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A
Morning, Zoe. Got donuts.
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B
Jeff Bridges, why are you still living above our garage?
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A
Well, I dig the mattress and I want to be in a T mobile commercial like you teach me. So Dana.
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B
Oh no, I'm not really prepared. I couldn't possibly at t mobile get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system.
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A
Wow, impressive. Let me try. T Mobile is the best place to get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network.
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C
Nice. You heard them.
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A
T Mobile is the best place to.
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C
Get the new iPhone 17 Pro on us with eligible traded in any condition.
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A
So what are we having for lunch?
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B
Dude, my work here is done.
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D
The 24 month bill credits on experience beyond for well qualified customers + tax and 35 device connection charge credit send and balance due. If you pay off earlier, Cancel Finance agreement. IPhone 17 Pro 256 gigs $1,099.99 and new line minimum 100 plus a month plan with auto pay plus taxes and fees required. Best mobile network in the US based on analysis by Oakland Speed Test Intelligence data 182025 visit t mobile.com A Mochi.
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E
Moment from Tara, who writes for years all my doctor said was eat less and move more, which never worked. But you know what does? The simple eating tips from my nutritionist at Mochi. And after losing over 30 pounds, I can say you're not just another GLP1 source, you're a life source. Thanks, Tara. I'm Mayra Amit, founder of Mochi Health. To find your mochi moment, visit joinmochi.com.
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B
Tara is a mochi member, compensated for her story.
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C
I'm Michael Popak and you're at the intersection of law and politics. The new podcast only on the Midas Touch network. I'm expressing my First Amendment right to give you honest commentary and you're expressing your first Amendment right to listen to commentary like this at the marketplace of.
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Ideas in the public square.
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C
It's all under attack. It's all under attack by the Trump administration. Your First Amendment right. My first Amendment right. But we're here together on Tuesdays to talk about things honestly. We got to talk and speak truth to each other before we can even hope to speak truth to power. And it's working. We see it in the poll numbers.
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F
We see it in the streets.
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C
If there were giant statues of Donald Trump like any other dictator, they'd already been torn down by the public with ropes. He's down to 38% approval rating, 37% approval rating. More than 63% of America is against Donald Trump and his dictator tendencies. They're against his militarization and federalization of the National Guard to go into blue states. He's against him cutting funding to important programs to those that help give people dignity and honor and the ability to live, whether it's welfare programs, it's SNAP Supplemental Nutrition programs for children and the like. They're against his immigration policy, they're against his tariff policy, they're against how he abuses fellow Americans, how he abuses our global allies. And we get to talk about it once a week when we come together here. It is that important. So I'm going to I have four or five stories, probably five stories that I want to cover with you here at the intersection. And we'll just do a Rorschach test. I'll say a name. You tell me what you think of Armando or Kilmer. Armando Abrego Garcia 1, Lindsey Halligan 2 SNAP lawsuit led by 23 attorneys general just filed today. The auto pen and pardon debacle or scandal or report of the Oversight committee trying to undermine once again Joe Biden and an appeal filed in the middle of the night by Joe Biden. I'm going to pull all that together with you here at the intersection. Let me start with Kilmer, Abrego Garcia, because it's not just about him. Yes, he's being tormented by the federal government and all of its resources. It's about all of us. It's about all of our civil liberties, all of our due process rights. We are Kilmer. And he's fighting a fight in two battlefields. One in Tennessee, presided over by Judge Crenshaw. Criminal matter. The second Judge Zinnis and his civil rights case. This is the person who was illegally deported to El Salvador despite having a American court order in his pocket saying he could not be removed, especially to the tortured prisons of El Salvador. It took Judge Zinnis several orders, the Fourth Circuit several orders and the Supreme Court nine zero to bring him back. When the government brought him back, they trumped up some manufactured charge of human smuggling in Tennessee. And now we've got two worlds colliding in the last 24 hours with a new order by Judge Crenshaw and one by and some findings by Judge Zinnis about Abrego Garcia. So the motion to dismiss his indictment for human trafficking smuggling in Tennessee is coming to a head. And the lawyers for Abrego Garcia let it be known that they want to put on the witness stand Todd Blanche and other members of the Department of Justice. That triggered the Department of Justice, who within days of that sent Abrego Garcia's lawyers a notice in the court. A notice that they're sending him 3,000 miles or more away to Liberia. And he said he was willing to go to Costa Rica, at least it would be near his US citizen family and children. And it's Spanish speaking. You know he speaks Spanish. We've seen him on the courthouse steps speaking Spanish. He doesn't speak English that well. Sending him to Liberia is not going to be a great idea. That was in retaliation to the lawyers for Brego Garcia and embarrassing the Department of Justice as they move forward with a Nov. 4 and fifth hearing about whether his indictment will be dismissed for a vindictive prosecution. Judge Crenshaw has already indicated that he's likely to grant that motion, but he wants to hear further evidence. And in the meantime, in the last 24 hours, Judge Crenshaw issued an order which we have up on legal AF substack that gags the federal government from continuing to bash Abrego Garcia and undermine his ability under the sixth Amendment to have a fair trial. And the judge cited several video attacks of Abrego Garcia. Like people like Pam Bondi. Here's a clip of Pam Bondi that got the judge upset. Let's play the clip.
