Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF - 6/10/2026

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

The Legal AF Podcast, hosted by Popok and Lisa Graves (in for KFA) covers the breaking news “leaking” out of the White House about Epstein (cue the mole hunt to find the listening device that must have been used!); and then turns to all things voter protection with the great voter protection lawyer, Marc Elias. Only on the award winning Legal AF pod. Democracy Docket signup link: https://www.democracydocket.com/pg-subscribe/ https://www.democracydocket.com/ Americans United: Americans United will keep fighting for freedom without favor - equality without exception. Keep up with this issue at Https://au.org/legalaf IQ Bar: Get 20% off all IQBAR products. Text LEGALAF to 64000. (Message and data rates may apply) Sundays for Dogs: Get 50% OFF your first order of Sundays.Go to https://sundaysfordogs.com/LEGALAF50 or use code: LEGALAF50 at checkout. Trust and Will: Get 20% off plus free shipping of your estate plan documents by visiting https://trustandwill.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

Seriously, why aren't Democrats in Washington doing more to stop Trump? I know. Have you heard about Phil Weiser and Colorado, though? No. Is he different? Yeah, A.G. Weiser sued the Trump administration 65 times. He's beating Trump in court again and again. Things like protecting Obamacare against Trump's illegal tariffs, and he even won against Ticketmaster. So he actually gets results. Exactly. As governor, Phil will fight for Colorado. Paid for by Phil Weiser for Colorado registered agent in Nand and Nosegazy.

Seriously, why aren't Democrats in Washington doing more to stop Trump? I know. Have you heard about Phil Weiser in Colorado, though? No. Is he different? Yeah. A.G. Weiser sued the Trump administration 65 times. He's beating Trump in court again and again. Things like protecting Obamacare against Trump's illegal tariffs, and he even won against Ticketmaster. So he actually gets results. Exactly. As governor, Phil will fight for Colorado. Paid for by Phil Weiser for Colorado registered agent in the Nand and Nostkase.

If it's Wednesday and you're on the Midas Touch Network and it's 8 p.m. Eastern Time, you must be on LegalAF, the podcast. And I'm Michael Popock and I'm joined today with one of our regular anchors on LegalAF over on the LegalAF YouTube channel, Lisa Graves. Lisa, I haven't seen you since the weekend when we were in Philadelphia for NetRu. Nation and did some amazing interviewing, including of Jamie Raskin together, which is up on Legal AF YouTube and doing great. So great to see you on the screen. It's great to see you again, and thanks for having me on here with you as your coach. Absolutely. Karen Freeman, McNifalo is traveling today. And so Lisa is here. For those who don't know Lisa, that's not just a random book behind her head. She wrote that random book behind her head. It's called Without

Precedent. It's a take. Takedown of the Roberts Court. Doesn't that sound good? It makes you feel just saying those words, a takedown of the Roberts Court. And I not only spent some quality time with Lisa Graves, constitutional scholar, extraordinaire, one of the few people in America that served in all three branches of government. She's a five-tool player, as we like to say, in baseball. And we sat in on a couple of Supreme Court panels.

I was in the audience. Lisa was up there on the panel about reform, about the United States Supreme Court. And I think at some point during the show today, we'll share sort of what we learned and what we think the proper course is once adults get back into government, which hopefully will be at the midterms.

And it was so great to hang out with the court accountability and true North people and just be surrounded. It really re-energized me. to be surrounded by people who are whose everyday existence is about voter protection, civil rights, constitutional rights, the Supreme Court and getting corruption out of it, women's rights, reproductive rights, immigration rights, you name it. We were all, you know, yoked together for three days in the Philadelphia Convention Center, right?

Yes, that's right. It was great to see you, Popak, and to see so many activists out who are really, eager to learn more about what's gone wrong, how we got here, and what we can do about it. And we had a great panel with Senator White House with two amazing legal scholars at Harvard with an organizer from Alabama in the aftermath of the Milligan case ruling by the Roberts Court last week. And so it was very exhilarating. And it was great to see some of our other allies on the court's panel and see Jamie Raskin and interview him with you because he's working on democracy.

summer. And there's a lot of things people can do. So, like, very exciting despite the hard things happening. There's a lot of lemonade to make. Yeah, agreed. And I just wanted to kind impart that to our audience. You know, when I go there, when Lisa goes there, we're your ambassadors, we're your fiduciaries. We feel that way. And we're interviewing somebody or meeting somebody, making a new relationship. That's something that will endure. We hope to the benefit of our audience on legal AF YouTube channel and of course here on the podcast. And so we've got a couple of, we're going to get into deep dive molecular level about voting and about because if you had to ask me what's the number one thing, the audience comments on,

ask me questions about on all my various podcasts and shows and videos, it's about Popok. Are we going to be able to vote? Is the vote going to count or the attorneys general ready or the States ready for all the stuff that Donald Trump's going to try to do to overthrow democracy a second time. And so I wanted to do sort of an all, almost all, 75% teaching, you know, brown bag teaching here on the podcast about all things voting. I mean voting and databases and lawsuits around that and gerrymandering and lawsuits around that. What's going on in California and how that's a blueprint that we need to be sensitive to, but is also informing us on how to fight at the midterm.

So that was actually a good thing. And then at sort of the halfway mark, you know, sort of, no pun intended, at the sort of like the Super Bowl show, the halftime show. We're bringing in Mark Elias. I'll be repeat that. I want to hear the crowd roar. I will read in Mark Elias of Democracy Docket and a lawyer. who's in the courtrooms fighting these very cases.

If you don't know Mark Elias, you need to know him. You will know him tonight. It's Legal AF meets Democracy Docket and Mark Elias at about the halfway mark. Let's kick it off, though, with some breaking news as we came on the air. This is live, live, you know, and just so you know, Lisa Graves and Dean Adal do Monday night live, Legal A.F on the Legal AF YouTube channel, LegalAF podcast Monday night live, 5 p.m. Eastern Time over on Legal A.F. This is live. So if you got questions, you want to ask Lisa or me or Mark or any of the three of us, just put it in chat. And our team will, you know, our team is standing by to put it up

for us to try to grab at certain intervals. So let's start with Epstein. Yes. Let's start there. I don't know what Maggie, I don't know who Maggie Haberman sources, but this new bombshell that came out this afternoon in anticipation of her book, inside the White House, freak out over the Epstein files. Her coverage, and I'll give the overview and then turn it over to you, Lisa. Her report is so at the molecular, like quotes, almost as if there is a mole in the situation room in February and March of last year about the Epstein file. and she's got the tapes. I mean, I don't know if somebody

surreptitiously recorded things, but she's not doing that, well, this may have been discussed or not. No, she's going, and J.D. Vance said the following. And then in response, you know, this guy said, you know, James Blake said the following.

And I'm like, these are like quotes. So leaky administration, somebody's talking. You know, that's going to piss off Donald Trump but Maggie Haberman doesn't care. And so the overview is, and we watched a lot of these pieces, but Maggie puts it together in a puzzle

and makes us understand what happened. So in and around, if everybody remembers in the timeline, because sometimes you kind of get it out of whack, you've got Trump and Bondi getting a lot of pressure, the administration getting a lot of pressure back in January and February to do something about the Epstein Files

and to release them. Because people in the administration, like Patel, they were all right-wing podcasters that were big conspiracy theorists and they were all about the Epstein files. And so there's this big push internally and externally to release it. And all, according to Maggie Haberman,

all the reporting, all Trump wanted to do was not release any documents at all. That was the first thing. His next gambit was to have a sort of a tip of the hat to transparency, a gesture of transparency without really being transparent. They were trying to calculate how little they could produce. This is in situation room. Little they could produce in order to satisfy what they thought was a story that was going

to go away. They were convinced based on polling and based on people in the room like Susie Wiles and others that this story was going to blow over, okay, which of course, huge miscalculation. And they believed it was only being kept alive by left-wing podcasters and fringe conspiracy theorists. They didn't say minus illegal a.F, but they might as well. And that there was no real voting block that was being represented by these conspiracy theories. That was sort of at the core, right? And then the reporting is that J.D. Vance was freaking out. I mean, that was the words. That's the freak out. That J.D. Vance in particular had bought

into all the conspiracy theories. And he was like, we got to come clean. We got to release everything. In fact, even if it has Trump's name on it, it'll be better if we get out ahead of the story. So he's got a situation room, right, Lisa? That's as reported. I'll paint the picture and turn it over to you. You got Susie Wiles, Chief of Staff. You've got, you've got Carolyn Levitt, press secretary, Stephen Chung, communications director. You've got Todd Blanche and Bondi, Cash Patel. You've got Warrington, who's the White House Council. You've got, who's the guy that's in charge of dummymandering? James, it'll come to me in a minute. James Blair. Yeah, Blair. You got Blair in there. Blair, and this is the quote where I was like, Maggie's got a source. Like, that taped

this, because Blair's comment was when they said, we need a press conference. I mean, immediately. And he stood up, and the only bright thing in the room, he said, with all due, respect, everybody in this room developed the original communications plan that got us into this mess. So I don't think another communications plan by you guys is going to get us out of it. And then lastly, they had to figure out what to do with the problem named Galane Maxwell. And so in the same room, they were considering, should we have Tucker Carlson interviewer? What should we do about it? And the best line, did you catch the line of Stephen Chung?

