Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Judge Excoriates Trump in Open Court for Fed Claim

Episode Date: January 1, 2026

Turns out misleading a federal judge by telling her that the FEDERAL RESERVE HAS NO MONEY to justify not complying with her injunction to not put a Congressional agency devoted to protecting the consumer, is a very BAD thing. Michael Popok reports on a new order from Judge Amy Berman Jackson in which she calls out Trump’s “Darth Vader” Russ Vought’s roll in “starving” by claiming the Fed is busted, to protect the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from being put through the wood chipper. Sundays For Dogs: Get 40% off your first order of Sundays. Go to https://sundaysfordogs.com/LEGALAF or use code LEGALAF at checkout. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. So, funny thing, it turns out you can't tell a federal judge that the reason you're not complying with her injunction to avoid destroying a federal agency that protects the consumers while an appeal is going on. You can't tell her that the reason you're not complying with the injunction is that the federal reserve is busted, that it has no money, pull out its pockets and say, we'd love to comply, Your Honor, but the Fed doesn't have the money to pay for the agency as Congress has required. What are we to do? And the judge says, no, I've seen your statements on right-wing podcast. In fact, Amy Berman Jackson, the judge, put one of the statements of

Russ Vote, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, on a right-wing podcast on the Charlie Kirk Network at the top of her order when she said, your manufactured attempt to choke off the funds to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, you know, the one created by President Barack Obama to stop predatory lending and credit practices, credit cards, and payday loans and banks and all those, and collection agencies, you know, you need somebody in your corner and it's the CFPB. You can't put it out of its misery or out of our misery and take it in the back and shoot it while there's an appeal going on and avoid my March injunction to prevent exactly that. You're on the Midas Touch

Network. Happy early New Year's. It's cold where I live. today. And so I'm in a sweater. Let me bring it to you, for those that are listening, let me bring you this new, we got a brand new order that just came out yesterday from Judge Amy Berman Jackson, one of our faves here on, on Midas Touch and Legal AF. She sits in the District of Columbia District Court, and I've got the new order. I'm posting it. It's 32 pages. I'll give you the, I'll give you the heart of it. I'm posting it over on LegalAF substack for paid members. I'm running a sale, everybody, 30% off through the first of the year on paid memberships of legal AF substack. And thank you for getting us to number one in rising U.S.

politics substacks. Okay, let's get to Amy Berman Jackson. We've been talking about the attempt, well, the efforts by the Trump administration, and really all MAGA, to get rid of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. There's two entities that have driven MAGA and Donald Trump crazy since his first term and has been a thorn in their side, Obamacare and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, mainly because of Obama and because it's the only agency that's out there protecting the consumer. As Donald Trump weakens all the other protective regulatory schemes and agencies, basically putting out to pasture by defunding the Securities and Exchange Commission about the stock market and that particular financial services

marketplace, the CFTC, the FTC, they've all seen their budgets shrunk by a half or a third. They're not doing enforcement actions. They're not going after issuers. They're not going after corporations any longer because they're all friends with Donald Trump. They're not going after cryptocurrency and regulating that. the last firewall to protect America, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Donald Trump wants to take it out in the back and shoot it. Now, back in March, Judge Jackson stopped it. She said, look, you guys are doing this on appeal, and the appeal is at the heart of the

appeal is whether the president and the executive branch and the unitary presidential model can destroy completely and defund completely a congressionally created agency or bureau. All right. You guys work it out on appeal. In the meantime, I'm going to protect it from being defunded. I'm going to protect it from being destroyed so that there's something, if you lose on the Trump side, there's something here left behind. Because if I allow you to defund it and destroy it and fire everybody through Doge and otherwise, there's nothing left to save. Makes sense. Except the Trump administration has been squirming about that ever since. And several trips to the appellate courts have resulted, though, in an injunction that stops the destruction of the

CFPB and requires its continued funding. See, that's the way Donald Trump has reshaped the relationship. That's a nice way of putting it. Reshaped the relationship between the American people and the federal government and destroyed the social safety net through funding, through defunding, through firing employees. When you get rid of, when you get rid of 10% of the federal workforce, Who do you think is picking up the phone at the Social Security Administration? Who do you think is generating the statistics that are needed to run the economy? Nobody. Nobody's home. The lights are on.

Nobody's home. And Russ Vote, remember that name, who's effectively the domestic policy president of the United States, the architect of 2025. Don't be misled by his bookish librarian demeanor. You know, he is Darth Vader. That's what Donald Trump has even. called him. He runs the Office of Management and Budget. He's the architect of Project 2025, which he celebrates, you know, and he holds the pen and the checkbook. The executive branch can't execute on the laws unless Russ Vote writes the check to do it. And that's how

they choke off and starve the American people through Russ Vote, right? Why do you think he's called Darth Vader? Here's Donald Trump calling Russ Vote and introducing him as Darth Vader. Let's play it. And I will say this, that we have Darth Vader. You know Darth Vader, right? Darth Vader is a man who, I think he's sitting right. Is that Darth? Stand up, please, Darth Vader. Stand up.

Does everybody know? This is, they call him Darth Vader. I call him a fine man. But he's cutting Democrat priorities, and they're never going to get him back. And they've caused us, and they've really allowed us to do it. And by the way, thank you. You're doing a great job, I have to tell you. So really a great job.