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Our government presented El Salvador with an arrest warrant and they agreed to return him to our country. We're grateful to President Bukele for agreeing to return him to our country to face these very serious charges. This is what American justice looks like. Upon completion of his sentence, we anticipate he will be returned to his home country of El Salvador. The grand jury found that over the past nine years Abrego Garcia has played a significant role role in an alien smuggling ring. They found this was his full time job, not a contractor. He was a smuggler of humans and children and women. He made over 100 trips. The grand jury found smuggling people throughout our country, Mississippi. 13 members, violent gang, terrorist organization members throughout our country. Thousands of illegal aliens were smuggled. This is especially disturbing because Abrego Garcia is also alleged with transporting minor children. The defendant traded the innocence of minor children for profit. There are even more disturbing facts that the grand jury uncovered. It is alleged this defendant is part of the same smuggling ring responsible for the death of more than 50 migrants in 2021 after the tractor trailer overturned in Mexico. This is part of that same ring. The defendant abused undocumented alien females according to co conspirators who were under his control. While transporting them throughout our country. This defendant trafficked firearms and narcotics throughout our country on multiple occasions. They were using vehicles, SUVs with added seats in the back floors that had been ripped out. Guns, narcotics, children, women, Ms. 13 members. That is what the grand jury found. A co conspirator alleged that the defendant solicited nude photographs and videos of a minor. A co conspirator also alleges the defendant played a role in the murder of a rival gang member's mother. These facts demonstrate Abrego Garcia is a danger to our community now.
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C
Having now gagged them, meaning they can't continue to talk about the case. It was interesting to me that nobody, including the lawyers for Abrego Garcia, didn't raise in the criminal case that they're about to deport him to Liberia. They knew it at the time. I'm surprised they didn't do it. The judge also said he wants more details about the senior lawyers in the office, the middle District of Tennessee U.S. attorney's Office who quit because they wouldn't bring false charges against Abrego Garcia. So Brad Edwards, for instance, he wants more information, the judge to be sent to him for personal review about that issue. So he ordered that as well. That's on the criminal side. Same 24 hour block. Judge Zinnis pulls everybody together about Liberia. And during that hearing, she says to the lawyers assembled, I don't want him going to Liberia. He's currently in Virginia under her watchful eye in an ICE detention center. I don't want him going to Liberia. Make a representation to me that he, I don't have to worry in the next few days or hours for him going to Liberia. I'm sure Judge Crenshaw, the criminal judge, doesn't want that either. And we're still waiting for the new filings that will give the judge that assurance. She was not happy in the court during that. During that. And she's trying to consider whether his due process rights are continuing to be violated. I've said, and I'll say it again, I think she has the power to grant him asylum for the abuse of his constitutional rights and as a way to compensate him. That's what I think she should do and I'll stand by that. But we'll have to continue to watch as the government reacts, overreacts and is vindictive towards Abrego Garcia in both courts. Speaking of prosecutors for the Department of Justice, but maybe not for long. Let me turn to Lindsey Halligan. Lindsey Halligan is in another scandal of her own Making I reported and I had the pleasure and the honor of interviewing Anna Bauer, a reporter for Lawfare who received a series of unsolicited signal app messages from somebody named Lindsey Halligan who was prosecuting the Letitia James case. Turned out it was Lindsey Halligan. Turned out she wanted to have a dialogue with a reporter, apparently on the record, about the case in real time, including about evidence, including about grand jury information. And Anna Bauer, as any intrepid reporter would