Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Golden Toilets, Tawdry Maps, & the Civil War Rides again

Episode Date: February 13, 2022

Anchored by MT founder and civil rights lawyer, Ben Meiselas and national trial lawyer and strategist, Michael Popok, the top-rated news analysis podcast LegalAF x MeidasTouch is back for another hard-hitting, thought-provoking look in “real time” at this week’s developments. On this episode, Ben and Popok discuss: 1. SCOTUS’ continued assault on the Voting Rights Act through the shadow docket by allowing an Alabama anti-Black voter redistricting map to stand for the midterm elections. 2. Trump’s destruction of Presidential Records and his taking 15 boxes of top secret materials to Mar-a-Lago and the criminal statutes implicated. 3. New possible obstruction charges against Trump, and a review of the 16 (!) cases and prosecutions currently pending against him. 4. The Equal Rights Amendment has been ratified by 38 states, so why are the Republicans hell-bent on denying women equal rights by preventing it from being declared the 28th Amendment to the Constitution? 5. Representative Madison Cawthorn’s attempt to use a Civil War-era law to undermine the Constitution and the 14th Amendment, to allow him to run for reelection.  6. Congress’ bipartisan passing of a law to prevent “forced arbitration “for sexual harassment and discrimination claims. 7. The Sarah Palin defamation trial against the NY Times goes to closing argument and jury deliberation with the First Amendment on the line. And much more! Support the Show! Stamps --Stamps.com -- Go to https://www.stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the page and enter "LegalAF" to get free postage and a free scale! AG1 by Athletic Greens -- Athletic Greens is going to give you an immune supporting FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase if you visit https://athleticgreens.com/legalaf today. Blinkist -- Right now Blinkist has a special offer just for our audience. Go to https://Blinkist.com/LEGALAF to start your free 7 day trial and get 25% off of a Blinkist Premium membership. Hello Fresh -- Visit https://hellofresh.com/legalaf16 and use code "LegalAF16" for 16 free meals and 3 free gifts! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Midas Touch Legal AF. If it's Saturday, it is Legal AF live. If it's Sunday, it is Legal AF. The entire week, why not? It is Legal AF where me and my cellist, Popak, Michael Popakian, he doesn't even go by his real last name anymore. He's just Popakian. We break down the legal issues, the critical legal cases of the week in digestible ways that you all could understand. Some have called it legal AF university. Some have called it that. If you're wondering for those watching, why is Ben dressed up?

Oh, I have a collar shirt. To the night. Right now. Let me explain to you, it is because, I don't know if you know this about me, Michael Popak, I am the leader of a massive cabal. At this point, I basically control all of the media. And given that I control all of the media, I need to step up the way I look. And for those who have no clue what I am talking about, you're not a real Midas touch,

no, I'm just joking. For those who don't understand what I'm talking about, all of the radical right wing extremists this past week accused me and my brothers as running all of the media and that we were behind trying to cancel Joe Rogan. In other words, I called up Neil Young, I called up India Rhee, Jody Mitchell. This was all a massive plot that three Hollywood brothers, aka Jews, is what they're trying to say from Los Angeles.

I wasn't sure where you were going with that. That's what they say. We do have to keep you. But that's what they are, what they were claiming. God called out somehow. I had literally nothing to do with this video. It was actually Alex Jones who edited this video of Joe Rogan a year and a half ago. We retweeted a few things. We retweeted the video because I'm very critical of that type of language. I don't think it's helpful to the discourse to use racist, misogynistic language. And so I called it out of the

person. And by the way, it doesn't feel it's it's proper. He just did a stand up routine this week in which he said, even he was offended by the video, which you did not, which you did not make a video. Yeah, a video, we did not make, but apparently by retweeting videos, we are now controlling all of the media, even though we never even called for a boycott. I don't, I don't necessarily even agree with a boycott. I don't agree with a boycott of Spotify. What I agree with is you make better content. You build shows like legal AF and you compete at the end of the day.

And if people don't want to watch it, and if people want to buy, great, you can do what you want to do. You know, the market ultimately is going to decide, but what we're going to do is we're going to make the best content. We're going to make popucky and content. But Michael, how are you? I'm doing great. Yeah, I got caught up in your whole Dave Portnoy bullshit,

bar stool bullshit, and that interview with him. And, you know, I was on the edge of my seat, like the rest of the fans, like, where is this going to go? And what are you being blamed for? But I do like the collared shirt. So if that is the byproduct of you being attacked that you're dressing up in the mornings for me, I'm going to take it. Plus I showed you something before we started. Look what I made. What you got there, Pope, Pop, for those listening to explain it, give us the paint to picture for us, Popeye. I have, you're right, because we do, a lot of people listen to this on the pod. I decided to have made a album cover,

business card with our legal AF logo on the front and the QR code for our podcast and my title with you on the back, because I can't tell you how many times I'm in the public and I tell them about the podcast and they, you know, instantly after hearing about it and the content and the fight for ideas that you just talked about they say, oh, that's great. How do I find it? You know, rather than grabbing their phone and showing them where to find it. Now I can literally pull this out of my wallet and I can give it to them and they can go right to our podcast. And it came with also a free set. I'm solid merchandising here. A free set of notebooks with also look how nice our logo looks on things like notebooks. Well, Pope, you gave me a great idea right there. I do think though there is some benefit. What we should do is we should print out those cards that you have and the notebook that you have. I think we should make it available for legal aeifers where at the

end of the day they could even put their names on the card and when they're out and about they can pass out the cards to people. They get style. Super You could be they could pass it out however they want and to get and you get the notebook that you and I, Popack grapple with in our legal practices and grappled with before this law is about to be passed. The bill's gone through both the Senate and the House and both the Senate and the House have voted to approve that this legislation. And it is to prevent or to ban forced arbitration clauses in cases involving sexual assault,

in cases involving sexual harassment. What we're talking about here is civil cases and criminal cases, a criminal form a prosecutor, whether a state or federal is free to prosecute those claims before a jury and individuals who engaged in criminal conduct, you know, would be held accountable. And they've always would be held accountable, although prosecutors haven't always done the best job prosecuting perpetrators of these crimes, but that goes in front of a jury. Because prosecutors haven't always done the best job, persecuting these crimes, but that goes in front of a jury. Because prosecutors haven't always done the best job,

persecuting these crimes, oftentimes it falls on the backs of civil litigators and our civil process. In the civil process, at the end of the day, the award, jury awards, is financial, it's monetary renumeration. But there is accountability in that process, but what exists in a lot of employment agreements, when you sign your employment agreement, or even in your employment handbook, which you may not even know that you've read every single page in your employment handbook. But there may be, in many cases, there is arbitration provisions that any dispute with your employer would go to an arbitration. These are written in very broad fashions.

PopoXo, in the broadest sense, any and all disputes that would always be interpreted in the past to incorporate sexual assault, sexual harassment. So if a boss sexually assaulted or harassed or even, you know, engaged in, you know, a rape, that that could potentially be subject to private arbitration. Yeah, on the side. That would go to another form where there wouldn't be a jury and that would be problematic because it would be hidden. You wouldn't get your day in court if you're a victim of this. And so for time, momentum's been building in different states about whether forced arbitration provisions should exist. But this has now

gained momentum and steam at a federal level banning forced arbitrations in both the House and the Senate here have voted to prevent forced arbitrations. And this seems like it will be the law of the land. Of course, it needs to be signed by Biden, but it likely will be signed by Biden. Any hiccups you imagine happening, Popoq, you think Biden's going to sign this and how important is this? Yeah, Biden's going to sign it. It's house house bill 44445 And I'll take a page out of my own background you and I like to talk about where it where it fits our own personal history So as as our listeners and followers know I was the global head of litigation and employment law for a large Wall Street financial services firm

So I dealt with arbitration and forced arbitration in handbooks every day. Some of which were carved out because in my world that I was operating in, which was governed by Finra, which was a regulator for the Wall Street entities. They already didn't allow that kind of claim to end up in FINRA unless it was chosen. And let me be clear for people that are listening to us today. This is about four-starred matration. There are circumstances where the victim does not want the publicity, does not want the reputational harm from going and filing the lawsuit in the public space for their own reasons,

because they don't want to be unfortunately blacklisted, which could happen because they have a public claim. So sometimes they would like to choose, but this bill soon to be a law allows them to choose whether to go into a courthouse where it is public, where the media can report on it, or go into an arbitration, but the employer cannot force into an arbitration,

but the employer cannot force them into arbitration, which also is the, you know, the employers also wanted it because if there is a rampant hostile work environment or other environment at the company, where there are multiple people who are victimized by a culture, they would rather have these be individual arbitrations, then have some sort of collective or class action treatment in a courthouse, which of course is again going to get media attention and leads the reputational harm for the company.

But I also like about the new law, which was passed by the way already by the Senate. And as you mentioned earlier, Ben bipartisan support, which is kind of rare today in this particular session of Congress. 335 in favor, only 97 opposed past this. It really stemmed from Gretchen Carlson, and her sexual harassment and arbitration issues with Fox News. Everybody who sponsored the bill from Lindsey Graham and

Jilla Brand, Senator Jilla Brand from New York and Chuck Schumer all pointed to Gretchen Carlson at the passage ceremony. But I like the retroactivity aspect of it then because it means, think about this, the chaos, this could cause for employers. If you are right now in an arbitration, pursuant to a forced compelled provision in your contract, it has as soon as Biden signs the bill, that is voidable as a matter of law at the moment it is signed and retroactive in application. So if you're in an arbitration because you were forced there, you could now void it, walk out of the arbitration and decide to refile in state or federal court.

