Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF - 4/29/2026

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

The Legal AF podcast is back with Popok and KFA breaking news from the US Supreme Court, New York, North Carolina and the White House. Qualia: Go to https://QualiaLife.com/legalaf for up to 50% OFF! Honey Love: Save 20% Off Honeylove by going to https://honeylove.com/LEGALAF! #honeylovepod Hims: Thanks to HIMS! Start your free online visit today at https://hims.com/legalaf for your personalized ED treatment options. Magic Spoon: Save $5 OFF your next order when you go to http://magicspoon.com/LEGALAF Get 40% off Legal AF Substack: https://michaelpopok.substack.com/webby40 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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And the hits just keep on coming on midweek for illegal A.F. Bombshell United States Supreme Court ruling, a couple of them, but one in particular we've been on pins and needles about involving Louisiana and maps, but more broadly, firing the starters pistol for a race to the bottom to remap America, especially red states. Now that the Supreme Court has basically said, we're in a post-racist world. And with computers, we don't have to worry about protecting the right to vote for anybody or the dilution of minority votes or red states picking off black democratic seats. Hooray, everybody.

So it says Justice Alito for the majority, just hours after they were busy dining on lobster and champagne or whatever else you get. When you show up at a White House dinner, not in the, not in the, in the ballroom and then six of them went and those same six justice in the supreme court issue this morning the ruling in the calais decision we'll talk about that and the ramifications of that james combe back in the news gets indicted probably an indictment that he's actually thrilled about because if this is the best the government has to indict james combe for using a a kitchen restaurant phrase about removing the president in a shell formation on the outer banks of North Carolina

when he was on vacation. If this is the best you got, I mean, if I'm if I'm Fitzgerald, Pat Fitzgerald, the former U.S. Attorney for Chicago is his lawyer, I'm like, I'm like on my knees kissing the ground and lighting candles. This is the indictment? This is what you got? And of course, already backfired, you know, just give the press and the media and might as touch, legal a F, give us a half a day, and we'll find all the people that have used phrases like 86, a president, and also didn't, like Jack Prasobiac, who's in the White House press room on a regular basis, and he just quoted 86-46, because 86, for those that have ever worked in a restaurant, like I have, means you're out of something, remove it from the menu.

Like, remove the onion rings, don't sell them anymore because we're out of it. It doesn't mean take the onion rings out in the back and shoot them. And we'll talk about it with our prosecutor, our resident prosecutor, Karen Freeman McNifalo, why this indictment is so troublesome and hopefully easily dispatched by the lawyers around James Comey. Maureen Comey is the daughter of James Comey, and she had a win. And it's almost the same day that her father had to like surrender in North Carolina on this bullshit indictment. She has a win in federal court in New York about a case she brought for being wrongfully terminated about 30 days before Todd Blanche went in to interview and give a pardon, give an immunity to Galane Maxwell.

Marine Kobe besides being the prosecutor of Pete Diddy, he was also the prosecutor of Epstein and Galane Maxwell. and sent her behind bars for 20 years for child sex trafficking. 30 days later, Todd Blanche goes up to do an interview of Galane Maxwell, right? To have her exonerate Donald Trump. You know you're doing terribly when you need a child sex trafficker to exonerate you. Connection? Link? Was she just Laura Lumered? Just loomered? That's why she got fired?

Well, we're going to know in federal court because her case is not going anywhere. And then we've got more ballroom bullshit. We should have a whole segment. It should have like a theme song. Ballroom bullshit, like dancers come out. You know, Donald Trump exploiting the thing that happened at the White House correspondent's dinner. I know the Wright wants to call it a political, an attempted assassination. I mean, it certainly was a terrible event averted.

But the guy was a whole floor above Donald Trump at the time. Secret Service got shot. For sure. Tempted assassination? I'm not sure. I'm not quite sure. Any more than the Jan Sixers who attacked the building. We're not quite sure what they would have done, had they gotten into the chamber that day. But was that an attempted political assassination of staffers

and members of the Senate in the House? Same way that this guy who broke in to the Hilton may or may not be. But whatever it is, it's a crime. It's being prosecuted. I understand all that. But now to exploit it. within minutes to try to get his ballroom built. I don't understand the ballroom.

The ballroom is where Donald Trump, two and a half to three years from now, when it's built, is going to live. He'll never leave the ballroom because he's so insecure. We need a ballroom for every event of the... I don't understand it. They just held a state dinner with most of the monarchy and six of the Supreme Court justices

and half of the line of succession to the president, they were able to pull that off without a ballroom, without a hitch or a glitch. Don't understand any of it. Nor do I understand the filing made to the wrong court about the wrong issue to try to demand a trial court judge to dissolve an injunction that's already been blocked. He can build the effing ballroom as we speak tonight

unless and until it's blocked by an appellate court that hasn't yet ruled. And then as we came on the air, E. Jean Carroll had a good result in her sex abuse, $83 million case in New York, which we'll touch on as well, with Karen Friedman McNiflo. Hey, Karen. Hey, Popak. How are you doing today? You must be excited. There's a lot of criminal stuff today. A lot of indictments and, right? All certain. Not going on. A lot going on. Let's start with James Comey. Before we get there, let's frame it.

There are lots of things that they were trying to go out. after former FBI director James Comey for, right? Starts six months ago with Lindsey Halligan, remember her, part-time prosecutor, now fired novice, who goes after him for lying to Congress, September of 2020, in a one statement response to something that Ted Cruz asked them about 2016 and the FBI.

Okay, that gets tossed. Statue of limitations likely up. So that gets abandoned. Then they start, we start hearing rumors that he's part of the grand conspiracy prosecution. And it's headed by Joe DeGinova, de Genova, who's an 81-year-old Rudy Giuliani type, who's election denier, who's running around trying to go after all Donald Trump's political enemies, because you can tell Todd Blanche has promised Trump to get the job of Attorney General. He's going to go after all the enemies that Pambati didn't.

