Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF - 5/20/2026

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

The award winning Legal AF Pod, helmed tonight by Popok and Dina Doll (in for KFA) provide political and legal commentary on “stunning” events from Miami, DC, Congress, and the White House. IQ BAR: Get 20% off all IQBAR products. Text LEGALAF to 64000. (Message and data rates may apply) SMALLS: Head to https://Smalls.com/LEGALAF and use promo code: LEGALAF at checkout for 60% off your first order PLUS free shipping! DELETE ME: Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to join https://joindeleteme.com/LEGALAF and use promo code LEGALAF at checkout. MAGIC SPOON: Save $5 OFF your next order when you go to http://magicspoon.com/LEGALAF 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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We've got a smile from ear to ear because we're about to start Legal A.F at the midweek. Dina Dahl sitting in for Karen Freeman, Ignifalo, my regular podcast partner. And Dean is my regular podcast partner on Unprecedented, our Supreme Court podcast over on Legal AF YouTube, and is now hosting Monday night, along with Lisa Graves, a new night that we've opened up. You've asked for it. We brought it. Legal AF live Monday nights 5 p.m. on the Legal AF YouTube channel. Hi, Dina. Great to see you. So excited to be here. Thanks for, well, I say thank to fill it in, but it's our pleasure to have you here and to brief our audience.

Let's kick it off. A number of things to talk about that have happened in the last hour, two hours before we got on the air. We're talking about Slush Fund. And yesterday's Todd Blanche sworn testimony is like old news already. We got a first lawsuit that's been filed to stop it. We've got the Senate and the House considering ways to stop it. There seems to be no political will to let Donald Trump walk away from $100 million in tax liability. We've got the resignation of the general counsel of the Treasury Department rather than participate and possibly an illegal wipe out of Donald Trump's tax liability.

And we got the first lawsuit filed by a couple of Jan 6 officers, you know, who as always have stepped forward to protect and defend the line and democracy. But theirs is not the last lawsuit. There'll be multiple lawsuits about this. And something that happened just as we came out of the air where the Senate threw up their hands and said, we're not funding the ballroom. Now, that in and of itself is a devastating blow to Donald Trump's ego and his golden ballroom.

They're not going to take a billion dollars and pay for security and all the heart in the facility and all that bullshit. But what does it mean? I want to ask you this question. It's rhetorical now, but I'll come back and ask you. What does it mean to the political will in the Senate to approve or to kill the $1.776 billion slush fund? From what I'm hearing on Capitol Hill, there is no support for this. Nobody's like clapping, nobody's saying great idea, I mean politically, including Republicans. So let's try to figure out, read the tea leaves.

If the ballroom got killed, what that may portend for the slush fund, the lawsuit we'll talk about. Then we've got to pick up on something that we covered a few months ago. only the first president to ever be indicted for stealing presidential records would then try by way of a White House memo declare that they don't have to save anything because the Presidential Records Act can't apply to them because they're a separate branch of government. We were like, what? We're just going to pull up a giant incinerator and incinerate the whole Trump administration documents at the end. They're not the people's papers. I thought they were the people's papers. And now we got Judge Bates, who's issued a new preliminary injunction,

which is right around what we thought would happen. So I want to talk about that. And so much more as we wait on pins and needles for things like the Supreme Court's final rulings as they round out their year. And then we had an election night in America, which the Republicans are saying represents the power and the muscle flex for Donald Trump. But does it? And what does it mean for the general election given Donald Trump's abysmally historically low polling numbers, which get, every day there's a nuance announcement, Dina, of a poll. It gets lower and lower. We're going to see how low this is going to go before just several months for now, before the midterms. But I'm so glad you're here. Let's open the show. Let's kick it off with what you've observed. Update our audience

from your perspective about the things that you found interesting about as we peel the onion, the slush fund, the settlement agreement, the attempt to take away tax exposure and liability for the Trump family. Well, let's start with all of that and testimony that Blanche gave before he let the American people know that he was going to absolve Donald Trump of tax liability. He didn't tell that to the senators now, did he? You know, from a legal perspective, this is a legal show, right? This is one of the most stunning stories.

Todd Blanche, in a typical situation, committed malpractice here, would be disbarred in any other situation. He was sued for basically created a billion dollar fund without filing one motion in the case. That's stunning. Not only did he not file a motion, he was given an opportunity on a cake bladder to get it dismissed by Judge Kathleen Williams, who said, I don't think that I even have a case here. Go ahead and, you know, both sides tell me whether or not I should or should not take this case. Any defense lawyer, I mean, any lawyer, we're talking about like the bare minimum of a qualified, competent lawyer would have taken that opportunity and run with it. Of course, the deadline was May 20th.

So instead, Todd Blanche acting really as Trump's personal attorney and not as our attorney rush this settlement. So really just the malpractice. His job, whether or not he wants to believe it or not, is representing the American people. He was told to step aside that there was going to be a conflict of interest. He was given a memo according to the New York Times by career lawyers within the IRS, laying out all of the defenses, including statute of limitations to get this dismissed on top of Judge Kathleen Williams questioning whether or not there was even a real case or controversy since Trump was suing himself. I mean, he had so many opportunities to try to file one motion in this case.