What do you think about that then? Well, I think that there are actually even a number of cases that we work on where this is going to become relevant and is going to become an important issue. And it's going to have a massive effect. In fact, you and I met over this. You and I, just we met over a forced arbitration provision that would have required your client at the time to go into arbitration. We had a public, it was all in the, and people can look it up. We had a public suit over it

and a public fight over whether I was gonna prevail in arbitration or you were gonna prevail to put the case in federal court and our side one and we ended up, well, we ended up doing something else, but that's right there, you and I, forced arbitration, you know, five, six years ago. See, people don't know that about us.

Is that Pope honk and I became friends over a very contentious litigation. And we became, you know, now we're best to friends, but back then we were duking it out and developed a great deal of respect for each other. The law, unfortunately, at the time, was against me. It was to force a case like this into a private arbitration. And so Popak representing the corporation cited the law and the judge ultimately sided with Popak there in the law. Now with the new law, I would have won that. You would have won.

And if you would won, would we be co-anchors today? I don't know. Exactly. Exactly. Things all happen for a reason. But this is important. It is notable, though, that people like Jim Jordan voted against this bill.

And there were still a number of Republicans who voted against this bill. I don't see how you vote against this bill with a straight face. But, you know, then again, you have people like, you know, Jordan, who has his own record of trying to cover up sexual assaults. Yeah. What's always, it's always that guy. It's always the person that's got his own problems, you know, his house is

burning down and he's, and he's claiming, you know, no need for water. But one interesting last little fact to I before we move on to our next segment tonight, that the stat, I actually found surprising. A jillabran in the sponsorship said there are 60 million employees that are subject to a forced arbitration provision. That number alone is staggering. And there's a very interesting broader discussion and debate we could have about forced arbitrations

though, generally, and specifically in the class action realm. One of the interesting things is that all of these corporations wanted to put in forced arbitration when it comes to consumers and class actions. And for a while, this was an absolute killer of consumers bringing cases. And then lawyers got smart and said, you know what, these arbitrations cost a lot of money for corporations to have to pay for. And the law basically held is that it was unconscionable to make a consumer have to pay if they were suing for a hundred bucks, a thousand bucks, to pay for the cost of arbitrations, which in many cases for one arbitration could

be several hundred thousand dollars. So imagine if you had 5,000 or 10,000 consumers bringing our individual arbitrations which cost the corporation each 100100,000. Just use that number per arbitration. The corporation said, you know what, maybe the class action was the right vehicle after all, you know, and so it's just interesting to see them play both sides of the fence, but I agree with this legislation and this is going to have a profound impact on our practices. Yes, so well. Here's across the world.

But Popeye, let's switch gears now and let's talk about this, Sarah Palin, case that's going on before Judge Raycoff in New York. We talked about this on a prior legal AF, just some of the background on it. Case was actually originally dismissed by Judge Raycoff at a motion to dismiss phase. The second circuit court of appeals rejuvenated the case and said that Judge Raycoff at a motion to dismiss phase. The second circuit court of appeals

rejuvenated the case and said that Judge Raycoff aired and dismissing it. They had some criticisms of him procedurally, which I disagree with, but I think the last thing. Then before you move on, the dismissal was over the actual malice prong of defamation. Is that why he dismissed?

You know, yeah, but he actually did something interesting, Raycoff. He tried to get to the heart of the case very quickly. And rather than basically going through like typical 12 B6 motion to dismiss practice or rule 56 summary judgment practice, he kind of very early on. He's reading between the the tea leaves here. He seemed to be like, this seems to just be like a case that's looking for publicity. Like, let's just get witnesses. Let's have everybody look at it right away. But yeah, at the end of the day, Popak, that she was a

public figure, that it was an editorial at the end of the day in the worst case scenario, the editor made a mistake, you know, or tried to make a link that didn't necessarily exist, but believed it in his mind that that's that that was the case and we'll talk about what that is. And therefore, there wasn't any actual malice there. And what the second circuit tried to say is that, well, they're based on the fact that this editor was also an editor previously at the Atlantic, which ran negative stories about Palin. Because this editor's brother is a democratic politician, there may be malice. I totally disordered that nonetheless. That's where that second circuit said

there were tryable issues for there to be actual malice on those points. But basically in 2017 after the shooting in Virginia that left a number of Republicans injured Steve Scalice and others seriously injured at a softball game. crosshairs of a sniper rifle on a map in 2010, 2011, and the New York Times editorial piece tried to connect that with the representative Gabby Gifford shooting that almost left representative Gifford's killed and said that they implied or said in this article that what Sarah Palin did inspired the shooter, that turned out to be not the case, apparently. The editor went up though on the stand this week, there's a trial this week for those listening to legal AF, the trial was supposed to be earlier. Sarah Palin, who's not vaccinated and brags

about not being vaccinated got COVID, we talked about on the prior legal AF that she went around New York, Galavanting, you know, at different restaurants while she had COVID, probably spreading COVID to individuals. We talked about that. And last podcast, Betrile began the editor, this former editor of the New York Times, who's no longer there, took the stand, James Bennett, and he testified and he said he made a mistake basically. He goes, it is my fault. That's right. You know, he's not saying he didn't write the editorial. He's saying that the connection wasn't there, but it was a mistake. And which may be enough to defeat actual melis. We'll talk about that.

Well, I mean, that, that appears to be as, as you, it's an interesting strategy. Normally, people are used to cases where a defendant just denying the accusation, like, you know, or trying to argue that what he said was truthful or he believed it to be truthful at the time. It doesn't seem based on his testimony that James Benin here is even arguing that, you know, that what he said was accurate. No. I think he's saying that he made a link that actually didn't

exist in. And he's embarrassed by it. What he took the stand, there was a seven day trial then that were wrapping up here on. They actually concluded with closing argument on Friday. And the jury got started into liberations on Friday and they'll continue on Monday. Sarah Paylon haven't testified this week. And James Bennett having testified this week. And James Bennett, having testified this week. So the actual malice standard that you and I broke down a couple weeks ago is set forth at a bedrock principle, the First Amendment law in a case called New York Times versus Sullivan. New York Times again had another thing related to Pentagon and bombing during the Atnomah and all of that and establish that if you're a public figure,

there's a heightened standard, a heightened burden, that the plaintiff has to get over in order to recover for defamation. If you're a public figure too, Ben, and I think I'm rapidly becoming one. So how we get to famed is different than the average citizen. If I just yell out on the street to a neighbor who's not in the public eye, and I accuse them of doing something that we're about loath some disease, we're having committed a crime. I probably have committed defamation against them and that standard is relatively low. But if that's an elected official or a media star or a podcaster or somebody that's in the public eye arguably, that the New York Times versus Sullivan case from 1972 says that now there's a lot of sharp elbows in the public sphere that public officials are going to have to accept as being part of being

the public eye. So they're the plaintiff has to prove that the person that defamed them or libeled them if it's in writing. Same concept, just written versus oral, that they have actual malice. And the standard for actual malice, is sort of what it sounds like. It's like the person basically set out to lie about someone else, refused all evidence and facts to the contrary

in order to write a libelist story. The problem with Sarah Palin here is, A, she's gonna have to establish she has a tremendous reputation that got maligned by this. Let's assume she's right about that, if you say, that somebody caused a mass shooting that led to six people dying

and Gabby Gifert's being paralyzed or being severely injured and brain injury. Okay, that's probably meets the standard of defamation. Let's go to the second part. Is it actual malice? And James Bennett, I think in what I've seen of the testimony in reports of it, of the testimony in reports of it, was made a very compelling argument to the Ninjas, five women, four men who sat in that box. He was authentic, he was chased, he was embarrassed. Literally, the reporting in the room was that he turned red faced

about the mistake that he had made in his editorial and not reporting, but as you properly noted, an opinion and editorial piece in connecting dots related to her political action committee, a piece of material that was submitted, this article of being labeled America's lethal politics following the shooting of the congressman softball game. So there I don't think anybody could have been left with the doubt having heard him that he was terribly embarrassed by the mistake. He did not do it intentionally that there was a lot of back and forth with the editor

after before publication about it. You might say he made a mistake, but I don't think they've made out actual malice. Now the closing arguments are interesting. The closing arguments for Sarah Palin's lawyer focused around send a message New York Times crossed a line and that they shouldn't have crossed and Jerry, have to punish them and find actual malice. The lawyers for Bennett and for the New York Times said, this will have a chilling effect on all media. It will stop media from reporting on things and issuing editorials that are important to free expression and First Amendment rights,

and of course, they taught them what New York Times versus Sullivan means as a law, because the jury has to understand that law when they go back and deliberate. But here's my, I want to throw this out at you. Here's the fear. She loses at the trial and takes an appeal to ultimately that goes to the US Supreme Court after the stop at the second circuit. And now we have a six to three super majority, right wing

majority, on the Supreme Court that really hasn't monkeyed around yet with the First Amendment. They've done everything else, religion, abortion, everything else that matters to you and I and our listeners and progressives. Now, paling, even with a crappy case, gives the Supreme Court the ability to pull out our monkey wrench and start tinkering with the First Amendment and the bedrock principle of New York Times versus Sullivan. And that's a fear, even though there is right wing media like Fox News that would be implicated by this.

Do you think the Supreme Court, if they get this case, starts strewn around with New York Times versus Sullivan and the First Amendment rights, or are they also fearful that that could backfire on First Amendment expression of Republican and right wing organizations? They are terrified that it would backfire the first amendment right now. Don't hesitate, Ben. Of the Fox news is of the world because, you know, here, because the New York Times has editorial standards, right? And many ways this case developed the way it did because New York Times admitted right away that they even made a mistake. The editorial said, this was a mistake.