And so we thought maybe, oh, maybe there'll be an indictment coming out of D.C. or by or florida oh no oh no it's the thing we laughed about a year ago which is he came across a sea shell formation collection he didn't even do it on the beach of north carolina that said 86 47 and he said under it cool shell formation on my beach walk not follow my lead and kill the president this isn't like manchurian candidate okay that's all it said and then would be people misinterpreted, he took it down and he apologized. It's not what he meant. He meant remove him. Like we're all talking about removing him, you know, whether through 25th Amendment or impeachment or whatever. Not killed. That's not what 86 means anyway. And then they bring the indictment.

It's embarrassment. It's a page and a half. We can go over it. They bring out the FBI. Talk about how strenuous the investigation was that led to the capture of James Comey and the indictment of James Comey, which was laugh out loud. laughable. And then, of course, the media does its job and goes and finds all the other times people on the right or others have used the term 86, which means remove next to a president's number like Biden's. For instance, we got Jack Posobiac, right, who is a right-wing election denier of the first order that's part of the press pool now. And he posted it, where is it there? In 20 is that 2022? What is that date? Okay.

When can we expect the indictment might as touch asks, tongue-in-cheek. 86-46. Okay. In fact, Todd Blanche decided to start making his appearances on morning talk shows and goes on CBS morning news, I guess, with Major Garrett. And this exchange happens. Let's do a compare and contrast, Mr. Blanche. In 2022, someone well known in right-wing circles, Jack Poscopic posted on X, 86, 46. He did not take it down. He did not apologize. Mr. Comey has done both of those things. The Biden Justice Department never prosecuted him.

By the standard of that grand jury, Jack Piscopic should face charges as well. Will the Justice Department pursue that case? Because they sound very similar. That's just completely not true. That's not how a grand jury does its work. They don't just look at a single image and then say, okay, yes, we'll indict or okay, no, we won't indict. They do an investigation. This conduct took place in May of last year, May 15th.

It has been almost a year. I assure you, the FBI, the Secret Service, and the U.S. Attorney's Office have not been sitting around doing nothing. They have been investigating. I have no idea whether there was an investigation into the other times that that post has been made and whether that investigation yielded different results. This investigation that we undertook resulted in a two-count indictment. So you cannot compare, well, what happened last time and what happened this time. Every investigation is different. You know that.

The American people know that. A lot of factors go into whether somebody should or should not be charged. The mere fact that there's a similar photo posted or similar statement made, that's true. Every day there's comments made about President Trump, threats made against President Trump. Every one of those are not are not indicted. It depends on the facts of every case. It gets more ridiculous. So, Karen, take over from there.

You got a grand jury, a grand jury transcript. We don't know who the prosecutor was that presented the case to the grand jury about the seashells on the seashore. You've been a prosecutor. Would you ever bring that case? No, this seems like a desperate attempt to get James Comey because they couldn't get him the first time, right? right, when they tried to indict him and it was essentially thrown out for various reasons and then they couldn't bring that again. They're looking for any reason to go against and brings charges against James Comey.

But this is not one of those cases where the investigation is going to reveal anything that will make this case stronger. He claims they were investigating it for a year. What he's implying is that they have other evidence. that goes towards whether it was his intent or what he was trying to do, and that that was presented to the grand jury, and that's why the grand jury brought this,

but that doesn't exist in other cases. This is not that kind of case, right? This case is what it is. It's a very thin, very short, two-count, one-page indictment that essentially does nothing more than, say, by posting the seashell picture, that is what the threat was to the president. period, full stop. There's no other facts that they're alleging in there. There's no other

conduct that they're alleging in there. They're saying that that one posting essentially on May 15th, 2025, that Jim Comey knowingly made a threat to inflict bodily harm on a president and then used interstate commerce and basically texted it. You know, I used the wires and the electronic means and texted it or posted it or whatever you want to say. And that was, that's, that that's the second count, but both of them involved the posting of this seashell formation. And I just can't imagine another set, whatever facts they have that is somehow going to make this knowingly making a threat to inflict bodily harm on the president. As you said, Comey immediately took it down, apologized and said, this was misinterpreted.

That's not what I meant. So again, he himself, his own. words immediately when he found out that this is how it might be interpreted, took it down and said, this is not what I meant. And intent, knowingly and intentionally, those are things that require a state of proving a state of mind. And so his own words immediately, I think, just disprove that. On top of that, they have a big problem here.

There's a case Watson versus the US where it's a seminal case that basically, you says expressions of violence against the president. Watson was a guy who expressed that he didn't want to be drafted, and he was handed a rifle, and he said the first person I would do this to is Lyndon Johnson and was prosecuted for that, and he claimed free speech. And in that case, the Supreme Court said it doesn't rise to the level of a threat. And so, look, this is not even close to that, right? this is not with a rifle or anything else, it's just seashells. And as you said, the common meaning of 86 is to remove it. And the closest thing, removing something from a menu in a restaurant.

And the most common or the most logical explanation of that would be to either impeach him or vote him out of office or, as you said, the 25th Amendment. But he was not threatening to assassinate the president. And they have to prove essentially that a reasonable recipient would, that this is a serious expression of a threat. And that is, there's just no way they're going to be able to prove that in this case. Will Jim Comey get to see the grand jury transcripts the way he did in his other case, which was highly unusual that they got to see those transcripts? We'll see.

The judge allowed it in that case because of the unusual circumstances of that indictment. And so we'll see if that is going to happen. And whether he brings another vindictive slash malicious prosecution in this particular case, although that's a high bar, I think he's going to be able to meet that here. There's another sneaky little part of the indictment that calls for forfeiture of his property, right? Property used to facilitate a crime.

And that's under a lower standard than beyond a reasonable doubt. They only have to show by a preponderance of the evidence standard that there was property used to facilitate the crime. So what could that property be? I think in a minimum it's his cell phone, right? And that happens sometimes in indictments that that's the forfeiture. They want the cell phone that was used to take the picture and post it. But the more sinister reading would be that they're trying to take his vacation house, right? That happens to be in the outer banks of North Carolina and that that's the property used to facilitate the crime because that's where he was

at the time. Who knows? Who knows what they have up their sleeve? But this is very, really this indictment doesn't pass any test, legal test, constitutional test, or even the Court of Public Opinion test. I think everybody knows what's happening here. It's a silly case to bring against the former director of the FBI, let alone anybody. And at what point it gets dismissed? I don't think it ever gets to a jury. At what point does it get dismissed? We'll see, but this indictment is not long for its world. I mean, you know, for this world, I just don't last one. Yeah, I agree with you.