About about Galene? We'll have to cover something. Yeah, no, he said Stephen Chung said, giving a pardon to a person convicted of girl sex trafficking is a PR disaster. Nothing about the morality. Nothing about the ethics. It's a PR disaster. All right, take it from there.

You also have the Epstein birthday book. that came with the Wall Street Journal all at the same time. What did you make from the report, the detail of the reporting? Well, this is really an extraordinary set of reporting. And as you mentioned, this is a preview of the book that Maggie Haberman wrote. They described that this book is based on over 1,000 interviews. And they only did exact quotes where the person was certain that that's what was said. And if they had any doubt, they paraphrase or didn't include it. And so it looks pretty rock solid in terms of the documentation. But as you point out, this particular story in The York Times today is based on a meeting in the situation room. Now, that's the room

typically where the president of the United States sits with generals and national security advisors on matters of war and peace. But in this instance, Trump wasn't there. He was excluded from the meeting because these advisors were so concerned about what was happening in terms of the public response to the failure, basically this administration, to be transparent about the EFSIN files after all of the time that so many of them, including Cash Patel and others had spent talking about the EPST files during the Biden administration and during the 2024 election. And so it really is, it's an amazing tale and it looks to be very accurate on the surface. And there are a couple things that really did stand out for me, you know, based on this reporting.

One was, like you said, there's clearly a leak or two, or maybe three, who knows, given the number of quotes, verbatim quotes, or someone taking very good notes or perhaps someone taking very good notes from a recording. It really is an extraordinary set of conversations. And like you said, Stephen Chung's comment about Galane Maxwell isn't about the morality of cutting a deal or the immorality of cutting a deal with Galane Maxwell. It's about how it would look, which is really extraordinary. And so in essence, part of the of the story that's told today is how that scheme was hatched. How they decided that they were going to, the idea was that they would interview Maxwell or have Tucker Carlson or someone interview Maxwell and basically count on her saying that Trump did nothing wrong, despite, you know, some of the things we know in those files that later came out, despite other statements by other women about how Donald Trump had treated them. And so, you know, that was the gamble they were willing to make. And there was a conversation about if they did this meeting with her, you know, would she get a pardon or a commutation or something else? Well, we know what happened next. What happened next is that

Todd Blanche, Donald Trump's former defense attorney, inter-quote interviewed, and that's technically true, but, you know, I'm going to use the term loosely, for a transcript to be specifically released for this purpose of trying to clear Donald Trump saying that she never saw him do anything wrong. And immediately after this interview, she was transferred from the prison that she was duly sentenced to for the very serious crime she was convicted of of sex trafficking and sexual abuse as well to one of those club feds. And so, you know, this went down in some ways how they planned it. But there are a couple of things I want to flag, Michael, if that's all right, because when you look at the story of what happened here, the part of the story that's told

here and then beyond. What you see is a timeline. And the timeline in part is, you know, February of last year, Pam Bondi saying, you know, she's got the client list on her desk right here and just getting ready to clear it. Then on the 27th of February, they released the binders that didn't have anything new. Oh, I love the binders. I love the, and get, I know you're going to get there about the fact that about whether she cleared it or not. Yes, which, which, yeah, which the White House officials were shocked. They had not cleared it. They hadn't seen them.

And the influencers felt betrayed because there was really nothing new in there. Then you see a statement, I think it was in June of 2025, where the comments from the judgment were, the files contained a lot of child porn, a lot of child porn. So that admission,

then you have this statement that comes out in July, July 7th, 2025, in which this memo from DOJ and FBI, in which the memo says, A, there's no client list, forget about what Pam Bondi said and what we've all been saying all along, B, that they reviewed over 300 gigs of, quote, evidence. That was a nice admission. And C, that despite all this, that there will be no further investigation of any third parties. So you have this admission that there's a ton of child porn in these files,

but they're not going to do any further investigation. It was extraordinary. It landed like a bombshell. Yeah. Before you leave that memo, I don't have it up. We can't put it up here. But do you remember, not only was at two pages and completely cleared. It completely cleared and exonerated everybody.

But it was, talking about cowardless, cowardice. It was unsigned. And I think undated and unsigned. Nothing says, nothing says, I want to be associated with this document. Like somebody doesn't want to put their signature on it. Yeah. I mean, an anonymous finding from the Justice Department. And, you know, they put their names all over everything else, right?

So then as this meeting is happening in the situation room with these, you know, nearly a dozen high-level Trump advisors trying to figure out what to do in the face of Trump, trying to stop anything else from coming out of the Epstein files, the Wall Street Journal story breaks about the birthday card and Donald Trump's close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and all of the wonderful secret things. that they know about each other. The enigma. The image of the woman and the breasts and the signature line, you know,

standing in for the pubic hair, which Trump is denied. But let me just say one of the pieces that is reemphasizing the story is that that birthday card wasn't just in a book of birthday cards. It was in a leather-bound book. Wait, wait. Four-volume leather-bound. He didn't even make the first volume. Right.

Right. Right. You know, and so you know, so that part, that's right. And on that note, on that note, there were hundreds of people that that made submissions to this birthday book that Colleen Maxwell said she, she handled because her mother had done it for her father or whatever. And it brought down careers all over the world in academia and finance, in the royal family and the rest. Not one person of the hundreds of people on either side of doctors. Donald Trump on the page or in the vodka, I said that's a forgery. That's not mine. The only person who says somebody went back, somebody forged it about my relate, is Donald Trump. Yeah. Yeah, it's extraordinary. And then another component of this, they replay, you know, Marjorie Taylor Green's encounter with Donald Trump. I think that was also maybe in the situation room it was at the White House or something. And she says that Donald Trump told her that releasing the obscene files could hurt some of his friends. And my.

thought was, are those friends John Barron, John Miller, and David Denison, the aliases that Donald Trump has used? But, you know, clearly we've seen other names come forward, Howard Lutnik and others who are mentioned in the, in the Epstein files when they were finally, a portion of them was finally released as part of the Epstein Transparencies Act, where a handful of Republicans joined every Democrat in, you know, voting for their release. And then Trump signed on to say, you know, he just couldn't stop the inevitable. No, that was total. That was four. 434 out of 435 at the end. One guy didn't sign on.

Right. Right. Right. Exactly. Once the lemmings started, like they all went over. You had to discharge. You had to discharge position. Yeah.

Initially for the discharge position, there were only like four or five. And in fact, that was when the House Speaker was trying to hold off on swearing in Adelaide Adelaide Grahalva, who we had on the show on Legal A.F to talk about this debacle of not being sworn in. Once she was sworn in, they could not hold it off. And then almost. every single member of Congress voted for it. But let's talk about what happened next because that was just last fall. Then suddenly in January of this year, January 30th, this year,

Todd Blanche announces there's going to be no more files released, no more files released. And I really want to be careful about what I say here because there are many shocking things in that press conference. But one of them was he specifically said, of course, any depiction of child pornography was obviously excluded. And then he said, quote, anything that would jeopardize an active federal investigation. And finally, anything that depicts or contains images of death, physical abuse or injury are also not produced. Still, we have had no prosecutions of anyone coming out of the files that DOJ and the FBI reviewed. The fact that they had tons of child porn in there and seemingly images of death and physical injury and no consequences

for anyone in terms of a criminal investigation other than Epstein and Gleine Maxwell is itself an outrageous scandal. Absolutely. And our colleague, Katie Fang, and I just interviewed her lawyer, Brendan Ballou, from the Public Integrity Project. You know, she filed the first and actually the only

lawsuit under the Epstein Transparency Act. She has a hearing June 30th at the front of Judge Sullivan in which she's saying as a reporter, I have been informationally injured by the failed, which is a standing element.