We're sorry we got this wrong, right? You compare that and juxtapose that with the position that the foxes of the world take, which they'll never even admit the mistake. They'll never admit the error. But it's kind of one of these things. Be careful what you wish for, because if you tinker with the actual malice standard, I mean, you think about the floodgates opening on a daily basis about the things that are said

on Fox News. I mean, you want to even think about it. The other day, as it relates to me, you know, Tucker, like you think about it the other day as it relates to me. Tucker, like you think about it yesterday. I watched that one. You think about it yesterday, like Tucker Carlson had a guest on there who accused me and my brothers of making the Joe Rogan video,

which is discernibly a false statement that we are a Hollywood cabal that came together, you know, to cancel an individual when we've said pretty much the opposite of it. And so imagine if there was a... Wait, and here is my favorite. You're going to like this one. Here is my favorite. And you'll know why when I say it. He then went on to say that your name for the organization, the movement, the mightest mightest touch, mightest comes from media and that you're so, and that you control the media through this. You wanna tell people where mightest comes from?

It comes from our last name and you could literally just Google it. I mean, I think it's the first thing on our Wikipedia that says that. But to be fair, one of the interesting things when you watch the back and the forth between that guy, Dr. Malone and Tucker is like Tucker knew right away. Tucker knew about us and his responses where, yeah, it's might as their brothers, you know, knew about it right away. I want to talk though about Tucker's friend for a second, Donald Trump and how his speech and Conroe, Texas is causing a great deal of legal, additional legal trouble for him. But that may be the point of his plan.

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Because we're giving you up to 16 free meals and three free gifts. So go to hello fresh dot com slash legal AF 16 use the code legal AF 16 for up to 16 meals and three. I might be that might be my favorite promo code. That might be my favorite promo. This is America's number one meal kit. Thank you. Hello, fresh. Trump is getting into a lot of trouble. Popo, it seems every single day, he just, once there was one soloyer who told me very on in my career and I love this expression said

Ben do you know the law of holes? I don't even I don't know what that meant at the time. I said what's the law of holes? He said stop digging. This was when I was a first year lawyer and I said I love that I'm gonna use that forever You know, it's I always say what's the law of holes stop digging and Trump keeps digging a deeper and deeper hole But at the end of the day, I think this is part of his plan. Trump knows he's caught red handed. He knows the investigation in Fulton County in Georgia over his extortion and find me the votes with Brad Raffin's burger with the special jury that's been in panel there, he knows that that is moving methodically towards, he's going to be you know, criminally prosecuted there. I'm very, very confident of that. He knows the Manhattan

DA is coming ever closer on his tax fraud and his remaking of his taxes for insurance, for the government to get special benefits there. And he knows the DOJ, especially as the DOJ is climbing the ladder, you know, charging terrorist groups like the proud boys and, you know, those, you know, those leaders with sedition, conspiracy and sedition that they're climbing towards Trump, Trump knows January 6 has the good. So what does he do? He gives this speech a few weeks back in Conroe, Texas, where he literally just threatens everybody and tells, you know, his radicalized, extremist, essentially suicide bombers. I mean, that's what these individuals

are, whether they're actually killing themselves, they're certainly willing to kill their careers and kill their characters and detonate democracy and detonate democracy for this monster that is Donald Trump. But, you know, he basically said it. I mean, it was an obstruction in plain view. What's going on here, Popeye? If I were a prosecutor, a state or federal that had my sights on Trump, I would jump out of the bed every morning, so excited, because every day is another gift,

another gift from Donald Trump. And just at the top of the segment, I think Ben, you saw this too, the Guardian, which I like a lot for reporting, even though they're based in the UK, they do an amazing job. They have a really great set of bureaus that do American politics. And the Guardian staff did a really good scorecard, which I'll hold up for our listeners and followers, my own version of it. Do you know there are at at present 16 cases and prosecutions in total against Donald Trump? And let me just break it down just and we've talked about almost all of these. That's that's the magic of what you and I are doing a legal

AF. I went back and looked at them and I'm like, and I have talked about all of these things and explained all of these things with listeners and followers. But here's the scorecard at present. Topically, insurrection. There are seven current insurrection-related lawsuits and criminal cases, including by the DC Attorney General concerning Trump's role in the JAN-6 insurrection. Financial, there are six prosecutions and investigations related to his financial manipulations and bullshit led by the Manhattan DA's office in New York attorney general. And again, the DC attorney general related to,

you and I forgot about this one, related to the inauguration. From the day he was elected, he was grifting, and Ivanka is tied up in that one. On election interference, there are two funny willis being the one you just mentioned being the lead prosecutor going after him in Fulton County in Atlanta. And on sexual misconduct, the one where you and I've talked about at length, Eugene Carroll, and you've had E. Jean Carroll, I know on the on the brothers podcast, that's a total

of 16. Now, what did he do in the rally in Texas that's creating what I like to, what I tell clients is when you come to me, the fact should be static and they should be set. Don't while I'm representing you or just before I decide to represent you, don't make new facts that I then have to deal with. So I try to counsel them on their conduct and their behavior. Every day Trump is making new facts the prosecutors can use.

As they're trying to figure out if Trump had the criminal mind and the criminal intent to be charged himself ultimately for seditious conspiracy related to Jan 6, it is helping them, the prosecutors not hurting them when he stands in front of a rally and talks about if I get charged, because, you know, the news is tightening around him and he's feeling it. If I get charged by these phony, urban, i.e. black prosecutors for any of these crimes, you need to revolt, you need to protest, you need to overturn those things. That is exactly what he said on the ellipse on Jan 6th and all the

reporting that's being done prior to that. That helps them establish. They're going to play that video at a trial or in front of a grand jury to get an indictment. If he had a lawyer worth his salt working with him, which Trump does not, because none of all of them have run for the hills, and he gets terrible advice, and he's a terrible client because he doesn't accept any advice. They would, if they would say to him, don't make any new facts. Don't give the prosecutors the ability to have a video or the Jan 6th committee have a video to play to continue to tie you to the Jan 6th insurrection showing where your criminal mind is. So that's what. Secondly, there is an argument. I think it's a good one and the

Jan 6th committee is going to investigate whether by blowing the dog whistle out loud that he's going to pardon people who participated, the patriots who participated on Jan 6th in this legitimate political discourse, BS, that Ronald McDaniels has come out with with the RNC, the new talking point that he wasn't interrupted everyone's talking. Please. Here's the thing though, if the people know, it's not just a talking point for the RNC when they talk about January 6th as the legitimate political discourse. It actually is in a formal Republican National Committee resolution with the seal of the

RNC as their actual view right there. She then said it in a Washington Post article, but this one everyone to know that is actually their belief and what makes it particularly intriguing is that the Republican National Committee's platform before the 2020 election was nothing. It was simply we deferred a Donald Trump and anything Donald Trump said. Whatever he said. Literally, that's what it was. So the fact that this is their first kind of public platform position that the January 6th insurrection was legitimate public discourse. And we'll talk later in today's pod about how a federal judge says, uh, uh, that was not legitimate public

discourse. And you and I like to tie everything together. So let me tie it back to something you said earlier in the podcast tonight about your nuanced position with your brothers on Joe Rogan and not about canceling him from spotify, but participating in a healthy first amendment debate in the public square and letting ideas went out here just to be clear you and I aren't saying that for the subset of people that were on the ellipse on Jan 6th, listening to the speech and cheering on their president, even though those ideas are repugnant to you and I, that's legitimate First Amendment expression. I'm totally fine with that. And I don't want to live in a society where Jack booted Gazpacho's come walking down the mall to suppress First Amendment expression. But the subset of people that either skipped the ellipse and armed and dangerous moved to the Capitol to attack our democracy. That is not legitimate First Amendment.

Or those who encouraged people to do that in a site. Or those that encouraged it. That's not legitimate First Amendment political discourse. And the fact that Ronald McDaniel is the niece of Romney, of Mitt Romney, who's been renounced by Mitt Romney for this position, as she's been renounced by even Mitch McConnell, who knows, this is a terrible political place for her to have put the Republican party

and going into the midterms. Great for us, terrible for them. That the fact that she blanket covered all of the things, all of the events that happened on Jan 6th, without making any separation or nuance between those that were on the ellipse and cheering and those that went to attack the Capitol and the Capitol Police and our democracy is just mind-boggling. It's just, again, yet another example of a party whose gyroscope has completely cracked and they've lost their way. No, I couldn't agree more.

So, I think we, I don't think there's anything else really other than yet another new set of facts that prosecutors are going to use against Trump for either new charges of obstruction related to his, their new charges of obstruction related to his, you know, everybody gets a pardon announcement or it's, you know, again, or the Jan 6th committee is going to use in their continued investigation of Donald Trump. So, one of the things, Popeye 2, that's gaining steam is this article 14 section 3 prohibition of persons who have gone to war against the Union, those who give aid and comfort to our nations. Enemy, those who participate in insurrections against the United States government words to those effect

in article 14 section three, about that being a prohibition of certain politicians who incited the insurrection from holding office. The issue about it is that what type of enabling statute, like how do you enforce Article 14, Section 3? Do you enforce it in court? Does Congress pass a resolution and do they enforce it on their own as a congressional decree? Is it a federal judge?

Who does it? Is it the election commission that does it? Well, that had been decided. So this was, this came, this section was passed right in response to the Civil War. And then eventually individuals who were part of the Confederacy were kind of given reprieve and not, and this wasn't really enforced on them as we tried to reconcile as a country historically. So there really wasn't any resolution on what's happening with Section 3 Article 14. But, you know, in North Carolina, in a very novel way, the election commissions

has been served with a petition as it relates to Madison Cawthorn saying that he shouldn't be able to even run based on his support of the insurrection. Madison Cawthorn went on these, went on a radical extremist right wing show. I forget even, you know, which one it is. It all blends together in the production quality. All looks like that same kind of dystopian low end kind of garbage that they use. But anyway, he laid out the case against himself. I thought pretty good about why he shouldn't hold office.