do, good reporter would do, published it. And that led to not only the article, my interview with Anna Bauer, but it led to that event being the centerpiece of a couple of different motions and lawsuits. Now, firstly, because Lindsey Halligan admitted that she used the Signal Applied and its disappearing messaging feature for official communication. She's destroying federal public records. She's destroying federal public records. And she should know better because she was on the team with Todd Blanche, her boss in the Department of Justice and others when they were the defense lawyers for Donald Trump. And they know what the defense lawyers were able to do to pick apart every little mistake or misstep of a prosecutor, whether it was Fawney Willis or it was Letitia James or it was the office of Alvin Bragg, these various places where he was prosecuted. Jack Smith, they wrote the playbook on how to go after the prosecutors. So why are they surprised that the signal app use and messaging to a reporter would, would be used by the defense team to seek to gag Lindsey Halligan in one of the motions filed by Letitia James? Let me show you a clip of the interview I just had with Anna with Anna Bauer up on Legal af. And she's hopefully going to be a regular. If you don't know her work, you really need to discover it. She's a reporter's reporter. She's one of the inputs and sources of information that I rely on for my reporting. Really, really insightful work. But here she is in the interview. Let's play a clip.
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I think it just kind of underscores that when you're in this, like, high profile, pressure cooker environment, of course defense counsel is going to, like, seize on these kinds of public statements, which made it so surprising to me that she was on the record speaking to a reporter about an ongoing case, you know, for all the reasons that we wrote in the piece, that's just so unusual. And so, again, I just think that the fact that this motion was filed kind of speaks to the unusualness and why it seems to be something that was at best misguided in terms of her choice to reach out to a reporter about an ongoing case.
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And a couple of days later, you.
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C
Did an update where you said that the DOJ communications person contacted you for the sole purpose of correcting the typo in Lindsay's name. That's.
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Yeah.
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So it was. It was. I, you know, it wasn't too long after we published the piece. It was like two hours, I believe it was. They reached out and said that they had realized that they misspelled Ms. Halligan's name. Yes. But other than that, I haven't heard additional commentary from doj. As I understand it. I believe that they gave a comment to a different outlet in which they described me as a blogger as opposed to a journalist. But other than that, you know, we have not had any additional commentary from DOJ asking for correction. It was. It was just that misspelling that they provided in the state.
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C
But that's not the only thing that happened bad to Lindsey Allegan based on the signal messaging. Again, this is a government who, at the start of its administration, had another signal gate problem when Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, then sent to Iceland as an ambassador, now accidentally or on purpose included Jeffrey Goldberg, another reporter, the editor in chief of the Atlantic, to a Signal chat to talk about whether they were going to bomb the Houthis in Yemen or not. A military action. Now, I hope people aren't getting too fatigued by all of Donald Trump's 15 different attacks on. In Venezuelan waters, Caribbean waters, and Pacific waters against people without due process. But back in. In the start of the administration, there was this entire signal chain about the bombing that included the reporter and J.D. vance and Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio and Tulsi Gabbard. And it was the subject of a lawsuit by a group called American Oversight. And a judge said, you can't use Signal. You need to preserve Signal.
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You can't use the disappearing messaging feature for public records.
