Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF - 3/21/2026

Episode Date: March 22, 2026

The Legal AF podcast covers breaking law and politics news including War and Pentagon and Epstein scandal updates, new suits and orders against the Trump Administration, Federal judges using their own bully pulpits, and so much more. Popok rides solo tonight for a traveling Ben Meiselas. Support our Sponsors: 120Life: Visit https://www.120life.com/products/120-life-free-shipping?code_bp=LEGALAF and use code: LEGALAF for 20% OFF! Dose: Save 35% on your first month of subscription by going to https://dosedaily.co/LEGALAF or entering LEGALAF at checkout. Head to https://smartcredit.com/legalaf and start your 7-day trial for just $1. Pocket Hose: Text LEGAL to 64000 for your 2 free gifts with the purchase of any Pocket Hose Ballistic hose. Message and data rates may apply. 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 The Ken Harbaugh Show: https://meidasnews.com/tag/the-ken-harbaugh-show 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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Come on, heat. Winter is hard, but your groceries don't have to be. This winter, stay warm. Tap the banner to order your groceries online at voila.ca. Enjoy in-store prices without leaving your home. You'll find the same regular prices online as in-store. Many promotions are available both in store and online, though some may vary. At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak equipment modernization. We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets. And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak. the same language you do business so join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardin today we'd love to talk business. Welcome to the legal AF podcast don't adjust that dial I am Michael Popak I'm sitting in the I guess the driver's

seat because my longtime podcast partner founder and Midas Touch collaborator Ben Myceles is with his family, and he covered for me when I was on a Disney cruise recently with my family, so of course, I wouldn't hesitate. So Popak's riding solo today. We've got a lot to talk about tonight at the intersection of law and politics. Robert Mueller, the third, his death and what it means and Donald Trump's depraved reaction to it. I'm going to talk about what's happening in Iran, particularly that it's not

Donald Trump's war to end. It's Iran's war to end, and the war will be over when Iran says it's over. And they've already figured out that very, very cheaply using, you know, $2,000, $500 drones, they're able to go toe to toe with America and its allies, and they have their own list of demands. So both sides can't be winning the war. I'll talk about Iran, what it means for the Trump presidency, and of course, for our economy.

Pam Bondi went down to the halls of Congress and had an unhinged press briefing to try to distract attention and to try to get support from Republicans to withdraw their subpoena, forcing her to testify under oath behind a closed door, but under oath about the Epstein scandal and the cover-up of the Epstein scandal. her press conference or briefing devolved into name-calling and misogynistic and racist comments by the Kentucky white guy that runs the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, in which he took a shot at Representative Summer Lee, and the Democrats walked out demanding that Comer and the Republicans and Pam Mondi reinforced that she is going to appear and answer questions under oath to the House Oversight Committee. We've got a new ruling against the Trump administration and its attempt to replace the credentials of America media, take away the credentials of America media that cover the Pentagon and all things, Department of Defense, criminalize journalists asking questions and replace them with right-wing MAGA influencers like Laurel Lumer and Mike Lindell, the pillow guy, and Matt Gates, who's been accused of sexual abuse.

Yes, there's been a parade of legitimate journalists that have turned in their credentials. And the question, based on this lawsuit brought by the New York Times, is, is the Trump administration going to be able to just block journalists from covering the Pentagon, both in the briefing room and in the halls of the Pentagon and knocking on doors and doing all the things the fourth the state do to hold a government accountable? And Judge Friedman, senior status judge in D.C., appointed by Bill Clinton, of all people, had something to say about it with a final judgment today. We've got a new lawsuit brought by the at least,

two FBI agents who were part of operation or investigation Arctic Frost into the 2020 election interference who worked under Jack Smith, the special counsel. They were summarily fired by the FBI director Cash Patel and ultimately by Pam Bondi and they want their job back because it violates their First Amendment rights, their Fifth Amendment rights. It violates the FBI procedure and I was fortunate enough to have Liz Toulis, the lawyer that is representing these FBI agents on with me, and you'll hear from Liz later today. And then I'll do a quick briefing about a tremendously important oral argument that's going to be up tomorrow, sorry, Monday with the United States Supreme Court. It has to do with what is the definition of election day and whether mail-in ballots

or absentee ballots that are postmarked as of election day, meeting the person voted on election day, but are received after election day, are going to be counted or not. It's important to having open and fair elections. Donald Trump wants to shut the ballot box on the election day and the Constitution. However, states who regulate federal elections

have always allowed as long as your postmarked day of election that you have effectively voted. It's just a matter of getting it in to the respective ballot box. And that's going to be up at the Supreme Court on Monday. We'll have it as a live stream on Legal AF YouTube channel. Thanks for being here. Thanks for being such tremendous supporters. We're going on six years with Legal AF, the podcast.

Ben and I founded it six years ago. It started out as legal roundup. really just Ben and me screaming at our laptops with no proper equipment. I was in a closet of my apartment in New York. I had pandemic hair. No beard. I have no beard again. Ben knows I joke about this. Ben looked so young that it looked like I had taken my son to work that day. And we got a few views. We had some friends and family that bailed us out, a couple of hundred views here and there. And suddenly, once we changed over to legal A.F. We were the just doing a little bit of origin story.

We were the Wednesday night edition of the Midas Touch podcast where Ben and I would just come on and do our thing in lieu of the brothers. And then we became Legal AF and then some people have been here from like the very, very beginning. And they know this story. That begat a lot of other things. The Wednesday night edition turned into midweek with Karen Freeman McNifalo and me. That begat the Legal AF YouTube channel, which has been up and running now for a year. half, which we have over a million subscribers, which begat the legal AF substack, sounds very biblical, which also has a tremendous amount of support. And we're here for it because you're here for it,

right? It's this, what we've learned over the last six years, especially over the last three years, is that we need to grow as a community, as a media entity to meet the moment. We're up against billionaires and trillionaires who control the viewpoint of the people that are, that are, that you're watching. You know, CBS has completely destroyed its news legacy. You can't trust 60 minutes in the hands of the Ellison family who own Oracle or Barry Weiss, its new MAGA executive editor. They just shuttered a hundred-year-old CBS newsre newsre. radio, putting 700 stations out of commission. A lot of millions of people get their news or had gotten their news from CBS News

Radio, gone overnight, hundreds and hundreds of journalists fired. And so when we have that, you have to contrast that with independent media like Legal AF, like Midas Touch. And growing to meet the moment and getting the resources to do that will never change our viewpoint. No one will ever tell me the brothers or anybody else what I'm going to say. I've been on this for six years, a several thousand videos, billions of views. Not one of my videos has ever been edited against my will or canceled or or you know kind of on the cutting room floor. I've never gotten a phone call from the brothers or anybody about my editorial viewpoint.

And if that ever happened, frankly, I wouldn't be on the network or probably on the channel. And that is a commitment. We make every day, every hour to you here a Midas, whether it's a Ben video or a Popok video or one of our other amazing contributors or over on Legal AF where we do a dozen videos a day. And so, but size matters. And, you know, I'm trying to continue to grow. and bring in new voices and new channels to affiliate with legal AF. Ben and his brothers are doing the same thing on Midas. But it starts with you. You're the building block.

