier. I think it's right on point and it is a data point to show you that we will be successful at midterms. And I think it's going to be a wipeout for the party. But we have to get up and vote and do the mail in and all of that in order for that to work. Let me turn now to Epstein files. Well, this isn't going well for the Trump administration. This is what's tearing MAGA apart. It's like two demons that have just come out of Haiti and are now ripping MAGA apart. One is Donald Trump violating America first principles and getting us into wars in other countries, which MAGA hates. That's one. And the lack of transparency around it and the obvious oil, Big Oil dominating foreign policy. And then you've got the, the continued Epstein cover up. Donald Trump has so painted himself into a corner he can't get out. And now we've got a new missing 3,000. Sorry, 3.2 million documents. What am I talking about? All right, well, they've only posted, get this number. About 13,000 documents representing about 130,000 pages have been posted by the Department of Justice. And we're now almost three weeks past the deadline under the Epstein Transparency act that if you just Take their denominator of 5.2 million from last week. That represents 0.06% of the total of the Epstein files. But now they don't like that number. So now they first said, after Midas called them out, based on one of those pages of the 12,000, and said, what about this email they. That says there's a million Maxwell documents that are sitting in the Southern District of New York. What about those? Then they came out, hey, there's a million documents sitting in New York we got to get to. We're like, all right, well, we'll put you down. It's like, we're. We're doing a ledger. We'll put you down for a million. Okay. Then a week later, during the holidays, Todd Blanch drops a bombshell as the number two in the Department of Justice. He says, There's 5.2 million. What a specific number. 5.2 million. Not 5. 5.2. All right, but we're working around the clock with 400 people, and we'll get there eventually. You know, we're redacting. We're like, wow, 5.2 million. And we didn't even think it was that. And if it's 5.2 million, that means it's 50 million pages, because it looks like the average document is about 10 pages long based on the prior numbers. So we're like, okay, we'll put you down for 5.2. So we travel forward. And now they have to file a letter with Judge Engelmeier in New York, who's supervising their production because he's also responsible for the Epstein case. And I'm reading the letter about. There it is. I'm reading the letter. It's up on Legal AF substack. And all of a sudden, I see under overview of work in progress, they just blithefully mention a new number, 2 million. No footnote. I'm looking the footnote like, okay, what happened to the other 3.2 million? Nope, nope. Just insulting everybody's intelligence. Just saying, did I say 5.2? I meant 2 million. Now, does anybody believe that they figured out that 3.2 million of the 5 million were not relevant and didn't need to be reviewed or were duplicative in a week? How is that even possible? It's not. They don't explain where the 3.2 million went from. Again, reinforcing what we've been saying on Midas. Touch and Legal. Lay off, illegally off, and intersection from the beginning. We are never going to see the entirety of whatever you define as the Epstein files ever now lawsuits should be coming out of this. I'm going to ask actually Sky Perryman, who's going to be with me tomorrow from Democracy Forward, who has a pending Freedom of Information act case in with before Judge Chutkin of all people. Speaking of Jan6, she was the Jan6 insurrectionist criminal judge. About the communications between Epstein and Trump, that's another thing you never hear about when they're doing their search. Have they searched Donald Trump's personal accounts, his personal phone and laptop and documents and hoard of things that he kept at Mar A Lago? Remember he kept all that stuff? He never returned it. That's the thing people don't remember. Like, oh, the Mar A Lago report. Oh, is she gonna, is Eileen kind of gonna release it or not? Oh, Jack Smith get escaped testimony? He kept all the stuff. He still has it, I guess, falling out of the ballroom and out of the bathroom. He has all of our top secret and classified documents. He never turned it back. You know, the FBI went in and grabbed what they could, but there's still stuff there, you know, that left behind. You know, they did a raid, but there's only so much they could grab with on that. So you have the, you have the shape shifting going on at the Department of Justice. You have them wanting basically saying, believe me, believe us, you know, which we don't. And now public interest groups are going to have to get to the bottom of what happened to the other 3.2 million. And this all matters to the survivors, of course, because we're getting even more and more information to help the survivors bring civil lawsuits around the country against people who they may not even have known was their predator at all. So look, I think you know, when you put all this together and you see what on to Venezuela here for a minute, when you're failing at home, when your economic record is dismal, when you're about to lose on the tariffs, I believe, and you're, which is the linchpin of your entire administration. When you're about, when all of those things are about to happen or are