I can't do my job. I can't do my job by continuing to sit back and be spoon-fed documents and be told that's all there is. We know there's three million more. And her lawsuit is to obtain the entirety of the Epstein files, including the unredacted, including the Donald Trump documents, including get this one, Karen. Karen, sorry. You know who I usually do the show with, sorry, Lisa, including the foreign, the foreign,

They didn't bother if it was in a foreign language, they just went pass. This is an international child sex trafficking ring. How do you pass on the foreign language ones? So, you know, they attacked you for not having standing, but let's see what happens come June 30th in front of Judge Sullivan. That's right. And then, you know, on top of that, there was a couple of the things that are worth noting because all of this redaction effort at our expense by the FBI, by different agents or contractors,

who knows, and by Todd Blanche reviewing them, he said himself, you know, you have a situation in which the victim's names were exposed, again, on the sloppiness, but the men who were implicated in a number of these exchanges about Snow White and other issues, their names were redacted. And Jamie Raskin and other members of Congress went to the Justice Department to have a look at the computers to be able to do a search, sort of a Google search of the files. And there are different reports coming out of those meetings. But the accounts are tens of thousands up to a million times Donald Trump's name appears in these files or Mara Lago or things related to Trump appear in these files. And that's just these files. That doesn't include the files that were released by the

Jeffrey Epstein estate that came out last fall that the Judiciary Committee and others have been have been sharing where in that instance, the Wall Street Journal did an analysis that showed that in a decade-long period or more, Donald Trump's name appeared more than anyone else's names in those files. And so, you know, Donald Trump is repeatedly referenced in these files. And there are some stories that were reprised in this New New York Times report showing that there were allegations again against Donald Trump. Some of them, you know, some of the allegations have been covered. in other reporting. There's the reprise of the statement of a prosecutor in 2020 that Donald Trump had taken far more trips on Epstein's jet than was previously known. And there was a very, you know,

a sad story about, you know, coming through from Sarah Ransom about one of the women in Epstein's sex shopping ring, a woman named Jen, who, who, who according to this claim, you know, Jen was someone who Donald Trump had sexual relationships, sexual relations with, and was, you know, a very, I don't know if I can say this on the air, I guess I'll just go for it and say. I mean, it's shocking to see a description that Donald Trump purportedly was so rough with this woman's nipples that they were raw and red and swollen and had made other statements about women's nipples among other things. And another part of this, you know, investigation that we've seen from the reporting, this particular part from NPR, not from the York Times, was how the 302s, which are the

write-ups of the FBI when they interview someone making an allegation, how those pertaining to Donald Trump had been removed in sequence. And NPR helped break that story. So there's a lot of great investigative journalism going on. We have a lot more to learn from the book. This is just an excerpt of this whole book that Maggie Haberman did. And I think there are going to be more revelations to come. Absolutely. And it's their worst. nightmare. There's a reason it's called the freak out because they were in the timeline the way you presented it. They were freaking out because it was just one bad story for them after another. But it all starts with Trump. If Trump wanted to do the right thing, which he obviously didn't,

and he should have released everything and appointed had his Department of Justice appoint an independent special counsel to go after wherever the files led. But we knew. Right. But of course, they don't believe in independent special counsel. Right. Let me just. just say this, it's interesting, like the speculation of the leak is, you know, who the leakers are. Oh, you're speculating about the leak already? Who is it? Yeah, I mean, is it Dan Bungino? You know, who could it be? But, you know, one of the things in there is, you know, I think, you know, I'll just say this, I'll say this on the record. I think J.D. Vance was right to say they should just release the files, you know, they should just be released. But I'm sure that someone in the White House

is going to read that as betrayal, that the second in line for the president, the first in line for the presidency after Trump is saying, let's release all this into the wild, you know? I think Marco Rubio is good. I think Vance just bought himself being a vice president again. I mean, running for vice president again on that one. But we'll continue to cover that story. And then lastly, I think we all know now that once again, Donald Trump for the eighth time. nighttime. I told the American people that the Iran war, the ending of it was just around the corner. And now we're firing off, you know, new missiles again tonight. And Iran is retaliating by firing on U.S. assets in Bahrain and Kuwait and other places. And we're no closer to this end game

because this Iran war will end, not when Donald Trump says it'll end. It'll end when the Iranians say it ends. and they're not done yet. And they've realized they can withstand the awesome firepower of the American military and survive that because they're on a different scale. They're on a hundred year. They look at things in 100 years, not in how is this going to affect the stock market.

And as a result, the best case scenario, and this is terrible, but best case scenario is that we get the Obama treaty deal that Trump pulled out of, probably a worse version of it. And we have to spend billions of dollars in reparations to rebuild Iran without also obtaining regime change. It's one thing to do the Marshall Plan. Right. Right.

But, you know, we took out Japan and Germany, right? But, like, we're going to rebuild the Islamic Republican Guard. Like, I don't understand. And then he's going to declare, you know, and then cue the confetti cannons on Fox, you know, mission accomplished. What was the mission? Yeah, it really, I mean, in some ways the mission looks like Wall Street manipulation and people getting rich off of this war. And also Benjamin Netanyahu getting what he wants in terms of the U.S. being pulled into this war of choice when it wasn't necessary. And it really was predicated by the utterly foolish withdrawal from the agreement that

the Obama administration had negotiated, just like sort of a de facto rejection of whatever this, the first black President of the States had done in Iran. We are worse off than we were in that agreement. We're worse off than we were last year. Iran is holding many of the cards. And like you said, we're in a position with Trump's claims that we, the taxpayers are going to end up paying, we, the taxpayers are going to end up paying to rebuild Iran. And also Iran is getting more revenue because it's able to now put a tax and a toll on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which was not happening before. So we're definitely in a worse position because of Donald Trump's reckless policies, his erratic behavior, his inability to actually negotiate an actual resolution and his

inability to accept that a previous administration did anything right and had a good agreement in place that would have held back on Iran's nuclear program, had more inspections, and not had us paying them, you know, paying them to rebuild the country that we have attacked. And so it really is, it really is basically an unmitigated disaster. All that is not funny, but I did hear comedians say that Donald Trump has won and lost and one in loss and one and lost the Iran war more than any other president in U.S. history. Sorry. That's true. I counted it. It was seven until this week. So now it's probably up to about nine. When I'm so happy to have you here. I'm sure our audience is thrilled. When we come back from a quick break here on legal AF, we're going to get in to the weeds and the molecular of all things voting. voting protection, voting mobilization, data protection and voter information protection, the Postal Service.

And what we're learning by watching Donald Trump attack the California vote, we can talk about why that's taking a minute with 16 million votes, 13 million of them, mail-in ballots. And then, you know, sort of a winning and losing, right? We're winning on data protection and maybe on the federal databases and probably on the Trump screwing around with the Postal Service, but we're losing in maps and gerrymandering. And I can't think of anybody better to kind of sort all this out for us in the post-Calais world than Democracy Docket's Mark Elias, which will bring in after our break. And he just wrote a great piece on Democracy Docket about how Calais,

the ruling in which the United States Supreme Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and said, yeah, but the last pin standing is intentional discrimination. If you've got intentional discrimination, come back to us. And then two weeks later, there was a case of intentional discrimination in the Alabama maps. They said, no, no, no, you're not giving enough credence and enough deference to the legislature who said it's not intentionally discriminating. And now Mark pulls it forward and says he's starting to see in his cases and in cases that they're using Calais to say any restriction on voting, meaning voter suppression, any hurdle that they put up before you vote, the only way you can tear it down is if you show a Calais-like intentional

discrimination. So you see how already they're trying to benefit from the Calais decision to argue about that intentional discrimination. So I want to bring Mark in so many different ways to support what we do here on Legal AF, the YouTube channel, and LegalAF. the podcast is we've got a YouTube channel. That's what I was trying to say. Come over to LegalAF YouTube. Got 1.1.2 million subscribers right now. Amazing content about a dozen contributors, including Adam Klausfeld,

all rise new court accountability action and True North, along with Lisa Graves and Alex Aronson. Dean Adahl is there as well. And in addition, we have the new Monday Night Live, M&L, yeah, Monday Night Live, Legal AF. So if you can't get your fill of Legal AF, Monday night, that one's hosted by Dina Dahl and Lisa Graves, 5 p.m. Eastern Time on LegalAF YouTube. And we have LegalAF, the substack. We come at all, you know, it's like candy bars. We come at all different shapes and sizes

for your, for your viewing pleasure. I do a live report every day. I just did one today with Adam Klausfeld. And we have this content like filings that you can read for yourself on legal A-F substack. And then of course, we've got the podcast. Thank you. We, we, oh, I can show it. We won the Webby's and we, I finally got them here. They're in the back. That's what these coils are. Those are the way. There they are. I didn't know what those were. They look great. I mean, I've seen them. That is three of them. Three of them. We swept them for best news podcast and really, that's all because of your generosity of time and commitment to what we do here. So keep the podcast afloat.

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They've got dials anymore. Legal A, here on Legal AF podcast. Elias Democracy Docket right after this quick break. This episode is brought to you by IQ Bar, our exclusive snack, hydration and coffee sponsor. IQ bar protein bars, IQ Mix, hydration mixes, and IQ Joe mushroom coffees are the delicious, low sugar, brain and body fuel you need to win your day. The ultimate sampler pack is a great way to try all IQ bar products and flavors. You get nine IQ bars, eight IQ Mixed sticks, and four IQ Joe sticks. All IQ bar products are clean, label, certified, and entirely free from gluten, dairy, soy, GMOs, and artificial ingredients.

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That's AU.org slash legal a.F. And we are back, and I'm wearing the same glasses as when I recorded. I'm so glad you. You have a lot of glasses. I do. I have a collection. Thank you very much. I was walking around the streets of Philadelphia, and I got stopped the number of times like, Popok.