And without filing one motion, he handed over more than a billion dollars to what appears to be generous and six insurrectionists. And to your point, you know, his testimony was in front of Congress was just atrocious, trying to act as if he has no idea whether or not the money will eventually end up in the hands of January 6th insurrectionist, despite the fact he's going to be the ones appointing the people on the commission who's going to be doling out the funds. Clearly, Todd Blanche here acting as Trump's personal attorney. And then we can get into the audits, which in itself, as you said, there could be worth more than $100 million. I mean, the IRS policy is to audit every president

and vice president. That has been a policy for years. So you get a sense of how extraordinary it is that Trump is going to be getting, and not just Trump, his sons, his businesses, his affiliates are going to be getting this favor of permanently never being audited. And of course, there is even that existing audit. Self-dealing to such an extent, it is hard to comprehend, all wrapped up as if somehow it has to do with this frivolous, baseless lawsuit. And unfortunately, these Capitol police officers who again and again have, have had to speak out against the lies coming from Trump and Republicans trying to rewrite January 6

or having to stand up. Thankfully, they have the ability to stand up against a slush fund, but they shouldn't have to. Really, we shouldn't be in this position. Absolutely. And then you've got the way that Todd Blanche did it in using a statute that relates to when an attorney general can stop an audit. Because at the core, see, I no longer think this was about a $10 billion lawsuit or even a slush fund. I think this was about Donald Trump having, at the top of his checklist, the things left to do before he's powerless, was to get himself out from under that audit. The audit he's been under since 2010, about a $75 million or so refund that he received, as companies received, and a tax loss of several billion dollars, about two people.

projects that the IRS was challenging. And it's interesting that they enter the settlement, there's no mention of Donald Trump's family getting this tax break, then the press happens, and then the next day after Todd Blanche steps off of the Senate, out of the Senate hot chair, he posts a one paragraph amendment to the settlement, which he doesn't call an amendment to the settlement, which adds a new provision waiving forever the tax liability and audit of against the Trump administration of Trump, Trump individually. This is the audit that Trump used as an excuse for decades not to reveal his tax returns. I love to reveal them, everybody, but I'm under an audit. And then here you go, you've got this May 19th memo a day late, but hundreds

of billions of dollars not short, letting them off the hook. This. is what's sticking in the craw of Congress and the senators, even the MAGA ones. And I'm not sure there's political will for this. First of all, you've got the former, now former general counsel for the Treasury Department. And I just had Matt Placken, former Attorney General for New Jersey, who's now in private practice with lawsuits concerning these issues. he came up with a great theory, which is the guy stays around, holds his nose, and it lets the settlement get announced. But as soon as Blanche wants to now go to step two and violate a criminal statute about when an audit can be interfered with, which I believe he's interfered with, on behalf of Trump, that's a bridge too far even for this general counsel, and he resigns because it's in that order.

okay then you have all of these open challenges that will come in the lawsuits we'll talk about next because if blanche doesn't have the power under this certain statute that allows him to interfere with with audits if he doesn't have that power then that aspect of the settlement goes out the window and if he doesn't have the power as the head of the department of justice to set up a settlement fund related to the Internal Revenue Service, completely different agency. Think about the parties that were involved in the lawsuit. It's Trump v. IRS. Let's put aside for a minute that they're on the same side and he controls them.

And it's a collusive conspiratorial suit with no adversary parties. Let's put all of that aside for a moment. Okay? Got that. All right. Department of Justice isn't a party. Department of Justice at best would be the lawyers for the Internal Revenue Service. then to settle this case, Trump has his Department of Justice, who has an anti-weaponization

committee set up a fund that's going to be funded by the IRS in order to administer. How does he have the power to do that? How does Blanche have the power to order the treasury to put taxpayer dollars into a fund under his direction in a case that he's not even a party to? So all the things we just outlined are going to be parts of lawsuits, one, two, three, four, I think at least another two filed before Memorial Day. You think fireworks only get fired in federal holidays like Fourth of July, wait to Memorial Day. So we're going to talk about now. I'm going to turn to the new suit, first of its kind, filed by officers Dunn and Hodges. There they are. Dunn. Or no, Hodges, tracked. We all remember that picture, trapped inside the revolving door, his life being crushed out of them. And they've been very poignant in their testimony about the post-traumatic stress disorder they have suffered. And I love their angle.

And the angle for their lawsuit is Trump is funding terrorists. Trump is funding insurrectionists because he's giving the money to the proud boys and the oathkeepers and all the bad guys that attacked our rule of law. and therefore he should be stopped. And they made their case on a very narrow plank of the Administrative Procedures Act of arguing that things are outside statutory power, asking for a declaratory judgment.

They didn't touch the constitutional, obvious constitutional issues, but they do kind of get to the heart of the matter, but also bring it forward, right, with this human aspect of Trump's funding terrorists. you know, at the same time, he's trying to put the Southern Poverty Law Center out of business for breaking up terrorist organizations and allegedly funding them. He's funding them with this fund.

What did you make of the lawsuit? Absolutely. And to your point about, you know, the person who signed this agreement was the newly created chief executive officer of the IRS. That role did not exist before Trump. And that person was not. confirmed by the Senate. That's the person who signed it because, as you said, the general counsel stepped down. Nobody else really probably wanted their name on this. And they had to create it

through this sham settlement because of the fact that there is no legislative statutory authority for it. It's interesting because I know the executive order was pointed to a few times. Trump put out an executive order last year that said that agencies had to follow his definition of the law. And both Judge Kathleen Williams cited that actually is saying this is why there's not a real case or controversy. Because does this mean the IRS has to follow Trump's definition of the law? It was also cited in this new lawsuit as well. But Trump in one of the press conference says that he didn't know about this settlement, which is interesting because if he didn't, I mean, of course he's lying about that. But you know, that's a, that you could take that quote as evidence to say that the Department of Justice wasn't or the IRS wasn't having to follow his definition of it because he didn't know what the definition was.