happening, your poll numbers are in the trash. It's scandal after scandal and you can't get out from under the Epstein scandal, what do you do? What do you do? Wag the dog? You start a phony war? It's not a war. What Delta team took out 30 Cuban mercenaries that were guarding Maduro who were getting paid in oil. That, that's, that's taking over Venezuela? We didn't take over Venezuela. We kicked the dictatorship in the nuts and then said, you like that because we're about to do another one in a second wave unless you give us all your oil. That's what happened. Freedom is not on the march. And then right off of what we saw with the Jan6 committee and the Gen6 oversight hearing, Ed Martin, who is a senior, who was a Gen 6 denier, an election denier who represented Jan 6 insurrectionist, who's now the head of your and my committee on weaponization of the Department of Justice, answering the Pam Bondi, he basically in social media posts in the last 48 hours suggested that the Department of Justice and Donald Trump may do a sweetheart deal with Maduro if he confesses to having a hand in election interference in 2020. This is the wet dream and the fevered imagination of Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani that a Venezuelan business person using software endorsed by Hugo Chavez, the predecessor to Maduro, was used and by Dominion voting systems and Smartmatic to change Trump votes into Biden. Right? 90 lawsuits in federal court says that's bullshit. You know, election forensic auditors hired by Republicans say that's bullshit. And the cybersecurity unit which Donald Trump has put out of business of the federal government says that didn't happen. And there's no proof of that happening. But Maduro has every incentive to lie about it, to get a sweetheart deal, much like Ghislaine Maxwell, and to be given asylum somewhere and let him keep his money. Trump gets the oil, Maduro gets out of looking at 50 years or 100 years in prison, and Trump gets to rewrite history and say, see, Venezuela did flip votes. But the fact that I even have to report on Ed Martin promoting this conspiracy theory tells you everything you need to know about the corruption of this Department of Justice. There is an antidote for this corruption and you found it. It's being with the Midas Touch network. It's being on the intersection with me once a week. It's being a supporter, a fervent supporter and helping us build the community where we're all vibrating on the same frequency on legal AF, YouTube, you know, and becoming a subs there, we are becoming a subscriber there and coming to. You don't have to roll the next one. And coming to Legal AF on its sub stack where we're doing live reporting twice a day. We have to speak truth to each other before we can speak truth to power. Now, some people have said, and I understand the point of view, Polbach, you're platforming Donald Trump and You're giving him a. We're not. We have to criticize and critique and call out the abuse of power, the corruption, the lawlessness, the rogue conduct. Because that's what he wants. He wants us to get fatigued. He wants us to be have our speech and free speech chilled. He wants corporate parents to crush their newsrooms. But we'll never let that happen here. We don't have a corporate parent. We don't have outside investors. We. This is all people powered. This is member powered. That's it. And so for people would say, how do you do 12 hours of content a day on Legal AF, YouTube, your videos over on Midas touch, the podcasts that you do, the sub stack, the lives. How do you do it? I do it because of you, but I do it with you. And the way you keep the lights on in the ways that we've talked about tonight, membership, paid membership, the products that are promoted here that we check out, you know, Jordy and I do our own screening of the products. That's the way you keep this community together. And then you get what I think we've all been looking for, which is to say we're not alone. The loneliness in the which is. Which is the, the, the art of the devil, the art of Trump is to separate us from our government and from our fellow Americans and make us feel alone. We're not alone. We're, we're not alone. We're together. And together as citizens, we will overcome the Trump administration and we'll do it together. I'm glad you're here on the Intersection every Tuesday night. Pick us up on the audio podcast platform of your choice. Leave a five star review. Let, let friends come and join us here. One thing I've learned in running the substack and running the YouTube channel, in doing the podcasting is that there is no greater influencer in your life than you. People will follow you. And if you say come to the intersection, come to the YouTube channel for legal AF, come to the substack. I, I see the numbers, the stats. You as a group, individually are the most influential people in your lives. To cut through the clutter of all the content that's out there and get people here. So you are our marketing department. I guess what I'm trying to say and I appreciate each and every one of you, thanks for being here. I'll see you on substack legal af substack live tomorrow at 12pm again at 7:45. I really appreciate you being here. Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal A 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 in 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 Layup are there as well. 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