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- [00:01]
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- [00:31]
Michael Popak
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliate potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. And I have created the brand new Department of Government Efficiency. Go. Perhaps you've heard of it, Perhaps, which is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the gallery tonight. Well, Donald Trump just solved a problem during his speech last night that's been vexing federal judges and even his own Department of Justice for quite some time. What is Doge? Who's in charge of Doge? Who's responsible for all the federal filing, firings and all of the defunding that's going on? Well, Donald Trump made it a lot easier last night, as you just heard, where he did a shout out to Elon Musk and said he is the quote, unquote, head of Doge. Are you eliciting Carolyn Levette, the press secretary, where she constantly says that she doesn't know who the head is, or it's this new person from Tennessee or Elon Musk is just a special advisor. Not according to the President of the United States, he's not. And this will now be new evidence in the courts of law. I'm Michael Popo with a smile on my face and a whistle on my lips here on the Midas Touch Network. So let's, let's break it all down. You may recall that Carolyn Levette, world's youngest press secretary, I think that's her title, she got into a whole snit with the press. She thinks her job as press secretary is not to do the work of the American people, but it's the fight with the hounds of the media because they have the temerity to ask questions about about Trump policy and cases. And that annoys her because she doesn't have the answers to these things. And so when she was asked about who is the head of Doge because it's important, because federal judges have said out loud in their recent orders that it is so opaque, the structure, the relationship between the Office of Personal Management, the Department of Government Efficiency Services, or whatever it's called, Elon mus, and they can't get to the bottom of it. And so they've started to order sworn statements under oath and depositions under oath and evidence to be provided and presented because judges are getting annoyed and pissed off that they can't figure out what should be a simple analysis. And so Carolyn Levette was asked, who is the head of doja? Why do you keep asking me this? Let me show you. Run that clip.
- [03:44]
Carolyn Levette
Thanks, Caroline. I wanted to ask about a federal judge yesterday was saying that they didn't know who the DOGE administrator was and was asking the lawyer, the administration, who it was. And the lawyer responded, I don't know the answer to that. Can you tell us who the administrator of Doge is? Ms. Again, I've been asked to answer this question. Elon Musk is overseeing doge. There are career administrators. There are no, Elon Musk is a special government employee, which I've also been asked and have answered that question as well. There are career officials at doge. There are political appointees at doge. I'm not going to reveal the name of that individual from this podium. I'm happy to follow up and provide that to you, but we've been incredibly transparent about the way that DOGE is working. John?
- [04:29]
Michael Popak
Well, if she was sitting in the joint session yesterday, which I assume she was, I mean, I doubt she was there for the whole hour and 40 minute rambling mental collapse of Donald Trump. But if she was there for any part of it, she may have seen the part where Elon Musk got to jump up and down again because he was shouted out by the president as the head of doge, already there are filings in federal courts from that speech. That's why I love plaintiff's lawyers and I love the plaintiff's lawyers are up against Donald Trump right now because I never thought I would say this. They are outnumbering and outmatching the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice used to have unlimited resources. It used to have I used to be very, I used to be very concerned when I had clients that had cases against the Department of Justice. Not that I was gonna lose, but I'd be very concerned just about the asymmetrical resources against me. That's over when you cut your federal workforce in half and you hollow out the Department of Justice. And you send away all the prosecutors and the civil lawyers, not just prosecutors on the civil side of the Department of Justice, the civil division, you know, the ones that are headed by, I'm not even sure who right now. Maybe Todd Blanch. Not yet. Maybe Emil Beauvais. For the moment. All those lawyers, they're all gone too. And funding is gone as well. So now you got, now you've got the lawyers of the plaintiff side working together. You know, they're sort of linked together like Skynet on Terminator to try to take down this, this, this guy named President Trump. And so when they hear, as did my ears, every time I hear Donald Trump say a version of I probably shouldn't say this, I'm like, oh, fire away, fire away. Oh, sir. And that got turned into evidence that got submitted. 