I think it's a not serious, to paraphrase by one of my favorite shows' succession. It's not a serious indictment. It's one, if I'm, I'd rub my hands in glee if I were the defense counsel for James Comey. I'm sure Patrick Fitzgerald is doing just that. If he needs to get to the bottom of the grand jury and what they were told, look, the last time he was indicted,

it was clear by getting the grand jury, transcript that the Fifth and Sixth Amendment was violated in the presentation of the evidence. How do we know what was told to them? The fact that he's so doubling down in that interview with Major Garrett that we just showed on the investigation, the investigation, as if implying like they found text messages where James Comey's like, I want to kill the president. I mean, you know, it's just so it would be in the indictment. Correct. Yeah, right. It speaks volumes of the opposite. The indictment is a page and a half and that includes the caption at the top they didn't even bother printing the 86 46 because it looks so rid laugh out loud ridiculous and wait till they get in front of judge

i think it's judge flanagan wait until they get in front of the judge of a george w bush appointee i don't know again if this is the best they got so that todd blanche can demonstrate to the the president, how low he's willing to grovel, how low he's willing to limbo, then, you know, we got problems. And to prove your point, you know, swirling around both Biden and Trump for different reasons were questions about their fitness for office and the use of the 25th Amendment. I mean, we all know that Joe Biden was attacked mercilessly for every physical or mental frailty frailty that was displayed and there were lots of calls by the right to take them out you know

in terms of procedurally through the 25th amendment not when i saw that with jack prosopiac whatever's name is i didn't go oh that's a assassination attempt i said yeah okay they're trying to we're trying to get them impeached remove the 25th amendment same thing same thing when i read comies right last thing on my mind especially given what you just said about the watson case which they're going to have a hard time getting around, which defines what is a legitimate, criminal, willful, intentional threat against the president. And if the guy that said the first person who I'd have in my gun sites, my rifle sites, would be LBJ, a president who took over after a president was killed, assassinated with a rifle, if that didn't get beyond, if that got First Amendment protection,

then of course James Comey. The fact that we need to even talk about it is part of the whole schick for Donald Trump and his administration. Let's stay on Comey's for a moment, as long as we're grouped them together here, and talk right before the break about Maureen Comey. Marine Comey, frankly, I did not know much about her, and that's a compliment. She was a political career prosecutor in the Southern District of New York office, which at one time had been a very reputable and a place to work and to ply your trade. She was a work-a-day prosecutor.

She was a lead prosecutor on many high-profile matters. You've been involved with her in cases. Pardon me, she was the lead prosecutor for Epstein and Galane Maxwell that led to the conviction of Galane Maxwell for 20 years in prison. Nobody knew the case better than her, the witnesses, the victims, the survivors, the evidence, the videos, whatever they were able to get, and all the stuff that's coming out through the Epstein files, she knew it like the back of her hand.

And just a month or so before they decided to go interview Colleen Maxwell and give her immunity to boot. They got rid of the one person in the Department of Justice that knew the case cold. And that was Marine Comey. Now, I didn't around that time, Laura Lumer is loomering her, whatever they call, Lumerizing or whatever they call it.

Trump's office wife, whatever she's supposed to be, the right-wing influencer that loves, loves, loves, Donald Trump, and started writing, why is James Comey's daughter in the government still? And why is James Comey's son-in-law, her husband in the government? And all of a sudden, she gets a memo from HR at the Department of Justice that says, under Article 2, you're being removed, turn in your badge. Oh, and here, you can do an appeal with the Merit Systems Protection Board. And that's it. And they figure she's going to go fight it out in some, you know, gray, dull back office bureaucratic place in the Merit Systems Protection Board. But no, she files her case in federal court,

Southern District, signed a judge Jesse Furman. And she had a very good result. Then we can tie it to the Epstein scandal as well. Go ahead, Karen. Yeah. So Marine Comey, who by all accounts has an extraordinary reputation. I have yet to meet a single person who has either worked with her or has been an adversary against her who wouldn't speak glowingly of her as a prosecutor. She's an excellent prosecutor, or was an excellent prosecutor, an excellent lawyer, just a real stand-up person, and had a fantastic reputation at the Southern District. And so when she was fired for no reason and not for cause, she basically filed something with federal court saying, I want to fight this in federal court.

I don't want to fight this, but with the Merit System Protection Board, which is normally where civil servants have to fight employment matters. And she said that this firing was vindictive, and it should be litigated here in federal court because there are real constitutional issues and other issues that aren't just employment related, that I was fired for various reasons, all of which were not appropriate, whether it was retaliation or whatever it was, it was not on the merits.

And Judge Furman agreed. And in order to justify his decision of why this should be in federal court, he said, look, this is clearly not on the merits. And he then wrote a ton of complimentary things about her, which was lovely. to read, that even judges agree with what I just said. And he basically said that this termination was wrong, this wrongful termination lawsuit can move forward in federal court because her firing raises constitutional issues,

not just routine employment claims. So she claimed she was fired without explanation. She was targeted because of her father and his political views and that this is unconstitutional in violation of civil service protections and potentially retaliatory. or politically motivated. And it raises important questions. Can the president fire a career civil service lawyer

without cause? Are they at will employees? Does Article I power of the president override statutory job protections? Is there a First Amendment retaliation issue tied to her family in politics? Now, AUSAs aren't political appointees like the United States attorney, him or herself, right?

The assistant United States attorneys aren't political appointees there, they're hired. And they usually stay on throughout various administrations up until President Trump, no one ever asked them their political party or affiliation that was irrelevant because this was not a political job. And so they have some employment protections, but not the full set of competitive service protections

that civil servants get. But they're covered by DOJ employment policies and procedures, meaning they can't just be fired for arbitrary or discriminatory reasons. So, but there's a good question here. AUSAs serve under the Attorney General and who reports to the President of the United States, and there's going to be a question about whether the President's Article I powers, whether that gives him broad authority to remove executive branch officials at will.