Which is great. So we're back. and let's get to our teaching about voting rights. I want to make, look, we don't blow smoke or sunshine on the show. We never have. I want to be, I want to give honest commentary and analysis, but I also want to give people some hope about the voting day, election day, and what people are prepared, whether it's public interest groups

and private lawyers like Mark Elias, or it's the attorneys general of the various states, Democratic, and others, N-A-C-P, ACLU, you name it, how they are ready, have already done tabletop exercises to get ready for the worst. They've already thought of the worst. They've probably out-thought Donald Trump about the worst of the things that he could possibly do,

and they are ready for it. And we're ready for Mark Elias. Let's bring in Mark Elias. Hey, Mark. Good to say you. Hey, you as well. Thanks, sure. I know you were traveling.

busy in your court cases, but our audience is thirsty for your knowledge. I don't know if you know Lisa Graves. You guys probably bumped into worlds in the past. I do. Two of our glasses are not like the other. We'll leave it at that. And for the audio listeners. So the, look, I've, you know, I'm a voracious consumer of all things on Democracy Docket. If people don't know about that, They should be going there and subscribing and helping marks in its cause and all of that. But, you know, why don't we talk about data protection, the federal database that Trump's trying to use, and the post office not delivering mail-in ballots? We can talk about mail-in ballots because we're about to get a ruling for the United States Supreme Court,

which, for instance, if they rule against grace periods, what's going on in California, which is waiting plus seven days for ballots to come in wouldn't be allowed. It is allowed for this election. One of the reasons that they are methodically taking some time, taking a minute to count votes in the mail-in ballot votes, especially in California. Then you got the other area that you're very active with where we're not winning as much, which is maps and gerrymandering, including you just posted in Florida,

where I live, you know, the Supreme Court of Florida, jurisdiction, we're okay with a map, even though it violates the Florida Constitution, we're not going to enter a writ, which is totally crazy. So why don't I turn it over to you? And you know what our audience ultimately wants to hear is, as my vote protected? And what can I do to assist voter mobilization and the protection of the vote? Yeah. So the first thing to know is that Donald Trump wants you to be so concerned that you lose hope.

And if you lose hope, he wins because then you don't vote. You don't bother participating because you think it's all futile. So we can't let him win. We have to understand that it is all of our jobs to fight for free and fair elections. It is all of our jobs to stand up for democracy. Some of us do it in the courtroom. Some of us do it on podcasts and YouTube shows. Some of us do it by calling our friends, writing postcards to strangers we don't know,

registering voters, but we all have an obligation. What Donald Trump is trying to do in 2026, that is different, right? the usual voter suppression, election subversion that we have become used to, that I became well known for defeating Donald Trump in court after the 2020 election for Joe Biden, right? All of that is still out there. But what is different is what you mentioned, which is that Donald Trump wants to build a national database of voters so that he and his administration can go through it and remove the people they don't want to vote and then send back to the states.

a list of who they believe should be eligible to get a ballot and cast a ballot. Now, they have conscripted or are trying to conscript the states into turning this data over. Some states are doing so. Many states are fighting. My law firm and I, we are undefeated in those cases. We're involved in 30 cases preventing those voter files from being turned over. We are so far undefeated. We know those cases are now proceeding through the courts of appeal.

The other thing that Donald Trump is trying to do is to try to get the, U.S. Postal Service to agree that if someone is not on the list that Donald Trump and his administration turns over to them to the states and to the Postal Service, that the U.S. Postal Service won't deliver that person a ballot or return their ballot. So that is the new sort of scheme that Trump and his cronies are trying to effectuate. And we're fighting them in court. We've already sued them in federal district court in Washington, D.C. That case is now before the D.C. circuit.

There are other cases by the state attorney general, the Democratic state attorney general that are going on in Massachusetts. So this is all going to be laid out and played out in court. But what I can't do, what I can't have is for people to just say, well, the system's rigged and Mark will never win. Or the system is rigged and Donald Trump will always get what he wants. The fact is we have a very good track record of beating him in court. He has a long history of losing these court cases. And so while I have eyes wide open about the U.S. Supreme Court and particularly the cases that we're waiting to have decisions on, you know, I have belief and confidence that if we all do everything we can, if the lawyers do everything they can, the voter registration groups do everything they can, the voters do their part by checking your registration, making sure it's up to date, making sure you have a plan to vote, you understand what rules have may have been changed, and then voting. I think if we all do that, I think in the end we'll be okay. Yeah, and on that, at least if you don't mind, I'll just, I'll just kind of kick it off there.

I mean, Mark's also being humble. I don't know if you're 10 and O or just the whole group opposing state data being turned. Harmie Dillon is 0 and 10, I think, or oh. Yes. At least, right. Okay. We are, we are, we are nine and oh. There was one judge in Arizona who didn't let us into the case.

Oh, you're right. So we are, we are one victory. We have not lost, but we are one victory behind the total number of cases that DAA is lost. That's what I thought. And for those that, you know, who are kind of joining our democracy in progress, and it's not something we often think about except when we're here at this critical moment. The elections of federal officers and the president was purposely, that regulation, that process, was purposely by our framers of the Constitution and the founding government given to the states because they didn't trust the new federal government

and the power of the federal government to run its own elections. People may forget, if less they watched like Ken Burns' American Revolution, how corrupt the colonial governments were, right? And governors of states that are now, you know, proud states of ours. But there's a lot of bribery going on in there with the chief executive of some of these states.

And they were like, yeah, we're never going to have that happen again. We barely trust the new federal government. We certainly don't want them running their own election. So they divided the labor on purpose. And what Trump's trying to do is say, no, we're going to federalize federal elections and take that power away from the states, right? Yeah. So the one thing people need to recognize is that the states, as you say, administer elections, right? So a lot of you out there are saying, actually, it's in my state.

It's at the county level. That's fine. States devolved the power down. But the Constitution gives the states the authorities at the time, place, and manner of federal elections. only to subject to legislation enacted by Congress. Now, Congress has enacted very few laws in this area. The one law that people are most familiar with is that Congress set a uniform election day

of the Tuesday following the first Monday and November. But there are very few laws that Congress has imposed its will on the states. The states administer their elections. But here's the most important thing. The president has no role. Like even where there is, a federal role, it is left entirely in the Constitution to Legislation Acted by Congress. And so when Donald Trump says that he believes the states are his agents for counting and tabulating

ballots, something he has said and something he has posted on social media, that is wrong. It is a lie, but it's also just constitutionally nonsense. When he says he can issue executive orders to dictate what the states do, that is wrong. It is a lie and it is constitutional nonsense. the only federal player, the only way that there can be federal role in these elections is if Congress enacts new laws, and Congress is not doing that. Exactly. And so when we, I know we quake in our boots when he talks about, I think we should

federalize the elections. And then anytime I hear the post office involved with my sacred right to vote, you know, the entity that can't deliver my catalog. or stuff's my stuff's my ballot box. Stuff's my post box with other people's mail. They're going to be responsible for deciding

whether I can vote or not in mail-in voting. And mail-in voting, this is the other dirty trick of Donald Trump, you know, one of the greatest tricks, is try to convince people, especially in his party and his face, that mail-in voting is a four-letter word and a dirty word

and it means fraud. 13 million out of 16 million people in California just voted successfully by mail-in ballot. In states like Washington, up and down the West Coast, all they do is mail-in or drop-box valid. There is no machine that you go for, and they're not rife with fraud. And so this whole, you know, orchestrate, I want to turn to California now, this whole orchestrated attack by Trump hoping people aren't noticing, but there's got to be fraud. How is the right-wing MAGA podcaster that I, that I, that I Doors not winning the L.A. mayoral race. Like, are you effing kidding me? You got 6-13 million ballots.

They have a seven-day grace period, which just expired yesterday, to finish the count. Plus, they have 20 or 21 days to check signatures. So it takes a minute to open a ballot, double-check it against the book, and clock it in. And they're just doing it methodically. I'm going to have Rob Bonta, the attorney general on on Friday, to talk about it. But what are you picking up, Mark? And then I didn't mean to squeeze Lisa out of this conversation. I'm going to ask Mark in a minute. Mark, what do you think about the blueprint that Trump's using against California and what

we can do about it? Lisa, get into it. Get into a dialogue with Mark. I didn't mean to hot. No, no. It's all good. I just want to say, Mark, it's a real joy to be on this with you and Popak. And I'm such a fan of the work of you and your team and the Elias Group and Democracy

Docket. It should be a must read, must subscribe for everyone. And, you know, I do think that, you know, what we're waiting for on this Roberts Court decision on how votes are counted. It really is extraordinary. The three of us all went to law school, I would say, for me a long time ago. But, you know, the mayor. And Mark, too. He and I were in law school together.