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C
Apparently, Lindsey Halligan never got that memo. Maybe it was on a disappearing app like Signal. So American oversight has made a demand, and we have the rumblings of a new lawsuit sent to Marco Rubio, who's the ethicist for America. No, he's the archivist. Couldn't be the ethicist. He's the temporary archivist in charge of public records, not just the Secretary of State, in which they're demanding all signal messages and all her use of signal messages not only be preserved, but that it be shown to the American people what she destroyed. And they also point out that she effectively threatened the reporter by telling her, you're getting your reporting wrong. You know, if I were you, sort of a not so subtle threat to try to chill her First Amendment expression. And now we bring it, since we're still talking about Lindsey Halligan and James Comey, because she's the prosecutor for the former FBI director and Letitia James, where we had just had the arraignment of Letitia James, in which he very valiantly and with great conviction and courage said, in effect, I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going to let them crush me. I'm going to stand up for the American people. There's a motion pending about whether Lindsey Halligan lives or dies. No, it's not Hunger Games. In being a prosecutor, in being a. Was she properly appointed as Eastern District of Virginia prosecutor or not? And everybody that's looked at it, including me, says she wasn't. She was illegally appointed because there was already an interim U.S. attorney named Eric Siebert, a Republican, who Donald Trump didn't like because he refused to indict Hal Lindsey. Sorry. He refused to indict James Comey and Letitia James, he got fired. But he was the one and only interim U.S. attorney. The next stop is he's. Donald Trump's got to get somebody through. Through the Senate. And in the interim, there needs to be somebody appointed by the judges of the Eastern District of Virginia. That's how it works under a statute we call section 546. So the motions are both almost identical, Comey and Letitia James. And the issue is there's a conflict of interest with the judges of the Eastern District of Virginia because they would pick the next U.S. attorney if she gets bounced. So the motion has been sent off, as I predicted, through the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, Chief Judge Judge Diaz, who sits over North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, to a South Carolina judge to decide. And the motions have been consolidated, so they're going to be heard together.
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Who's the judge?
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C
Judge Curry, senior status judge in her mid-70s. She was appointed by Bill Clinton. They found. I just think it's so perfect that they sent it to South Carolina, the home of the other Lindsey, Senator Lindsey Graham. They picked a federal judge that he probably supported because he had to have given his blue slip to support her, oh, those many years ago. She's been on the bench for a million years. She's a resident of Florence, South Carolina. She worked in the Department of Justice and in D.C. and in South Carolina. She's a very confident and credible judge. Judge Curry is going to be making this decision sooner rather than later because the trials of, of Tish James and James Comey are in January coming up. So we're going to be doing a lot of reporting about that. But, but if you're, if you're Letitia James and James Comey, you got to be happy with the pick of the Clinton appointee. Curry, the rest of the motions on vindictive prosecution and on the gag orders, they stay with the two trial judges, Judge Nakmanoff, the judge who's a Biden appointee for James Comey, and Judge Walker, who's a Biden appointee for Letitia James in the Eastern District of Virginia. Just this one motion, a DQ disqualify, goes off to South Carolina and all of that. So that's where we are with Lindsey Halligan. Maybe you shouldn't appoint A novice with 7 years legal experience and having never been a federal prosecutor, let alone being in federal court, maybe you shouldn't appoint them to be the top five federal prosecutor in America. How about that? Let me move on. Got a lot of interviews. You just saw one that I did with Anna Bauer and I've got one coming up. Actually, I'm going to be recording it tonight late with Attorney General Rob Bonta, who I had the distinct pleasure of doing the interview with on no Kings Day in California. And AG Banta is back to talk about today, a powerful new lawsuit filed on behalf of tens of millions of impoverished Americans or whose children need nutrition. It's the Supplemental Nutrition Program, the SNAP program between 20 and 40 million children and babies need this in order to survive. And Donald Trump is playing politics and Russian roulette with their lives because he wants to blame the Democrats for taking food out of their mouth and nutrition out of their mouth when nothing could be further from the truth. There are, there's a secret memo which I actually got my hands on. I'm going to put it up in legal AF substack. Back in September, before the shutdown, every agency had to come up with a contingency plan. And the U.S. department of Agriculture, which is part of the food distribution, nutrition distribution apparatus of America, prepared a report that said they had a rainy day fund of up to $6 billion that they understood that Congress wanted the SNAP program and other welfare and food stamp type programs to be up and running. And then somebody, if I had a guess, Russ Vogt, who's the chair of the Office of Management and Budget, he's the director of Office of Management and Budget. He's the creator of the project 2025. He, along with Stephen Miller, said, let's screw the Democrats and their efforts to try to ensure that 22 million Americans, many of the same overlapping families, don't lose Obamacare, don't lose their health care. We're talking about American here. Every time I say anything in this segment, we're talking about Americans, not illegal immigrants. And so they're holding it hostage and they're holding babies and children's lives hostage and threatening to shoot and not release the 6 billion. So there already was a secret memo that was taken down from the website of the U.S. department of Agriculture. We have it. We found it. Because that was in September, beginning of October, they said, we got the 6 billion. It's rainy day. We're going to be distributing it to cover the payments for November, which is about 8 billion. Then somebody thought better of it and two weeks later said there are no more funds, and then posted a callous message that we would like to distribute the funds if only the Democrats and the radical Democrats would stop holding the government hostage. Talk about inhumanely, inhumanely hitting the government or hitting Americans and making them suffer. In fact, I have a clip from a Midas Touch simulcast or broadcast of a press conference just today about the lawsuit filed and led by California by 23 attorneys general got filed in the District of Massachusetts in order to get those funds, that rainy day fund, paid out to Americans. Let's play the clip.