So the legal question they're going to have to sort through is do the civil service protections meaningfully limit the president's power to fire a line prosecutor. And that's what Judge Furman will decide. But in the meantime, it stays in federal court where it will be litigated. Discovery here will be fantastic because she'll get to see emails and communications between in her office, with the Department of Justice, with Washington, and potentially with the president. And where did this come from? And who gave the order and why?

And what were the justifications for it? So it'll be a real window into kind of the Trump administration and whether this was political or not. I think they're going to be hard pressed to claim that it was not. And I think there she's got some real constitutional protections that Judge Fuhrman will likely uphold. Yeah, I think you said Article 1. It's Article 2 powers. But the issue is they didn't cite the Civil Service Reform Act. You're right, Article 2 powers, I apologize.

Yeah, it's all right. Civil Service Reform Act. He acts like he has article one part. Exactly. It's easy to get confused. But Civil Service Reform Act is what he should have cited. And since he didn't cite the Civil Service Reform Act, he cited the Merit Systems Protection Board, which is slightly different. Furman's position is you are using the Constitution to fire her.

That is expressly excluded from the things that have to be. administratively handled on a termination, she can stay in federal court, answer the complaint in two weeks. I'll see at the end of May, the judge wrote in his order for a status conference. And if this gets beyond here, I totally agree with this opens up in a tremendous can of worms that they were hoping to avoid about her firing. Now, in her complaint, she said, I think I was fired, but she doesn't know because of my father, because they think I'm a Democrat. And for other reasons. But she didn't say what I think is really the reason she was fired.

And I think Discovery would hopefully bear this out is to get, it's not a coincidence that she was fired 30 days before Todd Blanche decided to go off an interview and give immunity to Colleen Maxwell. Now, why they left that out of their complaint, I'm not quite sure, but they're not limited by their complaint. There was enough to the complaint to get the ball rolling. And now in Discovery and all the documents, information, and emails about about the,

the decision-making process behind her being fired will come out. And she gets to have a deposition to, you know, I'd love to see Todd Blanche say, Mr. Blanche, you were about to interview, you know, Galane Maxwell. How were you supposed to test your credibility? You weren't the prosecutor. And the prosecutor that handled the case, you fired a month before. So, you know, this is very interesting. And you can see Todd Blanche doesn't like to be pressed.

We just saw that clip earlier when he was on Major Garrett. Major Garrett's not like the world's greatest cross-examiner. You know, a simple question about it. Oh, there's a year that you know the difference. No, we don't know the difference. That's why we're asking you the question. So, you know, they've done a good job so far this administration, keeping Todd Blanche and Pam Bondi off of, out of the witness chair and being sworn in.

But Maureen Comey, it would be ironic if Maureen Comey's case is the one that actual, does it and connects the dots with the Epstein scandal that is of course is ongoing. I mean, I've talked to people that have a little more insider knowledge about the White House, and they say that that is the one thing that Donald Trump just can't figure out why the public hasn't moved on from the Epstein scandal. It's just completely tenured about how Americans have already processed a child sex traffic rings so closely connected to Donald Trump and those around him. And they've already made their decision about it.

They, you know, there's nothing more. If he was going to solve this problem or salvage his reputation concerning Epstein, that would have had to come a year and a half ago with the full release of the files, the appointment of a special counsel to go after the predators and bring justice and maybe meeting with a group of the survivors. There was a way to handle this. if you weren't trying to actively cover it up for whatever reason and leaving people to their own devices to fill in the blank about why you are covering it up.

But now, 16 months later, that dye is cast. That cement is hardened for American people. Everybody has an opinion that is unshakable at this moment about why Donald Trump and his Department of Justice and his FBI that he controls continue to cover up the child sex trafficking ring and those involved with it and cover up and try to cover up the cover up. It's done. It's baked. As is Donald Trump based on the latest poll numbers.

Finally, I'm right, he broke through the 30 point barrier and is now in the 20s when it comes to at least the handling of the economy. Gas prices go up and his numbers go down. It's sort of an inverse correlation. I have a question for you about Epstein, et cetera. What is the latest on Pam Bondi being forced to testify before Congress? I know she doesn't want to, and they said she didn't have to, but we haven't heard anything about that in a while. I think that the Oversight Committee has decided they, in fact, the Democrats issued a memo about a week ago, they're not going to be holding the hearings anymore.

They're moving from hearings to roundtables. Isn't that sound nice and colloquial, like at your local library? A roundtable. And a round table has no subpoena power. And because Jim Comey, no, Jim Comer, James Comer, was getting outfoxed by the Democrats on the committee who were taking it and embarrassing some of the Republicans to sign off on subpoenas.

That's why, like, Howard Lutnik has to come in or had to come in and Pam Bondi. So they figured out, well, let's stop holding hearings. Let's start doing roundtables. And so as of right now, her flouting of the subpoena doesn't seem to have any repercussion because the majority, which is controlled still by the Republicans, isn't doing anything about it.

They're not issuing a new subpoena. They haven't even issued one to Todd Blanche. Like, well, you know, Todd Blanche knows as much about it, if not more than Pam Bondi. Move on to Todd Blanche. but they haven't done that either. So I think right now we're sort of, you know, there's Representative Garcia, right?

