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Close your eyes.
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Exhale.
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Feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today.
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And breathe.
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1-800-contacts. He didn't have the votes on Wednesday. He didn't have the votes on Thursday. He didn't have the votes on Friday, and he certainly doesn't have them leading into the weekend. In fact, Todd Blanche looks like he's lost the support of Donald Trump. But what this is really all about is that Trump wants Blanche to stand and deliver and make sure that Donald Trump and his family get a pardon, a release related to the Jan6 fund and that phony settlement that's already been found to have been entered in bad faith by Todd Blanch. And Donald Trump wants Todd Blanche on the firing line and he will not relent and release Todd Blanche. That's the reason Todd Blanche can't cut a deal with Senator John Corn of Texas and Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina. It's not because he doesn't want the job. It's not because he himself wouldn't be willing to of its misery and our misery, the Jan6Anti Weaponization Fund or the OR and the accompanying release. But this is all about the release, the pardon, the reason Trump is squirming and he's trying to make it about the Jan6 fund as he doesn't want to go public with the fact that he wanted Todd Blanch as a condition of getting the attorney general nodded to the day after that January 6th fund was created to compensate people that abused and maimed and tried to murder police officers and elected officials the very next day, obviously at Donald Trump's request and behest, Todd Blanche entered a one paragraph document. That's the tail that's wagging the dog. And that's why he can't get the votes right now, because it's not up to to him. Even Cornyn and Tillis have said, I don't know what's going on here. It seems like somebody else is calling all of the shots. Yeah, the guy's name is Donald Trump. Because he wants desperately that release. He wants desperately that pardon, super pardon for tax liability and audit liability worth hundreds of billions with a B of dollars to him and his family. I just got through interviewing Senator Cory Booker, the senior senator from New Jersey who's in the room where it's happening as one of the 10 Democrats. And I just interviewed him as Thursday's confirmation hearing had to be canceled and postponed because, repeat after me, they don't have the votes. And I thought now is a great time to kind of bring you up to speed about everything as we lead into the weekend and beyond here on the Midas Touch Network in Legal af. I'm traveling Michael Popo for the next couple of weeks with my family. But, you know, justice and the intersection of law and politics don't rest. And so we can't either. I'm glad you're here. Take a minute. Hit that free subscribe button over on the Legal AF YouTube channel. All right, let's get down to what's going on here. This is a Senate Judiciary Committee that's controlled by Republicans. They slid in Lindsey Graham's sister, who has no background in being on the Judiciary Committee. They slid her into the slot to be sort of a seat filler to vote for Todd Blanche. But they sort of forgot about Cornyn and Tillis. And Donald Trump finally woke up and said, oh, you mean the senator Cornyn, the guy that I opposed in the Texas primary, who now lost his job in the Senate come January, is opposed to me. Oh, Thom Tillis, the guy that I constantly abuse, who also is gonna be resigning come January. They're opposed to me. They want Todd Blanche on one issue and one issue only to come clean. I won't let them. In fact, Donald Trump continues to lie to the American people about what this whole thing is about. He says it's about the people that were on a. Get this phrase, an innocent journey. An innocent journey from the Ellipse to the Capitol to attack with murderous cries and blood lust, to kill elected officials and to do battle with Capitol Police. We had a series of Capitol police that committed suicide. You know what Donald Trump said about that in his. In his posting? He. He said, yeah, he thought that many of the. The Gen Sixers had taken their own life. No, it was law enforcement because of what they saw that day. Imagine your own nation attacking you. So when I interviewed Senator Booker, we talked about the dirty little secret here that Donald Trump continues to want to ignore. And the press follows it. I'm reading things like HuffPost and reading other, you know, mainline mainstream journalism, and they're always talking about the fun, the fun, the fun. They never talk about and link it back to the settlement agreement amendment by Todd Blanche about the release the super pardon. We do. Here's my clip of an interview that I just had with Senator Booker in the last 24 hours.
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And now we have two people that saying, no, I can't have history looking back and saying that we allowed the President of the United States to have a slush fund and what could be hundreds of millions of dollars worth of tax immunity for the cheating that this president we know does.
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That's what I wanna focus on, Senator Booker, because I don't think this, this is my working theory. I don't think this is a problem of having Todd Blanche put in writing the thing that members of the House and told judges and unsworn testimony that the fund. Look at this interesting and precise choice of words, that the fund is dead. I don't think that's the problem. I think the problem is there is somebody who doesn't want the super pardon, the release of Donald Trump, his family, his affiliates from tax and audit liability, which is the thing I think Donald Trump really cares about, never really caring about the fund. Somebody doesn't want that to disappear. That's my working theory.