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I'm going to kick it off here today to announce California's latest lawsuit against the federal government and specifically the U.S. department of Agriculture, also known as USDA. And Secretary Brooke Rollins using the current federal shutdown as a scapegoat. USDA has unlawfully suspended funds for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Snap for the first time in the program's history, informing state agencies that the federal government will withhold all November benefit payments. Trump and Rollins are cutting off benefits for more than 41 million Americans. 41 million Americans, Red states and blue states, folks who rely on SNAP to put food on the table, even though there are billions of dollars in contingency funds and other funds that could be used to provide SNAP benefits during the shutdown. They are doing this on purpose. It is deliberate. It is intentional. They have the funds. They're just not using them. The vast majority of SNAP recipients are families with kids, elderly individuals and people with disabilities. These are our most vulnerable. Societies should be judged on how we treat the most vulnerable. Trump gets an F for what he is doing here. To our kids and to our most vulnerable Americans. Here in California Our SNAP program, CalFresh, supports 5.5 million Californians every month, including 1.9 million children. All of them are counting on this program. They're counting on their government to follow through on its promise and to provide the support that they need. In abruptly suspending snap, Trump and Rollins have broken the law. They have forced states to scramble to try and clean up the federal government's mess. And worst of all, they've left 41 million Americans unsure of whether their next of where their next meal will come from. With today's lawsuit, our coalition of 23 attorneys general and three governors who are standing up for the people in their state have made it clear that we refuse to stand by and allow the Trump administration to arbitrarily and unlawfully do away with a decades old safety net program, the country's most important tool for fighting against hunger.
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C
And as I said, we had the Pam Bondi clip, now we got the Rob Bonta clip. I'm going to be doing another interview of Rob Bonta about that lawsuit. It'll be up on Midas Touch and Legal AF tomorrow. They're seeking a temporary restraining order, as they should. They got all the blue state Democrats. I guess the other states don't care. I guess the red states don't care about their children of their state dying from malnutrition. We do. That's a reflection of our values as a party and the values of the Democratic Party. So I think that's very important. When we come back, I want to talk in detail about this auto pen pardon fake scandal that the Oversight Committee who apparently has time to issue reports, but no time run by MAGA to help the American people at all. And so they issue a report. It's all choreographed with Pam Bondi who says we're looking into it to try to undo pardons and clemency. Not going to work. There's no judge that's going to allow this. Pardons have been a part of life since 1803. Thomas Jefferson issued one of the first pardons. They don't have to be done in writing at all. There's no evidence that Joe Biden wasn't compos mentis, didn't know what he was doing when he signed it. In fact, he's already been interviewed. Not by the Oversight Committee, but he's been interviewed and said he knew exactly what he was doing when he authorized several thousand pardons and commutations. But what they think he was going to sit down and sign 2500. I don't think Donald Trump signed 2500 to cover the Jan6 pardons. You know, he did it with like one, one signature. But, you know, we had individual signatures for 2500 people and nobody would ever expect him not to use an auto pen. And Trump used an auto pen as well. I'll cover that. And I want to talk about the new appeal that's been filed and another interview I'll be doing tomorrow of Governor Shapiro about a voting rights lawsuit and what Pennsylvania intends to do about it. So a lot to cover. Many ways to support what we do at the intersection. As I said at the top, First Amendment speech is being crushed or attempted to be crushed by the Trump administration. So in order to fight back, there's ways to do it. The subscriber base from Midas Touch and for Legal AF YouTube channel is very important to keeping us on the air, to keeping the content in, to getting the interviews that we want because the bigger we are, the more your voice can be heard because we're able to expand our network, our interviews, our team and all of that. So hit the free subscribe button on Midas, come over to legal AF YouTube. We're going to hit 900,000, I think over the weekend on our way to 1 million subscribers in just over a year. Okay. We built this for the break the glass moment and now we need your help. No paywall, no outside investors. Hit the legal AF subscription button. Then we formed this legal AF substack where in just in four or five months, we have 100,000 subs subscribers. Sorry. And there we're putting in real time live reporting, articles, analysis, all these filings that I talk about that you can get. And if you can swing a a paid membership which is less than $7 a month, not a week, will overwhelm you with a return on your investment that like a cornucopia of information at the intersection of law and politics. So those are the ways to support what we do. The Intersection is a podcast doing great because of you. Come over to the audio platforms of Spotify or Apple and look for the Intersection. Leave comments. I think we've got three or 400 reviews. Let's up that number. It's the Hummingbird theory. It all helps keep us in the top 100 of all YouTube channels and to break into the top 100 of audio podcasts. And we've built a tremendous audience here at the Intersection and I do appreciate you. And then of course, we've got some sponsors that support what we do as well. And here's a word from our sponsors.