Right. But I might be older than you. But anyway, the tried and true reality is that, you know, the postmark has been the traditional way for litigation, lawsuits, you file your complaint. is it on time? The postmark has been something that could be trusted. And now Donald Trump is trying to, you know, erode and destroy that trust by having that be potentially manipulated by the Postal Service that has no qualification in this area, no skills, no training, and no proper role by law, you know, by constitution or statute to do this. And yet, the reality is, is that America's been voting by mail since the Civil War. That in 1964 election of Abraham Lincoln, the re-election, it was a vote. by mail. And so now you have the Republican Party conspiring with Donald Trump in Mississippi

to say that you cannot count the ballots, even if they're postmarked the day of the election. And so I guess I'm wondering, A, what your thoughts are about where that case is going. I'm very worried given John Roberts hostility to voting rights as he's demonstrated over and over again as a lawyer and as a judge using his role as a judge to win what he couldn't win as a lawyer. But also, I'm very concerned about the fact that that case could implicate early voting, too. That's right. So can you unpack that for us? Yeah. So first of all, I want to make a political point that I think is implicit in some of what you, what both of you said, which is that, you know, mail-in voting is not inherently better for Democrats and Republicans. I mean, you know, Michael,

you're in Florida. Florida Republicans gained. control of that state largely because they invested more in mail-in voting than Democrats did. So, like, there are lots of states where you could, where I could point you to, Arizona's another state where Republicans had a huge advantage, and in Florida still do, have a huge advantage in mail-in voting. So there's something partisan about this. Donald Trump decided didn't like mail-in voting because during COVID, he thought it would benefit Democrats because Democrats were more were more careful about the health risks of COVID than he thought than the Republicans would big. But here we are, and, you know, Trump and the Republican Party are now in a war on every aspect

of mail-in voting. They try to ban ballot drop boxes. They try to shorten the periods to get mail-in ballots. They've tried to disqualify more mail-in ballots. And the latest thing is, you're exactly right. They are trying to say that a federal law, the very federal law I mentioned, that sets election day as the Tuesday following first Monday in November, their argument is that that means that ballots postmarked by election day that are put in the mail before election day, postmarked by election they can't be counted even if they come in a few days afterwards. I know if that doesn't make any sense to you, it doesn't make any sense to anyone, but that is their legal argument. I have litigated this issue against Republicans in state after state and we won and we won and we won and won and won.

Finally, the RNC decided to bring a lawsuit against Mississippi. Yes, Mississippi, which by the way does not have no excuse mail in voting. And I don't think they sued Mississippi because they thought that, you know, there was fraud in Mississippi or because the elections were closed. They thought it was a, I think, they brought the case because they thought they'd get a hometown treatment, right? They'd be suing the Republican state of Mississippi. Well, me and my law firm, on behalf of our clients, we intervened in that case and we have been defending that case, essentially defending the Mississippi law now in the U.S. Supreme Court. And we're waiting on a decision. You're exactly right that if the Republican National Committee wins this case and we lose

this case. Look, they're going to say it's not just ballots in the mail that come in after election day. They're going to say it's early voting, right? I mean, they're going to say, well, if it, if election day means election day, then you can't vote early. They're also going to say that you can't cure provisional ballots because after all, the provisional ballots are not counted on election day if they're cured afterwards. And so this is just the first step in them trying to institute what Donald Trump says he wants, which is in person on election. day only voting. And that will disenfranchise lots and lots of people. He thinks that if you disenfranchise all those people, it helps Republicans win elections. You know, this is kind of an

insidery point. But if you look at why it is that the RNC believes it have standing in this case, go back to the original complaint, it's because they said, we think that this will disenfranchise more Democrats and help more Republicans. So like, they're pretty upfront about why they're doing this when they have to for standing purposes. But, you know, we're waiting to do it the Supreme Court rules. Can I just ask you a quick follow up on that, which is, you know, one of those pieces is that Donald Trump, I think, went to court. You may have been on the other side of this in 2020 to try to stop Pennsylvania from counting the ballots that arrived early ahead of time. And so that pushed all that counting until after the polls closed like 8 o'clock or 7 o'clock,

whatever closes. And then there's this surge when those votes are counted. And then Donald Trump because the claim he won, but then it was stolen because somehow in the middle of the night, things changed. What changed was those ballots were counted? Can you talk a little bit just about that component? Because that's what's going on in California, too. This idea that they weren't counted that night and couldn't actually be counted that night that somehow this is a fraud. Yeah. And this makes my blood boil. I mean, I got to tell you, you know, the New York Times, people wonder why people don't trust the legacy media. They don't trust the legacy media because the New York Times of all publications today had an editorial in which they are basically critical

of the state of California and essentially mouth the same talking points that Donald Trump and the Republicans have been mouthing about California. And if you think it ends and begins in California, you are wrong. Because in 2020, when I was representing Joe Biden and the Democratic Party in beating Donald Trump in court more than 60 times, you are exactly right. Remember the stop the steel slogan? they wanted to stop counting. And the state of Pennsylvania took several days. The state of Arizona took several days. The state of Nevada took several days.

Georgia took several days. And so it has been Donald Trump's talking point that we should not be counting ballots past election day. And why the New York Times would associate itself with this crazy argument against California is beyond me. But here's the deal with California. California counts slowly for three reasons. Number one, it is a very big state with a lot of jurisdictions and a whole lot of ballots.

It's got a long ballot because there's a lot of races. It has a multi, it has multi languages and it's got a lot of jurisdictions. Number two, as you point out, it gives people more time to ensure that their ballot has been received and that it is processed and if it is rejected because the signatures are deemed not to match, it gives voters an opportunity to cure it by proving that, in fact, it was their signature both times. Okay. So that takes time. Now, I have argued for years that states should not be doing that signature matching. In fact, I sued Florida years ago, and I won. I sued Georgia years ago, and I won because they had very high rejection rates in that signature matching. And Florida's

signature matching program, though I still don't think it's entirely right. It is much better. The rates of rejection are much lower. So my answer to Florida, to California is if Donald Trump and the Republicans want you to speed up, let's stop the junk science of signature matching. And it is junk science. There is no court in America that would allow a person to testify whether a signature on one document matches a signature on another document. In fact, as you all know as lawyers, there's actually a federal rule of evidence that prohibits that, that prohibits lay handwriting analysis. Exactly. I don't think, not every state does signature matching.

I think California should get rid of it. But why does California have it? They have it to satisfy the same right-wing zealots who claim that there's fraud, right? So they do this whole kabuki theater that takes all of this time in order to contend with the fact that people say, If you don't signature match is going to be fraud. And then they get attacked for taking the time to doing that thing. So like to me, this is something we need to stand tall and not give an ounce, not give an inch. You know, the fact that the New York Times, you know, thinks there's a middle ground here.

Here's my message. I don't compromise with the Republicans because there is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist. And they are trying to burn down democracy. So every time someone says, well, maybe California can do it a little bit this way or a little bit that way. All you're doing is making Donald Trump's claims more effective. And it's not going to begin and end in California. He'll be making those claims in all the other states as well. Right.

And using his, well, he's not the U.S. attorney. He made himself the deputy, whatever he is, couldn't get confirmed. You know, then declaring, well, right on cue, oh, there's fraud. It's got to be fraud. We've opened up fraud investigations. And you saw the U.S. attorney in California. Right. The most shameful thing is what the hell is Clayton, the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of York.

He was on CNBC saying, yeah, he has concerns. I'm thinking, don't you have enough bank fraud? Don't you have enough crypto schemes of the Trump family going on for you to be paying attention to? What the hell are you opining about California? Well, let me use my prior life. Jake Clayton was a notorious golf buddy of Donald Trump and Howard Lutnik back in the day. The reason that Jay Clayton became the head of the SEC is because Howard Lutnik wanted him to be the head of the SEC. He really, they first wanted him to be attorney general in the first administration.

He didn't want it. He wanted SEC. This time around, he didn't want to be in the government at all. But when they left the U.S. attorney, the once proud U.S. Attorney's Office of Manhattan in Shambles, after the Mayor Adams' indictment and Amyle Bovi, they needed some adult. And he looks like he's from central casting, right? He does. He does. He got the suits, got the voice.

But he's a political hack. and he got he they pushed a button like they do with jene piro he just comes off less greasy and he pushed a button and said jay you got to go on cnbc and you got to shit all over california now he's well okay so that's it if he a big law guy from new york or what where is he was a big law guy from new york and he's not suited uh for i think burman when he wouldn't leave the office said out loud i'm not right i'm not going to leave the office until i don't want no jake right no he has no experience kids, he'll dismiss all of my, all of my criminal cases. And he doesn't, this is, he's a reluctant war, happy warrior. He doesn't really want the job and they shove him out to do it. But he does it.

I'm not making any excuses for Jay Clayton whatsoever. And to Mark's point, for those that want to go to see the editorial board today, California's excuses are damaging faith in government. Here's the, here's the line that I'm sure this is where Mark's blood started to boil. There's no good reason that California takes so long to count votes. Most democracies around the world count votes quickly. So do most large U.S. states. California has since adopted an approach to election administration without meaningful benefit and with substantial downside.

It makes the state government look incompetent. And we're like, we need that, right? No. I mean, and Mark's exactly right. The idea of signature matching is not allowed in federal court at all. Look, look, look, look. if the penalty of perjury signature is not enough to make people honest. Okay?

Yeah. As if they're, Trump wants people to believe there are roving bands of people who want to vote more than once or vote when they're not able to vote. And they want to go to prison for it. Because we have a way after the election to go after the hundred cases that out of 300 million of people that, could you imagine the prison scene? You know, a couple of, you know, a couple of, you know, five. What are you in for? Oh, I voted twice. Well, the reality is, right?

