Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF - 2/28/2026

Episode Date: March 1, 2026

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas goes solo on this LegalAF episode to report on the unlawful war in Iran and the Epstein cover up and more. Delete Me: Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to join https://deleteme.com/LEGALAF and use promo code LEGALAF at checkout. Veracity: Veracity: For up to 45% off your order, head to https://VeracityHealth.co and use promo code: LEGALAF Shopify: Sign up for a one-dollar per month trial at https://shopify.com/legalaf Mud/wtr: Start your new morning ritual & get up to 43% OFF your @MUDWTR by going to https://mudwtr.com/LEGALAF #mudwtrpod Nobl: Don’t miss NOBL’s biggest Sale of the Year! Head to https://NOBLTravel.com for up to 62% off your entire order! #NOBL #ad Become a member of Legal AF YouTube community: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgZJZZbnLFPr5GJdCuIwpA/join Learn more about the Popok Firm: https://thepopokfirm.com Subscribe to Legal AF Substack: https://michaelpopok.substack.com/subscribe?coupon=c0fc8f5c 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 Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum with Dr. Steve Hassan: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan 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 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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I'm Ben Myceles and this is Legal A-F and we are bringing you this episode of Legal A-F following the United States and Israel launching preemptive strikes against Iran. The United States of America is at war. We are seeing war breaking out throughout the Middle East. Iran has responded to the preemptive strikes by the United States and Israel

by engaging in retaliatory strikes against its neighbors, against U.S. military bases within the region, against residential areas and tourist areas. is in the region, as we saw, for example, in Dubai, and other neighboring and surrounding cities and areas. And while this show is the intersection of law and politics, we do need to acknowledge that there is a legal aspect to understanding what just took place. And I want to speak with moral clarity at the outset of this episode, and to say very clearly

it is my opinion, and I hope that you share that opinion as well, although you're entitled to your own opinions, that the strikes by the United States on Iran are unlawful. They violate the Constitution. There is no constitutional authorization by Congress for Donald Trump to strike Iran to bring the United States into a war. Let's be very clear. The U.S. is in a war right now. Donald Trump, when he gave that bizarre first speech that he posted on his social media platform, used the term war. And he said in wars, referring to the war that we're in now, soldiers die. And so, you know, he wishes them the best.

It should be very clear as well that it seems that the intersection of law and politics with this war is clear as well. And to me, I don't think it is a coincidence that as additional information was being uncovered in the Epstein files regarding Donald Trump and the Epstein class that this war broke out. You had the depositions this past week, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton. There were discoveries of photographs, for example, of Howard Lutnik, Donald Trump's Congress Secretary on Petto Island, on Epstein's island with, it appears a group of men and perhaps his two children at the time who were 16-year-olds. I believe that photo was when he went to the island in 2012. He was wearing this blue button down, seems to be having the time of his life with

Epstein after previously saying that after he saw Epstein once in 2005, because Epstein was his neighbor, they shared a townhouse, they shared a townhouse right next to each other. He said that he was so disgusted by Epstein that he never wanted to see him again professionally, personally. There he was in this photo on the island, blue button down seemingly having the time of his life with his kids. And there was an accompanying email that we previously talked about where Lutnik was telling Epstein, you know, I've got the. these children with me, by the way, bringing him to Petto Island. I got my 16s.

I got 13s. I got my friends' kids. We're going to bring them. We're going to bring them to the island. Then there are statements from victims, 302 reports as they're called, FBI witness statements that are missing from the Epstein files. And it's believed that there is a victim who's made accusations against Donald Trump, that she was sexually assaulted as a minor, and that those accusations,

were removed from the publicly facing Epstein files in this other batch of documents that are being withheld. We believe there are terabytes and terabytes could be as much as 50 terabytes of documents, hundreds of millions of documents being withheld. And so as we learn more and more and more about what's being concealed, about Donald Trump's connections with Epstein, about this cabal, about the cover-up, then you have this war taking place. And, you know, I've been referring to it. I've been referring to it as the Jeffrey Epstein War or Operation Epstein Fury. The Trump regime refers to the preemptive strikes on Iran as Operation Epic Fury. It's what our government calls it. I'm calling it Epstein Fury. And one of the things that stand out as well to me is that, you know,

We were told originally that what this was all about with Iran think was they needed to stop enriching uranium. And they had these ambitions of building a nuclear weapon and they couldn't get a nuclear weapon that posed an existential threat to the region to Israel to the United States. I mean, that was, I think, what they were trying to sell us as part of the negotiations to see if a diplomatic. diplomatic process could have resolved this without a war. You had the foreign minister of Oman serve as a mediator to try to negotiate terms to avoid war. That foreign minister of Oman went on American television on Friday and announced, we pretty much have a deal. Everything's been very productive. We've had massive breakthroughs, is what he told American media when he went on it. Then he posted a photo of himself with J.D. Vance and seemed to strike a very optimistic tone.