And just it gives us, we well up with so much pride and so much gratitude about our audience and being here with us. So listen, as we're watching the acts fall and every major corporate media institution, be put through the woodchipper, I think it's important to recognize what we're doing here, which is why I laughed out loud when Donald Trump put up earlier in the week this social media post about how he's changed the media landscape. You know, it's missing from that, and it's a compliment to what we're doing here.

Might as Dutch. Legal A.F. They're not on there. That's where people are getting their news from. It's not, it's not, he's destroying the thing nobody's even watching anymore. You know, yeah, I feel bad for the journalists. that are having to look for new outlets, hopefully many of them coming over to Midas and Legal A-F, but that's not where it's at.

That's very 2016, if you know what I mean. You know, when I'm doing reporting and commentary, and I'll tell you what makes my day, besides meeting audience members, and I'd met dozens and dozens, probably hundreds of audience members on the streets of wherever I've been. But when one of the people that were talking about, like a judge or a congressperson reveals that they are,

I don't want to call them fans, but they are avid followers of what we do. I mean, I just, I just, I get giddy, you know. We just put up on Legal AF YouTube, an amazing series, speak up for justice, where in the most recent episode that's up on our live tab, we had six current federal judges, talk about violence and violent rhetoric against them and how they're speaking out, not when they're just wearing the robe and writing opinions

or saying things out loud in hearings or oral arguments, but they're in interviews. This is the weird thing. This is the new thing, the courageous thing, that they are speaking up and speaking out on legal AF and in other places. And somebody that I admire among hundreds of federal, District Court judges and appellate court judges that are our constitutional soldiers, the foot

soldiers of our Constitution, protecting our Constitutional Republic and our way of life, is Anna Reyes, a judge in the District of Columbia, a federal judge. And we've reported on many, many of her rulings rebuking the Trump administration's violations of the Constitution, many of them, that we have that we've just found so brilliant and so necessary and important to uphold the rule of law. So we're her. So, you know, I fanboy out over Judge Reyes. It was nice to hear through the grapevine that she's a watcher of legal A.F. And that's a very kind things to say about the work that we do over there during her recent appearance on our channel. Same thing for represent. Senator Summer Lee. We're going to talk about her when I get to the Pam Bondi story. And yeah,

it's not appropriate for anybody, let alone a Kentucky white guy, MAGA leader, to even use the B word about a proud black woman who's also the first black representative from Pennsylvania in the house, Summer Lee, and to use the term bitching against her. And I did a hot take about what went down that day. And lo and behold, and Midas caught it. it, Summer Lee, Representative Lee, saw the video, liked the video, and made a comment about it. We'll talk about it when we get there. But those are those little moments, you know, meeting people that are in our audience, knowing that these people who I consider to be Titans are also respectful of what we do here. It just makes it, of course, all worthwhile.

Let me turn to Robert Mueller first as we came on the air. We all learned of his passing succumbing to Parkinson's disease at the age of 81. You know, my mom, as people know, in May died of frontal lobe dementia, so kind of a special place there. But Robert Mueller, for people that don't know who he is, or as his FBI colleagues affectionately called him, Bobby three sticks, because he was Robert Mueller, the third, was a titan. and he completely reformed and rehabilitated the FBI in the wake of the 9-11 attacks, spent 12 years revamping it from top to bottom. He was no-nonsense drill sergeant. He's a former Marine.

His word was law within the halls of the Hoover Building. But he gives me confidence the fact that he was able to accomplish what he accomplished at the FBI. He gave me confidence that when Cash Patel and Pam Bondi's era is merciful, over that a Titan, a respected leader appointed by a Democratic president, will be able to revamp and reconstitute the legacy of the FBI. All we have to do is look at Robert Mueller. Two things that Donald Trump has said, bookend everything you need to know about Robert Mueller. When Robert Mueller was appointed by Donald Trump's own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, just days after Donald Trump fired James Comey, the then FBI director.

And the question was, did Donald Trump just obstruct justice by firing his FBI director who was investigating those around Donald Trump to determine whether Donald Trump benefited from Russian interference in the 2016 election? whether he colluded with them, coordinated with them, or just benefited from them, or what? And when the FBI director was fired, I think Jeff Sessions realized he had no choice but to appoint an independent special counsel.

When Donald Trump heard, it was Robert Mueller or Mueller, he declared, and this is according to people in the room, he gasped and said that was a terrible development and that it would mean the end of his presidency. Obviously, Donald Trump knew more about, you know, what skeletons were hidden in the closet than anybody else at that moment. That's what he said when Robert Mueller was appointed in that period. And what did he say today when Mueller died in the report of him dying as everybody celebrated his legacy? Donald Trump said, I'm glad he's dead.

Good. There it is. He could no longer hurt innocent people, President Donald J. Trump. What a disgusting, immoral, and depraved thing for our felon in chief to declare against the memory of his special counsel. Who Donald Trump was quick to say that Mueller had cleared him of crimes after he issued his 300-page report. What they ultimately found is that while Donald Trump and his campaign benefited, from the Russians and actually wanted the Russians to help take down Hillary Clinton, that they didn't find the nexus or the link between people in Donald Trump's orbit directly

and the Russians to show direct collaboration or collusion to support that particular crime. But that's not the same thing as saying that Trump didn't want the Russians to help him. And that's what Mueller said. Just to remind everybody, here's Donald Trump in 2016, begging the Russians to help him take down Hillary Clinton. Let's play the clip. Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens.

That'll be next. Yes, sir. So that was our president. And right after that, the hackers, as the special counsel's report, noted, the hackers went after Hillary Clinton's emails. Robert Mueller, who later, when he testified, it was brought back to Congress, between our audience and me, I think he had the beginnings of Parkinson's then. He had some difficulty answering some questions. His memory and recall didn't seem to be greatest. But early on, when he gave his report and answered questions about whether he had cleared Donald Trump,

as Donald Trump had declared, this is what he had to say. And what about total exoneration? Did you actually totally exonerate the president? No. Now, in fact, your reports expressly states that it does not exonerate the president. It does. And your investigation actually found, quote, multiple acts by the president that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations,

including the Russian interference and obstruction investigations. Is that correct? Correct. Right. Robert Mueller was a Republican. Grew up on the Eastern Seaboard from a wealthy family, you know, sort of a Kennedy family-type background, went to Princeton, and then the Marines serving his nation, FBI, FBI director for 12 years.

He was the perfect person for the job. He made some mistakes, I think, at the end, in turning it back over to what that became, I think Donald Trump's third or fourth attorney general, Bill Barr, and said, listen, as he said in that clip, there are places you can go with this in terms of investigation, and you should. But my job is done. Of course, Barr couldn't wait to head for the exits. It wasn't certainly going to continue to go after Donald Trump or those in his orbit. Now, Mueller was able to successfully convict Paul Manafort, one of Donald Trump's campaign managers the first time.

around Lieutenant General Michael Flynn and others that also were convicted. Of course, Donald Trump immediately, as soon as he got back in office, pardoned all of these people as a sort of a payback to Mueller. But the reason I'm spending so much time about somebody who's passed is that I wanted to demonstrate to Americans and to those that watch us around the world, that we do have politicians and prosecutors and special counsel and people who are just titans and are respected patriots and constitutional scholars that still exist in America and will rise again and will be in charge of the very institutions that Donald Trump has tried to hollow out and destroy.

and leave in ribbons at our feet, they will come back. It'll take time. It may take two terms, and the right person. But we will be able to recover from the destruction that Donald Trump has reeked on America's institutions in just his first 15 months, let alone the full four years. The midterms will be important towards that because that will hem in Donald. Trump and make him the lamest of lame duck presidents. And oversight hearings and impeachment hearings can begin in earnest when the Democrats get the gavel into 2028 and 2029 as well. So that is where learning about this information, joining us here on Legal IF is step one.