- [32:59]
F
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- [34:43]
C
She recently decided that the new plant.
- [34:45]
F
On my desk is her personal jungle gym. Every time I walk by I find her perched on top knocking leaves over like it's her full time job.
- [34:52]
C
I love spending time with her.
- [34:54]
F
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C
No, not that kind.
- [35:46]
F
Two bowls side by side and she went straight for Smalls. Since switching, Chanel has had fewer hairballs, more balanced energy, a healthier weight, softer fur and a less stinky litter box. Still not a believer. Forbes ranked Smalls the best overall cat food and buzzfeed said, my cats went completely ballistic for this stuff.
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- [36:28]
C
Back to the intersection. Let's get to the auto Pen BS shall we? The Pardon Power the power of the presidency to pardon is in the Constitution. It doesn't say you have to use a pen, doesn't say you have to use a piece of paper. It doesn't say you have to, you have to sign it yourself or you.
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It doesn't say there even has to be anything. Could be oral.
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C
It is a pardon of the President to power. It is unlimited.
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It can't be challenged.
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C
It is what it is. It's been going on since the 1700s. Thomas Jefferson used an auto pen or a version of it. In 1803 Trump used auto pens just because in his final days when he pardoned all the Jan Sixers, or at the beginning of this term when he pardoned all the Jan Sixers, he did it in one two line pardon instead of individual pardons. That doesn't make a pardon valid or invalid. But the Oversight Committee, which is Donald Trump's hand puppet led by Jim Jordan, did a whole BS 90 page report which they interviewed a lot of Biden aids about what he did or didn't know at any given time. Look, Joe Biden has already given public statements in July, if not, if not later, in which he said he was compos mentis, he had all of his faculties, he knew what he was doing and everybody knew it. And the autopad was at his direction on every one of those sentences. You may not like the sort of sundowning of Joe Biden towards the very end, but it doesn't mean he wasn't competent to do his job. Just as Ronald Reagan, who is in the throes of dementia, we now know, and Nancy Reagan running the office, nobody's going back and challenging the last year of the Reagan administration at all. But, you know, Trump's been trolling Biden and therefore trying to undermine the Democratic brand since he's been in office. You know, he put the, all the photos of the president in the walkway leading to the Rose Garden or whatever's left of the Rose Garden these days. And he, he put an auto pen with Joe Biden's signature instead of his, instead of his, his photo. It's ridiculous. He should worry about greater things while Americans suffer. He's building a golden ballroom and took a wrecking ball to the White House. Why does he just knock over the White House and say, oops, I want to start over again. It's the people's House. He's scarring it. And now we've got the reporting, for instance, that Benny Thompson of the Jan6 Committee just sent a demand letter on letterhead to every contributor, corporate contributor, to that ballroom about how they've contributed to the ripping a hole in the heart of America and tearing down the East Wing, which had been the repository of everything that's great in this country. And about first ladies, which is where their offices were until it was destroyed by Donald Trump in a peak of anger and spending money that he doesn't have, redirecting money away from research and development and slush funds and trying to prop up his ballroom, which is now going up 50% in price. And he's only been at it for about a month and a half. So this auto pen, Pam Bondi, who is a low light, who is a crash test dummy when it comes to being a lawyer of any, of any repute, she's not smart. She never was considered smart. That's not how she got her jobs in Florida as the Attorney general or now, or as the impeachment, the impeachment lawyer for Donald Trump. And for her to say, well, we're looking into it, we're going to go.