Oman's foreign minister on Friday, Badr al-Bussati said, I met with Vice President J.D. Vance today and shared details of the ongoing negotiation between the United States and Iran and the progress achieved so far. I'm grateful for their engagement and look forward to further and decisive progress in the coming days. Peace is within our reach. Now what's very clear, is that this, part of it was, I think, about enriched uranium, but that's not really what this was about. This was about regime change in Iran. This was about putting in a new regime in Iran and getting rid of the current regime. And this was a regime change war that is taking place. That's it. regime change war. Now, I think we're capable on legal A.F and on the Midas touch,

network of holding together complex thoughts at the same time, right? Just because I say the war against Iran right now is unlawful constitutionally, that is true. That is an undisputed fact. I can still feel strongly that the Ayatollah and the regime in Iran is a horrible, despicable regime that is repressive and authoritative. authoritarian, and that has massacred people there. Recently is January massacring 30,000 people, apparently, who were protesting, as Donald

Trump said, go out there and protest. We got your back. And then the Iranian regime massacred all of those people as a brutal repressive regime. I think about the photos and videos of what Iran looked like before the revolution, what freedom looks like in Iran. And, you know, I think about a future of what a free, Democratic, Iran could look like. I think we should all agree that that actually could be a good thing, you know, to have people living in peace and freedom and not with repressive regimes, right?

At the same time, if we are going to do a regime change war with all of the problems we have in the United States, that needs to be made clear to the people. So we can determine, we the people, through our representatives in Congress as well, if this is, is what the United States should be doing right now with all of the problems that we are facing here in the United States as healthcare is being ripped away from people, as people are being psychologically tortured, if they're lucky enough to get a paycheck,

living paycheck to paycheck, as people can't afford rent and can't afford food, and as I said, healthcare is being ripped away, and they can't get good educations, and the future of their children and your grandchildren is far worse, than you could ever possibly have imagined for them. You know, as times are bleak here,

as we have iced border patrol and mass Gestapo, roaming our streets. There's a regime in the United States. There's a regime in Iran. There's a regime right now in Netanyahu in Israel. There are regimes that are out there right now. And people like Trump and Netanyahu and the Ayatollah are screwing up all of our lives. Frankly, they're screwing up all of our lives.

We naturally would want to get along with each other. We naturally want to love and express humanity and empathy and peace. We'd want to have a drink with each other if you drink or a coffee with each other if you drink coffee and hang out together and watch movies together and play sports together and enjoy each other's company. That's, I think, where humanity is it is. But you have these authoritarian despotic leaders, whether it's an Ayatollah, whether it's a Trump, whether it's Netanyahu, whether it's a Putin, you know, across the world,

screwing it up for all of us. And so I don't believe right now in the United States, as much as I despise the Ayatollah. I just don't think I support and you could tell me how you feel that we should do regime change wars. Donald Trump's not even capable of running his social media platform. Now he's going to do regime change wars in the Middle East, we've seen what that looks like. I wanted to see a diplomatic process. I thought that there were other means before doing regime change war that could actually be implemented. I mean, Donald Trump's social media platform where he posted the video of himself talking about, you know, the outset of a war after not giving the American people any notice about what the hell was happening or even trying to explain to us why we're.

regime change. Why is that in our national interest? Why is why is there a threat being posed right now? Why should we be doing this? But on that social media platform on Friday, if you caught this news, there was an SEC filing which showed that for the entire year of 2025, Trump's social media platform only made $3.7 million, not billion, I said million, $3.7 million in total revenue, and it lost approximately $720 million in 2025. And so what it is now doing is merging, Truth Social is spinning off the social media company to merge with a nuclear fusion company that's called T-A-E Technologies, and nuclear fusion has not actually been used in any commercial use.

There is this $6 billion merger, and now Truth Social to Social Media platform will be a nuclear fusion company. And guess what? The nuclear fusion company gets a lot of its money from, drum roll please, the Department of Energy in the form of grants that Donald Trump has control over.

Why am I even connecting the dots here? Because this is the guy doing the regime change in the Middle East right now. And then what happens after the Ayatollah? Do you think that in Iran, they're going to be happy to have a Trump or Netanyahu proxy as the leader of Iran? Do you think that what's the plan there? Do you think the people of Iran are all of a sudden going to say, this is, we definitely want Trump and Netanyahu's guy right there. You think, you think that is what's going to so easily happen. Didn't we see what's happened in Iraq?

Haven't we seen what's taken place in this region? And again, there's no even attempt to discuss this with us. So I thought it was important at the outset of the show. Yes, this is a legal show. But how can I not address the preemptive strikes by U.S. and Israel against Iran and what's happening in the region right now? There is a legal dimension to this. As I said, in my view, it is unlawful. It is not constitutional.

There is no congressional authorization for the use of force here. So it is an illegal act by Donald Trump. And just think about what happened earlier in the day. One of the things that we learn, 100, potentially 200 little girls were killed in an elementary school in Iran. As part of these strikes that occurred, the U.S. and Israel hit an elementary school, a little girl school, and little girls are dead. And I would be, again, remiss if I didn't make these connections about these predators

who are constantly attacking the little girls, the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. And so just think about in the past 24, 48 hours, you have a cover-up in the United States of a petto-child sex trafficking ring where thousands of little girls were sex trafficked, that Donald Trump calls all of this a big hoax. and then a war is unleashed.

At the exact same time, more information is percolating about Donald Trump's involvement in all of this. And the whole cabal is becoming undone. The Epstein class declare, that doesn't declare, they go to war, they don't get declarations. The Epstein class goes to war. And one of the first people in instance who die are little girls. So I think it's important that we address that, you know, all from the outset. And obviously, we're going to be giving you updates throughout the day and into the morning about everything that's happening. Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, had their depositions taken this week in Chappaqua, New York.

Neither of them invoked the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. They answered every question that was asked, even as Hillary Clinton was asked questions about UFO, and Pizza Gate and all of these things. She answered every question. She never had a communication with Epstein, nothing in the files that reference her speaking with Epstein. As far as she knows, never met Epstein even once. Yet they brought in Hillary Clinton as one of their main people

that the Maga Republicans wanted to take the deposition of not Howard Lutnik, not any of these other Epstein class people. Hillary Clinton. Heck, Melania's in the files. Gielaine refers to Melania as sweet P, and they talk about meeting up. And Melania says, hey, gee, love that New York Magazine article. Pictures of you were great. Jeffrey Epstein was amazing. J.E. was amazing.