But this is Gaining Steam Popo. Do you think that there is, I think it's going to be tougher election commission to enforce this article of 14 Section 3. I mean, Amendment 14 Section 3, what do you think, though? I'm going to geek out on this one. I like this one on today's segment, because not only do we get to talk about the 14th Amendment Article 3, but we get to talk about the Amnesty Act of 1872, which was passed specifically for former Confederates as a one-time window to let them serve an office again. And the fact that Cautorn has grabbed onto the Amnesty Act of 1872,

joining himself with the Confederates, once again, in North Carolina to try to overturn a constitutional amendment. I love Cauthart. Look, I know he's 26 years old. He's probably, I don't know how old Jordi is exactly, but he's probably in the same vintage. So he's like the youngest member of the House of Representatives. And I get that he's that he's in a wheelchair, he had some sort of car accident when he was 18. And he got some sympathy related to that. But he seems to be pretty incompetent to be holding public office. He didn't only take a position and go to the ellipse and cheer on Trump,

but he uses incendiary language constantly, including in the low production value videos that you talked about, which would make the Taliban proud and how they looked and he talked about not just fighting about the election that he claims was false and the and the big lie, but that there will be bloodshed his words if the election is not overturned or if it happens in the future now also a little known footnote that it's been lost the history. He has been given interviews where he said that he was wrong about the election and that it should not have been overturned. But you know, at the time when he was an insurrectionist and giving aid and comfort to those around him and fomenting that discontent that led to the attack on our capital, that technically, not even technically, should violate 14th Amendment Section 3 because you can't participate in an insurrection having

taken the oath of office and sworn to uphold the Constitution. So he files, as you mentioned, been a preliminary injunction motion and lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. So it's in federal court and he claims a couple of things. One, that the elections board, the board of elections in North Carolina does not have the power to determine his qualifications. I think that's a dead bang loser. That's exactly what boards of elections are allowed to do and have and have jurisdiction to do because if they don't, who does? He then his second argument is where I geek out where he pulled out of his backside this law that got passed in 1872 to help Confederates. It was like a one time, like I said, windowed, I'll let them come in from the cold and come back to the union and and hold office and not be penalized and

He kind of fails legal a f 101 on constitutional law Because I don't understand for the life of me how a statute even if it applied to him Which it doesn't unless he's you know, it was in a time capsule and he's really a confederates a former Confederate soldier I don't understand how a statute is gonna overcome the Constitution of the United States. He's got it directly asked backwards. So I don't think this case gets dismissed. Is it kind of analogizing himself

to being in a Confederate? Yes, there's pictures of it. And the leading case that he's citing for 1872 is a North Carolina rebel Confederate, you know, this whole case is whacked. I'll tell you, I think he's going to lose on the P people like to know our our Missalacean and Opacchian predictions. I think he loses the preliminary injunction.

I think they have a full case on the merits of the board of elections decisions to reject his qualifications. And then listen, I don't know the makeup. We'll look into it before the ruling comes out on the Eastern District North Carolina federal court who's sitting there. There is a judge assigned to it. I just don't know who it is. We'll try to look it up and put it on our Twitter feed. But you know, this will be another case that'll end up going to, I think it's the third or the fourth circuit. And then on to the Supremes for, but it's a test. It's a great test case because as you laid it out at the beginning of the segment, so well, as usual, who is going to decide article, you know, 14th amendment, article three issues. Everybody in our Twitter followers, Congress should do it. They

should police themselves, but it's in the court system. And if it's successful against him, then I know people want to pick up that mantle and try it against Trump because the easiest way not to have a Trump be reelected is to qualify for ever holding office again. Madison, Hawthorne, Matt Gates, Lauren Bobert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, Donald Trump, this is the radical, extremist Republican party. They are not the minority in that party, they are what it means to be a Republican today. And then you just have gradations of cowardice in Mitt Romney, in Lindsey Graham, you know, in people who Mitch McConnell, um, you know, this is a party that is overtaken by extremism and cowardice. Want to talk about Article 5 of the US Constitution.

That's where we get our amendments from end the 28th Amendment. Want to talk about that. But before doing that, want to let you know about athletic greens. This podcast is brought to you by athletic greens. Y'all know that athletic greens is my favorite and has literally changed my life this year because before athletic greens, I'd have my medicine cabinet that was filled with my pills

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It's lifestyle friendly. So whether you eat keto, paleo, vegan, dairy free or gluten free and it contains less than one gram of sugar, no GMOs, no nasty chemicals are artificial anything while keeping it tasting good. So join the movement of athletes, life leaps, moms, dads, rookies, first timers, and most importantly, legal a-fers who love athletic greens and AG1 and take ownership of your daily health and focus on nutritional products like AG one that you need in the simplest manner possible. Now that's essential nutrition. And to make it easy, athletic greens is going to give you an immune supporting free one

year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. If you visit athletic greens.com slash legal AF today. Again, visit AthleticGreens.com slash legal AF and take control of your health and give AG1 a try. speak more highly of athletic greens. I love it. Article five of the US Constitution, quote, the Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses, shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or on the application of the legislatures, of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments,

which in either case shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of this Constitution when ratified by the legislature of three-fourths of the several states or by convention of three-fourths So Popak, the history here, in 1972, Congress passes something called the the ERA, the equal rights amendment. And let me just read for you, Popak, what this is with the ERA. It should not be that controversial at all. Here's what it says, equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Section two, the Congress shall have the power to enforce by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. Section three, this amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification. So why pop up has this been an ongoing discussion since 1972?

And why is this in the news right now? Well, being the only co-anchor on the show who was actually alive in 1972 and remembers as a young first grader, the ERA sweeping the nation, which as you just said, should be so unobjectionable. How did this not pass the first time around in record time, who was against providing equal rights to people, you know, women basically, as well as what it's the focus of. And, you know, there was a very good series on, I think it was on, I think it was on Fox just this past year, which followed basically the formation of the women's liberation movement and the women's rights movement led by people like Bella Ubsug, who was a Congresswoman, Shirley Chisholm, also glorious Steinem.

And it was, but those that want to look it up, it was a very good six or seven part, docuseries about that. And that's where this came from. And it came from a need. Women were being discriminated in the workplace and in, in other contexts, even as late as 1972 in this country, even though they had had the right to vote. The women's suffrage movement was 100 years or more, you know, old by that, by that period. Now in Congress, started the ERA process and sent it out to the states for ratification

for three-quarter ratification, meaning they needed 38 states as you just did the math. They put a timer on the original statute. And the timer said, we'll give you seven years organizers. Go get this thing ratified. Go to the each individual state house. Get a bill passed in each individual state ratifying the entirety of the ERA of the Equal Rights Amendment. In other words, it can't make any adjustments to it. It's either all or nothing. They accept it or they reject it.

And in the beginning, they got a lot of momentum. They got like 30 states like right away, but they were all dots. You know, this is 1972. If you think state legislatures are led by Republicans are the home of Neanderthals and Kro Magna people now, you should see what it was like in 1972. And, and all men, they're like almost no women elected officials sitting in these houses to vote. It was like 99% white guys. So you can see where in some regions of the country, IE the South, there were problems getting enough states

to pass it, but they eventually got that first 30 pretty quickly. And now there's a fight, there's a race as the clock is ticking on that original seven year cycle to get the last eight. And frankly, they never got the last eight within that seven-year initial period that the Congress had passed. And a couple of these states, when they got,

you know, super right-wing Republicans in office to take control of the statehouse, tried to rescind the ERA and say, well, yeah, our prior legislature said it was five, but we don't like it. There's no, there's nothing in the constitution that says that you have the power as a state once ratifying an amendment to rescind it. So let's put that aside for a moment, that novelty of three states trying to rescind. So, but they were short. They were short up until like a year ago, two years ago, there were still short three states. So Congress passed another extender to give it more time. And then finally, with Virginia, you know, one of the original 13 colonies, 13 states, the commonwealth of Virginia stepped

forward and was the 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. And there's a whole constitutional fight over whether Congress can actually put a timer on an amendment. The 15th Amendment, which you read from, or Article 5, I'm sorry, Article 5 that you read from, which provides the sole process by which the Constitution is amended does not have a timer in it at all. So can Congress do that? So there's a whole fight. Why is this coming to it? Why are you and I talking about this in 2022? I hadn't thought about the ERA in years until I watched that miniseries. It's because the National Archivist, we always love talking about that guy. We never knew who that guy was before Donald Trump started eating documents and obstructing but David Ferrerro who is the current

National Archivist who retires in April Apparently he's the guy. He's the person the position that publishes Who amendments to the US Constitution? And so there's a struggle because the group that want him to publish it as the 28th amendment and include it in the tax of the Constitution. And that's one of his jobs are pushing him to do it. Three senators, Mitt Romney again, it's always the rogue's gallery of bad people. Mitt Romney, Rob Portman, and Johnson, the three senators of Stepford, writing him a letter, not a lawsuit, a letter telling Ferreiro, don't you dare? We know

you retire in April, but don't publish the 28th Amendment as the ERA because there's a lot of legal issues and constitutional issues and it all has to be resolved by Congress and the courts. Don't do it. I doubt he's going to do it. I doubt he's going to publish a new amendment to the US Constitution on his own say so. And if he tries, then there's going to be the rush to the courthouses and ultimately the Supreme Court to decide this very interesting issue, which is, can Congress put a timer on an amendment and can states who once ratified, can they rescind their ratification? And then the fundamental question you asked, who is against this? Like, who is against giving women equal rights in this country? Yeah, it's a very strange thing to be so vociferously against.