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Jean Carroll case about sex abuse or the federal criminal, the state criminal conviction case trial. And he would go out and do these press conferences at lunchtime, pissing off the court staff because they wanted to get him back in to try the case in front of the jury or the judge and any of the statements that he made. The prosecutors would all be listening. They'd have whole teams ready. They would like record it, print it out, get a transcript, hand it in, mark it as an exhibit. And that's what just happened. We already have the filing, which if I, if you give me a minute, I'm going to put it up on the screen. So in I'll tell you what, this one in particular in we have a notice of new evidence that it's been filed in a case and here's what it says in the federal case. It says in support of their motion for expedited discovery, the National Security Councilors submit new evidence which conclusively demonstrates that expedited discovery, which means this exploration of facts through sworn statements under oath and document exchange that we need in order to prove matters and to bring up evidence in cases that it's urgently needed to ascertain the nature of the Department of Government Efficiency and its relationship to the United States DOGE service, of which Amy Gleason is the acting administrator. She's that woman that used to work in DOGE in the digital service the first time when she did Covid response for Donald Trump and now works for a Tennessee healthcare entrepreneur that's also with doge, with Elon Musk and while she was on vacation in Mexico. They made her the acting director of Doge so that Carolyn Levette could say, it's Amy Gleeson. You know that. Okay, so here's what the filing Sundays. At approximately 9:46pm President Trump stated the following in his joint address to Congress to further combat inflation, we will not only be reducing the cost of energy, but will be the. But we will be ending the flagrant waste of taxpayer dollars. And to the end, to that end, I have created the brand new Department of Government Efficiency, Doge. Perhaps you've heard of it. Perhaps. Which is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the gallery tonight. And then sites back to YouTube on that particular point. See real world consequences for running your mouth at in public, Donald Trump. So I think we now know the answer that we've always suspected. Let me, let me, let me lay this out on a board without, you know, red, red string. It's not that big of a conspiracy. Elon Musk, from his perch in Doge, controls the decision making about what the Office of Personal Management is going to do, what kind of emails they send out to federal workers. He dictates which federal workers get fired. He has his people on his team go into payment systems to ensure that payments don't get made and funding gets cut. All through Elon Musk, this person that they trotted out as the acting director, she's a figurehead. She's a meat puppet. She has no power. Wait till they get her under oath about what her powers are. There's zero. The only one that has the superpowers given to him by the executive branch is Elon Musk. And he just said it out loud. This is going to help and strengthen the hand in about 12 different cases that Elon Musk has been sued or Doge has been sued and, or the administration has been sued in because of Elon Musk. Because now he's answered the question. It is Elon Musk. And then with a constitutional battle that's going to happen next is when they tried to get Elon Musk under oath in a deposition. They're going to argue some sort of executive privilege. He, oh, he doesn't work in Doge. He's an executive officer. He's a special advisor to the president. We have executive privilege. He can't tell you about anything that he's doing. So there's. So in other words, there's no transparency. Even though Donald Trump looks the American people in the eye and says all the things he's doing to destroy independence and independent bipartisan. Commissions and take all the different agencies and departments that Congress created as bipartisan and put them under his greasy thumb. That was for transparency. That's a lie. They don't want transparency. They want the opposite of transparency. You know, I'm going to do another hot take soon about them trying to manipulate and cook the books from the Commerce Department about the slowing of the American economy. They're just going to change the numbers. I'll do that in another hot take. I want to continue to focus here. So we'll continue to mine all of the transcript from last night. I'm sure there's other things that the lawyers will continue to use against Donald Trump. Submit it to judges as evidence, just as we saw in that particular case. And I'll cover it all right here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal af. So until my next reporting, I'm Michael Popak. In collaboration with the Midas Touch Network, we just launched the Legal AF YouTube channel. Help us build this pro democracy channel where I'll be curating the top stories, the intersection of law and politics. Go to YouTube now and free subscribe at legal a FMTN. That's at legal AFMTN.