0000,000, 0,000, maybe one more 0.0.1. Right. Yeah. Out of hundreds of millions votes cast. And this playbook is old. I'm old enough to remember the playbook when Carl Rove was trying to peddle it back in 2004 and push those U.S. attorneys to claim that there was voter fraud when there was not, when demonstrably there was not.

And ultimately, some of those U.S. attorneys got fired when George O. Bush won election in 2004. and they removed them because they wouldn't play ball and make these claims. But now Donald Trump has surrounded himself with people in U.S. attorney positions and the Civil Rights Division of the United States with Harmeet Dillon, who have no business being in those rules because they're not actually protecting our interests. They're just using those offices in an almost, in my view, an almost hatch act violation-like way to help Donald Trump's electoral ambitions and his ambitions for retaining power in Congress,

despite his utterly sinking of popularity ratings. If I can, Mark, can you indulge us for a few more minutes? Of course. What did you, what have you learned? Because you're the one in the trenches, right? I hung up my spurs. What have you learned from the playbook being run against California right now by Donald Trump and U.S. attorney and all the others?

But what, you know, we're not AI, we're I. We've learned. What have you learned? Yeah, so I think two things. The first is there's a lot of attention. right now on whether the U.S. Postal Service will capitulate and cooperate with whatever scheme that Donald Trump has. I am worried about that. And like I said, we're litigating that. But the thing I think I've learned is that what Donald Trump's going to do is say that if you are

voting and you're not on the approved list or you're an election official and you're not disenfranchising voters the way he wants you to, that right off the stage, like right in the wings waiting will be a criminal prosecutor, right? I mean, there was a federal prosecutor that was sent to observe the vote counting in L.A. I mean, why on earth would that be the case? Like, why would a federal prosecutor be observing the primary vote counting? And I think that, like, what we were talking about, about, you know, the, the U.S. for the St. Church of York opining here, and what we've seen from some of the comments from

the federal prosecutors in California and what we've seen from the Department of Justice. I think that we are going to see these soft forms of intimidation, maybe not so soft, that there is a threat of criminal prosecution if the wrong person wins or if votes are counted that Donald Trump doesn't want to count it. I mean, I think Todd Blanche, you know, in some respects, gives away the gain. You know, Pam Bondi, when they would say, you know, is Donald Trump misusing the Department of Justice towards political ends, she would say, no, no, no, of course not. And I think she did that because she's like a politician.

And, you know, she was a state attorney general, but really more political. And I think Todd Blanche, because he's a criminal defense lawyer, he's used to having to embrace unfortunate facts, right? You know, like rather than telling the jury, no, my client didn't have a bloody knife. He's used to saying, yes, of course he had a bloody knife. He should have had a bloody knife. Who wouldn't have a bloody knife? Right.

And so his answer is, of course Donald Trump is having us go after his political opponents. That's what the president should be doing. So I think Todd Blanche will be. quite happy to say, yes, of course we're, of course we are threatening criminal prosecution for people counting votes that we don't like. And that is a different level of shamelessness. How, I totally agree with you. I want to go back to, I never thought I'd say this. I want to go back to Pam Bondi. He's doing things, he would, he's doing things that would make Pam Bondi blush. I feel like you probably don't Blanche also from here. Yeah. I mean, and I know people that

are friendly with Blanche and they don't know who, they don't recognize this guy, you know, at all. I mean, I did because I read that New Yorker or New York interview. where they were like, why would you leave a cushy white shoe firm and take on a single client? Are you kidding? Why would I turn down the opportunity to make new law? You know, he's, you know, he's been the bridesmaid three times. He finally got the nomination. He had a kid, a step over the body of Matt Gates.

Eileen Cannon at one time was leaked as being, right? She was leaked and nobody denied it during the transition, Aileen Cannon. And then also, also wasn't Lee Zeldon going to get it? Oh, then Lee Zeldon and a bun. And then, oh, oh, there he is. How low will you go, Mr. Blanche? Oh, you're going pretty low. You're okay, you got the nomination.

Let me ask you, though, here to kind of wrap it up for us and for you. And I really appreciate the generosity of your time here. I know our audience does too. Let's be a little hopeful here. I know we're doing a lot of doom scrolling. How confident are you that the combination of your law firm, democracy docket, public interest groups that are shoulder to shoulder with you, the attorneys general for the Democratic State,

and the rest are ready, you know, both long game and short game day of election and leading into election to protect democracy and to make sure our audiences vote is counted. Yeah, so I think it's a three-legged stool, and I want to make sure I get to the third leg because I think you left out the role that you play and the role that progressive pro-democracy media plays. But on the legal front, on the pure legal front, the private lawyers, the the public interest efforts, the state attorneys general. Look, I don't think you could ever say that you're 100% prepared. I've never felt like I am 100% prepared for elections because they are operated at the local level and the hyper local level.

And they're always new twists and turns and trying to keep track of everything everywhere is hard. You know, right now my law firm of 60 plus lawyers, we are litigating 83 cases in 40 states. So like we are already stretched and we will be more stretched. And that is going to be true for a lot of the groups that are in this space, in part because big law firms have walked off the playing field. Like one of the most underreported stories right now is just how cowardly big law firms remain, even now and how they refuse to be engaged in these pro-democracy issues in the ways that they have been in past elections. But I feel, but that said, I feel good.

I feel prepared, but I'm never 100% prepared. But I think we will win those battles more than we lose. and certainly enough, I think, to protect free and fair elections. The second question, though, is whether or not the institutions, this is the election officials, the government workers, the civil society groups that do voter registration and help people keep educated about how to vote, like whether or not that process of people feeling confident in the election and feeling like they know where to vote, how to register, and that they turn out, I think that that is something that we have to constantly be bolstering and, you know, ensuring that they have the resources so that voters feel like they can turn out to vote in that their vote will count so that they go through the trouble of combating some of the voter suppression efforts.

And that brings me to the third leg of the stool. And this is where I don't want you to sell short the work that you do. And it is why I started Democracy Docket in 2020. It is why I do podcasts like this. It's why people subscribing to your channel is so important. by the way, if you are watching and you have not yet subscribed to legal AF, go ahead right now and hit the subscribe button, then hit the bell that's right in front of you. And that will make sure that you are alerted when there is new content, which is critically important because content is king right now

in the democracy arena. You need to know when there are updates. And one of the ways you will do so is by making sure you are subscribed to this channel and they are alerted when there's new content. And the reason why I say this, the reason why I say this is because the new, New York Times is spewing the nonsense that they do. And they are better than the Washington Post. And they are better than CBS News. And they are better probably than 90% of the other news outlets. And so what we need to do is we need to have a vibrant pro-democracy, independent media ecosystem.

And this is a win-win. Like anybody who tells you, oh, watch this person because they're better than that person. No, we need to support the entire progressive ecosystem. We need to support all of the pro-democracy news outlets. And so everyone can start today with subscribing to this channel. You can subscribe to Democracy Docket, which is the news outlet I founded, puts out great news information. You can choose any of the other pro-democracy news outlets, or you can choose all of them.

But we need to have it because that is going to be the place that keeps the public informed when the legacy media decides, you know what, we have an FCC approval. you know what we want to land an interview with with someone in the administration so we're going to kind of both sides it our parent company has government contracts there you go yeah yeah oh or your children or that mark i want to make this a regular gig i know you and i committed last time i came on your show to collaborate more yes yeah we're we're going to do it because as you said you and i recognized it immediately about how you just framed it that it's the entire eco-executive system that needs to be lifted up and in and i do i mean i said before you got on that the way that i

orient myself every day and for when i started this legal a f gig is that i consider myself an ambassador for my audience and a fiduciary from my audience when i do an interview when i meet somebody lisa and i were just that net net roots nation over the weekend in philadelphia anything that i did anything that I said was always in furtherance of our cause here of protecting democracy and the rule of law. And so that once you have that as your poll star, you know, you really, you don't go wrong. And I think that's why people keep coming back to Democracy Docket and legal AF in this show. So, Mark, a really great, what's coming up?

Anything we should keep it on? You think we should keep an eye on? Supreme Court decisions, right, tomorrow. And then between now and the end of July and finally, go Nix. Okay, I like all that, including the booze that rained down from the 500 section all the way to, and my favor, you'll appreciate this, Mark. I don't know if you, so I'm reading the New York Post because I like the sports section. And the New York Post says, this is how they framed it. Donald Trump salutes crowd, right?

Some booze heard. I was like, some booze heard. He brought his granddaughter as a human shield. He's such a coward. Okay. Anyhow, Mark Elias Democracy Docket, if you're not already subscribed and don't read him every day, every hour, get that reminder thing. You're making a big mistake. Mark, thanks for being here on Legal AF. Thank you. Thanks, you will. Thanks. And if you like what we're doing and the kind of content that we do, a couple of things you can do for us, you can become a subscriber to the Midas Touch Network, which of course is our, we collaborate and we stand on the shoulders of Midas Touch. And come over to Legal A8.com.

the YouTube channel as well where there we go and set as Mark I couldn't have put it any better no I didn't put them up to it yes hit the reminder but hit the bell and the reminder and become a subscriber we do 12 fresh videos every day if you can believe it you should and then so you want to become a card carrying member of the legal a F community as and and we have some great programming senator White House is going to be coming on with me Lisa maybe you can join me soon Rob Banta is coming on with me on Friday. Don Lemon is joining me on Friday. He'll be seeing these videos over the next couple of days.