They are, they, there's, they have not even a shred of legal justification for the slush fund. The fact that it's some sort of settlement of a civil suit is a complete sham. and then there's no statutory or now even in the executive order that gives them any kind of basis for this fund. You know, but to your point about it funding terrorists, you know, Trump doesn't do anything out of loyalty. I do not believe he is giving them this money six months before the midterms as a way to thank them for what they did on January 6. He only does something if it is going to serve him right now. You know, I just interviewed Officer Michael Phonone to ask him about this slash fund for my touch. And, you know, he really believes that political violence is going to be part of all of our elections.

It scares me that he's wanting to fund insurrectionists six months before the midterms, where he's already talked about how we should have standing armies to make sure the right people are voting because his poll numbers are so low. They're doing all this redistricting to get the vote. And that lawsuit really captures it. The officer's lawsuit really captures it. They said that they have been threatened, you know, to this day, threatened. And they have been injured.

And they point out the fact that they believe that this is going to just encourage the insurrectionists to commit more political violence. And I believe that that is the purpose of this. Tomorrow I'm going to have with me the lawyers who filed this lawsuit. They're coming on public integrity to brief our audience about what the next steps are and how they collaborate with what's obviously going to be a series of other filings. I don't know if it's going to be members of the House, like the 93 that joined together the file in Amicus Brief in Miami, or it's going to be others. But there's other aspects. It all leads, all the roads up the mountain all lead to the same place in blocking the fund, blocking the funding of the fund, blocking the,

the eradication erasure of Donald Trump's tax exposure, but they'll come at it from slightly different angles and perhaps with different judges. They'll all be in D.C. federal court, I'm sure. I'm not sure which judge is yet. Do we know which, maybe we'll look it up while we're doing the show tonight, what judge has been assigned to this particular case.

I'll have those lawyers on and ask some of those questions. Let me read to you from their filing. this is paragraph one. In the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century, that's saying a lot for this guy. President Donald J. Trump has created a taxpayer-funded slush fund to finance the insurrectionists and the paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name

and that it's a sham. They go on to say that the fund endangers the lives and safety of plaintiffs Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges, officers who defended the Capitol on Jan 6th in two ways. By its very existence, the fund encourages those who enacted violence in the president's name to continue to do so. They face credible threats of death and violence on a regular basis. Second, if allowed to begin making payments, the fund will directly finance the violent operations of rioters, paramilitary, and their supporters who threaten plaintiff's lives and continue to do so.

And then they had this line, among many, 12, Dunn and Hodges did not back down on Jan 6th. They held the line to defend democracy and the rule of law. They bring this case to do so again. You know, there's just a certain gravitas that comes from these two talking about the funding and refunding and reanimating of these groups that by any account should be completely out of business with their leadership in jail. And it would be under any other sane administration that committed to the rule of law and democracy. And yet today we're talking about, let's give them a check for a million dollars to get back on their feet. What do you think?

It's so disturbing. It's like the Capitol police officers did their job so well that members, the Republican members of Congress are willing to let Trump pardon them and now potentially pay them. Because if the Capitol officers hadn't done their job that well, members of Congress would have been beaten as severely as those officers. And the fact that these Republican Congress members are willing to have allowed those officers to protect them and have, don't have the decency to have stood up against the pardons. Because honestly, the pardons were bad enough. I mean, the fact that we're even to the point we're talking about getting them paid is shocking. The fact that they had all the constitutional protections afforded them as a criminal defendant and were still convicted. And yet pardoned, with a out a peep from these weak Republican Congress people who had the luxury of not getting hurt that day because men and women put their bodies on the line for them. It's just, it's a shame on this country that we have, I don't think, even barely reconciled with. It is really disturbing. And I think you're right you alluded to in the beginning that perhaps the slush

fund to pay insurrectionists will be a step too far for these Republican. Congress people, but it is just the fact that this is even on the table, it shows really how the kind of authoritarian figure Trump wants to be. Well, I mean, there's that old saying after you hear a description of something, sounds like a cult. And it sounds like a cult when the Democrats who are making great political hay out of this, as they should to pin this tail directly on this donkey, they say, well, Let's see if we can reach common ground. Can we pass an amendment that convicted child sex abusers can't make application for the fund,

voted down by the Republicans? Can we pass an amendment that people convicted of and were indicted for violently attacking law enforcement can't make application, voted down? And every one of these is going to be a new ad against these Republicans. why they hate this. They hated the ballroom and they killed that billion dollar hot potato that Donald Trump threw with them. Here you go. I need a billion now for the free ballroom. They were like, yeah, no. During a national discussion about an administration where affordability has fallen on deaf ears looking callous, we're not going to give a billion dollars for a golden ballroom. I think that

factors in here. Because if there's no political will, one thing you can say that unifies all MAGA in the House and the Senate is that they're cowards and they're worried about their political hides. And if they can't get this passed and don't want to pass it, as we reported it coming on the air, why does Trump think that they're not going to block his weaponization fund? They didn't even remember when we reported on three months ago when they were going to have a little thing and the big, beautiful bill to give $50 million or some amount of money to pay back the Lindsay Grahams of the world and Congresspeople who incurred legal expenses related to the Jan 6th investigation because they were cooperating with the insurrectionists. That got killed. So now, so so so Trump's takeaway from that