But you look at some of the Republicans who are, I mean, Mitt Romney is one of the people who signed this letter to the National Archivist saying, do not under any circumstances publish the 28th and the letter. It is what Mitt Romney is fighting for. But you raised a good point, Popak. I mean, the National Archivist, the general services administration. Of course I remember we made a video about her on might as touch that kind of like six million views or something, but we didn't know about who any of these people are because one of

the ways that fascism tries to attack institutions is it bambards it from all sides. It bambards the courts, but it also bambards ministerial professions like the GSA. It bambards the national archivist and tries to politicize it and really destroy them from engaging in their basic and the FDA and the national health organization. They throw, you know, and they throw sand in the, they throw sand in the gears. That's all they got. All institutions and you think about it too, like just even the Department of Defense, this whole right wing narrative that the five star generals and leaders in our various military branches that because they want to have women in diversity within the military because they believe in actually reading lots of different types of books and not just books on one

topic that that makes them too woke to be leaders and they mock our military and at the same time the right wing supports things like the patently unlawful I don't call it a protest because in many ways It's a form of insurrection, but what these truckers are doing at the border trying to literally destroy doing at the border, trying to literally destroy commerce. And these are astroturfed efforts, actual coordinated efforts by radical extreme operatives who are trying to destroy the economy by harming commerce at the Canadian border. These aren't widely massively supported things. Trucks are big, so when you put trucks and you shut them down and you put them at the

border and you prevent trade from happening, it's going to have a harmful effect. But also, if you notice these Trump supporters are doing this not just in Canada in the U.S. they're trying to arrange these in other NATO countries at the same time Russia may be poised to invade Ukraine. I mean, this is a concerted effort taking place, trying to erode and destroy all of our institutions, which is why, though, might as mighty, we need you to step up. And even the most basic things,

like Biden's ability to have a vaccine mandate and requirement amongst federal employees that as the executive, he's the CEO of the executive branch that he wants to put in place a mandate for his own employees. And you have these astroturf bullshit, Republican groups who file lawsuits in every single state trying to draw a Trump judge who's willing to go against the law and find a sympathetic year. And so one of the things that happened with this is we're talking about now a vaccine mandate that Biden had not for private employees, but for his own employees, people in the executive branch.

And these various astro-terp, and I call them astro-terp because they're these fake groups that are created by radical right-wing people to try to get a sicker and try to harm our country. So one by one in 12 different district court judges, from all different ideological backgrounds, shoot down these claims to have no vaccine mandate in the executive branch. For a variety of reasons that procedurally, these lawsuits were brought in the wrong form without

even exhausting remedies. You remember that exhausting administrative remedies. That's what we've always used to be told on when the agencies want to propose things, one of the reasons that the Supreme Court struck it down. The agencies have to go through

all this preliminary process. Well, here the district court shot this down from all different ideological spectrum saying there shouldn't be, or that there could be a vaccine mandate. But this one group that was formed, they're called like Fed employees against vaccines or something like that. I'll try to get you the exact name of this group,

Fed's for medical freedom. They call themselves. So they bring a case in Texas. They draw a Trump judge in Texas at the district court level. And this district court, this district court judge Vincent A. Brown, who's a federalist society member, not only does he reject Biden's ability to do this vaccine mandate in the executive branch. But this one judge decrees essentially that all of the 12 other district court judges are wrong and that he is going to issue a nationwide injunction in all states, not just where he's a district court judge in the entire United States of America, preventing Biden from implementing a vaccine mandate of executive employees.

That then is appeal to the fifth circuit. There's a Reagan judge, a Trump judge, and I believe a moderate Obama judge on there. And in a two to one kind of blanket opinion that has like almost no reasoning, the fifth circuit says that Biden's not allowed to have the Vax mandate with respect to his own employees and the executive branch. Now, these are the Republicans setting aside the health issues here, who have been talking about the unitary executive. The executive can literally do anything without congresses approval. That's like their whole view of these people. I took classes for about three days before I dropped

out with Paul Clement and Viet Dinh. Viet Dinh created the Patriot Act and Paul Clement the solicitor general under Bush. And they were doing this federal socialist society recruiting thing at Georgetown. I took two classes and I'm like, I got to get the hell out of here. And so I dropped it after two classes and took another class. But their whole thing is the executive can do whatever he wants. That was very, it's called the Imperial president or the unitary executive. Yeah.

So what's going on here, Popeye? I think you've comforted all. I think what you, the one thing I want to know, if I'm going to do a little bit of color commentary on your play by play, is that as we've talked about, and this is now our, it's hard to believe Ben, we're coming up on a one year birthday party for legal AF, our 49th episode is today. That we've talked about in the past, that the path of least resistance for challenges

by the right wing extremist is the fifth circuit court of appeals sitting in New Orleans. And Texas is a part of the fifth circuit. So if you're a right-winger and you want to take a monkey wrench to the US Constitution or you want to throw sand into the gears of our democracy, you're not going to go to New York, you're not going to go to California, you're not going to take a shot and see what happens in Illinois. You're going to go to Texas, you're going to go to the most conservative section of Texas to increase your chances of pulling a Trump or a Bush appointee or maybe a Reagan appointee if you still around. You're going to take your chances of pulling a Trump or a Bush appointee or maybe a Reagan appointee

if you still around, you're going to take your chances and probably win there. And then you're going to have the most conservative, sorry, right-wing extremist circuit of all 11 circuits in the United States federal system is the fifth circuit court of appeal. It's where the abortion case was filed, the multiple abortion cases, it's where vaccine mandates. So if you've got a hankering to overthrow democracy at our constitution, go to the fifth circuit, find a way to file your case there. And that's, that's all that's happening there here. So when I, when I read, when I opened my paper and read that I saw the headline, I didn't even have to get into the

body of the text. I knew it had to be the fifth circuit, who has now become the thorn in Biden's side. And the last thing I'll point out is exactly what you said, which is when it is convenient for the Republicans to have a unitary or imperial president. They're all in favor of it, except when it's not their guy. And when it's not their guy, then it's let's find ways like in Gulliver's travel to pin the giant down and throw sand in the gears and ruin all of his policy making. Anyway, we can delay, delay, delay and make him. And this is what they're trying for. And we've been watching it. You did a, you guys, your brothers and you did a video,

a coup in plain sight. We're also watching in plain sight, a party whose mission it is to emasculate and undermine and make Biden into a feckless president that can't accomplish anything during his term. So they can point to that when they try to take him down in the midterms and in the 2024 elections. That's what they want to do with what I mentioned with the convoy. Like they're trying to destroy the economy. That's why they were actually rooting the day where we got the jobs numbers and the jobs numbers were great. All of Fox News, you had big doosey and little doose

kind of together, ready on Fox News to cheer for bad job records, or job job numbers and the job numbers were actually great. To your point also, Popak, these Republicans were strictly construing the text in its original form, except when it's the second amendment. And then we read out the militia part being well-regulated. Those words don't matter. And it's just the right to bear arms

is the only piece of that one sentence. Literally, it's the one area in the constitution that even mentions like regulation in it. And talks about militia, but we don't talk about that. And the fifth circuit is also being a thorn, you know, with respect to S.B. eight and the right of childbearing persons, women to choose the fifth circuit now is deferring the issue of ruling on the constitutionality of S.B. eight until the Texas Supreme Court rules on a procedural issue.

And I'm sorry. Yeah, before I didn't interrupt you. And on that, the evidence, the empirical evidence is now in. I don't know if you caught last week that since SBA has been kept in place by this Supreme Court until the summer when they make their decision, and they will see what happens, abortions have been cut in half, in half in the state of Texas.

Now to some people that are pro whatever, that's a good thing. But think about the unwanted pregnancies that have now been brought to term. And as that state really ready for doubling their birth rate in terms of social services, education, public education, and other things that taxes pay for, as that is the repercussion of this, is that somebody's having an unwanted child, unfortunately, and the state is going to end up having to pay for aspects of it if the people are in the certain economic group.

But I just shook my head and I said, wow, I mean, I know I know they act like they're above it all at the Supreme Court level, those justices, but it had to have leaked into their hermetically sealed chamber that that the and if they it isn't the liberals will bring it out to them when they start making their decision making about the deleterious impact of that law and the failure to overturn it or to stay its application and what's happened on the ground and in the bedrooms and otherwise of Texas. You know and it's really just the hypocrisy for me. We read some the people who are against the right to choose avail themselves of the right to choose. This holier than thou, bullshit, is what really kind of gets me in this invocation of religion while these people are doing the most anti,

you know, things that religions are not support. That's what gets me, you know, so much. It's this hypocrisy. And I'll just before we go on to the next topic, like, here's just even someone who wrote to me in my DMs yesterday who basically said, I'm sure there's a bunch of people in your DMs now that you've been exposed. You're a clown who thinks he's a big shot.

The only thing that's a failure here was you and your bros and your idea to sit around, jerk it for hours, and stir up stupid drama show about Joe Rogan. Keep hiding behind that computer screen, bud, wearing your mask, and shoving another vaccine in your neck. I'll continue to watch my favorite podcast, which makes fun of sheep like yourself. Take care of yourself, Bobo. And I said to him, ha ha ha ha. And then this is what he finishes. You're exposed little man.