I think right now we're sort of stuck with nasty letter writing by the Democrats and the Republicans trying to not continue the hearings. Look, this is once again, this is our commercial break for voting. This segment brought to you voting you don't like any of this and most people in our audience don't then get the democrats to have the gavel in the both chambers and run these run these committees and have subpoena power and then

you'll see real accountability and real enforcement of subpoenas and testimony and nothing behind closed doors everything done transparency in the open um you know and and to and to your follow-up you know to to your point, but follow-up. What's going on? The Melania victim hearings? Where are those? She was all angry, shaking her fist. I liked it better when Melania stayed in New York. This whole going after Jimmy Kimmel and kind of going after the victims,

she's so angry, angry about her being accused of being involved with child sex trafficking, demanding hearings. A lot of the victims don't want to go on the public record in open to talk about their child being the victims of child sex trafficking. And why should they? Why are the victims? Why is it the responsibility of the victims to do their own investigation? Isn't that what we have the Department of Justice for and the FBI in the right hands? It's just. And if they were really, if the Department of Justice was taking this seriously, they would do everything in their power to prevent the victims from testifying because that will screw up your criminal case. You don't want

them testifying and creating all kinds of records that could then develop inconsistencies before a trial. I mean, that just goes to show that they aren't really taking these investigations seriously at all. Absolutely. Very good point. As my prosecutor, in-house prosecutor, just pointed out, I'm so glad everybody's here on Legal A-F, the Webby Award-winning Legal A-F, because of your fervent support, so many ways

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All right. We woke up this morning just hours after the White House dinner, state dinner for King Charles, and leave it to the king to make a speech in Congress, the King of England, the UK, to remind us how to be Americans and what the promise of our Declaration of Independence, declaring independence from England and our Constitution means. I mean, the irony of, I mean, I love the speech, plotted it, sure, I get it. The fact that he had to tell us how to be Americans. It's a sad state of affairs under the Trump administration.

And then there's a party over at, no, not the ballroom. We don't have a ballroom yet. In the White House, like normal, everybody's there. You know, the whole succession to the presidency is there. And six out of the nine Supreme Court Justice, or their white tails and white tie and pictures we'll put one up later of Brett Kavanaugh, you know, the only thing they were missing was like a smoke-filled back room and big fat cigars, you know, and they knew because, you know, these opinions get printed during the week.

They knew they were going to be dropping a couple of opinions today, including the Calais opinion out of New Orleans and we've been waiting on about voting rights. And there they are just, you know, dying. It's like Marie Antoinette, like let him eat cake. Oh, pass the caviar. You know, as we take away the black and brown people and minorities in America's voting rights, which is what they've effectively done. So we've got a decision six to three led by Alito, joined by Roberts,

Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Thomas and Gorsuch. And it will now allow states. effectively to not give a rat's ass about whether a district, congressional district, is been created to give black and brown and minorities in their state a seat at the table, a seat in Congress. This is now the bookends of two cases, one case in 2019, which the Supreme Court said, you know what? You want to redo your maps and make them black and red, I mean, red and blue? and just and you want to just gerrymander the hell out of them in order to give one party a political advantage over another go ahead not only is it not a violation of the voting rights act or the 14th or 15th amendment or equal protection it's not even a case you can bring into the sub federal court we're going to lock the door it's a political question do it to your heart's content and that led to texas and california at different places once that was done right once that glass see

was broken, then you knew that the next thing was going to be the destruction of the Voting Rights Act. Now, they didn't do, they basically did it, but they didn't declare, which is one of our fears, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 violated the Constitution and Section 2 of it. The Constitution and its amendment coming out of the reconstruction period after our Civil War, you know, of which another major ruling we're waiting on birthright citizenship is also part of that, you know, 14, 15th, 16th Amendment group, we were like, oh, are they going to declare that the great society, you know, Malcolm X and Medgar Evers and and Martin Luther King Jr. and LBJ, the Civil Rights Act is going to be found to be unconstitutional. No, Alito found another way. The way he interprets Section 2 of the voting,

of the Voting Rights Act as it relates to maps. And what I, my takeaway, and I'll turn it over to you for that, and for Kagan's stinging dissent, joined by, of course, Katanji Brown Jackson and Sotomayor, was this self-adulation and congratulations about, hooray, everybody, we live in a post-racist world where he didn't quite say it, but he almost said it, we're a black guy, God voted twice. as president, we don't have to worry about voting rights act and making sure that black people's votes aren't diluted because black people vote for white people now and white people vote for black people. And there's computers that make maps. We're all good now, aren't we? I mean,

that was the thing that Chapman I asked the most when I read Alito just talk about how much progress has been made since 1965. I mean, he gave lip service to the racist history of America when it came to voting. But then, suddenly declared it's over it's over everybody with like affirmative action we don't need affirmative action anymore because there's no more institutional racism everybody hooray and the whole opinion is sort of based on that what was your uh what was your take on the uh opinion on kagan's dissent well also ironically there was a concurring opinion by uh justice thomas the only black supreme court justice who basically said the majority the only black supreme court just he's

black one on the right. True. You're right. That's what I meant. Well, that's what I meant to say. Right. It's only black Supreme Court justice in that group, in the majority opinion. And he essentially said the majority opinion didn't go far enough. And, you know, that I would essentially make this whole thing, the Voting Rights Act go away. There is no racism. And in fact, when you try to do things to make things more racially fair, you're engaging in the same racism that you claim to be fighting against. And it just seems so ironic.

And so many Americans, I think, today, are scratching their head and saying, maybe it's time we get rid of the electoral college, gerrymandering, and rethink all of this, because we've really entered a dark period in the representation and voting world with this decision because this decision essentially is going to allow states to gerrymander based on a political party as much as you want. Go ahead. You can completely

disenfranchise Democrats if you're a red state and just dilute their vote because you cannot use race, but you certainly can do that. And Louisiana, which is a perfect example, has six seats and there are six districts and it's one-third black. And so the map that they drew, currently they have one black district and the map that they drew was going to add a second, which is exactly one-third, right? Two out of six. And what they, and what does that do? That essentially fairly allows for different people, majority-minority districts, to have representation and have votes. And what this decision is going to allow them to do is to redraw it, and they can actually redraw it so that they get rid of the one. They can make it

six Republican districts and zero Democrat districts. I mean, they can draw it like that. And it's just a really appalling decision, in my opinion. And as you said, they're basically the majorities, the majority's discussion on racism in this country really has an old school view of what racism is. You know, if as long as there's no segregation in schools and, you know, drinking fountains and buses and all that kind of stuff, certainly we don't have racism anymore, right? Black people can buy houses. Black people can vote. Black people can do all these things, therefore there's no racism anymore. So it really, it really, it really I think was a very, very upsetting decision for so many reasons. And Thomas, who in his concurrence, basically said, the Constitution should be colorblind.