So Amy Berman Jackson has a Darth Vader problem. And Darth Vader, Russ Vote, goes on right-wing podcasts in October and says in response to a question about the CFPB, the following. So we want to put the CFPB out, out of business. And we will be successfully, probably within the next two or three months. How do I know that's the quote? Because Amy Berman Jackson put it on page one above her order. Now, Donald Trump has also said he wants to get rid of the CFPB. And we've got a clip of that as well.

And Amy Berman Jackson saw it also. Let's play it. Protesters are calling on the Trump administration to change course and reopen the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. CFPB workers were told to stay home yesterday and its D.C. headquarters is shut down. CFPB was founded in 2011 after the Great Recession, and the agency aims to protect Americans from financial fraud, abuse, and unfair practices. Critics say shutting it down is an attempt to loosen financial regulations. The CFPV is there to make sure that Elon's new project can't scam you or steal your sensitive personal data. I got elected on making government better, more efficient, and smaller than that's what we're doing.

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Or you can use code legal AF at checkout. That's 40% off your first order at SundaysforDogs.com slash legal AF. SundaysforDogs.com slash legal AF or use code legal a.F at checkout. So now they decide they're going to starve the CFPB of cash, and they're going to do it by saying that the Federal Reserve, which is the funding source that Congress set up for this Bureau, doesn't have the money. It's broke. It's busted by the way that they define earnings, a defined term concerning the balance sheet. Now, she also remarks in her footnote four on page five and relies on a brief that was supplied to her by former officials of the Federal Reserve. Now, the whole thing stems to a two or three page memo created out of whole cloth by the Trump Department of Justice, which we know has been captured by Donald Trump, so it's not independent.

It's Office of Legal Counsel really been captured, really not independent, who defined the Fed's profitability. and concluded that there isn't enough money to pay the funding for the, for the Bureau. Here's what she says in her footnote. An amicus brief submitted by former officials of the Federal Reserve contends that Office of Legal Counsel's analysis of the Fed's profitability is flawed because the Fed never truly operates at a loss. Here's what they tried to say on page three of her order. On November 10th, the defendants filed what they styled as a notice of, of potential lapse in appropriations to pay the expenses of the Bureau,

which transmitted a copy of the November 7th memo issued by the Office of Legal Counsel, mainly Donald Trump, at Votes Request, at this Russ Votes Request. The notice acknowledged that this court's injunction, which restricts the agency's conduct regarding employment, contracting and facilities, remains in effect. So she's saying, now I'm getting trolled. You're saying that my injunction that you can't fire people, you can't cancel contracts, remain, and you can't sell the building remains in effect.

So you're going to defund underneath it. But that the Federal Reserve, this is over on page five, has no earnings. They're busted and cannot fund the CFPB and that the director has no statutory obligation to request funds when the Fed is not profitable. So the acting head of the CFPB, this Consumer Bureau, Russ vote, purposely did not ask for the funding that the Fed had set aside for the Bureau in order to argue that there's no money

and that he needs to shut down operations. That didn't go over well. Here's what the judge rules at the end of her order on page 31. This sums it up. The court clarifies that the claimed lapse in funding, like you're out of money, Fed has no money, which was manufactured, her word, by the defendants, based solely on that legal memo I just read to you, is not a valid justification for the agency's unilateral

decision to abandon its obligations under the injunction. You're not getting out from under my injunction by a false claim that there's no money. the statutory text of the Act, the Statutory Act governs, and it prescribes a process through which that Bureau is to request the funding. It needs to carry out the mission assigned to it by Congress, and the Federal Reserve must provide that funding from its, quote-unquote, combined earnings. And you can't make combined earnings disappear through a new version of what combined earnings are, to say that the Federal Reserve operates at a loss. And every year from 2011, this has not been a problem, she said. Neither the statute, the injunction, nor the Fed's willingness to pay has changed,

she writes, the judge writes, the only new circumstance is the administration's determination to eliminate an agency created by Congress with the stroke of a pen, even while the matter is before the Court of Appeals. It appears that defendant's new understanding of combined earnings is an unsupported and transparent attempt to starve the Bureau of Funding and yet another attempt to achieve the very end. The court's injunction was put in place to prevent.

Therefore, judges have to clarify a lot with this administration. Therefore, this ruling construes the scope of the existing order to clarify that the defendant's unilateral decision to decline the request to decline, to request funding, not even put in the request, based on an unsupported interpretation of the law contravenes the preliminary injunction. I can't tell you it's into the multiple dozens how many times judges are forced to reclarify, reissue, reconsider their orders for this Trump administration and the Department of Justice. They act like they can't read, they act like they don't understand plain English. It forces judges to be like,

I need to really redefine my order once again, buying more time for the Trump administration, wasting more time, you know, wasting more time and dollars. No wonder government spending is up 7% over Joe Biden's period. I thought they were trying to shrink the government. I thought the purpose of Doge and Donald Trump and cost cutting and all that was, to cut spending. Why is spending up 7%? You know, he got rid of 10% of the federal workforce, but spending is up 7% under Donald Trump, right?

That's where we are right now. I'm glad you're here on the Midas Touch Network. Great news. Legal AF substack. This week, actually today, number one and rising in U.S. politics of all substacks. So if substacks, U.S. politics were number one on the rising, chart. That's all because of you. And in honor of that, I'm running a sale through the 1st of January,

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