I said, what else do you have? And he goes, Jesus still loves you. And then they go and they invoke the religion of Jesus. And it's always sexual with them. I know it's always, someone else said, you probably F zero, Bs in high school. That was one of the DMs that I got like, it's this buzz,

these people are really disturbed and they go to bad for fucking Joe Rogan. All right, so let me, let me, let me weigh it on that a couple of things. One, he needs to take a course in anatomy. They're not giving vaccine shots in people's necks. Secondly, to your point, they're fine with hands off my body. Don't put a vax, my body, my autonomy,

except when it comes to women and reproductive rights, then it's my body, government, it's not your body. It's my body and my legislation. And you got to do what I say, except when I got to wear a paper mask and I got to put an injection in a mask on my face. Oh my God. Wow. Now, you know, just you were bringing in real life here. So I had dinner the other night with a close friend of mine that I started my career with. And he's a he's a litigator. A very good, a very good firm. But we're not on the exactly the same page politically, but we're not that far off either.

I mean, 30 years ago when I was in college, like I would have been considered a Kennedy Democrat, he would have been considered a gold water Republican. And that would have been like this in terms of where we were politically. So he's a Rogan, I was surprised though. He's a Rogan listener, because we talked about my podcast,

and I pulled my business card out, and I gave it to him. And he said, I'm gonna listen to it. And I said, I want you to. I said, what do you like about Rogan? Because I don't listen to it. I don't, first of all, I don't listen to many podcasts other than you guys

and the ones that you and I make. So I'm a little bit select that way. And I said, what do you like about Rogan? And he goes, I don't know, he just tells it like it is. I mean, he has a lot of interesting guests on and he opens my brain to a lot of different concepts. And then we started talking a little bit about the politics. He said, listen, I'm not anti-Rogan. I'm not anti anyone who's not a menace and isn't violating federal law or criminal law in giving advice or he's not misleading people about medical advice that could kill someone. Like, I don't want to, you know, giving instructions and how to, people commit suicide either.

I mean, that shouldn't be happening on a podcast. So, but we had a fair discussion between two reasonable people about it. And I was fine. I said, I accept your view that you're one of the people that listens to Rogan. It didn't make us enemies at across our dinner table because I like legal AFMitis touch podcast and the progressive point of view that was expressed there. And he happens to be a Roganite or whatever they call themselves. But for people to kind of jump over that and decide, and I'm sorry that happens to you. That's one thing that hasn't been happening to me. I'll deal with it in my own way if it happens. But the fact that people jump over and passive

aggressively behind their computer screen and their keyboard decide that they're going to make anatomically in polite comments to you and your brothers or threaten you or use anti-Semitic terms. It's just, I mean, just that petty, that petty bigotry, that low bar of bigotry that goes on in this country, only proves the point that you and your brothers and others have been making. You know, the fact that you get that as a badge of honor, that's why we have to elevate the discussions though, you know, and frequently though on the shows like the Rogan, where it is attractive though to people is that it's spewing

lies and people in a complicated world are trying to make sense of it. And we're trying to help people make sense of it with the truth. And here's what's going on. And here's the reality. And things are complicated. And you have to deal with complicated things. But sometimes it's easier and cathartic to watch some of these other shows. And it's a problem because when they go,

yeah, you know what, it's all a big lie. Never really landed on the moon. It's all a big conspiracy. All of the problems that you have really are in sheer fault. It's bigfoot's fault. Or it's, you know, the government cabal's fault. And they're the reasons that you're struggling,

not because of you anyway. We can go on and on this forever. But Popak, tell me about stamps.com. I know you're a big fan of stamps. I've always been a big fan of stamps. I used to collect them when I was a child, and I use them in my business. This doesn't surprise me. You're a stamp. Oh, that's, is that kind? That's a sound kind, but maybe it was I use the collect stamps. So my grandmother had a nice book with vinyl sleeves in it. We collect it stamps, but you got to use stamps. They haven't been replaced as a matter of what technology is done. You need to use a stamp to transmit mail. And so what better way to do it than with stamps.com

I own and run what I would consider to be a medium-sized business, but it's not medium-sized to me. It's all I think about other than legal AF in you and your brothers who I think about a lot as well. Time is money and don't waste either with repeated trips to the post office. That's a terrible way to spend your morning or afternoon, but with stamps.com, you can skip the trip and focus on how to take your small business to the next level. Stamps.com lets you print your official postage right from your computer and saves you money

in the process so you can spend less time at the post office and more time making your customers happy and finding podcasts like LegalAaf that you and I are on. So stamps.com not only saves you time, money, and stress for more than 20 years, it has been an indispensable part of over one million businesses. And it's not just stamps, it's shipping services. Anything that UPS or the Post Office does, you can do through stamps.com and its website. And it's right from the comfort of your computer.

And you can get discounts, which we use in our office. We've we've used it for up to 40% off USPS United States Parasal Service rates and 76% off a UPS shipments. So whether your office is sending an invoice, you're doing a side hustle with some sort of Etsy shop Ben. You have an Etsy shop. I have multiple Etsy shops. I don't know. That's what I thought. Yeah, that's what I thought. Make it a little.

Or it's I do little. Yes. Yeah. I do a little dog collar stays. Yeah, you dog collar stays and you put them up on your mantle on your fireplace. We're going to look into dog collar stays and, but you can use it for shipping services all from your computer. And whether you have an Etsy store like Ben or a full blown warehouse, shipping out orders,

stamps.com will make your life easier. All you need is a computer who doesn't have a computer and just a standard printer, no special supplies or equipment. You're up and running in minutes. Literally, it took us, I think, five minutes to set up the account, printing official postage for any letter, any package, anywhere you want to send, stop overpaying for shipping. Why are you doing that? Save your money for other great things like our other sponsors with stamps.com. And you've signed up with a promo code. Yes, we have a promo code. It's legal AF, L-E-G-A-L-A-F for a special offer that includes a four week trial, free postage, Ben, free stamps, and a digital scale because you still got to weigh this stuff to figure out how many stamps to put on the package. No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to

stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the page. That's convenient. A microphone icon and enter code legal AF, L E G A L, a F stamps.com bed. I love it. So we talked about earlier in the podcast, Trump's obstruction when it comes to threatening witnesses at his Conroe, Texas speech, absurd. We also learned this week about Trump's destruction of evidence, bringing classified information

with him tomorrow, Lago, things that are possibly missing from call logs. I think there are really three things that are going on as we read the various stories. So on the one hand, it's the fact that Donald Trump is ripping during the presidency was ripping up, shredding, I kid you not here, eating documents, he would eat documents according to individuals class. Here's my artist rendering of Trump after every meeting.

Instead of preserving them, pursue it to presidential records act. Exactly. So it was Popeye gripping his paper up for those listening, flushing them down the toilet ball. We know Trump loves to talk about toilet ball. So that's one aspect of it The next aspect of it is that when Trump left the White House He brought documents with him to Mar-a-Lago

Classified documents with him to Mar-a-Lago the National Archivist again. We hear about the National Archivist Again, we hear about the National Archivist. David Perero. It's a hear about the National Archivist all the time because Trump's such a piece of shit. And so the National Archivist has to go make a DOJ referral and says, hey, Trump took all of these records with him and their classified records to, he's supposed to return them to us after he leaves, pursuant to the Presidential Records Act. And then the third thing that's going on

is that there are apparently missing call logs. The January 6th Committee is aware of calls that Trump made and had because they've gotten the records now through subpoenas and through voluntarily turning over records, people voluntarily turn over records. So they know have a good idea of certain people who Trump talked to. So one of the things we do as litigators and the Jansics Committee is using the same tactic to see if a party is actually producing records as they're supposed to is that we compare them. And

we look at records that we know exist. We look at the records that are turned over and here because he's the president of the was the president of the United States. You work for the people, not a dictatorive, and those documents are made available. And in normal cases, that's not a big deal for presidents. They, certain documents are classified, certain documents have an unclassified process where they become unclassified and unclassified. And then the records are produced publicly. That's not a controversial topic.

So these are the three things that are going on. Popoq is their criminality taking place here based on what you read. Oh, yeah. And I'm going to introduce a new concept or a new person to the pod in the story. Maggie Haber, HAP, ER and trippet reporter for the New York Times. Maggie Haberman. Is it Haberman? Haberman. I'm going to leave it. I'm not even going to, I'm not even going to edit that. I'm going to, I like it. Heyberman. Why did I think it was Heyber? I read her all the time. Anyway, maybe I know a Heyber. So Maggie Heyberman and a trepid reporter for the New York Times to bring this podcast full circle talking about the

times is Trump's worst nightmare. She's the reporter that he's most worried about. And it's at least other reporting has suggested and other confinates of his who have given that comment. And it's not like the Watergate investigator who's written all the books, Bob Woodward. And people give Maggie Haberman a lot of shit, Popok, because they say her relationship with Trump was too cozy that she was a mouthpiece for the White House during the information, you know, during the period to get out White House propaganda. But at the end of the day, she established a relationship there, though, that now she has access to the

things that. Well, that's exactly right. We're going to post a photo of Maggie with Donald Trump with one of his little thumbs, giving a thumbs up in the White House. The reason that she so, she scares him so much is that she's been there from day one, from the first hotel that Trump bought with Daddy's money right by Grand Central Station all the way through today. No one knows his grifting and his mo better than Maggie Haber and excerpts of her memoir or excerpts of her book have already leaked out. No pun intended. And that's where the toilet flushing story

has come from that she's got it on proper reporting credentials and criteria that they, that they were flushing documents down the toilets at the White House. Now, the eating the documents that I apparently came from Amarosa, I'm not sure. I, I'll take Maggie Haberman over Amarosa, but it all comes to other reporting that has now come out that supports Maggie Haberman, which is that Trump did not neither understood nor respected the Presidential Records Act, and that his own staffers were not only worried about giving him materials that he would then tweet about that were confidential and top secret. So they would actually have questions in the hallway. Should we show this to the president? Because we know he won't respect the top secret classification

or the presidential records act. That's one, two, just as I just showed in the visual, I'll do it, I'll do it orally. I worked in an organization where I saw executives leave the room because they were not subject to records act. And they would rip up the documents from that day and toss them into a can. Unless they're subject to what's called a preservation notice, because they're involved in a lawsuit, or there's a lawsuit on the horizon or an investigation, or they have another

regulatory requirement that requires them to keep documents and not destroy them. They can do that. But as you mentioned, you touched on Ben, the whatever the president does says creates or touches is not his own. He's the temporary occupant of the White House. He's the temporary president. It's either four years or eight years or they take him out sooner because they impeached or convicted him or he dies. But everything he does wearing the hat of the president belongs to the people. They are official records. They are not his own. They are not his own to mutilate. They are not his own to destroy or flush or eat or take with him in 15 boxes,