Words to that effect. Came out amazing in the article. That was the article where Donald Trump said that Epstein is a great guy. It's a direct quote from Trump in that New York magazine article. Donald Trump is a great guy. Donald Trump says Jeffrey Epstein is a great guy who likes women on the younger side. Great guy. Many beautiful.

Some are on the younger side is what Donald Trump said. There were so many red flags in that New York magazine article. You remember the one I'm talking about? That's the one that Melania said to Geelaine in the emails. Great stuff. Great work. So Melania doesn't get deposed by the House Oversight Committee. Separately, you know, Melania is in a lawsuit right now.

now where Michael Wolf, Donald Trump's former biographer, sued Melania for violating his free speech rights. She threatened to sue him for a billion dollars for talking about her connections with Epstein and Geelaine. She said it was defamatory what he was saying about her. He said, this is my First Amendment right. I'm expressing my opinions and I'm stating facts. Go ahead and try to sue me. She didn't. He sues her for trying to infringe on his First Amendment right to report on her, she dodges service of the complaint, rushes to a federal court and says that because she wasn't served, the case should be dismissed that's filed against her. She says in the alternative, transfer the case to Florida

because she says she really lives in Florida and the case was filed in New York, so it should go to federal court. I won't get into the complexities of that. But then get transferred to Florida. Actually, I will get into the complexities. It's legal A.F. I'll get into the complexities of it. One of the grounds for a case being in federal court is if there's something called complete diversity of jurisdiction. So if someone's from one state and the other person's from a different state and the amount in controversy is over $75,000, that case belongs in federal court, not state court. And then there are further issues about venue, jurisdiction, subject matter jurisdiction after it's determined, or personal jurisdiction, rather,

after it's determined if a federal court has subject matter jurisdiction over you. So in this case, Michael Wolpe sued Melania in New York State Court saying Melania is from New York. So she should be sued in New, he's from New York, she's from New York, not complete diversity, regardless of what the amount in controversy is. Keep the case in New York State Court. It's confusing in New York. They call it Supreme Court. their state court, which is their trial court. And then you had Melania say, no, it should go to

federal court because there's complete diversity of jurisdiction. The amount in controversy is over $75,000. I'm from Florida. You're from New York. Complete diversity over $75,000. That's the limit. Transfer it to federal court. And then she says, and then transfer it to Florida, because she wants to be in of Judge Cannon because she argues not only does the state court not have jurisdiction over me, but New York doesn't. I should only be sued in Florida. Florida has personal jurisdiction over me and New York doesn't have personal jurisdiction. So transfer the case to Florida. She wants, in my opinion, to try to get in front of Judge Eileen Cannon. So she claims that she lives in Mar-a-Lago. Michael Wolf is saying you don't live there, you live in the Trump Tower, you don't live in the penthouse

is what Wolf argues. You live in another room in a unit and Barron goes to school there, and you're just pretending to live in Maralago for other reasons. Malani has refused to submit a declaration. Michael Wolf says, hey, federal judge, she hasn't even submitted a declaration to say she's from Florida. She just wants you to say, trust me, bro, because her lawyers claim she's from Florida. Why wouldn't she just submit a declaration under penalty of burgery if she's actually from Florida? that's pretty suspicious, isn't it? Anyway, the reason why I'm even bringing up Melania is, why is Hillary Clinton being deposed?

And why is Melania not being deposed at all? But Hillary Clinton answered all of the questions, and then the MAGA Republicans tried to, in the House Oversight Committee, you know, they didn't release the depositions right away, which they were required to release the depositions. Hillary Clinton wanted this all to be public. So did Bill.

I mean, look, to their credit, they wanted all of this. to be done publicly. They were saying, let's do public hearings and the MAGA Republicans are like, no, we want to keep it secret. And then even when it was happening in private, it was videotaped. But then Lauren Bobert was taking Lauren Bobert and some of these MAGA Republicans were taking videos and photos of Hillary Clinton when the Republicans made the rule that none of this can be broadcast, that none of this can go out to the media. But then the MAGA Congress, members were then sending it to their right-wing media influencers to try to like come up with

fake narratives. So then Hillary Clinton's like, okay, look, if you're sending this to Benny Johnson and Maga Republican influencers, when I want this all to be public, just make it all public to begin with. Let's bring the press in right now. And then the Maga Republicans were like, no, no, no, we're not going to do that. We're not bringing in. We're not going to bring in the press. We're going to keep it private. And the reason they wanted to do that with Hillary Clinton and with Bill Clinton is that as soon as those depositions were over, they wanted to rush out and then mischaracterize what was said. From all of what I've heard, from all of my sourcing, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton like demolished these Magna Republicans. And as I'll talk about in a little bit, what Bill Clinton did was really give a roadmap against what Donald Trump was saying to people in the Epstein class about Jeffrey Epstein.

and why they had a falling out and what was happening and what was happening there, which I'll talk about in a brief moment. But the MAGA Republicans, they rush out, they hold the press conference. They say, oh, Hillary Clinton was unhinged, and she was yelling, and she was screaming at everybody. And everybody was in her, it was like, no, she wasn't. What are you talking about? You were asking her about aliens and UFOs, and it got really weird because you had nothing

to ask her about. And you were asking her about, like, how does she feel that her husband was in photos? and there were other women in the photos, like, why are you asking the wife of someone about those questions? And then Bill Clinton answered all of the questions to. Then they rushed out, and then they tried to use Bill Clinton

as a character witness from his deposition as though he somehow exonerated Donald Trump. And that was one of the messages that they were pushing. Bill Clinton exonerates Donald Trump. Look what Bill Clinton did. He said that Bill Clinton said that Donald Trump told him that he had no relationship with Epstein at all. and that's not what was said at the deposition.