That's the ideal, period, full stop. And Justice Kagan wrote a dissent, joined by Katanjia Brown Jackson, the other Black Supreme Court Justice, but in the Democratic, the liberal side. And Justice Sotomayor, basically calling them out. and essentially calling it for what it is and saying, look, they're basically saying, it's okay to dilute the black votes by breaking them up

and putting them into majority white districts. And that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which is what this case was all about, is it doesn't allow you to do the things that you tried to do. And she really took them to task and really gave some real real, world examples that anyone can understand about how in practice this is going to affect black people in particular. So it was, this is a, this is a very disappointing decision in my opinion.

Yeah, absolutely. Here's what Barack Obama, as we came on the air, had to say about it. President Obama, who Alito comes very close to referencing, but not, he wanted to write it. He was like, he gave an example. He said, well, Louisiana's fine now because in two out of the last five presidential elections, black turnout was actually greater than white turnout. I wonder which ones those were. 2008 and 2012. President Obama, today's Supreme Court decision effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act,

freeing state legislatures to gerrymandar legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities. So long as they do it under the guise. of partisanship rather than explicit racial bias. I mean, this is what we talked about. I mean, the Roochoke case, which is the leading case from 2019, had already established that partisanship, party, could be used, even if it meant that because blacks predominantly vote Democrat

and whites Republican, that it would also dilute as a byproduct or under the cover of, which is a one. dilute a minority power and minority voting but that's okay they even went further you can't bring that case to court so it's not even you know you can't even argue it's that you in order to get into court to argue we have a constitutional violation against you you have to get into court you have to have standing and the case has to be what's called justiciable meaning the court has jurisdiction over it and the court says we don't have jurisdiction over it it's all politics so i said after the oral argument that that we did that we put up on legal a f you two

channel in October in this case so far so so long ago that my fear was that based on the oral argument and the way the questions were being asked by the right wing that they would be like well as long as you're doing it for red and blue you can get rid of all the black and brown and that's sort of what we have now sure there's some lip service about some aspect of racial um equality can be included in the algorithm that the computer uses but can't predict dominant. It was a whole lip service. All this did was give complete license to the race to the bottom to have now, before even April is over, to have enough time for red states like Louisiana and others. Florida did it before. Florida, Florida didn't even wait. Florida did it yesterday.

But other states are now going to take the lead in Missouri and remap, remap, remap. Now, look, there is a backfiring quality to this. The Democrats have labeled it, I think, properly, dummymandering, which is you just keep slicing so thin the Republican concentration of voters in a district to spread it out over this new district, right? It's like icing on a cake, you know? We all like a cake that's nice, gloppy icing, right?

Not like just barely a little bit. The last piece that gets to somebody has no icing at all. And Republicans are worried in states that are being forced to remap by the Trumpers that it's actually creating competitive districts where once they were secure. For instance, in Florida, we just put up the article about that, where Florida has a fair districting, no gerrymandering part of its constitution approved by the voters. And yet they just gerrymandered to have it be 24 Republican districts and four Democrats. But according to insiders, including Republicans in Florida, Mark Elias and I were just on

an interview yesterday together. And Mark said, their fear is it could be 1711 or 1612. In other words, the Democrats pick up seats because they've underestimated how the electorate has shifted. See, everybody on the Republican side was so enthusiastic about, look at the great shift to MAGA. Look at every district that was, that had been for Biden has gone red or pink. I remember all the maps, analysis and stuff in the New York Times and the giant map and look at the arrows, pointing to the right. I'm like, F that. that wasn't the MAGification of America. That was a weak candidate and some other issues that kept people from voting,

and that led to Donald Trump's return to office. However, it does show you, it does prove the point, that things can happen very, very quickly. And there has been a shift under the ground of Donald Trump and MAGA. Hispanic vote. Let's take the Hispanic vote. Let's take the Hispanic Catholic vote right now. It's 72 to 75% against Donald Trump.

That was part of his winning coalition. The women vote, the black vote that gave them the benefit of the doubt. Not blaming the blacks for getting Trump elected, but 12% went for Donald Trump instead of the normal historical 3%. Forget that now. The under 30 vote, which gave them the all want their vote back. White Catholics want their vote back. You start taking that away, especially in a state like Florida and the Hispanic vote, and you start saying, well, this is what happened four years ago. So this is what's going to happen again, right?

Yeah, no, not right. not even two years ago. And so dummymandering is a real thing. And when you have stretched out, it's ironic because in the racial gerrymandering world, we have the concepts of packing and cracking. You pack into one district, all the blacks, so they get one seat.

And then you take the rest of the black population, and you crack it, and you spread it out and sprinkle it, all around the white districts to dilute their power, cracking and packing. Kagan talks about it in her broken circle hypothesis. But it's ironic that they're doing their own version of cracking and spreading. I guess that's another concept. And they're spreading it so thin that they are in, and when that meets a tidal wave election,

which is expected for the Democrats at the midterms, bad things happened to the party that tried to Jerry, their way to a victory to try to steal something they did not earn. And I think that's what we're watching now. So if you're upset, if you're fired up, if you're pissed off, sound like I'm doing network, go to the window, lift it up, and scream, I'm not going to take it anymore. And I'm going to go vote. And I'm going to bring everybody in my life to go vote.

And I'm going to go help the party that I want to get elected vote and register their voters. And then really good things are going to happen at the midterms, despite the fact that the remapping may on paper put the Democratic Party at a six or eight or ten seat disadvantage. We don't play games or politics on paper. We play them on the field and in the voting booth. And that's where our audience that's been, we have been built for this, literally. We're building this channel, this network with our. bare hands, right? Brick by brick for this moment. This is the moment that we've been waiting for. What did Barack Obama say when he was campaigned the first time? We are the change that we've

been waiting for. That's it. United together here on Legal IF and on the Midas Touch Network. So when we come back from our next break, we'll bring it home with the ballroom and other things like E.G. Carroll's victory at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals today. about her $83 million judgment as the Supreme Court continues to kick down the road, whether they're gonna stick their nose into her original sex abuse, punitive damage award from a jury for $5 million.