was well, 50 million didn't work. I'll go for a 1.776 billion. I don't get it. No, we shouldn't get it because like I said from the start this is beyond any legal political and that's why it's scary we have the Department of Justice who is meant to keep us safe wanting to go pay criminals who who beat and killed officers and doing this right before another election we should be disturbed we should be scared and it's not just Trump it's top lanch he the first he the fact that he as, I mean, like to your point, to Congress, he wouldn't even rule out paying out of this fund, somebody who was convicted of violence that day. This is where we're at and it is stunning. There are a few stories that we have discussed that are as stunning as this one to me because

there is like you can't even try to spin your way out of it. And the fact that it is politically even a step too far for a lot of Republicans. And Trump's still doing that is alarming. I think we have a new tagline for midweek edition of Legal AF. It can go on mugs and t-shirts. Midweek, Legal A.F. You'll be stunned. Right?

I know. I always think I'm not going to be surprised. And then there's like a further level of depravity. This to me is a five alarm fire because Trump, tends to be know where his party, I think, is willing to go and not go. And this is so extreme being paying the proud boys, essentially. You know, this sounds to me like a private army. He's trying to coalesce here.

Right. And I think even the Republicans like dude realize that if they don't draw the line in the sand here, this could lead to a limitless president where he has unlimited constitutional power to do anything, you know, put money in his pocket, wave his own debts, wave his own tax. Like this may be, you know, you're always wondering, what is the last straw even for MAGA? And we may have reached it here.

And for the Department of Justice. I mean, there should be calls for Todd Blanche to resign. If Merrick Garland gave that performance and did these things, you know, there would be calls for him by the Republicans to immediately resign. But instead, no, we just have. you know the communications director for Donald Trump you know relishing in the fact that Trump made his entire party run hard to the right yesterday and he's like uh f around and find out

that's what i'm going to say on my official white house account i'm like i don't know how that helps you with the general election to make to make everybody a mini trumper you know and um and we're going to see i think there is a golden there's a silver lining to what happened yesterday You know, the harder right these candidates for the Republicans have to run to appease Donald Trump, the more they're out of lockstep with the American people, and candidates who all they have to do is just step ever so slightly to the left and to the center to gain the votes. We haven't heard the last of Massey in Kentucky. First of all, Trump just created a couple of new Tom Tillis who are going to be able to completely run around unfettered from now,

until they're out of office opposing the Trump administration without any repercussions. And Massey may run as an independent, splitting the vote and maybe grabbing the seat in Kentucky, especially if this is a wave election. So we're going to cover all that. So much more. We come back. I want to talk about Judge Bates' new ruling about presidential records. We'll talk about the ballroom and anything else that pops into our minds.

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deleteme.com slash legal a.f and then use code legal a.f at checkout. That's join delete me.com slash legal a.f, code legal a.f. Welcome back to legal a.F at the midweek. We got Dina Dahl sitting in for KFA and Michael Popak. So when things are going terribly, Dina for a president, every other day, a new set of polling numbers come out, whether it's the guy on CNN that Donald Trump is, is having a bromance with Gary Enton. Harry Enton, it's like,

this are the most abysmal numbers in the history of the presidency, and then they stop Trump, and Trump's like, I like that guy. I like that guy. You know, are you following the storyline here, Grandpa? So, you know, and then you got the Silver Bullet memo comes out. You got New York Times in Siena Paul, Ipsopal, and they're competing to see who's going to report the lowest number for Donald Trump with the margin of errors in the 20s in favorability. And his takeaway from that is they love me. They can't get enough of me as the voters can't run further away from him.

And if you plug all these numbers in, sorry, Karen, sorry, you plug all these numbers in, Dina, thank you, then you come to. to the inexorable conclusion that he's going to lose the House and likely the Senate. I mean, you've got right direction, wrong direction, approval numbers, which are horrendously low. You have the lowest consumer confidence index in history in 50 years. There's a lot of recessions that were in there and something called COVID. You've got that. You've got joblessness, no jobs being created by this economy. Hyperinflation already started.

double gas prices, which people hate for good reason because it ends up being a tax on everybody. Any tax refund you might have gotten has gone up and smoke at the gas pump. You plug all of that in, and it's a 40 to 50 seat advantage for the Democrats. I mean, there's polling out that shows that a random Democrat with no-name, a no-name Democrat versus a no-name Republican in a congressional seat, the no-name Democrat wins by 11 points, we haven't even done platform, we haven't even done policies, we haven't even done the, do you want to have a beer with me test? It's just no name. And Trump knows it, which is why we're

seeing, you know, you and I and others I've interviewed are starting everything now with this breathless. It's unprecedented. It is stunning. It's because he's running out of time. And he knows he's running out of time. I compared it on the intersection last night to one of those game shows where they lock something. You win a chance in 20 minutes to grab whatever you can inside of a department store or a toy store or whatever it is, right? You get a shopping cart. Well, okay, he's going out of business.

You know, he's trying to stuff as many dollars in his pocket and get as much benefit as possible before he's made completely powerless at the midterms. So all of this whistling past the graveyard, I think we're going to win. I just controlled the primaries. This guy lost because I said so. It's all hyperbolic bullshit

that's not going to help him in the electoral races. And then when he has a bad news cycle, which is like every third hour, he then pushes a button somewhere, you know, and Todd Blanche and his Department of Justice file or indict and do something else to steal the news story, which is why we waited to like the second half of the show instead of leading with Raul Castro of Cuba.