Mark top secret to Mar-a-Lago. They belong to the people and they belong to the National Archive by law by by law. Now, and all those documents that should be in those boxes and in all those records that shouldn't be ripped up and now having to be reconstructed with tape because Trump didn't give a crap about the National Archive or any other law or guard relative democracy. They then get turned over to the American people and to researchers and to academics 12 years after somebody leaves office or earlier, if there's a congressional investigation, which is exactly what's going on now with Jan 6th. And that's why the Supreme Court ultimately ordered that the documents go, don't wake 12

years because we got to get to the bottom of Jan 6th right now. Now having said all of that, the, let's, let me go to the 15 boxes. I want to ask you something. I know that there's now reporting that the National Archive realizing that there were 15 boxes missing, then went to the staff and said, you got to return the boxes. There was a fight. There was like negotiations over the 15 boxes. So first, you have Trump and his staffers deciding that these 12 boxes need to go with him tomorrow, logo, and not stay as

presidential records. Despite the fact that everything in his office and everything he created or was shown is a presidential record. So why those 15? My second question to you is, who dropped the dime on Trump? That's not something that the National Archive, there's no inven, master inventory that the Archive is with a clipboard was like, hmm, where's boxes 101 to 116? They seem to be missing. You would never have known they were missing unless they got that information from a witness to the JAN6 committee who testified about record keeping or otherwise. What have you seen reporting?

How did the National Archive find out about the missing 15 boxes and then do a search and seizure to recover them from Mar-a-Lago? I think it's been on their radar for a while. I mean, Trump's a big mouth. And so I think when he took the boxes,

he also kind of mocked the process and that it was something that was always known. I think it's taken on a greater relevance with the light of Jan 6th and what the committee is looking for. So the National Archivist has expedited its efforts because it's under a subpoena request to turn over these records to the January 6th committee as well. And so I think that's expedited their efforts. But ultimately, why didn't we hear about it earlier when they were, they were litigating

at the Supreme Court about the 70 pages. Why didn't they have a drop of footnote in one of their briefing and says, we're currently negotiating with the Trumps about 15 boxes at Mar-a-Laga. Why am I hearing about it this week? Because we don't really hear a lot about the National Archivists a lot. I mean, when you think about everything that's taken place from January 6th, the insurrection to now,

I mean, we've heard about a lot of things. I think that have taken place generally. I mean, Trump and the right wing fascists that are now the Republican Party have like engaged in some horrific conduct to the country. Every day, it's a new piece of information. I just think that as this issue is reaching its natural conclusion and the conflict is now at its most heightened stage,

an intrepid reporter, you know, got the information and it's and it's being reported. So, so let me give what, let me give one last thing before we leave it because you asked me the beginning, is this a crime? And it is. And we like you and I like to open up legal AF law school every podcast. And so here we are. So there's two, there's two crimes that are implicated by Trump, destroying, ripping up documents, stealing them, flushing them down toilets and the like. One is 18 USC 1361, which is destruction of government property. And in this case, would lead to up to a one year prison sentence. And the other is 18 USC 2070, 2071, the mutilation of records something that should have been sent to the national archive.

What I find troubling, and I'm sure your brothers and you have talked about this, is you have the Republicans, you know, talk about being contradictory and being hypocrites. You got Grassley saying, well, we didn't do this with Hillary and the servers that she had in the basement of their chopper, Kuala Lama island house. Okay, that's like a horse of a different color. The servers were hidden. The servers, the materials on the servers were maintained. And the fundamental question was sometimes she used Hillary.gov and sometimes she used Hillary.com.

And there was an academic question about which things should have been turned over and as a secretary of state, which things should have been preserved on our own server. But the server was there and the server was turned over to the FBI director at the time. It probably led to her, the last nail in her coffin for the election. But it's not like she stole the document,

it's put them on our own server and then refused to turn them back. I mean, Trump violated that. Like, it's a given that what Trump did with respect to and what his administration did by using private servers, just that one thing alone is 100 times worse than anything. Like Clinton, did I really need to do anything wrong there? But like, this spoliation, this destruction

of documents is a crime. We'll see what happens there. One of the things you mentioned was about giving Trump classified information at a fear he was going to tweet it just to remind some of our listeners and watchers to just one of those example is when President Trump tweeted what experts said was an image from an American classified satellite or drone showing the aftermath of an accident at an Iranian space facility.

And Trump tweeted about that. And that was a highly classified satellite image that showed technology that we possessed, which would be used by our enemies to harm us and to potentially learn about our confidential information. And so that was just one example that was a tangible example of him tweeting things, tweeting things about our national security and placing. Top secret information. Top secret information and placing us all in

peril. Want to talk about the what's going on in Alabama. This is an update, but an unfortunate update about the Voting Rights Act. Because we had good news to report with the three judge panel in Alabama that had ruled that the Jerry Mandering there was racist,

but the United States radical right extremist court and Justice Roberts, who's a bush appointee. Didn't even join what took place here. We'll tell you about that soon, but they kept the status quo in place, which means the racist Jerry Manderd map in Alabama will hold through 2022. And then there will be a full or a argument there. But before breaking down that issue, I want to talk about one of our partners, Blinkist, this podcast is brought to you by Blinkist in 2022. This is all about empowering people to grow personally and professionally by discovering content that inspires motivates and will give you new perspectives about your lives

and the world in 2022 and Blinkist has the perfect content to help you be a better, smarter, and more knowledgeable you in 2022. Now what Blinkus does is it breaks down these incredible works of nonfiction that I love to read in small digestible ways you could understand the same way we break down our legal cases here in many ways. And these are audio or it's in writing. It takes you about 15 minutes to get through. And what Blinkus does is it breaks down for you, the key concepts, the key points, what you need to take away in these books. And I think you could use them for two purposes.

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So the five second rule by Mel Robbins, the five a.m. club by Robin Sharma or two books I read using Blinkist got the main concepts in small digestible ways. Quince Analy, those books kind of work together. One, getting up early, starting your day right, counting down 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, motivating yourself to be your best self and grow professionally and personally. That's what Blinkist is actually all about as well. Right now, Blinkist has a special offer just for you.

Our legal AF audience go to blinkist.com slash legal AF and start a free seven day trial and get 25% off a blinkist premium membership. That's blinkest spell B L I N K I S T blinkest dot com slash legal AF to get 25% off and a seven day free trial. That's blinkest dot com slash legal AF use that code. So Popeye, I think I set the stage before that ad read for what's going on in Alabama, the three district judge panel previously found the Alabama map to be racist. African Americans in Alabama makeup about 25% of the population. But the way this map was drawn, it basically takes all the areas

which large concentrated black populations and puts it into just this one district so that if it wasn't like that and the other districts you would have black representation and those other districts and you would have black representation in those other districts, and you would have at least two, maybe even three districts that would be represented by Democrats in Alabama. So you're able to do, we talked about this before, like politically motivated, Jerry

Mandarin, unfortunately, is allowed. But racist, Jerry Mandarin, unfortunately, is allowed. But racist Jerry Mandarin is not allowed. We talked previously on legal AF that in a court case within the past 10 years, the pre-clearance requirement where before these maps even came into existence and before they were approved either the Department of Justice or judges would work with the states to make sure the map was not racist and was a fair map, but that pre-clearance requirement was removed.

It's a little more complicated than that. It was one of the sections that involved the formulas and how the formulas are applied was declared to be unlawful, but it had the effect of destroying the pre-clearance because you need the formula to determine pre-clearance. But for all intents and purposes, pre-clearance was removed by this Supreme Court case.

So now you have all this racist, gerrymandering taking place. And now the Supreme Court though put its finger on the, put its thumb on the scale of justice here. And they basically ruled, put its finger on the thumb on the scale of justice here. And they basically ruled, they didn't rule as to the legality of the map. But what the Supreme Court said is that,

they didn't go, they basically did. And explain why Popok that what they did was had the effect of that. Yeah. This ruling was so bad by the right wing majority that even Roberts, Chief Justice Roberts, who himself stripped away the protections of the Voting Rights Act and watered it down so completely in two prior decisions, even he couldn't join with the right wingers on this one. And he sided with the liberal wing. And it was a five to four decision at the injunction level. Even he could, you know, if it's so bad,

but even Roberts who in the past had never seen an attack or an excuse to undermine the Voting Rights Act, he'd never passed that up. If he passed it up this time, that's how bad voting rights act, you'd never pass that up. If he passed it up this time, that's how bad this ruling is in a masculating and undermining the voting rights act in specifically section two of the voting rights act which does exactly then what you said, which prevents

gerrymandering mapped redistricting drawing from being done in a way that undermines racial enfranchisement. Yeah, I got a good pop-up. So what the Republicans and the radical extremists are saying, though, this is their argument, is because Article 2 of the Voting Rights prevents racism, what they argue is that that's racist because you're now seriously, because they argue that by bringing in race into the equation to stop racism, you're being racist. That's how disingenuous, but that's their argument. Yeah.