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No, you and I have the same belief. Everybody needs to understand who this guy is. I've watched him for decades before he was president. Bankrupt New Jersey casinos drive small contractors out of business by refusing to pay him, have failed endeavor after failed endeavor from Trump stakes to Trump University from housing his charitable foundation be revealed to be an absolute scam to get him more money, take money from people and not do what they're supposed to do. So we know who he is and his, his time as president. It's all about his megalomania and his avarice.
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Now, Cornyn can't figure it out either. John Cornyn came out and gave this press statement about, I can't figure. He must think I'm going to go away. I'm not going to go away. And he signaled that it's not just Cornyn and Tillis that have a problem. Many on the Senate Judiciary Committee have a problem with the Jan6 fund and that Supreme Court super pardon given to Donald Trump and his family. Play the Corning clip. Maybe they think I'm just going to give up or, you know, go along, but they're mistaken. Did they say they're going to respond to you by 4pm today?
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Did they say they respond to.
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I think they realize now that we're serious. And I think Senator Tillis is pretty much on the same page that I am. So they better get real. And there's not much time left. Now, if Donald Trump really does support Todd Blanche, he sure has a funny way of showing it. And you know that Donald Trump doesn't like to be associated with losers. If you know anything about Donald Trump, he doesn't like to be on a team with a loser. That's, that's one of many reasons why Alina Haba is no Longer a acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey. Lindsey Halligan is no longer the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. Tulsi Gabbard is no longer in his administration as the Director of National Intelligence. Pam Bondi is no longer the Attorney General. And Kristi Noem is no longer the head of ice. The question now is, has Todd Blanche now fallen into the loser category? It looks to me like he has, because the first thing that Donald Trump put on social media was not a ringing endorsement like, I'm going to go through. I'm going to go through fire and hell and hell and back to support Todd Blanche. Oh, no. He said, I'll just pull the nomination. I'll just pull the. No, he's a good guy. I'll pull the nomination. We'll try it again next year. Next year when the numbers are maybe worse. Doesn't that give a target for the Democrats to aim and the independents to aim for? Deny Donald Trump the House, deny him the Senate, and give the Senate over to the Democrats so that Donald Trump doesn't get to have Todd Blanche. And as Attorney General, hasn't he made the equation? Now we're down to simple arithmetic. It used to be a more complicated calculus, if you know what I mean. So, you know, I didn't know what to, to make. It was sort of like, you know, the owner of a sports team, which Donald Trump used to be in his. In his lifetime, giving a ringing endorsement, but faint praise about a sports coach that he employs. I think he's doing a great job. We're going to wait till the end of the season before we make a final decision, but I don't. And like, two days later, the guy resigned, saying he needs to spend more time with his family. We're having that moment right now with Donald Trump. Here's what Trump posted, and I'll try to, you know, I, after six years of doing this, you know, I'm fluent, I have a PhD in Trump on how to interpret things. Here's what Donald Trump had to say in his postings. I'll just point to the parts that relate to Blanche. He said John Cornyn never had a problem with the so called fund which will not benefit me, but rather the great American patriots who were hunted like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed by the crooked Joe Biden administration. Stop right there, first of all Cornyn, and tell us hate the fun, but they hate more the, the super pardon to you and your family, which you ignore in your every time you talk about what this, what this is about, you try to make it about the people on an innocent journey. You know, the, the lovely people who, you know, erected a guillotine and brought makeshift weapons and real weapons and used it to attack the Capitol Police and the Metro police. Right. He goes on to say millions of people agree with me, as we have proven in my landslide presidential win. All right. He beat sort of a hobbled Kamala Harris, you know, after a lack of a primary for the Democrats after Joe Biden pulled out late. Todd Blanch, a good man. This is, this is, this is now 3/4 to 4/5 of the way through the posting and he finally mentioned Todd Blanche. Faint, damning, faint praise. As we say in the business, Todd Blanche, a good man, should be immediately approved as U.S. attorney General. Thank you. Thank you. 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Get 60% off your first order plus free shipping and free treats for life when you head to smalls.com legalaf that's 60% off your first order plus free shipping and and free treats for life when you head to smalls.com legal af I had a conversation about what was going on here and fundamentally whether we should be concerned that the replacement for Tom Blanche could be even worse. I actually asked Senator Booker, I said, on behalf of our, of our audience, I said, you know, some in our audience are saying maybe we should just take, just take Blanche because the next person, I don't know, Bill Pulte, Jeanine Pirro, one of these, you know, Mike Davis, one of these other MAGA crazies would be worse. But he made a very compelling point about why we have to fight so hard. Play my clip. Some people are like, well, he's terrible, Todd Blanch, but the next nominee, if he loses, could be worse. In other words, we know that Donald Trump is picking from the bottom of the barrel, the bottom of dealing from the bottom of the deck. Some people I have actually said, and I've told them it is possible that Donald Trump is his own attorney general. There's nothing in the Constitution that says the President can't be his own attorney general. So what do you say to people that say, let's just take Todd Blanche the devil you know, the next one could be even worse. It could be Bill Pulte, right? It could be Jeanine Pirro. It could be, you know, Harmeet Dhillon. Fill in the blank. What do you say to those people?