Like, who gives a flying fuck about Raul Castro of Cuba? Sorry, my Cuban-American friends, you know, but I don't want to indict Fidel Castro any longer either. So why don't you pick up the pieces from what got announced today and why you think it got announced today by a beleaguered Todd Blair. The indictment of Castro, basically. Yes, so the 94-year-old, and I think that is the,

that in itself is the detail of why this is a distraction. Reminds me a lot of how they thought of celebrated about the killing of the Iraq. Ronnie and leader who was also probably going to pass away at any moment, but essentially they indicted Raul Castro for 1996. They took down a plane that had three American citizens in a green card holder and we said that it was outside Cuban airspace. Cuba had always alleged that this was a terrorist group that they took out on the plane, but they have decided to indict the hymn today.

Well, actually, it was just unsealed today. They indicted him back in April. He is not the current leader of Cuba, but he is the power still. He's seen as the power still behind the throne. Although, of course, here, again, I'm going to say, he's 94 years old. So his physical condition, we really have no idea.

So it seems very much like a show. But Taublanche has said, this is not just some sort of show indictment. We basically plan on bringing him to justice. Does that mean they're going to go and capture him like Maduro and bring him here to the soil? You know, who knows? But at this point, it sounds like we know that Rubio and Trump have been talking quite a bit about invading and taking over Cuba.

There's that humanitarian crisis unfolding in Cuba as a result of really us, all the sanctions that we are having there to try to kind of force a regime change. But for me, the biggest takeaway here was his age. At this point, even if you were to prosecute a 94-year-old man, I don't know how much power he really has at this point anymore. Yeah, now let me give it from a Miami perspective. Yes, please. All right.

And so, and I've got former law partners that represented some of these people who were shot down in civil cases against the Cuban government. I don't have any insider knowledge, but I know those people. And I know what it means to the Cuban American population in the Cuban population in Miami. And think about where they chose to announce the indictment, Tina, in front of the Freedom Tower. Freedom Tower is not only the Ellis Island on Biscayne Boulevard in downtown Miami for the Cuban population, where they came through for immigration status. But it sits directly next to the 2.63 acre plot of land that Donald Trump has gotten donated,

by the state of Florida for his Trump Library Convention Center casino hotel thing, whatever that's supposed to be, a 50 Tower monstrosity, where he stole $300 million from a local university because they gave him the property for free. There's a lawsuit about that that's pending down here in Miami related to the violation of the emoluments clause. So just out of, and if you take a wide enough lens with the indictment announcement, you can see the parking lot,

where he wants to build that. That's one. He's trying to curry favor and shore up his political support. This has nothing to do with 94-year-old Raul Castro. As you said earlier, it's always about Trump. Trump just watched Eileen Higgins, the mayor of Miami, Democrat, first Democrat in 30 years, first woman ever, and beat the MAGA pick by him, Trump,

and Ron DeSantis. this by 14 points, okay, to win the mayoralty of the city of Miami. So just to be clear, there's a county that used to be called Dade County, now Miami, Dade County, and there's a county mayor. She's a Democrat. There is a city mayor who is now a Democrat, first time in 30 years and first woman ever. And so, and she won by a lot, like, she's so crushingly crushed the guy, the MAGA guy she was running against, that he conceded, like, within a second of.

the race people and said, what a great race. Anyway, so he's got, if he's got a hope to win and for MAGA to ever win again in Florida, they've got to secure that base in Miami. So this is a complete pandering to a Cuban-American, which is 70% of Miami-Dade County, a Cuban-American population, who cheered wildly, according to local reports, when the indictment was announced. Because the symbolism of this 94-year-old. When Castro, his brother, died, it was like a national holiday in Florida, in Miami. I live within blocks of the Cuban exile community on Caiocho, which kind of runs up against Coral Gables where I live. And so I get it. So if you think this was nothing more than we're having a slow news cycle, and they've been getting pressure from

Marco Rubio used to be the senator down here and others, I'm sure, including my former law partners, to bring Raul Castro before he dies to justice. Now look, I'm not against octogenarians and septuagenarians and nanogenarians being brought to justice, okay? I was very supportive of Ellie Wessel and everybody who were Nazi hunters chasing after, including some that didn't, you know, that didn't get put on the stand until they were in their 90s and brought to justice. So it's not a, I don't want to say that justice has a time limit or a statute of limitations, but you also have to put this in the political context that you and I just did. And that's one thing I get to bring here of being a long time resident in Miami and practicing law down here

and being a part of this community is I see the political tambourine for what it is. And I think that's what we really just saw. To people who don't live down here, it's like, that's interesting. Rao Castro's just indicted. And I'm like, no, this is. to shore up the votes. This is to get Spanish language radio, you know, a buzzing down, you know, and then it can then it can roll into the midterm elections for the candidates. I'm sure every congressional candidate for, you know, Republican was at that press conference, you know,

because that, you know, that they got to show their bona fides. Was Marco Rubio there? He had to have been, right? I would think. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what the reporting is. I think Marco is probably there, because, you know, he's been trying to over, you know, take over Cuba, his ancestral home forever. And, you know, there's a big, let me just tell you, that in the Cuban-American community down here, your bonafides are established depending upon when your family emigrated or were forced to leave the island. If your family was forced to leave because of Castro and the revolution, you have a certain higher status in this culture than if you came before. If you were part of the prior president and made a lot of money with the prior president and got out before, you're on a lower social rung than if you came out because you were forced out after.