Step two is putting this knowledge to action in helping register people for voting, making sure you're registered to vote properly first, campaigning for people up and down the ticket that are not MAGA, that are blue and Democrats. That's another thing to do between now and the midterms. You know, continue to harass and harangue in a good way, you know, good trouble, your local officials, even at the local state level and federal level. These are all the important ways, not just passive,

This is a contact sport, participatory democracy, right? We don't have the luxury any longer of being on the sidelines. We've got to get into the game, and these are the ways to do it. Let me talk about Iran, because as a backdrop to all things law and politics, it's so important. Donald Trump tells the American people that he's going to declare when or if America wins the war. It could be weeks, it could be months, it'll be on his terms. That's a lie. The Iranians believe, based on Intel, that they are winning the war.

Whether that's true or not, doesn't really matter. It certainly animates them and motivates them to continue to go toe-to-to-to with America as a superpower and 20 or 30 of its allies, including Arab allies, and they can do it very cheaply. and economically. For every multi-billion-dollar, million-dollar bomb, missile, system, ammo that America, Israel, or its other allies are using, Iran is striking fear into the hearts of oil traders and others with, you know, $500 and $5,000 drones. So you do the math, you know. A billion-dollar bunker Buster gets dropped to the Strait of Harmuz, and the retaliation is a relatively cheap series of drones

hitting sites within the Arab world that are allies of the United States, from the United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia, to Dubai, to Kuwait, to Qatar. They're all getting nailed with drones. And oil and gas infrastructure being nailed. Here's a prime example. Iran didn't like the fact that Israel bombed their oil infrastructure. So they bombed Kuwait's natural gas infrastructure, eliminating 17% of world capacity overnight.

And it won't be brought up back online in three to five years. They are controlling the straits of our moves. And I don't care if Donald Trump sends the entirety of the U.S. Navy, along with 20 of its allies, they are not easily. going to be able to unblockade the strait of our moose. And the goal for Iran is different than Donald Trump's goals, which are ever shifting. Oh, destroy their Navy. Oh, get rid of their missiles. He's fumbling around in the dark looking for the exit. Whereas the Iranians, as insane as they are, are also hard-nosed. And they're willing to suffer tremendous loss to their people, to their infrastructure, to their society in order to ultimately prevail. For them, it's a generational, a hundred-year war.

They want to control the Strait of Arbouz forever. They want to set up a toll booth, and they decide what comes and goes out of it. They want to control Middle Eastern oil and energy for generations. They want reparations. Think about that. We're spending hundreds of billions. It'll be up to a trillion dollars to try to defeat Iran,

whatever that means, and they're going to want it back in war reparations to pay for, the rebuilding of Iran. I mean, they've already hit them 20,000 times. Think of the cost, literally. Think of the destruction on Iran. They want that pay back as well. So it's not Donald Trump saying, okay, I'm done. This war is over when Iran says the war is over. And that is the problem. That's why people like Tulsi Gabbard, who currently heads our national intelligence directorate, never wanted to go to war with Iran. In fact, when she was campaigning to be president,

she would constantly say and wanted everybody to declare on the stage during a debate, going to war with Iran is a fool's errand and will suck the world into World War III. I don't agree with Tulsi Gabbard on really anything. But she was right about that. And what we're watching is oil prices, which are stubbornly now well above 109, 110,

a dollar's a barrel for what they call Brent crude oil, which is one measure of oil capacity in the world. But in some parts, including in Asia, it's hitting $200 a barrel. Economists say that if oil stays at $138 a barrel or more for a month, we got a U.S. recession. And the Arab world is predicting $190 to $200 a barrel. of oil. So you do the math, the impact on the economy, an economy that is not yet recovered from Donald Trump's own devastating fiscal policy, from the tariffs and the trade war. All right, this is a jobless economy. We just heard Jay Powell, the, yes, the Federal Reserve Chairperson, we'll talk about him in a moment, declare that in the six months of the Trump

administration, not one job got made. Zero, zero. Joe Biden, 400,000 to 500,000 jobs a month, every month while he was in office to zero. Consumer, wholesale consumer prices, way up. No jobs, inflation, 3.3% or higher, higher on groceries. Now add in gas prices, $4, $5, $6, $7 a gallon before it's all said and done.

You think you've suffered, you know, Donald Trump's like, you'll have to, everyone will have to suck it up, you know, you're just idiots. You're losers if you don't want to pay more in gas to defeat Iran. Gas has gone up every day, every day in the three weeks since Donald Trump started the Iran war, every day. And it's not even where it's going to end up. So think about that as Donald Trump effectively cut the fuel line between Middle Eastern oil and oil and gas all around the world, and the U.S. economy, what the impact of that is going to be as we come in to the final months leading into the midterm election.

So we always have to talk about the Iran war, Venezuelan war. You've got a hearing coming up with Maduro in New York coming up this week because of its impact on American policy and politics, as Donald Trump tries to bomb his way to popularity, much like Richard Nixon, footnote, It didn't work for Nixon either. People realized he was a terrible, criminal, corrupt president, and he had to resign, and he would have lost

if he hadn't resigned. Sound familiar? I mean, James Carville, the great Democratic strategist, some people who don't really know he is, and he's got that foxy way about him, they're like, who is this guy? That's one of the major reasons that Bill Clinton became president of the United States twice.

And he said he thinks, if there's this wipeout of the Republicans making it no fun anymore to be president if the House and the Senate turn to the Democrats, that Donald Trump will resign. You know, whether that's true or not, the fact that we're even talking about that, even talking about Donald Trump's resignation or the 25th Amendment taking him out because he's incapacitated shows you where he's at with the electorate. the fact of that even has mileage and resonance. And we're going to cover that and so much more.

We come back in the second half of the show. We're going to talk about this new Pentagon ruling, which puts back in legitimate media to cover and to expose the Department of Defense and Donald Trump during time of war. A new ruling involving Judge Bosberg and Jay Powell and in a kind of an alignment of stars and planets that I've never seen before, where the chief judge of the Supreme Court,

the chief judge of the federal court in D.C. And the Federal Reserve Chairperson, Chairman, all came out swinging against Donald Trump in the same 48-hour block. But this is where we are as a society. Also FBI agents fighting back against their firing for doing nothing more. than doing their job. And if you just kind of wandered in, you're on the Legal AF podcast.