In fact, it was kind of quite the contrary, where what Bill Clinton was saying at the deposition is that Donald Trump said that he had a falling out with Epstein over a real estate transaction and not anything related to sex trafficking or girls that Donald Trump seemed to have a good relationship with Epstein, but it fell apart after this real estate transaction. That's what Bill Clinton said at the deposition,

but Maga Republicans rushed out to try to mischaracterizing, Verizon and say, Bill Clinton had Donald Trump's back and he said that Donald Trump did nothing wrong. Here was the thing. They should have released those video depositions immediately. They should have made this all public. Why everything with these MAGA Republicans, everything is private, everything is secret, everything they want to manipulate. Just make it public. Those should have been public hearings that we could have streamed live here on the Midas Touch network for everybody to watch. But instead, they don't do that. They rush. they go out, they do their press conferences, they try to distort the narrative, they spend way too

much time before ever releasing the depositions. Just hoping that by the time these depositions are released, people don't care anymore, and that the narrative is so manipulated that it's just a bunch of noise, and you don't believe the facts, you believe their initial lies about what happened. I just want you to know what their tactics are. So I want to talk a little bit more about those tactics. And then we have a lot more to discuss as well. I want to talk to you about what's going on with these tariff refunds. I have an update to report there as the Trump regime has made filings about what their position is going to be. A hint, they're going to try to make it as difficult as possible to people to get back the money that they stole from you. But I want to show you with

specifics, specific court rulings. I want to talk about a lawful purpose clause, what that means in the context of the Trump regime attacking the AI company Anthropic and calling them a supply chain risk right on the eve of that war with Iran. They called Anthropic a supply chain risk. I want to talk about that. A lot more to discuss here on Legal A.F. Let's take our first quick break of the show. A reminder, make sure that you subscribe to Michael Popock's YouTube channel, the Legal A.F.

channel and the Legal AF Substack. Subscribe to Legal AF YouTube. Subscribe to Legal AF Substack. And if you or somebody know has been injured in an auto accident, a car accident, if you've been injured, if you know somebody who's been injured or killed in an accident, a victim of sexual assault or harassment, reach out to the Popock firm. Call 877 Popak AF or visit the Popock firm.com. That's 877 Popok AF or go to the Popock firm.com.

They've got lawyers across the country. So make sure you reach out. All right, let's take our first quick break of the show. Starting something new. It's not just hard. It's honestly terrifying. I remember launching this podcast and the YouTube channel and thinking, what if nobody listens or watches?

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It's time to turn those what-if, Into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash legal a.F. Go to Shopify.com slash legal a.f that's shopify.com slash legal a.f. This podcast is sponsored by Veracity, an all natural way to slim down, get energized, and sharpen your focus. Veracity is revolutionizing health by tackling the root cause of so many issues. Metabolism. With veracity's drug-free, clinically proven, and doctor-formulated solutions, you can support your body's needs to live your healthiest life.

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with clinical trials showing no negative side effects from the ingredients. And it is safe for everyone, including new moms. So make the switch to GLP1 the natural way. Head to VeracityHealth.com and use code LegalAF for up to 60% off your first order. Once again, that's Veracityhealth.com for up to 60% off. And make sure you use my promo code LegalAF so they know I, sent you. Welcome back to Legal A.F. I wanted to share with you what took place outside of the deposition of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,

what the Democrats were saying, what the Republicans were saying following that deposition. Democrats were saying was, well, now a precedent has been set. If you're going to be calling in former presidents for depositions like this and former First Ladies or former Secretary of States. As soon as the Democrats take power in the midterms, we are going to, we're going to call Trump, we're going to call Melania, we're going to call everybody. There's nobody off limits. There's no courtesies that are extended. You know, interestingly, it should be noted that the Republicans and the House Oversight Committee allowed numerous individuals connected with the Epstein case and who were part of this Epstein class to just submit affidavits in lieu of testimony,

and but not Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton had to show up in person and testify. Let's take a look at what Democratic Congress member Roe Kahn had to say. Let's play this clip. A new precedent has been set in America today. Before this, we had the Trump rule. Trump defied, as all of you know, a congressional subpoena with the January 6th committee. He said presidents don't have to testify. Now we have the Clinton rule, which is that presidents and their families have to testify when Congress issues a subpoena. And that means that Donald Trump needs to come before our committee and explain what he knew about Epstein and explain why we have not had a full release of the documents. We also need other people, part of the Epstein class, to come before this committee. If President

Clinton can answer questions, many others need to as well. Let's take a look at what Congress Garcia, who's the ranking member of that oversight committee, what he had to say. Let's play that. Republicans have now set a new precedent, which is to bring in presidents and former presidents to testify. So we're once again going to make that call that we did yesterday. We are now asking and demanding that President Trump officially come in and testify in front of the oversight committee.