That still goes on down here from a political infrastructure that's controlled by the Cuban American community. I mean, Trump is, it's always a PR move, right? It's always a PR move. You even knows if they're going to legally be able to actually physically bring him here. Yeah, no, that's a fascinating take there. And hopefully, you know, hopefully he doesn't get as many points as he's trying to get out of that PR move. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, that's going to be, I want to see the polling on that.

But he knows he's cratering in Miami. For people in Idaho who are wondering, why are we indicting Raoul Castro at this late date and bringing him to justice? It has as much to do about bringing somebody to justice for a horrendous act of shooting a plane out of a sky and killing people as it does for the political. side byproduct of shoring up failing numbers in Miami. And, of course, we sit at that politics and law intersection, so we wanted to bring it to you there. You want to talk about Judge Bates and the Public Presidential Records Act and what's happened there?

Can you frame that issue? Yes. Well, I think that Trump is taking a cue knowing that Nixon should have destroyed those tapes way back when, because as we know, the tapes are rolling. brought back, brought down Richard Nixon. By the way, Trump's approval ratings is about where Richard Nixon was when he was forced to resign. That's how bad those poll numbers are. Well, rather than just, you know, take his files and have the FBI come after him again, Trump has decided to have the DOJ say, well, presidential records should just not be a thing anymore. And that

because as president, he has this absolute power over the executive branch, that he cannot be told by Congress to preserve the records. That's what the DOJ said to the court. They're trying to basically make it so Trump could either destroy them or just put him in his briefcase and take him this time wherever he wants. The judge base issued a preliminary injunction saying, no, you have to preserve all of the records. you know, this litigation is still going to be moving forward, but right now they have to follow the Presidential Records Act. And it is also, I thought, indicative of the time that this preliminary injunction also said that the presidential and vice presidential team

within the White House cannot use signal, chat, or WhatsApp for their official communications, because, as we know, HECSeth has infamously used it, and this is one way that executive branch can just do a runaround around the Presidential Records Act is use an app that auto-deletes. So the preliminary injunction also making it clear there that they're not supposed to be doing that. But, you know, it's the office of the president is,

this is a public, you are a public servant. That job, the powers, is being loaned to. you by the American people. Unfortunately, too many people gave that power to Trump to belong. But it is stunning to me. You know, the No Kings rallies, some people said they thought maybe that no Kings was too cutesy of a term or something like that. But Trump in so many ways just really does want to be a monarch between the putting his face on the passport. I don't know if anybody hasn't renewed their passport yet. Go do it quickly because his face is going to be on it. You're going to be stuck with his face on the passport to him signing the high.

$100 bills along with the Treasury Secretary to him not wanting any record of his communications. He wants to change the office of the president. And unfortunately, the Supreme Court has given into him so many times how much they're willing to put. I mean, this is what we talk about on our Supreme Court unprecedented show all the time. They, you know, they pushed back when it came to the Federal Reserve and the tariffs because, of course, it's money and they care about the money and they don't push back. when it comes to labor rights and that the board covering the governing the labor rights.

But this is this is the tension that exists. And really, it's not just Trump. It is Project 2025. It is the Republicans. It is that movement that wants to make the president all powerful in this co-equal branch of government. So for today, Judge Bates, at least issuing this preliminary junction saying, I don't care what you say, Department of Justice, your interpretation of the Presidential Records Act, you have to follow it while this litigation proceeds.

Absolutely. And probably beyond, probably beyond the litigation. So stop burning everything and stop shoving it down the toilet and eating it and whatever else they were doing during the first Trump administration. It's the people's papers. It'll always be the people's papers. And no, it's not, I don't think it's going to be found to be a violation of the separation of powers that Congress has created the National Archive and required that the National Records Act in the National Archive and required that the presidential papers end up there. All they're doing is directing where the repository is and that the documents end up there. And I think ultimately even the Supreme Court is going to find that that is not a violation of the separation of powers

and all of that. When we come back, we're going to talk about the ballroom and other things related to it and how it may tie back to other things that are important to Donald Trump, but I think it's a big blow to the ballroom. A couple of developments in the ballroom that we should talk about. But first, we're going to take our last break. We've got the Legal A.F. podcast on Wednesday nights, on Saturday nights, and now on Mondays at 5 p.m. with Dina Dahl and Lisa Graves.

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I'll say something. You tell me the first thing that pops in your mind. Back in law school. First thing that pops into your mind, ballroom. All right. So ballroom. You know, Trump's. says, why is everybody upset? It's free. It's not free. It's no more free than the $400 million,

you know, Kuwait, not Kuwait, Cutter, Boeing jet that is being converted for billions of taxpayer dollars into Air Force One. If he lives to get on that plane, I mean that chronologically, I'll be shocked if that thing is ready in time. But, you know, but the retrofitting. And then he's can apparently take the taxpayer dollars like a paper airplane and fly away and stick it in the Miami convention center hotel and casino library thing that he's building on public dollars public land so we got that and the same guy that said that's free told everybody when he knocked over the east wing in the middle of the night without a permit that the um that the ballroom's free why is everybody complaining?