So let's talk about it. So what the decision, and let's, what we keep talking about it as if our listeners of followers know exactly what's happened. So the Alabama legislature, in drawing up seven districts, each one will be represented by a Congressperson. So representative democracy found a way to Jerry Mander so that there would only be one concentrated black district

to give them voting rights out of seven. So 27% of the state is black, but only 14% of the state congressional districts would be in concentrated black areas. And then the farious and really insidious way they did this is that they recognize that there's something in Alabama that's called the black belt, which has some historical references to slavery, but is referred to today. They're referred to the urban centers of Alabama like Montgomery and other places which are heavily black and they found a way to draw the map and away and we'll put the map up and the black community in a state of which they are almost one-third, you know, a part of the citizenship. So that's one. The three judge were back to our legal AF lessons again,

the three judge panel, the three judge act that requires these types of cases to go to a trial court, but a three judge trial court. And this was comprised of a Trump judge, a Obama judge, and I think a Biden judge, three zero. They found that the map that the legislature provided violated section two of the voting rights act. And they had to go back to the drawing board. They said, go back hurry up, come back to us in two or three weeks. You've got seven months or nine months. Don't be racist.

Well, yeah, but that's what they said. That's what they said. Come back. Don't give us a racist man. True, true. However, they said, go back to the drawing board, go back with your cartographers and your map makers and come up with a way. You don't split the black vote

in the district and let's come back and show us two, primarily predominantly black districts and the Alabamians and the legislators say, well, we'll take our chances with the Supreme Court and they file an emergency, an emergency application to Justice Clarence Thomas, who is the Justice who's in charge of that particular state. No surprise, Roberts put Thomas in charge of Alabama.

And he has a choice, as we've talked about in the past, when you're the duty judge or the circuit judge, you have a choice either to make the decision on your own without reference to the entire Supreme Court, or you can send it to the entire Supreme Court for what we call that shadow-docket discussion. And the, or the Supreme Court can decide, we're not gonna do it in a shadowy way. We're gonna do it on full briefing and hearing. We'll do it on an expedited basis.

And they've done that a couple of times, but using the shadow-docket method, Thomas referred it over to the full court. The full court said, we're not going to do full briefing. We're going to look at the record and we're going to make a decision on a preliminary basis. So what? It just tells you that that's how cocky though, Clarence Thomas knew what was going on. So he wanted the cover, but he knew that he had the votes to shut that down. Didn't want

it to be just about him, but he knew where that court was lying. Right. Because such a my air just shut down a vaccine mandate appeal that in New York without referring it at all, they have a lot of power when the emergency application comes up to them to they're the gatekeeper. If they say no, rejected, it doesn't go to the Supreme Court. Doesn't go to the thing though, Popok. And this is why it's be called the Shadow Docket though,

it's not called the Shadow Docket merely because it's being referred to the Supreme Court by someone like Eclarence Thomas who gets it because he represents that area. It's because their actions have the effect of overturning the status quo. So for all intensive purposes, what they are doing is creating a ruling,

even though it's not technically an opinion, hence it's a shadowed docket of where normally there would be normal oral arguments. The concern is not simply that these things are being decided. It's that they are overturning the status quo, like what you should do in this situation is say, you know, look, we could, this is what Justice Roberts point was in his descent, but in his own descent for himself, he goes, look, we should have an oral argument on this issue, but we should overturn what a validly constituted district court

who, by the way, was comprised of, was a bipartisan panel of people who was there, but he just said we shouldn't overturn what they're doing for now. So, so let me just, I'm almost done connecting them dots. So, Alabama brings a motion for preliminary injunction to an ask for a stay, because they are the movement asking for the stay. This is important. So, they don't like the three judge panel decision telling them to go back to the drawing board literally and redraw your map.

So, they take the emergency application to Thomas. They are the movement, which means normally they have to show that they are likely to succeed on the underlying merits of showing that their map complies with section two and wasn't done for discriminatory purposes. But that's not what the majority, the majority in a 5-4 decision. The majority did not issue a ruling. However, there are written opinions by three justices. One of them is Kavanaugh.

One of them is Kagan setting up this fight between Kavanaugh and Kagan on voting rights again. And the other is Roberts. The rest stayed silent. Alito joined Kavanaugh's decision, Breyer and Sotomayor joined Kagan's dissent and Roberts joined with the liberal wing. And Kavanaugh in a very insidious way, in a very interesting way, and I mean that in a negative fashion, applied, basically turned the law of injunctions on its head and put the onus on those that were challenging the map to argue why they were going to win ultimately

a trial. And Cavanaugh says, look, it's a close call whether you win or you lose. I don't think that cuts in your favor. But that's the exact opposite of the analysis. And Cagan called him out on that and said, Cavanaugh, what are you doing? We know what you're doing. You're putting the burden on the party that's not moving for the stay. Okay. The stay is to stay the district court's decision to overturn the map. So the party that's coming before them, the state legislature, who's saying we like our map, keep our map, they have the burden, not the party that's opposing it to show that they're going to win a trial. So they applied, so he did that.

That's the first thing he did. The second thing he did, which you got to think the full court's going to do as well when they finally vote on this thing, is that he, they applied a, the Purcell doctrine and the Purcell doctrine says, the closer you get to an election, the less the court should monkey around with changing the rules of the road because election officers and people running for office have to know what the rules of the road are in order to run for election. And Cavanaugh made a big deal about this and said, you're only seven or nine months away. And therefore, we shouldn't be screwing around with the 2022 primaries and the 2022 election. We'll do this

on full briefing and we'll pick up with it in 2024, meaning from now until 2024, blacks will be underrepresented. And the Voting Rights Act will have been violated. And it goes and it's worse than that because even though he went out of his way to say, this is not a merits decision. We did not make a ruling on the merits. We're only making a ruling now on the stay. He just gave license and permission to other lawsuits in other places to just disregard section two of the Voting Rights Act until they make an ultimate

decision. And you can see the writing on the wall. So now we've just ripped up the Voting Rights Act, a act of Congress, which they are always pointing to as saying, this isn't, we're not law makers. Congress needs to act in this area. Well, gosh darn it. Congress has acted in this area. Well, gosh darn it. Congress has acted in this area, and they are busy undermining and pulling the underpinnings out of a legally passed statute.

That's not supposed to be the role of Congress, but I mean, of the Supreme Court, but it is when they have an agenda, a racial agenda to monkey around with politics, which is what they've done yet again. And we see not just the politicization, but also they're kind of common defense and it's kind of a staple of the radical right extremist kind of petty trolling that they do. Just basically saying, hey, this is not a merits decision. We actually said you can go in pursue your remedy, gas lighting. That's the word that I was looking for there. It's just a bunch of gas lighting that they're doing.

We saw this with SB 8. With SB 8, basically saying, look, we said, if you want to, you can go and challenge this, but we're going to kick this over to the fifth circuit for a little bit. And maybe the fifth circuit, they have to go and ask these profound questions to the Texas Supreme Court. Meanwhile, we're going to look at Dobbs and Mississippi case, which is likely going to overturn Roe V Wade over the summer or at least the poll toweek abortion ban. It's that gaslighting and that disingenuousness that exists also. But that's why the Supreme Court has

record disapprovals. What the Republicans do when they degrade these institutions, though, was they also degrade themselves. And that's why there is going to be a ground swell of support for our institutions again for Democracy as it should be for real representation of the people by the people for the people That's what's going to be happening this summer and unfortunately it is going to be spurred by the Supreme Court's ruling in Dobs when they uphold the 15-week abortion ban. And for all of our legal aephers, that's why now more than ever, it is so crucial,

it is so critical for you all to be motivated and to get involved. The signs are still pointing in the direction. Don't listen to what the media is saying. They wanna run these things like a horse race and say, someone's up, someone's down. Okay. People want rational, reasonable leadership

and the polling is showing overwhelmingly that this childish lining, illegality, unlawfulness, that is the Republican party. People don't want that, but we need each and every one of you to be out there every day, fighting for our democracy, fighting for what it really means when we say the rule of law. One of the fundamental things about legal AF at the end of the day is we talk about truly the

rule of law, its complexities, its beauty, its difficulty, the struggles that law, it's complexities, it's beauty, it's difficulty, the struggles that exist in it. But ultimately moving towards a better, more perfect union. It's why I love doing this pod with you each and every week, Pope, and also just enjoy spending time with you. Hey, Pope, did you think that those Pope, pocket in shirts were going to sell out? I mean, you sold that on them pretty quickly. Those those new t shirts and they aren't you by all 50 of them.

No, I bought a few, but no. And there's people that we've got some annoyed legal legal a effort and Midas mighty shout out to Midas mighty because they, you know, there was a limited run. I think we're going to have to do a second limited run because I know know I know a couple of OG members of the Midas mighty who are like, wait a minute, did I miss the sale? I couldn't make the chat that night. The live chat. And so I think we might have to open the gate for another short period of time and allow a few more of those to roll out.

Well, Popak, if you make, if you make it too many things that are limited, at the end of the day, it doesn't become limited anymore. So we've got to be cognizant of that. Want to say a special thanks to our sponsors, stamps.com, Hello, Fresh, Athletic Greens, and Blinkist. Use those promo codes that we told you about earlier and you can check on the podcast handle where we have those promo codes as well and on the YouTube for those promo codes. Make sure to give Legal AF A5 Star review. That is how you can help the show as

well by giving it a five star review and actually review it wherever you get your podcasts and wherever it's available. To you, thank you everybody for listening to this edition of Legal AF. I am Ben Mycelis controlling all of the media apparently with Michael Popak. We so appreciate your support and we will see you same time. Same place next week. Special shout out to the Midas Mighty.