He appears in the Epsine files next to Jeffrey Epsine and Galane Maxwell. almost more than anybody else. So it's time for the president to answer questions about why files are missing from the DOJ, why there's been a White House cover-up, and why we continue in that administration to call this investigation a hoax. And finally, I'll review the call that we made yesterday,

that we are demanding, again, that the press and the public be allowed inside the depositions so that you can hear the answers and the questions directly. And if that's not going to happen, they need to release a full unedited review of the questions and video within 24 hours of the end of these depositions. That means the Secretary Clinton deposition needs to be released immediately today. Well, that did not happen. It was not immediately released.

Instead, what happened was you had the Maga Republicans, like Anna Paulina Luna and Nancy Mace, go out and just spread disinformation and spread lies instead of releasing the deposition. So, for example, a reporter was asking to Nancy Mason and Luna, why is it so important to hear in great detail from Bill Clinton, but not Trump? How does that make sense? Here, play this clip. Wait, just real, real quick, if I can also just add into that show. If that's the case, though, you make the case, the chairman makes the case, but why it was so important to hear in great detail from both Clinton, but why it's not... If I can just elaborate, real quick...

Hold on Epstein's plane, 26 flights. Hold on. I mean, he had information with them for hours and hours. Lots of minutes. Real quick. Even Luna was like, all right, be quiet. Because we know that Donald Trump was on the plane. If not Donald Trump was on the plane, far more times than Clinton, we all believe.

In the files, it talks about how the prosecutor said Trump was in the file, was on the plane way more than anyone anticipated. that even the prosecutors anticipated. Then you have James Comer and Nancy Mace go on this deranged tirade saying that Donald Trump has been exonerated by the files and all of the victims and survivors say that Donald Trump is exonerated. Everybody says that Trump is exonerated. They rush out of the Clinton depot to say Trump is exonerated.

Just think about that. We'll play this clip. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, President Trump said today that he knew nothing about Epstein files and he was exonerated. Do you agree that he is exonerated of this matter? From all the evidence I've seen, he's been exonerated for a long time. And would that preclude your committee, if that's your position, from your committee calling him? Well, we'll discuss that as we move forward. Obviously, we've got more people to bring in,

and we'll see if any new evidence arises. But right now, I haven't seen anything. And if anybody just... Can I just say this? The Epstein victims have exonerated President Trump. This is a trope that you guys are... A rabbit hole. You guys are going down. but he has been exonerated over and over again by Epstein victims. We need to get all the information on co-conspirators. We still even have the names of all the co-conspirators because the Southern District of New York is hiding that information by redacting those names. And so, wait, just real, real quick, if I can also just add into that.

If that's the case, though, you make the case, the chairman makes the case. So then a reporter asks, where are you getting that from? Have Survivor said to you that Trump is exonerated? Who's who's told, where are you getting this info from? Here, play this clip. Today, I was very impressed with where this went today. Nancy, can I ask you when have survivor said to you that President Trump is exonerated? Yes.

Because they've only ever told me they want to see him question. Nope, I've never heard that from a single victim. Okay, well, why don't we hear from what the victims have to say? How about Danny Bensonki? What does Danny Benson? say, let's play it. This idea that he was exonerated is so inaccurate. We're in touch with quite a few survivors and nobody has been talked to to even say the word exonerated anybody. And also, we know that there is evidence out there that really needs to be investigated. It's never gone

through a process. So how could he be exonerated? It's just, it's a farce and it needs to be corrected. And one of the things that Donald Trump said as well yesterday was that he, fully endorses Don Huffines. He says he's a great guy. He's been with him from day one. And MAGA owes Don Huffines a lot. Big, big proud endorsement of Huffines. Huffines, the guy who purchased the Zorro Ranch after Epstein died, purchased the ranch in 2023. The Zorro Ranch was the New Mexico Ranch. Epstein bought in 1993. That was an area where a lot of the sex trafficking was taking place. There's some suggestion that there were murders that were taken there and bodies buried there. But we know undisputedly it was an area of sex trafficking in horrific areas with when Epstein

controlled it. It was mysteriously sold in 2023 to an LLC named San Rafael LLC. Turns out a major MAGA guy ended up buying the property by the name of Don Huffines, who was a Texas MAGA state senator. He's the guy who went to Russia in 2018 in order to to help normalize relations, improve relations between the United States and Putin. So anyway, he buys the ranch in 2023. And then his son, who was previously working at a fireworks company, we got a top job in the Trump administration and the Trump regime, kind of a senior position there.

And so his son works for Trump. Don bought, Don Hafeinz bought the property. And then yesterday, Donald Trump says, you know, MAGA supports Don Hafein's. He deserves all of our support. One thing that came up in the deposition of Bill Clinton that I think is important. And I mentioned this before the break is that I think it's the most important part of the Clinton deposition. When he was asked, did Don, any time that Donald Trump was around you, did he ever talk about Epstein? And Clinton said, yes.

Tell us about that. You know, he seemed to suggest that he liked Epstein, that Epstein. was a good guy and that he knew him well. But they had a falling out over a real estate transaction or over a land deal, a land transaction. It was phrased like that to which the Magor Republicans all rushed and said, Bill Clinton exonerated Donald Trump. He said they had a falling out with Epstein and this confirms everything. Yeah, but it's kind of the, it's Donald Trump said that the falling out was over girls and sex. trafficking and that he uncovered it and then he kicked Epstein out of the property, which we always

knew was false. I don't even believe Epstein was a member of Mar-a-Lago. I think he was just a guest and he was just Donald Trump's friend that he was invited to go whenever he wanted to go. And also, he couldn't really be kicked out of the spa. He never went to the spa. The spa went to Epstein. And Mar-a-Lago sent the spa staff and the girls to be with Epstein at Epstein's house. Epstein lived a few miles away. But remember in the Midas Touch Network, we've always talked about this real estate transaction. And I always said, focus on this real estate transaction that took place. In 2004, when Donald Trump purchased from a foreclosure sale, a property of this former, really rich guy named Abe Gosman who went bankrupt.