I'm Michael Popok. No Ben by Salas today. I'm riding solo so Ben can enjoy his family and family time. Of course, he deserves, as we all do. Many ways to support what we do in the legal AF universe. You're here on the podcast. So we have audio versions. I think by now people know we're on YouTube and on

audio but some people only think we exist on one if you watch us great come over and listen to us on Apple and Spotify leave five-star reviews and comments it helps the rankings and the algorithm algorithms and keeps us in the top of the charts in both places if you listen to us come over to YouTube and watch us you always wonder what Ben look like here's here's your opportunity then we've got the legal aF YouTube channel which I've built I curate on the executive Editor 4, we have 12 new videos every day, usually four of mine to start the day. And then we bring in people like Adam Klausfeld of All Rise News.

Cindy Blumenthal and Sean Walentz, our resident historians on Court of History. We've got court accountability action. Dina Dahl is over there with me on a podcast we call Unprecedented. We've got it's complicated another podcast, just an amazing group of people and all they want to do when they get up in the morning for the time they brush their teeth and the time they go to bed at night is to make some sort of content that you'll find interesting and informative at the intersection of law and politics. We also become a member. You can become a paid member. That's what keeps editors like I have tonight getting paid and keeps us on the air. This is how we fight back. And then we've

got legal AF substack, whole other community, which I also curate. We have about nine or ten pieces of content there, including the actual court filings that we use for our hot takes. I do two lives a day over there. There's just a velocity at LegalAF substack that can't be matched even on our YouTube channel so that these are the ways to become card-carrying members of the legal AF community. And then we've got our sponsors here for the podcast, some of which have been with us since the very beginning, some of which are new, all have been curated and located by Jordi Myceles, one of the brothers that you guys all know and love.

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And now for a limited time when you purchase a new, new pocket hose ballistic, you'll get a free 360-degree rotating pocket pivot and a free thumb drive nozzle. Just text legal, L-E-G-A-L to 64,000. That's legal to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase. Text legal to 64,000, where message and data rates may apply. Welcome back and thank you to our pro-democracy sponsors and all that support us. Pam Bondi, once again the Epstein scandal the cover-up of the cover-up of the up of the Epstein scandal Donald Trump's relationship to it those in his inner circles relationship to it Pam Bondi's handling

of the Epstein scandal and documents is back on the front pages again mainly because of her you know she's inept I've called her the kindest thing I can think to call her is just a crash test dummy that's running the attorney general's office she's a political hack. She's an admitted political hack who has no interest in being an independent chief law enforcement officer in America that can be trusted. She's just an arm of the Trump campaign. You see it whenever she appears before the House or the Senate. You'll see it again now that James Comer, who is the Oversight Committee Chair, has issued a subpoena, probably because of a failure

by Pam Bondi to negotiate to give her testimony. He's brought her in. He's going to bring her in in in April, related to the Epstein scandal and what is the federal government's role in it, including under her watch. You can't keep pointing to, well, why didn't Biden do it and why didn't Obama do it? You know, like, okay, well, why didn't you do it when the law says you had to, including revealing the documents that implicate thousands of people? I mean, you have 1,200 victims and survivors. One of them, as we know, full disclosure is a client of mine, Lisa Phillips. How do you, they didn't victimize themselves. You know, where are the perpetrators?

Where are the predators? Europe and the rest of the world is woken up. 40 or 50 people have lost their jobs or their royal titles over it. Where are the predators in the United States? And why aren't they, why is the FBI going after them? You know, why is there a press conference announcing that they're opening up investigations. And if it ties back to Donald Trump, then just appoint a special counsel, Pam Bondi, and just get out of it. Because that is what the Department of Justice and the statute says,

the Department of Justice Manual and the statute says about a special counsel. When you have a conflict of interest where there's an appearance to the public of impropriety or of a conflict, you appoint a special counsel. And that's what they should do. If Donald Trump really wants to be exonerated and cleared by a special counsel, related to Epstein, now would be the time. So she didn't like the subpoena. So she and I guess Todd Blanche, her number two and probably Donald Trump, said, why don't you go down and do some and give a voluntary briefing about the Epstein files? And maybe you won't have to go in under oath and do it behind closed doors, no less.

So she, you know, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, you know, Bondi and Blanche head down to Capitol Hill. and the House Democrats weren't having any of it, calling it a farce, calling it not an appropriate substitute for her sworn testimony under oath and cross-examination, trying to get her to commit to testifying and that she wasn't down there trying to get out from under it. Let me show you a clip of her and Blanche, basically admitting that mistakes were made in the Epstein rollout,

but again, trying to diffuse any kind of attack on her, or again, she wants to get out of having to come down and give her testimony in April. Let's play the clip. I think it was less than 1% error. Todd, do you want to add to that? Yeah, no, that's right. We said from the beginning that any mistakes that were made, and there should be no mistakes. And so when you say lawyers have said something, that's not a fair question, and you know it. Because we took pains to make, to protect victims. when someone identified that there was a victim, we immediately pulled that document down, fixed it and put it back up. Immediately. Immediately. And so, so of course, we don't ever want to do

anything to re-victimize anybody that was victimized by the horrible crimes of Mr. Epstein. But, but, but, and we didn't. And we didn't to the extent that mistakes were made. And there were mistakes made because of the reasons the attorney judge, Attorney John just said. But when they were identified to us, we fixed them immediately. I am so tired of why, I'm so tired of watching people in the Trump administration attack the media for doing their job and asking questions. Putting aside Don Lemon and Georgia Fort in Minnesota, who are still subject to these manufacture criminal charges for reporting about a peaceful protest or trying to, we'll get to the story in a moment, in the Pentagon trying to criminalize journalists asking questions,

which is what they're supposed to be doing. I'm so tired of watching senior leadership in the Trump administration, including Donald Trump, go after the media with, cut it out. And that's not a fair question. And I mean, you are not there. Check the name on the door. You are not there to debate with the media or try to distract or divert attention from their question by making it personal about them. You're there on the taxpayer's dime to give honest service. as a public servant and stand there and answer the questions. And if you can't deliver that, if you can't do that as part of your job, then leave, then resign. In disgrace, like people are starting to do around the Trump administration.

So the Democrats showed up at this thing and looked around and said, what is this supposed to be? This is a briefing in some sort of marble hallway here, you know, and then James Comer, who obviously has a tin ear, among other problems, he decides that he's going to attack Representative Summerlee, who's from a district that covers Pittsburgh and is the first black representative out of Pennsylvania and say to her, first of me, first, talk about a misogynist. He starts trying to lecture her about, well, what do you want? You want us to put chairs around in a circle? Will that, will that satisfy you? I'm like, is this really happening? Make this really happening. could stop and then he used the B word against her which is there's so on so many different levels

is completely inappropriate you know stop your bitching and some people I I did a video about the Democrats walking out on this after Pam Bondi refused to commit recommit to complying with the subpoena and now there's talk that some Republicans are in favor of withdrawing the subpoena subpoena like because they don't like the way Pam Bondi was treated what about the way summer lee was treated so i did a video about it then i said look i know some people were like well when did bitch and become the same thing as calling somebody a bitch i'm like okay maybe if you're on the receiving end of it and the person that's saying it is some guy from white guy from kentucky and you're a black representative and you receive it that way maybe we should defer to the

person who's got the comment hurled at them rather than what you in the current in the comfort of your living room or wherever you're watching the show, whatever you think. I took it that way, but more importantly, Representative Summer Lee took it that way. Here's a clip of her walking away from this briefing and how she reported what happened to her. So I just walked out of a fake deposition, fake hearing with Pam Bondi, where Chairman Comer call me a bitch. So here's what actually happened. We had already subpoenaed her. her because she has not been in compliance with our subpoena and the Epstein Transparency Act to release the full, complete, unredacted Epstein files. She has been withholding them.