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F
Look at all of these things.
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C
It's just another way for Donald Trump to try to troll the Democrats, undermine the brand, get to a one party system. He's doing it with attacking voting, trying to suppress your vote, trying to make it harder for you to vote, trying to take away all the Democratic advantages. And now he's going after the icons and the idols of the Democratic Party, right? Letitia James, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and, and Joe Biden, et cetera, et cetera. But I will repeat, there is nothing in the Constitution that says it has to be done in writing. Presidents going back to Thomas Jefferson have used auto Pens. Donald Trump used an auto pen. And I think the interesting missing part of the Oversight committee report we're going to post that on Legal AF substack as well, is they never interviewed Joe Biden. How about interviewing Joe Biden? No, they didn't want to interview Joe Biden. They wanted to edit and leak and cut and paste to make their argument to give Pam Bondi, who's floundering as the Attorney General and the Department of Justice some sort of lifeline to prop her up. And we'll continue to follow that story on the intersection and on the Legal AF YouTube channel. Now, in the middle of the night, literally, Donald Trump finally got around to filing his appeal of his 34 count criminal conviction in New York. You may recall that Donald Trump is the only president to have ever been convicted of felonies and the only president with, with a felony record to become president again. In the 34 count there were the prosecutors, which were the Manhattan district Attorney's office convinced the jury of 12 in New York of Donald Trump's peers, 12, 0 that he committed effectively two crimes. The crime of business record fraud in the Stormy Daniels election interference, hush money cover up case where the three, two out of the three members of that conspiracy testified against him. David Pecker of the National Enquirer and Michael Cohen, his former lawyer. And that was done in conjunction as the jury concluded to support a second crime which in this case was election interference. Put those two things together, you get a felony. Now, Judge Rashawn didn't sentence Donald Trump to jail time. He suspended his sentence but kept the felony on the books. Suspended the judgment, if you will. Now Donald Trump has hired his purse, has hired lawyers at Sullivan and Cromwell. I just did a new hot take video that's up on Legal AF exploring their conflicts of interest to file their his appeal. The top story is not he filed an appeal raising the shop worn arguments, tired arguments that have failed before. Oh, Judge Marshawn's daughter worked for a Democratic strategy and fundraising company, so he should recuse himself. Why she's allowed to have this is 20, 25 daughters and wives are allowed to have jobs. That doesn't mean that it disqualifies their husband. So says the ethics rules. Oh, he contributed $25 or something to Act Blue once he was cleared of any ethical violation related to that. There's nothing in Judge Prashad's actions, his background, his history, his statements that indicate that he is, he is unethical as opposed to all the people that are in the Department of Justice. It's always ironic when the Trump administration or Donald Trump is arguing about somebody else's ethics. Right? Like Lindsey Halligan talking about the ethics of Pat Fitzgerald, a lawyer for James Comey. You know, oh, he's shocking.
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F
So Sullivan and Cromwell has been the.
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C
Government'S lawyers trying to negotiate against other law firms to get them to settle with Donald Trump, like Paul Weiss, then flipping sides and becoming Donald Trump's lawyer, while at the same time, their firm is rewarded by having the U.S. attorney in the in Manhattan be one of their partners with a revolving door that.
- [44:49]
F
Just reeks of corruption and lack of ethics.
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C
That's what I read when I read, you know, when I read the new filing, I read the filing by the Sullivan and Cromwell firm and it's, and its vice chairman, and I saw corruption and lack of ethics related to it. Now it's at the First Department Appellate Division in New York, of which I'm a member. It's the same appellate court, not the same panel, though, that.
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F
Ruled sort of.