He lived in West Palm Beach. As part of his bankruptcy, he had to sell his mansion in Palm Beach. and Epstein, new Gossmann, Epstein was really first in line to win the foreclosure sale auction and get this property. Epstein told Donald Trump about the sale because Epstein wanted some advice from his close friend Donald Trump about what to do with the pool and where the pool should go. And then Donald Trump ended up bidding on the property when it was put up for the foreclosure sale. he outbid Epstein. And Epstein thought it was odd at the time because Epstein was going to pay $33 or $34 million for it. And then Donald Trump paid about $41 or $42 million for it. So Epstein

was kind of pissed because he liked the property. But then in 2008, Donald Trump sold it for $95 million, this Palm Beach mansion to a guy named Dimitri Ribelov, who was a Russian oligarch. So in a period of four years, Trump made like a $40, $45 million profit on it, to which Epstein suspected and then started spreading rumors to people based on his suspicions. He believed that there was some shady business in the initial purchase with the Russian oligarch and whether Rye Blab was trying to bring money into the United States and to kind of clean it, to do this transaction, to then give a piece of the final transaction to Trump, if it ultimately sold, you know, in the future. And was it part of a broader plan or scheme or artifice that was

taking place out of the foreclosure sale to begin with? And Epstein was telling people in the community that. And then it was believed that in response, that's when Donald Trump, after Epstein was arrested, started speaking with West Palm Beach detectives or the lead detective and said, yeah, we all knew that Epstein was a bad guy. He was a really bad guy after Epstein was arrested. And because of the falling out over the real estate transaction and Epstein's kind of threats to sue Trump or saying that Trump engaged in the shady deal with the Russian oligarch, that's why I said, focus on that transaction. In the Epstein estate release of documents, when there was an Epstein and Ghislane message to each other,

that they referenced that transaction. They talk about West Palm Beach property, WPP, they talk about Abe Gosman, Trump, and they were asking whether they thought the feds were looking into that property. That's how you'll remember I cover that linkage when the estate released those files. And you may also be wondering, why aren't there a lot of messages in the recent, recent release of Epstein files between Guy Lane and Epstein. Why are there not enough,

you know, why aren't there any, shouldn't there be more communications between them? Well, when you looked at this January 4th memo that Todd Blanche has been circulating to the FBI, any communication between Guy Lane and Jeffrey Epstein, they are declaring it as attorney-client privileged information, the DOJ is, and saying that they have what's called a joint defense privilege because they were both being prosecuted and that any communications that they have with each other is excluded and withheld on the basis of a privilege. They also are claiming something called deliberative process privilege, attorney client privilege, work product privilege, and claiming these broad categories to withhold documents. So lots of internal communications,

memos, emails internally were flagged to not be produced based on these privileged claims. And so that's one of the reasons why, you know, that stuff hasn't been produced. So I think that's a lot of, I think there's a lot of there as well. I want to talk about as well the latest updates on you probably have been hearing about it, this dispute, well, more than a dispute, how the Trump regime is calling Anthropic a supply chain risk and what this dispute is all about because it got a little confusing where Anthropic made certain demands about its AI language module and what it was okay and not okay for how the government could use it. It made it clear that as part of its terms of service, you can't do mass surveillance

and you can't have autonomous killing, killing without a human directing it and mass surveillance for domestic means that's built into Anthropics terms of service. If they see the government using it, they pull back their AI language and it's blocked. It's not allowed to, it's not allowed to do it. So that was the main dispute. You had Donald Trump say that Anthropic is a radical leftist organization and, you know, it's trying to blackmail the United States government. And then Pete Hegsafe came in and said, Well, anybody who does any commercial activity at all with Anthropic, if you have a government contract, you will lose your government contract if you have any commercial activity with Anthropic. So, I mean, Amazon and Google and Microsoft and InVIDia all have commercial activity with Anthropic. Anthropic uses its language module called Claude, which is kind of a first in class AI language.

And it also was kind of marketed as having. these safeguards on him, which is why it was used for classified material, why the government adopted clawed early on because of the safeguards that were put in place, whereas some of the AI didn't have these safeguards, which the Trump regime wanted them to basically get rid of the safeguards that they put in place. And so what the United States, what Trump's regime was saying is, we're agreeable to what's called a lawful purpose clause that we can. could use your AI for any lawful purpose, to which Anthropics, emoties the guy's name,

who runs Anthropics, says, okay, just clarify in the language that lawful purpose complies with our terms of service, which means no mass surveillance and no autonomous killing. This way, we know that your interpretation, Trump of lawful purpose, meets our interpretation of lawful purpose, no autonomous killing and no mass surveillance. We're not just going to trust you, bro. When you tell us lawful purpose means you're not going to do those things, put it in writing, agree to our terms of service. And that's where the Trump regime said, no, it's enough that we put in a lawful purpose clause.

We're not going to violate the law. We're Trump. What do you have to worry about? We're not going to violate the law is what they said. So then Open AI, Sam Altman steps in, and they're like, we've agreed to the government's terms. And the government has assured us lawful purpose means these things. So you may be confused.