She has been obstructing justice since last July. And a couple weeks ago, we finally got bipartisan support to subpoena her to bring her into our committee to ask questions. Now, today's attempt, a sham of a hearing, was your attempt to bypass that. Multiple times, we asked her if she would come in and she would talk to our committee on the repper under oath in the public. She refused to do so. So instead of directing any more questions to her where she's not under oath, where she can continue to lie to us, I directed my questions to our chairman to see if he would compel her to comply with the subpoena that he signed and that he issued, he could not respond.

I asked him if she did not come, if he would hold her in contempt, move with contempt proceedings like he did with other people who he said did not comply with our subpoenas. And instead of answering this simple question with a yes, of course, he said that I was bitching and that I was wasting his time and that we didn't have to talk about this anymore. So that's where we are. That's why we are trying to move to impeach her. That's why we introduce those articles of impeachment

because it is clear that she has no intention on cooperating with Congress. She has no intention on cooperating with the American people. She is not seeking justice for survivors or anyone else. She is there to run cover for Donald Trump, for his allies, and for herself. And it's time that we get her out of there. I mean, you can't watch that and not come away, bald over and impressed by Representative Summerlee. By the way, she did that.

I sit in a chair and do my commentary. She did that on the run in the halls of Congress from what it looks to be an iPhone. And then I had a special delight. Because, you know, again, I've done a couple of thousand videos. But to have one of the people that's the subject of the video not only indicate that they've watched it and support it, but then comment on it back to Comer.

It's just a special delight. I think we have the actual posting that we'll put up. They're summarily commenting about it. And me responding, we got your back because you have our back. She said in her posting on my video that next time you use the B word against me, it better be under oath and in a hearing room with a court reporter. And I totally agree with that. And so Bondi is trying to continue to gow their Republican support to avoid being removed and impeached. Of course, she's troubled, you can tell, by Christy Noem being removed and fired.

Donald Trump has a number, a replacement for her waiting in the wings. It's actually the guy that she keeps leaning on, Todd Blanche, the number two in the office, who if Pam Bondi ever gets fired or resigned or gets a social media post by Donald Trump thanking her for her service, don't be shocked if it's Todd Blanche that steps into the role as attorney general. But these are important matters about the cover-up and what. the Department of Justice is not doing to pursue justice in the names of the victims and their survivors because they're being directed by the president not to follow leads because I'm sure just as I said at the top of the show about Robert Miller's passing,

I'm sure he believes it could be the end of his presidency because there's just going to be there's so much interaction between him and a convicted and a indicted child sex trafficker and a convicted child. sex trafficker in Galane Maxwell, that even he's sitting in his 80-year-old dotage, he can't remember all of it. And he certainly doesn't want anybody looking into it. So we'll continue to follow that story closely here on Legal AF, the podcast, and all in our ecosystem. Let me switch gears and talk about the Pentagon. Back in the start of the administration, Donald Trump, in making the press the enemy of the people and trying to capture mainstream media. When he couldn't do that, he would try to take away their credentials

to report from the White House Press briefing room or the Pentagon briefing room. And when it came to the Pentagon, they passed a whole series of new regulations about credentials that let the Pentagon decide whether a reporter pose a national security risk, banned and barred them from having any communication outside the chain of command or outside the press briefing room with anybody in the military so no knocks on the door no cups of coffee no going to their house or meeting at denny's or starbucks that's where the press does its best work to be frank the pentagon papers watergate the coverage of the vietnam war uh and all the wars it's when some junior officer bumps into a reporter or a reporter, make sure that they're on the playground or the park at the right moment,

and conversations happen. That's all been effectively criminalized and banned by the Pentagon. And Judge Friedman, who is a senior status judge, we haven't talked too much about on legal AF, although we admire him, a Clinton appointee. He got the case brought by the New York Times about the First Amendment. And what Donald Trump did, if you're not already repulsed, by Donald Trump is that he took out corporate media, mainstream media, the New York Times, The Washington Post, and all of them.

And he replaced them, get ready, with Laura Loomer. Yes, yes, that right-wing social media crackpot, who lives like in a trailer park in the Panhandle. No, nothing against people in trailer parks for the Panhandle. I'm just illustrating where she's at. Mike Lindell, the pillow guy, okay, Tim Poole, podcaster, James O'Keefe, head of Project Veritas, and who got indicted for trespassing, these are now your Pentagon Press Corps. Okay, so, and I give a lot of, I give a credit, because I've always thought the press should just stand up and walk out on Carolyn Levitt. press secretary and even Donald Trump had turned their back on him when they bash female reporters

or are abusive i just like stand up and walk out now i get this is their job and they feel like they got to be in the room to hear it but you know how are you going to discipline the trump administration and make them stop abusing you if you if you continue to show up every day for work and the new york times wall street journal they walked they they were like we're not signing this new credentials thing we're not we're not agreeing that it's criminal for a journalist to ask a question and they walked out and so on a final judgment this is no this this case is over except for the appeals judge um freedman ruled that the press corps particularly the new york times his first amendment right fifth amendment rights have all been violated that the purpose of the of free press is at the very heart of our constitutional

republic i mean many of the framers and founders were authored and even publishers, Benjamin Franklin, a publisher, you know, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, the writers of the Federalist papers, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote all the drafts of history and of our governing documents. You know, the power of the pen or the quill over an out-of-control executive branch is what our founders and framers envisioned when they put it in the first of the amendments. And so for Donald Trump to come in and say, I'm going to alter the landscape of how the press is able to cover my administration,

while at the same time declaring that I'm the most openly accessible, transparent president of all time, just because he wanders around on Air Force One and he can never stop himself, he never turns down in interaction with the press, doesn't mean that the press isn't being denied their ability to do their job, and to root out corruption. This is what Judge Freeman said in his ruling about a 250-year-old principle about the government not suppressing political speech. Those who drafted the First Amendment believe that the nation's security requires a free press and an informed people, and that such security is endangered by governmental suppression of political speech, as the Supreme Court said 50 years ago, we have learned and continued to learn from what we view

as the unhappy experiences of other nations where government has been allowed to meddle in the internal editorial affairs of newspapers. Regardless of how a beneficent sounding the purpose of controlling the press might be, we remain skeptical, intensely skeptical, about those measures that would allow government to insinuate itself into the editorial rooms of this nation's press, especially and certainly at time of war. It's necessary to bring sunshine as the best disinfectant, as Judge Brandeis once said, especially when the country is at war.

And people have to either, the public either has to believe in that and support it or reject it and know who they're going to vote for in the next election. And this has all been violated by Pete Heggseth, the Department of Defense, and ultimately by Donald Trump. This will go up on appeal getting Laura Lumer. No, they can leave Laura Lumer.