I got 400 million people, $400 million, because apparently it's 1.4 billion, and you seem to be $1 billion short. So there was a bill that the House originated, I think they feel, I think they feel sorry about that now,

in which they said, oh, and then they had the Secret Service guy, Dina, run around and start lobbying Republicans for votes. Well, 220 million of it is to harden the ballroom. The ballroom's not hardened? I thought the ballroom was supposed to collapse on top of the bunker,

and that was part of the security system. Now it needs to be hardened. So a hardening, and then there's other threats. Well, you didn't think about those threats before, maybe because this whole thing got planned on the back of a napkin in the middle of the night. That's why they're doing that now. There's also a secret service training. Yeah, that's a good idea.

You probably want to get secret service trade. So here's the bill, America, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer. a billion dollars what happened to that well it didn't work out the senate parliamentarian first said you know because of course the GOP just wanted to try to add it to the reconciliation bills they didn't actually have to have a vote on the record and the Senate parliamentarian said they couldn't and now it looks like the GOP's kind of dropping it because it is like a hot potato it's really unpopular that's they've already extremely unpopular going into the midterms the last thing they want is to put their name on a vote for this ballroom, ballroom slash bunker, as we know,

that's the other thing, too. They're not really clear about what is this money actually going to the existing bunker that is under there. How much of it is that? How much of it is the ballroom? You know, I just think that it's like a perfect metaphor, the fact that Trump knocked it down before having a plan. It is very easy to destroy something.

Anybody can do it with a bulldozer, right? Anybody can fire somebody. like the promise that Doge had about firing all of those air traffic controllers, hundreds of air traffic controllers, because there was supposed to be a modernization of them, the control centers, and so we didn't need as many employees. And so they just fired the people. I'm not hearing anything about some great new technology that's streamlining it. In fact, we're hearing the opposite, right?

All these planes with near misses. You know, it's easy to destroy something. It's very hard to. build it. But Trump, I think he knocked it down like a day or two after one of the No King's rallies. He was upset how unpopular he was. He took it out of the American people. He knocked down a historic part of the White House that does not belong to him. And now he can't find funding from it, even with his weakling GOP colleagues, because he keeps lying about how much it is. He keeps lying about why he needs it. He keeps, you know, lying about who's going to pay for it. You know,

they try, even with this, you know, assassination attempt, where so many people don't even know if it's real or not, you know, that they try to use for this ballroom. The fact is, is Trump uses Mar-a-Lago ballroom all the time. It is a private ballroom. He doesn't need a billion-dollar ballroom in order to be safe. The White House is extremely safe as it is, including the East Wing that he had knocked down, was extremely safe.

So, yeah, for now, at least this is a DOA, as you would say. He cannot get the funding for this very unpopular ballroom due in part, really, to him. Him and his lies have made this so politically impossible for the GOP to back, at least for now. If they manage to pull out the midterms, I'm sure they will resurrect it, but they know that they will probably be voted. you know, this is, this would be just another thing that the Democrats would campaign on. Well, like you said, you're right about that. Look at Iran. As I said, they can train a whole room of chimpanzees to push a button to bomb and do 50,000 missile, bombings sorties. But what was the plan for the 90 million people? What was the plan for the regime change? What was the plan to secure the uranium stockpile? What was the plan? There was none.

Apparently the plan is every 45 minutes announced that they're either bombing or not bombing that they're going to bomb. This is the calm before the storm, the storm before the calm of the storm before the storm of the calm. And if one more, if this is like the parent that doesn't get,

you know, the child tunes out because one more time you come home late. I'm going to take away. I don't know. I'm running out of things to take away. Nobody believes him. Every world, he has a special talent, Donald Trump. Every world leader that tussles with him, they come out stronger than they were before, right?

At home and globally. And Donald Trump comes home shrunken and weak and tail between his legs. Example, Putin, coming out of Alaska and the Ukraine war. Or she, China, or Iran's regime, the revolutionary card. Okay. They're all sitting pretty. I mean, yeah, there's some. And what is, and what is, just to touch on Iran for a minute, and what's Donald Trump can end up doing to declare victory?

He's an end up entering into a treaty that looks exactly like Barack Obama's treaty about the nuclear stockpile, you know, almost exactly the one that Obama, that Trump shit all over with one difference. We're now going to be on the hook for the billions of dollars of reparations to help Iran rebuild its Navy and its electrical grid. and all the other things, and it's oil infrastructure, and all the other things that we bombed. So we have to pay because big, big baby president wanted to be a wartime president to try to shore up his failing domestic numbers and domestic policy.

I know, I'll start a war. And, you know, without, as you said, without any planning whatsoever. You know, and we're lucky. We really, I mean this without too much tongue in cheek. We're lucky that he didn't knock over the entire White House. Because other than the same, his same approach, the White House is insecure.

It's shabby, it's insecure. I'm not comfortable there. I live there now. Knock it all down. Put a trailer outside. We're putting up a 30-story building, ladies and gentlemen. And you can't do a thing about it. Just because it was the East Wing, which they still in filings act like is still there.

the refurbishment of the East Wing. You can't demolish the East Wing and then say you're refurbishing it at the same time. Okay. If you hired a contractor to refurbish your house and you went out for lunch and the whole thing was torn down, you'd be understandably upset because that wasn't the refurbishment that you want. He could have torn down the whole White House. Mm-hmm. You know, we're lucky that he didn't.