So if the government told Open AI, which by the way, major Trump backers, major Trump donors who run Open AI, you see them in the White House a lot. So if Trump regime was willing to. to agree to Open AI to those terms, no autonomous killing, no mass surveillance, then what's the dispute all about? Well, it's obviously about actually putting that in writing and what a lawful purpose clause means. I think on the one hand, Open AI's view is that lawful purpose covers these things. And on the other hand, Anthropics says you need to affirmatively adopt our terms

of service because we need to not just trust, we need to verify. And the open AI is we trust and we're not going to verify. That's my opinion of what the dispute is really about. Now there's going to be litigation. Anthropic is going to be suing the United States government over its retaliation, over its now tortious interference with other commercial relations, over its ability to declare anthropic a supply chain risk. And just think about it like this. The Trump regime has given our classified semiconductors to the UAE. You can, in China, you can buy our semiconductor chips as well from Nvidia as long as there's like a 20% extra fee. So giving our most highly guarded semiconductor chips to UAE and China, not a supply chain risk, but clawed an American

an AI company deemed a supply chain risk because it wanted to avoid mass domestic surveillance and autonomous killing? Just think about that too. We're going to take our last break of the show, a reminder. Check out Michael Popock's YouTube channel, LegalAF. Search LegalAF on YouTube. Subscribe to it on Substack as well. And also, make sure you, if you or somebody know has been injured in an auto accident,

trucking accident, any type of accident caused by the negligence of others. If you know somebody who's been injured, if you know somebody sadly who's been killed by the negligence of others, call or text 877 Popok A.F or visit the Popak firm.com. That's 877 Popak AF or visit the Popak firm.com. They've got lawyers and staff available 24-7 across the country to answer your calls. They represent a lot of people who are on this network who watch the show. So give them a call. Thanks, everybody.

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Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. Welcome back to LegalAF. I want to go through some court filings and court. court orders first to talk about what the Trump's position are on tariff refunds. Remember when Trump lied first about Doge dividend checks, that every American was going to get $5,000 dollars Doge dividend checks. Then he lied and said every American's going to get a $2,000 tariff rebate check. Remember that lie?

And remember he said that his health care plan is that every American is going to get $2,000 and that's going to cover all of their health care needs, apparently lie, lie, lie, lie. Well, then the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump regime's tariffs against the world were unlawful. The natural consequence of when your tariffs against the world are unlawful under AIPA is you have to refund the money you stole. It's a tax. It's a levy that's imposed on the importers in America. They pay it when the money, when the product, when the goods arrive, you get taxed on it. And that money goes to the government. That's the way a tariff works.

And then when you pay more money for it as the company, you have a choice. You could eat it yourself or you pass it on to a consumer. And if it eats into your profit margin, you have to pass it onto a consumer. You can try to hold the line and not pass it on to consumers. consumers, but eventually it's hard to do that. And so that starts to make the prices go up. And that's one of the causes of why inflation is rising, again, because of Trump's tariffs against the world. So if you do unlawful tariffs, unlawful taxes, then these American companies, and all of us, should be entitled to refunds of the extra money we've had to pay, right? A pretty simple concept.

And by the way, this is what the Trump regime argued when they were in the Court of International Trade, when they were in the federal circuit courts, and when they were in the Supreme Court, when they asked the Supreme Court and the circuit court to stay or pause the ruling, to declare the tariffs unlawful, they said, here's why you should pause it. Here's why it won't cause harm to anybody by you just pressing pause. If we lose this case, Judge, we're going to have to do refunds. We'll return the money right away. So press pause on the rulings that declare what we're doing unlawful while we appeal it for 12, 14 months.

We promise you we'll refund the money. That was the argument that they made. So when they say the Supreme Court never addressed whether we should give the refunds, when they declared what you did unlawful, when they say you stole, their response is what you said you were going to do, which is return the money. I think that part of this story doesn't get told a lot. And I think it's important that we mention it here. But now that the Supreme Court has made its ruling, in the lower court, the intermediary

court, which is called the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the prevailing parties, the companies that won the lawsuit in the Supreme Court, have now reached out to the circuit court and said, we won, please issue right now an order that says the refunds can happen. Let's speed this process up because our businesses that we represent, it's not just the businesses who are named, but all of these businesses may go bankrupt if we don't get this money right away. All this money that we pay, We need it because we have to save these businesses of various size, small businesses, medium-sized business, large-sized businesses. We need that right now.

And so the Trump regime made a filing and said the following. This court should deny plaintiff. Remember, plaintiffs are all of us in this case, essentially, right? The people who are unlawfully taxed. The court, particularly the companies that filed the lawsuit, but it's on behalf of it. of all the companies that want refunds and then we the consumers should then get the refunds passed on through us in the extra money we paid so this is what the trump regime argues and i'm just reading it to you word for word the court should deny plaintiffs ill-conceived motion to issue the

mandate forthwith before plaintiffs repeatedly asked for and were repeatedly denied immediate relief from having to pay iepa tariffs on their imports plaintiffs again claim the court should speed ahead but lack any good reason for that departure from an orderly process. Pause. Maybe there's a different circumstance that just happened from before and as opposed to now. Maybe the Supreme Court declared that these were unlawful. So it's a different circumstance. Of course, it's different.