Oh, the other one was Matt Gates. So Laura Lumer, Matt Gates, Tim Poole, and the Pillow guy. They can leave them there, but of course, they have to rescind all of these regulations that criminalize journalists doing their job. So we'll follow that Pentagon ruling as it inevitably makes its way to a couple of levels of appeals. Let's talk about Jeb Bosberg, the chief judge in the federal court in D.C.

As chief judge, he's also responsible for all things, grand jury. Now, you'll know Jeb Bosberg, or you'll remind you, that Trump's had it out for Boseberg since he presided over the grand juries that ultimately indicted Donald Trump. Yeah. Yeah, same guy. And he was also the guy who the judge who got the case, you know, a couple of months into the administration when Donald Trump tried to use the Alien Enemies Act in an unconstitutional way to send 200 men to El Salvador's torture prison without due process.

And he tried to put a stop to it with a series of orders that were violated. The case is called JGGG. brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. In the JGG case, after Trump violated it, by continuing to ship these men there, and then later, by the way, they're not even in El Salvador. They've now been horse-traded, prisoners swapped with Venezuela before we went to war with Venezuela. Yeah, thanks.

And after those orders were violated, this is the judge that brought two separate criminal contempt proceedings against the Trump administration. So they have had it out for Bozberg. They tried to defund him. A representative from Texas tried to take away funding from one federal judge. That didn't work. They tried to impeach him.

That didn't work. They tried to get him removed from their cases by judicial complaint. They filed a complaint against him with the judicial ethics board. That didn't work. Donald Trump bashes him, including in the last day or so, saying that he's erratic, irrational Trump derangement syndrome. The only person for me that is suffering from Trump derangement syndrome is Trump. But yet he, you know, it's very, a lot of projection going on. Oh, he's got to be removed from all of our cases. He's got a political agenda. Yeah, he doesn't.

So he's the one that threw out last week, Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chairs, effectively it's criminal prosecution because he found that it was a bad faith prosecution. because there was no evidence that Jerome Powell is benefiting personally from the cost overruns to remodel, you know, two buildings as part of the Federal Reserve compound in Washington. Like, where's the proof that he's put money in his pocket? Sure, there's cost overruns. I'm sure when you start digging into a 100-year-old building where you barely have the blueprints, you're going to run into things you didn't expect.

Where'd that come from? I mean, I've done construction cases before. but to claim that he's personally liable, criminally liable, Judge said there's no evidence, and I asked the federal government to show me their evidence, and they're not even showing it to me because it doesn't exist. Now, the government has come back and asked Judge Bosberg to stay his decision, arguing that he applied the wrong standard.

In the interim, he also went out of his way to reinforce the grand juries. in case after case after case, we're not talking dozens of cases, grand juries around the nation, especially in D.C., have rejected Donald Trump's U.S. attorney's offices and their attempt to indict his political critics or his political targets over and over again in D.C. And the last straw for Boseberg, apparently, as the chief judge over all things in D.C. that are grand jury is when Trump and Janine Piro, the U.S. attorney and political hack stalwart of Donald Trump in the District of Columbia tried to indict six

members of Congress, senators and Congress people, all in the military, formerly in the military or in the intelligence community because they told the military you cannot follow illegal, illicit unconstitutional orders, which is consistent with the code of military justice. Trump did like it. Hanks Seth started calling them the seditious six. And then Piro comes around and tries to prosecute them. Grand jury said, no way. They're not going to indict sitting members of Congress for exercising their First Amendment rights of criticism.

And so, and then the reporting was Piro dropped the case or isn't going to pursue the case. So now the new rule that Chief Judge Bozberg issued is that whenever a original grand jury investigation, which means the criminal case starts with the grand jury, not with a criminal complaint prepared by a prosecutor. Then in that case, if the grand jury doesn't return an indictment, in other words, they don't indict the person, that has to be reported to the magistrate judge on duty that day so that there's knowledge by the court system of how unsuccessful the indictments are going, which in a way reinforces the grand jury. The grand juries are acting out now, much like judges against the Trump administration.

It's one of the firewalls that's protecting our rule of law right now. Now, Janine Piro doesn't like the fact that Boseberg has blocked her ability to investigate criminally, the Federal Reserve Chair, even though, frankly, that helps Donald Trump get his new pick to be the Federal Reserve Chair when the current term expires on May 15th, get him confirmed, guy named Kevin Warsh, That's not going to happen while the criminal case is going on against Jay Powell. Jay Powell says he's not going anywhere while the criminal case is going on. His term runs until 2028. And Tom Tillis, North Carolina Senator said, who's on the banking committee,

said, I'm not going to confirm Kevin Warsh as Donald Trump's pick unless the criminal cases is kicked. So Donald Trump has created this catch-22 where he refuses to give up on the case. and yet that means his pick won't become Federal Reserve Chair. And it's all been falling on the shoulders of Janine Piro, who got pissed off at the media. This is back to my point about totally inappropriate attacking the media, when they asked her about, hey, how come grand juries don't like your cases?

Let's play the clip. Why are grand juries so skeptical of the cases that your office has been brought? Oh, cut it out. Do you know how many convictions we've got cut it out? You're in one lane. We have cleaned up this city. Historic? Yeah. Historic, really?

I'll tell you what's historic. What's historic is that I prosecute everything other than 10% of the cases where the United States attorney before me didn't prosecute 67% of the cases. That's what's historic. I'm willing to take a not guilty. I'm willing to take a no true bill because I'll take all the crimes and put them in. Thank you. First of all, that was such a word salad of a response. They used to jump all over Kamala Harris first.

whatever her syntax. I barely understood what she was trying to say. Sometimes when I watched Janine Piro, I don't know if I'm watching Cessley Strong from Saturday Night Live doing her Janine Piro or it's Janine Piro. It's that uncanny of an impersonation, except for the red wine bottle, I guess. But I have no idea what she's talking about. I guess she's, I prosecute 90%. The other guy did 67%. You're in a lane and historic. Yeah, it is historic. The Department of Justice is not supposed to be losing at the grand jury level, right? Or on the judge level. And now judges are rising up.

It's not just all the orders that I talk about, and I talk about a lot of them, where judges talk about what the framers wanted and the founders wanted, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and all of that, and reminding us what the Constitution says or the Declaration of Independence. They're doing it. They're doing it in the courtroom during oral arguments and hearings, where they're chastising, excoriating the Department of Justice before them, for violations of orders, to quorum, their defiant tone or attitude.

But when they're not on the bench, they are joining together in a way I've never seen in my 35 years of my legal career, of sitting federal judges, meaning they're currently federal judges. They're not retired. I know retirees that are like, all right, well, I don't have to worry about it any longer. let me speak out. But you're on the bench and you're speaking out. It's so courageous and so proud of it. We just had a group of six federal judges from California, Minnesota, Florida, and D.C. joined together in a panel discussion. It's up on legal AF YouTube today. And here is a judge that I know well, Judge Beth Bloom, Southern District of Florida. I knew her when she was on the Miami. Dade County Circuit Court. I think I had the last case in front of her before she was elevated to become a federal judge. But here's her and her comments about attacks on the federal judiciary and what sitting judges are doing about it. I can't speak for all of the judges, but I know that the

judges that I've had the pleasure of working with that have spoken out is there are two constants here. One is there's been an escalating rise and attacks on on judges. Social media has certainly served as an amplifier of messages that are being made against judges. And the other is there's been a rise in threats. And it's the time now, and thankfully, it was clarified through the ethics opinion that judges are permitted to speak about the illegitimate threats and attacks on the judiciary, not only those that occur to the individual judge, but throughout the judiciary. And I think the larger reason is the threat to our rule of law and judicial independence.