I'm going to be joining the weekend show with Anthony Davis for his this weekend version. I'll be the guest on that particular weekend. I got Paul Blumenthal, senior writer at Hoffmo and Cindy Blumenthal's son, who just wrote a great scathing piece. Maybe you can join me on the United States Supreme Court. He's going to join me for an interview there. So that's the kind of content that we keep coming. Substack, legal AF substack, you not only get live reporting that I do and bring in other people like Adam Classfeld, All Rise News today, but you get filings, legal filings, AF, and you can find all the source material and become a member there as well.

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One more time, Sundaysfor Dogs.com slash legal AF50 or use code legal AF50 at checkout. And since I cut that ad earlier this week, I have a second dog. Oh, wow. Yes, we got a Lola to join the Lily because my wife decided a toddler needed a puppy. Oh, that's nice. You know, Lola, I always think of the damn Yankee song, what Lola wants Lola gets. Yes, and the great song by the Kings. Thanks, by the Kings.

So Lola is something we hope my daughter will be able to walk because it's wonderful. Hopefully comes in at 15 pounds or less. So let's pick your, let's use, let's take advantage of you being on the show with your Supreme Court knowledge. For those who don't know, great new book written by Lisa Graves, the cover of it's right behind her head there. It's called Without Precedent, a take down, my words, of the Roberts Court. You know, and Lisa has been sounding the alarm about John Roberts since he, at least since he was on the federal, what the DC when he was nominated to the DC Circuit.

Yes. When he was nominated to the D.C. Circuit, which is the Training Academy feeder school for the Supreme Court saying, no, you're like Cassandra. Nobody believed you, right? You're yelling out, hey! Somebody believe me, because I did ask

for there to be no recorded vote on John Roberts because I was convinced that he was going to be the nominee. And Senator Leahy and Senator Reid let that go forward by unanimous consent to preserve the opportunity. But I'm not sure that anyone actually really believe me that he was for sure going to be the one. I was convinced that Roberts was going to be there, not beneath his Supreme Court.

Yeah, it's the Trojan horse, and you've been yelling out about it for a long time. And here we are. So we're at the end of what would normally be the end of the term. No more oral arguments, except for emergency petitions and things, which are still being filed, or requests still being made. But the traditional writ of certiorari and the rulings were still waiting on, here drips and drabs, they announced it tomorrow.

They're probably dropping some opinions. They're usually by the middle of June. Do they ever go later to the middle of June? Yeah, they went right up to the eve of July 4th for that immunity decision when they was July 4th. That was a July ruling before the July 4th holiday. Jesus Christ. my God. All right. I forgot that it went that late.

All right. It usually ends in June, but the performance could continue to that first year of July. So the ones that I'm looking at that you can weigh in on, of course, is the mail-in ballot, which is about whether there can be grace periods after election day where votes continue to be counted, even if they're postmarked on or by election day. You know, like when you file your tax return, go to get the stamp. Because it has to show up on the 15th of April. just has to have the postmark on it, whether any states, including Republican states,

grace periods, are consistent with the Constitution about setting an election day or not. So we got that one, which is Mark Elias is involved with. That's the Mississippi case. We're waiting to see birthright citizenship, whether Donald Trump can rip the beating heart of birthright citizenship out of the Constitution by way of an executive order. We've got the independence of the Federal Reserve, Donald Trump just fire Lisa Cook because Bill Pulte, who's now going to be our acting, temporary part-time acting head of national intelligence because he posted a couple of social media posts

using documents he probably shouldn't have had access to, cut and pasted them and said, look, signatures match on these two loan documents. She's committing loan fraud. She needs to go. Is that going to be allowed? And then there may be some other ones that are near and dear to your heart too. Why don't we do a little wrap up of what to expect? Because some of these might be coming out as early as tomorrow by 10 a.m.

That's right. This is Decision Month for the Roberts Court, for the Supreme Court. And tomorrow on Thursday, there will be some decisions issued. We don't know what they are. They don't tell us in advance. And so it'll be a surprise. And as you mentioned, there are a couple of major cases that remain to be decided, including the Mississippi case about whether if your ballot is marked,

is postmarked by Election Day, whether it's. can be counted. This is in response to a federal law that actually wasn't focusing on this issue at all. It was just setting a uniform day of election so that it is that first Tuesday in November. But no one thought that that would mean that therefore you could not have early voting or you could not have ballots counted if they were postmarked in time. And I think one of the things that doesn't get mentioned enough about this case is that a lot of our service members, people who serve in our military and the Navy and the Army and Marines abroad, vote. by mail. And the Postal Service is the carrier of that of that mail. And it does take time,

sometimes for the mail to get to the United States. We know that Republicans have targeted military ballots. We saw that happen in North Carolina last year when Republicans were trying to stop the votes from being counted for the winner of the North Carolina Supreme Court race. And so this is not new for them. But it is, I think, particularly despicable to try to deny the counting of the vote of people who really do want to have their ballots counted and to do so to take the Supreme Court and have the court seriously consider this issue. By seriously, I mean, you know, decide to take this case when I think it's a case where they could have summarily reversed and said, we're not going to intervene in this election process, particularly in the middle of an

election year. But all bets are off because we know the Roberts Court has been actively, aggressively intervening in our elections while elections are underway. to put their thumb or their fist on the scale of justice on the side of Republicans. I think not just because Donald Trump has wanted to change the maps and create some basically cheat to get an advantage in this midterm election, but also because John Roberts has, you know, a multi-decade antipathy for the Voting Rights Act. And he's joined in that by people like Sam Alito who have been opposed to the apportionment cases and more. And also, it cannot go unmentioned by me, that if Congress were to become controlled by Democrats, there would probably be robust investigation

of this Roberts Court. So they have a self-serving interest as they are moving, you know, trying to move the law to aid what the RNC wants or what Republicans want. Well, stop right there because that's going to interest our audience. You believe that when the Democrats get control of the House and the Senate, that there'll be investigations of the United States Supreme Court and John Roberts Court. Yes, because there were significant, substantial investigations by investigative reporters that were thwarted by Republican control in the House and the Senate. And so the full details of the millions of dollars of trips that Clarence Thomas has taken have not been investigated. The tax situation that Senator Whiden and Senator White House have worked on to try to uncloak whether Clarence Thomas ever even paid taxes on the business.

on the benefit of that huge, you know, super expensive six-figure, six-figure RV. And there's more. There are all these trips. There are trips that Alito has taken. There are other controversies that have arisen because of the role of Jenny Thomas in trying to subvert the 2020 election, including she herself emailing legislators in Wisconsin and in Arizona to try to get a fake slate of electors put forward. Then there are bigger issues.

Like we now know that Clarence, Thomas' wife accepted a $500,000 donation from billionaire Harlan Crow just weeks before the Citizens United decision was issued. And he still sat on that case of five to four ruling. He did not recuse. And in fact, he had the audacity to write a concurring opinion in which he claimed that if money of speech, then anything that chills speech would be unconstitutional. And so therefore, disclosure rules would violate freedom of speech, knowing that his wife got a half million million gift from his billionaire benefactor on New Year's Eve of 2009 just weeks before that decision came down. So there's a lot of investigations that need to take place.

For those that don't know, Lisa's not talking through her hat. She's also the founder of True North research and collaboration and does collaborations with court accountability action. As long as you're here, sell that a little bit. Tell the audience a bit about what True North, why it was founded and what is it focus on? Yeah, so I launched Tree North a few years ago as a follow on to the other nonprofits that I either led or incubated and I named it in tribute to Frederick Douglass's newspaper The North Star. He's the great abolitionist. He wrote so passionately about human freedom and he's one of the men who signed the Seneca

Falls Declaration in favor of women's rights. And so I really wanted to have a center, you know, a real North Star, but I didn't want to obviously take the name of his paper. And so I called my organization True North. We're a watchdog group that works to expose corruption. And we've done a lot of investigations around the Supreme Court, including around Clarence Thomas and Jenny Thomas and Samuel Lito and more. And we've also then joined forces a few years ago with court accountability, which is founded by Alex Aronson. We've co-founded court-telma together, but he spearheaded that because we wanted to join that investigative work, that exposure of what's happening, how do we get in this mess with an exploitation of policies and solutions? How can we fix it? And so these two groups work together to really help understand this crisis, this authoritarian, competitive authoritarianism that we're facing with a Supreme Court, a Roberts court that really is out of control and has been captured as Senator White House has described,

captured by these billionaires, a handful of billionaires, in order to roll back our rights. And we are not powerless. They want us to think we're powerless. John Roberts at one point, shortly after he was confirmed, a couple years later,

gave a interview with C-SPAN in which he said, if people don't like it, it's just too bad. Well, I don't know about you, but I know the Constitution starts with we, the people, not we, the court. And the court, this is, court was chosen not to interpret the law fairly, but specifically chosen to be no more suitors, chosen to roll back our rights. And it's just intolerable what this court has done with the immunity

decision and more. And this Clay decision and the Milligan case out of Alabama, where John Roberts handed the pin to Samolito to use it like a dagger to destroy the voting rights act, an act that was purchased with the blood, sweat, and tears of thousands and thousands of Americans who risk their lives to secure the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to actually secure the right to vote and have that vote be counted. And so that's the origin story there. And as a consequence, we pay close attention to the Supreme Court's docket, what's happening, and also who's weighing in?