Then Trump goes on to argue, in a case on review from a federal court, the Supreme Court sends down its judgment 32 days after entry of judgment, or forthwith upon the denial of a rehearing. The Court of Appeals ordinarily should not act on a case until the judgment is sent down. Accordingly, when, as here, a Court of Appeals has stayed both of the lower court's judgments and its own mandate pending Sir Chiarrari. The Court of Appeals ordinarily should not dissolve the stay or issue a mandate. And one of the things that they specifically say is that there are cases out there

where tariff refunds haven't happened for seven years or five years. And they compare this with those cases and say similarly, this could take five to seven years. So why are we even rushing this process to begin with? Here's what they say. The coming process will take time. And they cite refunds tick seven years to fully be provided after the United States versus U.S. Shoe Corp case,

even though the amount of money at issue there was substantially less than the amount of money here. So they're trying to cite some other case to claim that they can now wait seven years after stealing your money to refund your money. I don't know. I don't care what political party you're from. That should be bad. That's not a good thing right there that they are doing that. Let's go through some of the other filings now from federal courts as it relates to what the Trump regime is doing on immigration. and specifically they're detaining people, not providing due process. Habeas petitions are being filed on behalf of migrants and sometimes citizens who are unlawfully detained, saying you have detained the wrong person, you've unlawfully detained them, you haven't given them

the right to a hearing, they should have the right to be out on, they should be out to be released, pending the proceedings. Whatever the argument is, you're unlawful. detaining them. And frequently, federal courts have been agreeing that these, from all parties, Trump appointed judges, George Bush appointed judges, Obama, Biden, saying, yes, the Trump regime is unlawfully detaining individuals and you need to release them. But then the Trump regime continues to violate the court orders and not release the people or when people are released, they're released without their license and phones or without contacting their family members. So people

get lost and hurt and injured or in some cases killed. They're being transferred and moved to other facilities unlawfully after these court orders. And so literally, you've got federal judges like this federal judge in Minnesota saying the Trump administration has been terrorizing refugees, violating the promise America made to them when they fled persecution back at home by locking them up illegally. Or you have a federal judge in New Jersey. federal judge, Quarishi, who says, it ends today. He says, arguably worse, while the procedures for the government's immigration arrest and detention may have had initial appearances of negligence, they have since slid downward into manifest recklessness. Immigrants are swept up into custody

and shifted repeatedly around the country without warning or explanation. efforts by the court in this district to protect detainees' rights have been largely frustrated by the government. Earlier this month, the U.S. Attorney's Office conceded to violating 72 orders issued an immigration habeas cases in this district alone. That number by itself is objectively appalling, but at least one judge has indicated that it is underreported. The U.S. Attorney's Office has couched these violations as unintentional. Sadly, the well-deserved credibility once attached to that distinguished office is now a presumption that has undeniably been eroded. The government's continued actions after being called to task can now only be deemed intentional. The undersigned will not stand idly by and allow this intentional misconduct to go on.

It ends today. You had federal judge Schiltz saying the court will continue to do whatever is required to protect the rule of law, including if necessary, move to use criminal contempt, way or another, ICE will comply with the court's order. He's the presiding judge in Minnesota. And then he goes on to talk about how it's beyond the pale that ICE has continued these violations of orders of these court. And increasingly, this court has had to resort to using the threat of civil contempt to force ICE to comply with its orders. The court is not aware of another occasion in the history of the United States in which a federal court has had to threaten contempt again and

again to force the United States government to comply with court orders. And just a reminder, we're dealing with here situations where there are Republican judges, Democrat judges. These aren't like all Democrat liberal judges. Okay. I mean, these are conservative judges, liberal judges, moderate, whatever. I mean, they're all, they're from all, they've been appointed by all different presidents. And this is having real world implications, these violations of court orders. and I'll just give you this example that we learned this week, that a nearly blind Burmese refugee, who was abandoned by Border Patrol agents,

was confirmed dead in Buffalo, New York. Neural Amin Shah Alam, 56 years old, had been missing since February 19th, when he was dropped off by Border Patrol following his release from the Erie County Holding Center. A city hall spokesperson told the investigative post that homicide detectives were in, investigating the circumstances.

They then say that they let him in. So what the Border Patrol said, that they let him into a nearby restaurant because it was freezing. But then the investigative post got the surveillance footage and saw that they just put this blind guy out into the streets, miles away from his home with no cell phone, didn't alert his family in freezing cold weather. And he died.

He froze to death outside. And then they tried to cover it up. And so this is happening every day. here in the United States. And it's important that that's why I wanted to just read these court orders for you to let you know this specifically what's happening, what the judges are saying, not just to give you my opinion on the tariff refunds,

but to read for you, what's the Trump argument? What are they saying? What are these federal judges saying on the immigration cases? That's what Legal AF is all about. Popak was on vacation. I should have addressed at the outset. So you weren't worried about Popok. Popok is on, I should have said that at the outset.

Popak was on vacation. We wish him the best. And hopefully he has the best time he deserves. He deserves the total best. So shout out Popak and your beautiful family. And shout out to all of you, Legal AFers. A reminder, subscribe to Michael Popock's YouTube channel, the Legal AF YouTube channel.

Subscribe to his substack, Legal AF. A big fan of both. Both are doing incredible. So make sure you subscribe to both. Also, if you or somebody knows been injured in a car accident, trucking accident, you've been injured by the negligence of somebody else. If you know somebody who was injured because of negligence, medical malpractice, sexual assault, sexual harassment, wrongful death types of cases,

reach out to the Popock firm, 877 Popak AF or visit the Popockfirm.com. Don't be shy. Popok represents so many people who watch and listen to this show. You know, the worst they'll tell you is you don't have a case. But, you know, they handle catastrophic injury cases. So like death cases, serious injury cases, real tragic cases, and they handle it at the highest level. So give them a call if you think you have a case. And we'll put the link as well for the Popok firm in the description below. So thanks everybody for watching.

We appreciate you. We're grateful for you. and we'll see you next time on Legal A-F. We're in this together. Remember that. Thanks, everybody for watching.