And you're right when he gets petulant. Like, oh, people don't like me. What can I do now? bulldozer. He did the same thing at the Kennedy Center, you know, changed the name, slapped his name over John F. Kennedy's, which was in the moment, you know, in the year after his assassination, with a country literally mourning, they built the Kennedy Center and put his name on it in testament to John F. Kennedy. And then he just typed his name on top of it. And then when nobody showed up and all of the ballet troops and opera and Broadway and

stars and singers and this and that canceled, canceled, canceled, canceled. And it was going to be like Lee Greenwood every night. I don't know what this is supposed to be. I don't know. Like Lee, an MMA fighting, you know, Dana White production. He said, I got an idea. I'm going to tear down the Kennedy Center. Right?

He's like tearing down the Kennedy Center because. Absolutely. Yeah. It leaks. I know. His obsession with, he wants the, he wants the, he wants the, perspective Kennedy, but he's trying to bully his way and buy it instead of earn it. And then he's obsessed with Obama.

He could not handle that deal in Iran. And like you said, we're going to be worse off, but probably end up with a similar deal. And same with the health care credits. I mean, they, it's stunning to me. Speaking about stunning, okay, that's going to be my word of the day here. The fact that the Republicans are not even talking anymore about a replacement for all those. health care credits under Obamacare that they allowed expire on January 1st? I mean, they don't even talk about putting in a proposal.

So many Americans had their premium skyrocket, only because Trump hated the fact that the Obamacare was so incredibly popular. If you notice, they started calling it the Affordable Care Act because they didn't even want to give Obama the credit anymore to include his name. In the beginning, they called it Obama care. because I thought it was a dig, but now that it's so popular, they're starting to call it the Affordable Care Act. So I'm going to keep calling it Obamacare. But they just let that expire.

So many people are without health care. They're going to get diagnosed with cancer. They're going to have heart attacks. And they're going to have no health insurance. And that also needs to get drummed in here as we're leading up to the midterms. Because it's another example of it's very easy to let something that took so long to negotiate and put into law, Anybody can let something expire. Where's it?

But they have zero discussion. It seems to be they have moved on completely from the fact that they they increased health care premiums by thousands of thousands of dollars across the country because they cannot, they can't build anything. They can only break it. Yeah, I mean, this is, I like that. This is an administration that is in a administration that is in a race to the bottom at every level is trying, I guess, to prove to the American people the age-old question, how low can you go? We're watching the Department of Justice and Todd Blanche, how low can you go? We're watching failing polling numbers for Donald Trump. How

low can you go? I mean, we're not talking about an administration that's on the ass end that is getting its footing. That is, you know, had a rough patch in the very beginning, but is now making a vital connection with the American people. Nobody believes that. Quite the opposite, right? Did you see Jeff Bezos just gave an interview, he gave an interview to see. Oh, he says he's better. He said he was more mature this term. Well, he was a two-year-old in the first administration and now he's two and a half. But, yeah, I mean, but Bezos. He's so much more. dangerous this time around. Bezos is a butt liquor from, sorry, boot liquor.

I say butt, boot or butt. Boot butt liquor from way back. You know, he's the one that gave Melania Trump $40 million for a documentary. Has billions of dollars of Amazon computing contracts with the government. I don't know if he went. Did he go to China? Wasn't he there? Wasn't he one of the dozen?

Yeah. Right? And he invites all the Trumpers to his wedding. to what's her name. He is so far up Donald Trump's backside, right? So Bezos should just, they should, there should be a warning label when people like this can, I am not an independent thought or commentary. I am so conflicted with my business interests. This would go too long on the lower third, but I am so conflicted in my business interest that you cannot trust a word that I say. And you know what? Where did you see that? Where was that interview? It was on C-SPAN.

Right. And God damn it. C-SPAN. Oh, no, CNBC. And C-NBC, according to our producer, had a C-NBC. Okay. There's nothing with a C. NBC, of course, doesn't do their job as journalists. They should have said, well, but let's be frank here. Yeah. You do have a little bit of a conflict, do you not? Because you're in basically in business with Donald Trump and its entire family, and you were just on the plane to China, and now suddenly you're declaring that he is a competent administrator? How do you think the American people should view? What lens through which should they view your comments? But nobody has the balls to say that.

That's why people come on Midas Touch and on Legal AF, because this is our new bumper sticker. We have the balls to say it. Yeah, absolutely. Sorry, Dina. Did I make you blush? No, okay. I didn't mean to. I'm not, you know.

I've seen you swear like a sailor. Have you? No. Yeah. I don't swear, but I'm not exactly going to be. I don't care if you do. You're not a hot house flower either. Exactly.

Been around the block. Been a top lawyer for too long for that. But thanks for being in here. Thanks for stepping in for KFA. So many different ways to support our show. You already know. You know the check. People in our audience can do the checklist for me, right?

Put it in comments. One, subscribe to legal. AF YouTube channel. Two, while you're there, do Midas touch too. Two, go over to LegalAF Substack, become a member, or even a paid member. That's two. Three, support our sponsors. That's really important, right?

And then help the show, because that gives us the street cred that we need. Continue to put five-star reviews over on the audio podcast platforms, comments, views, bring people to the next episode. That all helps as we continue to. to grow our pro-democracy brand for you. And I really appreciate it. Dina, always a pleasure. You're going to be on with me for Unprecedented,

which is our Supreme Court show. We might have, who knows, on Friday, we might have some new unprecedented Supreme Court droppings that you and I can unpack. And then you're going to be on Memorial Day Monday at 5 p.m. Eastern time with Dean. Oh, look at this. Look at the graphic.

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