And judicial independence doesn't protect the judges. It protects the public. So if the judges cannot ensure that their decisions are followed, that they're able to do their job without fear or favor and judges are doing their jobs. They're courageously doing their jobs in light of these escalating attacks and threats. But if they can't do that, then the rule of law and our democracy is at risk. If you ever wondered what a federal judge's chambers looks like or her office looks like, now you know from federal judge Beth Bloom. So important now at this moment against great public sacrifice and risk for federal judges, even though they have lifetime appointment,

you know, to be abused and doxed and attacked by Donald Trump and those around him, which have led to death threats against federal judges and their families, which are on the rise, a political rhetoric in this country, as we know, that led to, and there's Judge Reyes, that led to, you know, assassinations and murders across both sides of the aisle happens all the time. It's not right. I grew up, I missed, you know, because of my age, I missed the tumultuous 60s of the civil rights movement and the death of RFK, JFK, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the rest. But, you know, I was a high school student and college student when Reagan was there was an attempted assassination on Ronald Reagan, the Pope just before that, you know, his press secretary, unfortunately suffered a tremendous injury from a bullet. I'm talking about Ronald Reagan's press secretary, James Brady. You know, this, this happens. It's not just what happened with Charlie Kirk, you know, a year ago, or the attempted assassinations or whatever that was with Donald Trump. And it starts with unhinged

minds and and violent rhetoric, which is promoted by the Republicans. It's not the Democrats. What are the Democrats doing? The Democrats are in the streets, blowing whistles against ICE. And ICE is responding with guns, murdering and executing American citizens on the streets because of Donald Trump's policies. Yeah? It's not the left-wing rhetoric that is endangering federal judges.

It's the right-wing rhetoric. But the Trump administration doesn't want to acknowledge it. They've eliminated all offices in the FBI, the Department of Justice, that focused on tracking right-wing violence in this country. They've cut all ties with organizations like the Southern Poverty, the Southern Poverty Center, that track an anti-defirmation league, which track the rise of these kind of groups, because it wants to bury its head in the sand and not acknowledge that they exist,

but we know they exist. And of course, federal judges do too. We're on Legal A.F. The podcast, no, I'm not on an extended rant, and I'm blocking out Ben Mycelis. Ben is not here with me. Today, I'm riding solo like he did for me when I was on a family trip. Ben is on a family trip. Well-deserved rest and respite for him. And shout out to Ben Myceles and his lovely family. So many ways to support what we do here. We need your support. It's not ego. I don't people. people like oh you know we need the comments because it makes me feel good yeah it does make you feel good but the reason we need it is so we can be robust and muscular and so that we

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CBS and soon to be CNN are in the hands of supporters of Donald Trump. for the Ellison family, you know, Facebook, Apple, are bootlickers for Donald Trump and donators to all of his respective, you know, ballrooms and libraries and the rest. So, you know, it's starting. And then you've got ABC that's because of its affiliates and its TV station owners want to play nice with the Trump administration, so they're willing to take the Jimmy Kimmel's off the air, and they're willing to settle over something that was not actionable

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We call it an ROI, right, in the business world. You're going to get a tremendous, and you have hopefully gotten a tremendous ROI. So what we do with a dollar is like what mainstream media would do like with a million dollars. But we still need your support. So that takes the form of podcast support on our Apple and Spotify platform where you just plug in Legal AF, five-star reviews and comments, YouTube, keeping us at the top, you know, we're regularly, the show is in the top 20 or 30 of all podcasts in the world, rated by YouTube. And the reason for that is the work that I do on my videos, but of course the podcast itself, and that's with your support, right? So that's that's the podcast world. And we've got the YouTube channel, which is, you know, 1.1 million people strong, 11 or 12 videos every day.

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Welcome back and thank you to our pro-democracy sponsors. You're on LegalAF podcast. FBI agents who have been fired by Cash Patel, fired by Pam Bondi, for doing nothing more than their job, such as working on Arctic Frost, which was the code name for the investigation into the of 2020 and Donald Trump and others' people's role in it, which special counsel, Jack Smith, at the top, as the prosecutor, these were FBI agents who had long and illustrious careers,

who got frequent awards and promotions. And if they're doing something bad, there's a way to get rid of FBI agents. There's a whole manual that outlines discipline and reprimands and termination. Well, two FBI agents in particular, whose names are now anonymized, have brought their case against the FBI for wrongful termination and to be reinstated to have their careers that were dashed by Cash Patel because Pam Bondi and Cash Patel have been trying to root out all of the, you know, the merry band partisan hacks they called them at one time. They're partisan hacks. These were just FBI agents who, like, were assigned.

designed to work on it. These two people in particular, they barely worked on the investigation. And yet, why do they have to have their careers ended? Especially after Cash Patel lies to the American people under oath during his confirmation process, that he's not going to, he doesn't have an enemy's list, and he's not going to be firing people who worked against Donald Trump or on his investigations. And he did exactly that. I'm fortunate enough to have, and it's up on Midas now and on Legal AF as well,

to have interviewed for you, Liz Toulis, who's at the full disclosure. She's a partner at the Perry law firm, Donya Perry's law firm. I'm of counsel at that law firm, but I did not work on this case, and I have no insider knowledge. So I had to bring in Liz to talk about the filing and why it's so important. And it's very important for Liz too, because as you'll hear, she was a long-time member of the Department of Justice. She was like the assistant director of federal program investigations in which she represented the government in claims related to harassment, discrimination, terminations, and that type of thing.

And also worked in the Southern District of New York, the once proud Southern District of New York prosecutor's office and now is in private practice. Here's a clip of my interview with Liz Tolis about this brand new lawsuit that was just filed in the last 24 hours. Let's play it. What that represents is really a disregard for not only just the constitutional rights of our clients, but all the norms and procedures and principles that have defined what the Department of Justice is and what the FBI has been for basically their entire existence. So, you know, if people don't bring these suits to challenge these actions, it's unclear that there'll be a chance not only to vindicate their rights,

to get courts to say to the government, you can't do this. This is unconstitutional. This is not right. And let's make things right. And this is personal to you, I would imagine, because you have a background at the Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney's Office and all of that,

including you were the assistant director, right, of the Division's Federal Programs Branch. You dealt with anti-discrimination and employment matters on that side of the case. right and now you're out in private practice does it when you when you got when you consider taking this case i think our audience likes to hear about how lawyers make decisions to take cases right you get a phone call i'm sure you and i take cases all the time i've i decide not to take cases all the time why did this case matter to you sure so when i first started with

doj as an a u.sa and the civil division in the southern district of new york u.s attorneys office many, many years ago, you know, we were told you do the right thing for the right reasons without fear of favor. And that was, you know, how we went about our jobs. And to me, to see the principles that defined my work as a DOJ lawyer seeming to be disregarded and not honored in the way that really are crucial to what being the Department of Justice means was really, really difficult for me. and to have these clients come who really are the perfect example of what's gone wrong. Yeah, so Liz Toulos, phenomenal lawyer, took this case, you see, for a very good principle and a very good reason and took the stand there. Interesting, side note, the judge that's going to decide whether it stays John Doe, John Doe 1 and John Doe 2 versus Cash Patel and Pam Bondi.