Because what's happened is that not only did Leonard Leo get chosen by Donald Trump to choose the people that were on the list for the Supreme Court to choose who got on the Supreme Court in the first Trump administration, but he also is, fueling a multifaceted set of interest groups, special interest groups, that are writing amicus briefs, briefs to the Supreme Court, in order to sway the law or justify the law as it's being changed. And these people, many of them have claimed to be originalists. That's a term of art that was created to sort of claim that they're just going to follow the plain language of the Constitution or history, suppose, intent. But when push comes to shove at almost every turn, they ignore that. So they ignored the fact that the Constitution specifically does not give president's immunity. It has immunity only for one thing, which is for Congress, for their words on the floor. No immunity for presidents. In fact, it's antithetical to our Constitution, which specifically says the job of a president

is to faithfully execute the law. And nothing could be more faithless than violating that and being, you know, engaging in criminal conduct through the official acts, like pardons. if they're given for bribery or to advantage the president or his family. And so anyway, that's a probably too long of a summary of what we do. But as a consequence, we're following these cases, including the birthright citizenship case. Again, an outrageous assertion by Trump that he can just unilaterally set aside the language of the 14th Amendment, which specifically says that if you're born in the United States, you are a citizen.

Trump calls that stupid. I call that constitutional. If he doesn't like it, then he shouldn't have run for president and shouldn't have taken an oath to uphold this Constitution. We'll see what happens in that case. There's a real debate about whether the court will go along with Trump or not, since it's gone along with so many things. But I would say to you, Michael, that my concern is that there are no rules left for this court.

It's making it up as it goes. And if it decides not to go with Donald Trump on birthright citizenship, I think that will just be a PR tactic, that they don't need to do that, given everything they've given Trump with the Calais decision and with the rigging. of the maps or the attempt to rig the maps and make it harder for Americans to vote, they don't need to give that. And they can use that as a talking point, basically to say, look, they don't give Trump everything, so therefore they're not out of control. I think, Charlie right, I think birthright citizenship, they're not going to.

They're not going to rip that apart. We'll find that out. They'll leave that in the 14th Amendment. I think they're not going to let Lisa Cook holder job, at least for now in the federal at the Fed. But these other things, mail-in ballots, I think, are in jeopardy. and the rest. And just let's let's end it this way with a hopeful note about not just court reform, but the United States Supreme Court reform has, do you think this Supreme Court by being so rogue and being so reckless about being so rogue has effectively invited the Supreme Court reform that they so fear? In other words, you know, in other times, you know, it's, you say, well, we have to have to have a blue ribbon commission. I mean, got to think about this and

you know, Joe Biden, all this and that. Okay. Aren't we sort of post that at this point? Is it, do you think there's enough momentum that if the Democrats get the Senate in the House, that we can have real Supreme Court reform, including adding a few more seats, having a binding ethics rule, having term limits? Do you think there's political will now, a public outrage, voter outrage to give these elected officials the backbone to do real reform. And is that the natural consequence of this Supreme Court so out of control? Well, that's exactly right. I think this court has, the Roberts Court has created the ingredients for its reform for the conclusion of this period with a court that's so out of control. We've never seen more members of Congress embracing reforms.

the public is even farther ahead in terms of their embrace of court reform, a variety of reforms that would boldly address the way this court has been using the judicial power in a way that is contrary to how fair judges would behave. And with that, you know, what we have is momentum, enormous momentum. And that momentum in the next two years could grow and be built upon, you know, through hearings and oversight by the House and by, the Senate, as well as other outreach and public education, because a lot of people don't realize, for example, that Article III of the Constitution, which is the section that specifically addresses the power of the judiciary, it specifically says that the Supreme Court has jurisdiction

over a certain set of cases, like when one state sues another state over a common river, you know, so there's a battle between two states, but that Congress can set the jurisdiction of the court in all other respects. And in fact, previous Congresses have limited the jurisdiction in the court. We have that power without a supermajority, without a constitutional amendment in the Constitution itself. And of course, there's no number of justices set in the Constitution that has changed over time over many years. It's been eight or nine or ten. And the Republicans were more than happy to have it be eight while they were blocking Scalia's seat from being filled and waiting to put Neil Gorsuch in that seat. So there's a lot of opportunities for reform. And I would just say on the

big picture, people know that this system is broken in many ways. And they recognize what this Roberts Court has done to voting rights and the type of corruption that it has unleashed through that immunity decision claiming that Donald Trump can do no wrong in terms of criminal law in his so-called official acts, separate from civil litigation, but actually to break the law. And, you know, people get it. And there is just a real determination and an increasing understanding that if we do not reform this court, it will continue to dismantle our rights. And we will not be able to have a new voting rights act survive the gauntlet of this Roberts court's hostility toward our voting rights. And this court should not have the final say when it comes to whether we can vote and have our votes be counted. We're going to have to retake that field. And the polling is strongly, strongly on our side. But beyond that,

the moral call to secure our democratic rights, our rights in our republic is on the rise and growing. I am very hopeful about where things are headed in that way. Yeah, and I'm going to butcher it. But when we were watching, when you're on the panel that I watched, that you were on, the Senator White House sponsored by a court accountability action at NetRutes about the Roberts Court and Supreme Court reform to Harvard authors there with their new book, supremacy that's going to be coming out. They'd be great to interview. We should bring them on on legal layout. And I think it was Alex that put up a slide of a comparison. between a quote of Abraham Lincoln, maybe at his second inaugural or first, about a first inaugural,

a first inaugural about a democracy that seeds itself to the Supreme Court compared to a quote from John Roberts. Do you remember, can you paraphrase the, yeah. Yes, the paraphrase was Abraham Lincoln contending with the out-of-control Supreme Court of the time, led by Roger Taney, that issued the Dred Scott decision that rejected the power of Congress to create rules in terms of territories and which states would be slave holding and which states would not. What Abraham Lincoln said, to paraphrase in that first inaugural address was that if the people

concede that a court, an unelected court, has the final say on its rights, they will cease to be, we will cease to be our own rulers. And then the contrasting quote was from John Roberts, the C-SPAN quote that I mentioned earlier. John Roberts said, if people don't like what we do, it's quote, it's just too bad. Right. And I'm here to tell you it's not just too bad. We have a lot of work to do and we have a growing number of allies and friends, both in the policymaker world and across the country, organizers, activists who understand the deep destruction that this Roberts court is engaged in and who are determined. to restore and expand our rights.

Great. We're going to reclaim the democracy. We're going to reclaim Abraham Lincoln and his criticism of the United States Supreme Court. And we're going to march together. I mean, this is that we all vibrate on the same frequency here. That's what Mark Elias said about a lifting up progressive independent media. You're on it.

You're at the epicenter of it here on Midas Touch, an unlegal AF. And I'm so pleased to have met Lisa Graves to be able to call. all on your talents, both on the LegalAF podcast on Monday nights. You love what Lisa Graves is doing and how she puts it. You're going to love Monday night live on LegalAF YouTube channel 5 p.m. Eastern Time. They take questions. They're unplugged. It's Dina Dahl and Lisa Graves.

And, of course, they'll be able to pick your brain about these weighty constitutional issues and have the great Mark Elias join us as well. What a great treat here. Thank you all. joining us and we did a little bit of longer version because it needed it you know we we wanted to do this teaching about voting in the United States Supreme Court and but thanks for hey thanks for the generosity of your time your spirit and in a case of our sponsors and memberships your your money where where that comes into play as well you're on legal a f the podcast

hit the free subscribe button here on Midas come over to legal af youtube channel and do the exact same thing. Set their little bell for reminders, and that bell will be going off 12 times a day on legal A.F. But you will appreciate each and every one of them keeping you out informed and up to date. So for Karen Freeman Ignifalo, who's traveling, Lisa Graves and Michael Popock, thank you for being here in Legal AF. Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal AFers. Seriously, why aren't Democrats in Washington doing more to stop Trump? I know. Have you heard about Phil Weiser in Colorado, though? No, is he different?

Yeah, A.G. Weiser sued the Trump administration 65 times. He's beating Trump in court again and again. Things like protecting Obamacare against Trump's illegal tariffs, and he even won against Ticketmaster. So he actually gets results. Exactly. As Governor, Phil will fight for Colorado. Paid for by Phil Weiser for Colorado registered agent in the Nand-N-N-Nose-Gazy.