We'll do all that. You know how to support us here. Subscribe to Midas Touch. Come over to Legal AF YouTube channel, do the exact same thing. Go over to LegalAF substack. And if you could swing, become a paid member, I'll grease the skids.

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And after you check out, they'll ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them legal A.F sent you. Experience the new standard in comfort and support with HoneyLove. Welcome back to Legal AF at the Midweek with Popak and KFA. Leave it to Donald Trump and his minions to try to exploit an averted tragedy at the White House correspondence dinner. while all I should have been on, why was the security so shitty at the Hilton?

Why did the FBI, the Secret Service, allow two-thirds of the chain of succession for the presidency to be at a rubber chicken dinner, the correspondence dinner, all at the same time? A building and an event so insecure that Donald Trump, just moments after it happened, said out loud in the prim-promptu press conference that he held instead of the White House,

Dinner, this is not a very secure building. Right. Whose fault is that? Why don't you look to your right and look to your left? FBI? You know, maybe if Cash Patel could put the, what's the word I'm looking for? The lawsuit down long enough for defamation.

Maybe he, and it was focused on his job, maybe he would have thought better than to put so many of the same people in a room in case in a series of mass shooting, leading into that week in America, maybe something like that could happen, especially at the site of Ronald Reagan's attempted assassination, same exact place. You'd think they would know better, okay? And then, of course, they said, I got an idea. We'll use this as an excuse to promote the ballroom. We need the ballroom. See, this wouldn't have happened

without the ballroom. The ballroom is three years away. What are you supposed to do? Live in the ballroom? Donald Trump's not going to do rallies anymore, political rallies. He's not going to go to Fox. He's not going to do interviews. He's just going to, I thought that was the problem with Joe Biden. He campaigned from a basement. I don't really understand the ballroom link to how this solves the problem that just happened. It is a answer to some question, but not to the one that's being posed by what happened at the White House correspondence dinner. But leave it to the Republicans to try to exploit an averted tragedy. Never let a tragedy go wasted.

And here they are on the ballroom. And they immediately follow, there we go. MAG accounts tweet in unison, look at Midas, about the need for a White House ballroom. Wow, that was like within minutes, right? Yeah, they all have the talking points. They all the rapid response team. And the problem is we got a rapid response team too.

At minus touch, legal AF, you just saw it in action there. So now you see, then there's a filing. And I'm like, all right, I get the headline from, mainstream media. Curious filing or weird filing gets filed about ballroom with court. I'm like, oh, he filed something with the D.C. Appellate Federal Appellate Court, because that's where the case is right now. The trial court judge having been divested of jurisdiction on the appeal, oh, no, oh, no.

They file a, what they say is a motion, which is nothing of the sort, with the trial court judge who's already been divested of jurisdiction, which they admit in their filing, in order to argue that his injunction should be blocked or dissolved so they can build the ballroom without acknowledging his injunction is already blocked by the appellate court at least through the end of May, so they can continue to build the ballroom without interruption, at least for right now.

So they're asking him to give him the remedy that they don't need in order, with the wrong court, with no jurisdiction? What the actual F? All right? So, Karen, take it from there. You got the filing, got Judge Leon. What's going to happen next? I mean, first of all, this filing does not read like a court filing.

It reads like a Donald Trump truth social posting with all caps and in the third person and making all kinds of, you know, attacking language. and it really is an appalling piece of writing, just period, full stop. Number one. Number two, it makes no sense because this case is up on appeal, but I think they are doing this. Well, actually, I don't know why they're doing it. Maybe you have a theory about it, but I don't know why they're doing it because they already, as you said, got the injunction lifted and they're allowed to continue work on the below ground

you know, from the ground and below, because that's the national security stuff. And again, as you said, what is he going to do? Never leave the ballroom? I mean, look at Mar-a-Lago. People have weddings at Mar-a-Lago. People have parties at Mar-Lago. There's all kinds of people coming in and out of Mar-a-Lago.

I mean, that's more similar to the Hilton than it is to some bulletproof, glass, drone-proof, secure bunker ballroom that he's trying to do. And the thing that really appalled me is the next day, Lindsay Graham basically said, I'm going to introduce legislation that essentially makes the taxpayers pay for this ballroom. I mean, we were assured all this time that this was going to be paid through by private donations. And now Lindsey Graham is trying to make us pay for this ballroom that nobody asked for and nobody wanted, and that they essentially broke down and destroyed the east wing of the White House without permission,

you know, a building that had great historical value, and they just smashed it to Smitherians. And, you know, look, this motion that was filed by the Department of Justice asking a federal judge to lift the injunction that's blocking parts of the ballroom project, you know, they're trying to get the judge. to lift their injunction and reconsider the original injunction so that this whole thing is now they can just move forward, full steam ahead, and they're using this shooting at the White House Correspondence Dinner as the new information that wasn't there before,

and that's what they're using it for. But they're claiming the attack would have never taken place in the proposed facility, but as you said, what is he going to do? Stop doing his rallies, stopped going to public events and not do anything. So I think this was all an effort to essentially use this shooting as an opportunity to try and push Judge Leon to reconsider his position on the ballroom

so that they can move forward. That's what I think. Yeah, I totally agree with you. This was, I mean, if this hadn't happened, they had obviously calculated that the ballroom was stuck in the mud on that it was really up to an appellate court to make a decision about an injunction about whether Donald Trump had the power under his Article 2 powers to demolish the White House. I mean, I never understood the argument.

It's not a slippery slope. If Donald Trump thinks he could have knocked over the East Wing and built a ballroom because everybody wanted it, I don't understand why he couldn't have just knocked over the entire White House in the middle of the night, lived in a trailer, put up a tower with his name on top of it, like his library, he's building in Miami, and that's okay, too, because he's the president at the time. I mean, his whole illogical argument always falls flat. And it was up in an appellate court, you know, two to one against him, probably. He didn't like that.

Oh, we should have, first of all, where is there any press release that the White House, that the group, the White House correspondence would have rented or used the ballroom for this event? Maybe that's something to consider in 2029, 2008, when the ballroom is up and running. But that's not the justification for a violation of the Constitution and the statutes regarding who is the keeper of federal property, which is Congress, not the presidency. And no national tragedy averted or otherwise changes the analytics of the jurisprudence about who's right or wrong, about knocking over the East Wing and putting up the ballroom. You know, that's just a sympathy getter to try to gain some momentum.