and they stay anonymous is none other than Chief Judge Jeb Bosberg as the Chief Judge in DC. So we're back again, we batted around, we're at the top of the order, and we're back with Jeb Bozberg who's going to make the decision. Once he makes the decision about whether the, and they had to file a motion for that, which of course outlined, as we're talking about political violence, that FBI agents in the past have been roundly doxed and with the violence with violent rhetoric attacked and swatted, you know, when somebody calls in a phony crime that's happening at a house to set a SWAT team there, hoping that somebody gets shot.

All these things happen. And so those are that and the political rhetoric and the way that Donald Trump turns up the heat against people like these poor FBI agents are grounds to keep them anonymously. Generally in criminal cases and in civil cases, We bend over backwards under our rule of law to have everything in the open and in the public.

You get indicted in the public, not by some Star Chamber, some secret chamber, you get indicted in the public. You get to clear your name in the public. And things that are filed in the case or happen in the case are generally available to the public. It's one of the great ways I'm able to do my job because I'm able to access. I mean, I think it's also because I have a fair amount

of legal background and training and experience, but I'm also able to get access to the things are filed on the court docket. Sometimes they're redacted for various different reasons. And sometimes those reasons change and the black tape comes off and we get to see, oh, that's what got filed back four months ago. Sometimes I start my reporting with, we didn't know it, but three months ago, the following motion was filed. It's because it was redacted. It was hidden. It was sealed from public view. But generally things are not. My gut is he's going to keep it as John Doe 1 and John Doe, too, for the very good and meritorious reasons that are outlined in Liz's motion,

then it gets assigned to a judge once the anonymous part is resolved. You know, and these cases are important, just to show you how corrupt the Trump administration is, you know, they use Chuck Grassley, the 92-year-old senator, to try to out many of these FBI agents. There was a list that early on we reported on that Donald Trump's FBI had, or Donald Trump's DOJ through Emil Bovey, now a Third Circuit Court of Appeals judge, had the FBI that was then headed by somebody not named Cash Patel. It was then by a senior administrator who was not aligned with the Trump administration, ordered him to prepare a list of all the people that worked on the Trump case. Well, we knew what they were going to do with that list, right? That's the enemy's list. when all of that happened, that list and documents about Arctic Frost got brought over to Chuck Grassley. Chuck Grassley dumped it into the public domain and buried in there are the names of these two people.

I mean, I know that for the reporting. I'm not here to out them or connected dots. And certainly I didn't ask Liz that during our video because I would never do that. But this is where the Trump administration working hand and glove with MAGA senators and congresspeople, this is where they are. And this is why we call it out. We platform these kind of stories so that you understand it. One last programming note here as we end the show. On Monday at 10 a.m., the Supreme Court is holding oral argument concerning Election Day in its definition, concerning your

mail-in ballot, your absentee ballot. Because if they rule in favor of MAGA, that election day is election day, and there goes mail-in ballots, right? There goes mail-in ballots, certainly ones that come in after election day that are postmarked on the day of. The Democrats argue this isn't about fraud. As long as the person's intention to vote is demonstrated before or on the day of the election, That's what matters. When the post office or somebody delivers it, it shouldn't be left to the vagaries of the United States Postal Service as to whether my constitutional right to vote is being undermined or not.

That sounds like a very good and logical argument. The Republicans are like, no, make everybody wait in line. They'd love to get rid of mail-in-balloting outright. And this would be the first step. Make everybody wait in line on one day. Get rid of computers, get rid of optical readers, have everybody fill out pieces of paper. Why don't we use a carrier pigeon?

Why do we use smoke signals? Why do we make it harder with more barriers to vote? Because the Republicans want to take away your vote. They call it vote fraud. Vote fraud at voter integrity? It's not. It's voter suppression. It's taking away your vote.

Democrats don't want fraud, and we've never had fraud of any outcome determinative nature in our country. fraud in our electorate is 0.004%, no, 1%, 0.001%. It happens in the entire state of Georgia, eight out of tens of millions of ballots were found to be fraudulent. You know, there's entities that look into these things after everybody signs a penalty of perjury that they're not committing voter fraud,

and then it's investigated afterwards. Eight in the entire state, So what are we talking about? Even if you multiply that across 50 states, you're talking about three or 400 ballots out of 100 million cast, this is not outcome determinative. Democrats are in favor of lowering the barriers to entry, making voting easier, not fraudulent, easier, you know, ATM machine,

okay? Longer hours, longer early voting days, or more early voting days, drop boxes, and, you know, other things. Every time we raise one of those issues, the Republicans say, fraud. This is, it's not fraud. There's no fraud. State of Washington, all they do is drop in ballots. There's no voting in person, and it works just fine. So that's just a Republican red herring to use the F word of fraud

to try to steal your vote. Democrats are onto it, legal a F, and Midas Touch are onto it. and the Democratic leaders are onto it. Now let's see if the Supreme Court is onto it or not. So we'll know relatively early. I'll do a briefing around 9.30, 9.45 Eastern time on Monday to start the live feed. But then we'll have the live feed with the nine justices, yeah? Solicitor, it's going to be the state of, I think the state of Louisiana or Texas,

and then opposing groups, and then the Trump administration, wants to be heard from. So it's going to be a couple hour hearing, but we'll know right away on voting and balloting where the justices stand. And I'll be able to report back to you here on Legal AF, the podcast, Legal AF, the YouTube channel, Legal AF, the substack. Have I left anything out? Legal, Wednesday night, Legal AF, all kidding aside, again, it is heartwarming and rewarding that our audience has been such fervent supporters of everything we've done from day one and has grown with us to make us the top-rated law in politics podcast in the world, in America, certainly, and regularly, as we said, top-ranked. But that's not because,

I mean, it would just be Karen, me, and Ben, talking regularly, you know, or kibitzing, but the fact that you're here with us and that you matter to us and we matter to you, That's what's important. That is what's going to be the driving force into the midterms and beyond. We just need to keep it together. We need to stay together and we need to, you know, as we are, resonate on that same frequency, learn the information, you know. We curate it for you so you can get it firsthand. And then that gives you what you need knowledge-wise to debate, to make your own decisions and then to debate this in the around the kitchen table around your social media in the public square of ideas that's what matters that's you know an educated voter is what is what we're

looking for uh educated and voter going hand and glove glad you're here with us ben myself will be back next saturday with me and of course all of his hot takes over on the might on here on the the Midas Touch Network. I'm Michael Popock. Catch me on LegalAF YouTube channel. Catch me here on the Midas Touch Network and on our Legal AF substack. And I thank each and every one of you. Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal AFers.