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C
For Donald Trump on the fraud case Sullivan Cromwell brought that to because they kept the fraud in place, but they knocked down the 450 or $468 million judgment. And that's up on appeal to the Court of Appeals, which in New York is the Supreme Court, the highest court. So we'll see what's going to happen. I'm sure Trump's going to lose at the court of, at the First Department appellate Court, and then it's going to go to the Court of Appeals. But the story is a lack of ethics of the Sullivan Cromwell firm in New York. And, you know, major firms in New York all ran away from Donald Trump found him radioactive in 2020, especially in his role in January 6th in the insurrection. But then he went after all of them and got 14 of them to bend the knee and to agree to get rid of their diversity, equity and inclusion programs, to get rid of their pro bono programs, to support people who needed help but couldn't afford it, and give a billion dollars worth of free legal service to the Trump administration, some of which are being used on these, these illegal tariffs that are about to be hopefully declared illegal by the United States Supreme Court. So that's the takeaway from the Trump appeal. Finally, let me just touch on what is coming up at the United States Supreme Court on the 5th of November, and we'll have it up on Legal AF YouTube. There is going to be an oral argument about whether Donald Trump's tariffs are legal or not. I wouldn't say constitutional, but is constitutional because he claims his powers come from something called the International Economic Emergency, the International Economic Emergency Powers act, iepa. And when he got but there has to be an emergency and there's nothing in the IIPA about tariffs. So he's already lost at two other top courts, the International Court of Trade and the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. Now it's up at the Supreme Court. Now there's briefs coming in all left and right states and economists and others. Chamber of Commerce are all writing telling the Supreme Court to find that the tariffs are illegal. That would be a $1 trillion setback for Donald Trump. It's the hallmark, it's the foundation, the linchpin of his domestic and foreign policy. So there's going to be all those briefs, there's going to be all those arguments. The Wall Street Journal just came out and told the Wall and told the Supreme Court they should tear down the tariffs and find them to be unconstitutional. So we're going to have to follow that because they should under ipa. And the reason that Donald Trump was triggered by Doug Ford of Ontario last weekend where they ran the Reagan clip talking in 1987 about why tariffs are bad. And while he was going to have to do a tariff against Japan about the semiconductor war, the chip war at the time, they generally are unpatriotic and bad. Donald Trump didn't like that. Now, Ronald Reagan was a free trader. He wasn't a tariffer. And the courts have ruled that what he did against Japan in 1987 was not a tariff. It was really a sanction, but not a tariff on 138 countries, which can only be done by Congress under the under the Constitution. And that's what the Supreme Court, that's where the rubber meets the road with the Supreme Court. I like doing this show with you. You know, I think you know me from Legal af. I've been doing it five years now. Wednesdays with Karen Freeman, Igniplo Saturdays with my co founder Ben Mysalas. You see me in about 40 videos a week. But here it's different. My approach is different here at the intersection. And I'm so glad that you have found this show to be rewarding for you and you're part of this audience. Don't forget the ways to support us. Come over to legal AF YouTube, help us cross that 1 million subscriber barrier. Subscriber base is what drives YouTube and it's what drives the legal AF ecosystem. And we need it. Take a second, just check to see if you've already maybe you've subscribed already. Just go and check and you'll know. Come over to Legal AF substack, hit the and become a member and think about becoming a paid member for $6.77 a month. That's how we frankly keep the lights on. That's how we pay the editors, that's how we pay the bills. That's how we get the research teams. That's how we do our work here. We're on a shoestring, but that pays for the shoestring and we could really use your help there. And that's the way to do it. Of course we've got our sponsors, we've got this podcast which you can vote.
- [50:05]
F
And take a receipt.
- [50:06]
C
Go over on the audio podcast platforms, watch us on YouTube, of course, leave comments here, come over to the audio podcast platforms and leave five star reviews and notes there as well. So I'm glad you're here. You'll see me on the Midas Touch Channel on Legal AF on the Legal AF midweek edition of Legal af. That's tomorrow. And on the interviews that I've got coming up, Rob Bonta, Attorney General of California, you'll see me with tomorrow Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania in the next 24 hours. And then lastly in the middle of November on the 19th of November, I have the pleasure and honor of hosting or being asked to interview, if you will, as many of 23 Democratic attorneys general as I can get into a room in Arizona during one of their conferences. I'll be interviewing them in panels. I'll be interviewing them one on one. You need to hear about the first responders that are protecting our Constitution and our rule of law and that is the attorneys general for the blue states. And I will have them on Legal AF and on the Midas Touch Network. So thanks for being here until my next report. I'm Michael Popak. I'm Michael Popak and I got some.
- [51:21]
F
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C
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