Now, look, even this judge has said, you have a solution. Go to Congress. If Congress wants to give you the eff in ballroom, let them give you the eff in ballroom. That has always been the solution. And he's trying to get, from a political standpoint, the momentum in Congress. you know and it didn't help that the sweat shirt cargo short wearing senator god how is he senator from uh pennsylvania john federman yeah i was pausing for dramatic effect john federman right right john fetterman from uh pennsylvania writes uh oh we have to get over the trump

derangement syndrome give him his ballroom you know the white house dinner shows shows what shows what it shows what It shows that Cash Patel's incompetent. It shows the Secret Service is barely able to do its job. It shows that maybe Trump shouldn't have decided to co-opt the White House correspondent's dinner for his own personal coming out party to bash the press, right? And whose idea was it to put everyone in the line of succession all in one room? That seemed bizarre to me. Right.

They usually hold someone back. Oh, they said they didn't do that because, oh, no, they had an answer for that. Carolyn Levitt, Leavitt said, oh, no, we didn't need to do the survivor, the designated survivor because some of the cabinet members, like Howard Lutnik would have been the president in the United States. Howard, the Commerce Secretary didn't go, for instance, to that one. He saved himself for the White House dinner. In the unsecured White House, right?

This whole thing about, we need drone protection and ballistic materials for the top secret, you're in the White House every day, okay? It's not covered in bulletproof glass. I mean, parts are. But if you're insecure now, without the ball, you're in, the whole White House is insecure. Move it all below ground.

Why do we need a building? He should live like a mole under the White House. where he belongs under the white house but anyway listen i think that uh the lawyers for the national trust are going to oppose this because it's not a proper motion under 62.1 of the federal rules of civil procedure at all that's the only time you can bring an out of jurisdiction motion back to a judge this is not a motion this is a social media post by written by Donald trump i'm sure signed by stan woodward his co-counsel in the Mar-a-Lago case, and then it's going to die there, and then they're going to try to lob it in to the appellate court,

but the appellate court already said, brief the issue, brief the issue in May. And it doesn't matter that Congress may be taking up the issue. Just like it doesn't matter, we had to hear it, we had, I'll leave it on this. We had an oral argument today at the Supreme Court about whether Christy no, remember her, whether she could end the temporary protective status for the Haitian community primarily. 350,000 Haitians and send them back and back to their country, their war-torn, you know, drug lord-ridden country. This is not me speaking. I've interviewed people from the Haitian community about how dangerous the community is, especially for children. And they had an oral argument today at the Supreme Court,

even though there's going to be a vote on in Congress about whether to restore the temporary protective status. So it doesn't matter. These things happen simultaneously in all that. Let me touch on E. Jean Carroll before we depart. So there were two, E. Jean Carroll brought two successful cases against Donald Trump, proving through a jury of nine people in a civil case that she was at least sexually abused by Donald Trump in a dressing room and a department store in New York, Caddy Corner from Trump Tower called Bergdorf Goodman's back in the 90s. That was proven, proven by to a jury, 90. There were two trials. One was about the initial sexual attack and a damage award. The jury found 9-0. She was sexually abused. They would have gone to rape, I'm sure, except at the time,

the criminal code in New York did not recognize if anything other than a penis was used in the crime, so to speak. It was not a rape. It is now. It wasn't then. And since she testified as the victim, E. Jean Carroll, that she had her eyes closed and she didn't know what was done to her. They went with sexual abuse. I mean, it's still terrible. I mean, it's still awful. That resulted in a $5.5 million judgment. Trial number two, same judge, Lewis Kaplan, federal court, different jury about his continued bashing her. after he was president. That one, because he continued to bash her during the trial,

and he testified in the second trial, ended up with an $83 million judgment against him. Now, they didn't have to relitigate. The jury didn't have to find that he sexually abused her again because that was law of the case, so to speak, and the jury was instructed that you would assume that that's already happened. You're here for damages about a second set of events.

Trump appealed both to the Second Circuit. He lost a number of times about the $5.5 million, including some screw-ups by Alina Haba. That went up to the United States Supreme Court where it still sits. The $83 million lost at the Second Circuit by the same appellate panel. He didn't like those losses.

So he asked for what's called an en banc review, which is the entirety of the active judges basically kicking out the three judge panels ruling and doing it all over again. You got to get a majority in order to have that happen. And he didn't get the majority. He had five said no. Three said yes. And that's it.

At this level, now he's going to have to try to go to the Supreme Court again and ask the Supreme Court. I think, Karen, at the Supreme Court, they keep kicking the court. began down the road. Most of this happened, well, the event happened before he was president of the United States, the sexual abuse, the defamation, some happened before and some happened after and all of that. What do you think this, even this Supreme Court would do with these cases? I mean, I don't see why he doesn't just pay the money and make this go away. Why does he keep making this be in the news? I mean, sure, go to the Supreme Court and have oral arguments

where you get to talk about how you're a rapist again. I mean, It just doesn't make any sense to me that he keeps going on and on with this case. I mean, if I were him, I'd want to bury it, but I guess he doesn't care. As he said, I could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and get away with it. I think the Supreme Court's going to be hard pressed to do anything other than fine for E. Jean Carroll. I suppose they could reduce the judgment if that's something the Supreme Court can do. I know that the appellate courts can do that. I don't know. This one perplexes me. What do you think they'll do?

Well, I think the reason he doesn't just pay it and he's put up the money is because he doesn't want to be, he doesn't want to be labeled an abuser. He doesn't want to be label. He wants the whole case thrown out. He wants it to be thrown out completely, just like he wanted his criminal conviction thrown out of Manhattan, the Manhattan Criminal Court. You know, he wants everything expunged and removed and rewritten and all of that. So he could have made it go away a long time, but no, he keeps litigating whether he's a sex abuser or a rapist and the difference between the two and the defamation and all this stuff. There you go. Well, then we've reached the end of Legal A.F for the midweek. Subscribe here, Midas Touch.

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