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I would say, please don't surrender to that idea because that will lead us into a pretty terrible place. I know from my own history as a black American that people fought hard as hell for every inch of ground we gained. And this idea that if we just acquiescence, if we just give in, maybe it won't be as bad as we imagine it to be, that to me is inviting disaster and accepting, resigning yourself to injustice. We have to fight. I am telling you right now, when it comes to principled stands, we have to stand up or there'll be the slow erosion of the very principles that are worth fighting for.
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Now, here's what Thom Tillis had to say. The other, the other swing vote here from North Carolina always comes off. I mean, I don't, I don't agree with most of what he does, but he always comes off as very reasonable when he's dealing with these particular issues. He said about four hours ago, the President made it clear today that the so called anti weaponization fund is still alive, which is exactly why we are attempting to formally end it. While I never disagreed that the Biden administration pursued a number of vindictive prosecutions related to Jan6, that's where I kind of go. I kind of jumped the tracks with Tillis but let's continue. The criminals who assaulted police officers and defiled our nation's capital are not, quote, great American patriots quoting from Donald Trump, who are, quote, victims of government abuse. Anyone who attacked law enforcement should still be in prison, not getting a check from the federal government. Senator Cornyn and I, Thom Tillis, rights, have been working with Blanche to end the fund. And he's been forthright, thoughtful, impatient. It's a shame his confirmation has hit a snag. Only because of an incompetent personal advisor to the president who refuses to amend the bogus settlement. So here this is again, classic Thom Tillis. He, he, he creates the straw man of this unknown personal advisor to the president and says that's the boogeyman, not Trump, who is calling the shots here. And I don't know if that's. He thinks we, if he thinks we'll think it's Stephen Miller. It's the only person in the White House that has that type of power. I don't think it's Susie Wiles, the chief of staff. So if you're looking for somebody on the inside, inside it's Stephen Miller. But I don't think it's Stephen Miller. I think what Corny, what Tillis is doing is trying like he did with the when Jeanine Pirro brought the prosecution or attempted prosecution against Jay Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, Tillis was like, I think the president's getting some bum advice and I think he should. That was like a, to give Trump some face saving in order to solve this and blame this unknown person in the White House not named Donald Trump that's calling the shots. Forget that. This is all about the release and the super pardon. There's only one person in the White House that wants it. It's the President of the United States, Donald Trump. Tillis continues. I will continue working in good faith to put an end, to put an end to this legal and political albatross and prevent any potential misallocation of taxpayer dollars. But it's this phony, this creation of this phony boogeyman, you know, the real president. But that is just Till is trying to throw Trump a bone so he can sweep in and say, I got some bum advice and I've decided that I'm going to rip up the whole darn thing. He's not going to rip up the whole darn thing. He could care less about the Jan6 fund. He's always wanted the release that Blanche gave him. Blanche is the only attorney general that was willing to give him that that was the condition to get nominated. Todd Blanche was left twisting in the wind for several months while Donald Trump allowed a little bit of a Hunger Games to break out. About the attorney, Will it be Jeanine Pirro? Will it be Harmeet Dylan, the Civil Rights Division head? Will it be Lee Zeldin, the head of the epa? No. Or will it be the guy that will do anything I asked him to do, including creating $100 billion worth of tax liability to audit, exposure, release and immunity for me? That's the guy that gets it just days after he announced it. You don't think that was a quid pro quo? You don't think that was the deal? That was the transaction for the art of the deal President it certainly was. We'll continue to follow it. All right here you're on the Midas Touch Network. In Legal af, I'm Michael Popo. Not my normal studio. I'm on holiday with my family. But we can't take a break. We're trying to defeat Todd Blanche's Attorney General. So together we'll do it. Hit that free subscribe Button on Legal AF YouTube channel. Until my next report, I'm Michael Pop. Can't get your fill of Legal AF? Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do called wait for it Morning af. What else? All the other contributors from Legal AOFF are there as well. We got some new reporting, we got interviews, we got ad free versions of the podcast and hot takes where Legal aforementioned on substack. Come over now to free subscribe.
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