Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF - 6/13/2026

Episode Date: June 14, 2026

The award-winning Legal AF podcast is back with Ben and Popok at the helm, as they provide breaking commentary on events from Virginia, DC, Miami, the Situation Room, Congress and Iran, and so much more at the intersection of law and  politics.  Support our Sponsors: Blissy: Use code LEGALAF for an EXTRA 30% OFF at https://blissy.com/LEGALAF  Pocket Hose: Text LEGAL to 64000 for your 2 free gifts with the purchase of any Pocket Hose Ballistic hose. Message and data rates may apply. Quo: Try QUO for Free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months at https://Quo.com/LEGALAF Sunday for Dogs: Get 50% OFF your first order of Sundays. Go to https://sundaysfordogs.com/LEGALAF50 or use code: LEGALAF50 at checkout. 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.

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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 Phil Weiser for Colorado registered agent in Nand and Nosegazy. We have a lot to discuss on this episode of Legal AFA symbolism of the entire Trump regime, the tarp going up to cover up the removal of Donald Trump's name from the Kennedy Center after Trump was ordered to remove it, and the tarp had remained up as Donald Trump trying to, you know, say, well, judge, if you told me to take my name down, well, I guess I'm just going to cover up all of the name on the Kennedy Center. So we'll talk about that. We'll talk about what's going on with the January 6th slush fund for the insurrectionist, and Donald Trump basically negotiating with himself a super pardon where all of his allegations of tax evasion.

and non-payments and past audits all get wiped away. We'll give you the latest updates from Virginia, the latest updates from Florida. And we'll talk a lot about some groundbreaking reporting on the Trump regime's cover-up of the Epstein files, what went down in the Situation Room repeatedly as J.D. Vance and others in the Trump regime were out there, literally holding, like, meetings that you would expect

in the Situation Room for, like, the raid of Osama bin Laden, but they're holding it there or talking about emails where Donald Trump is mentioned and to cover up this email or that email and what do we do with Gilein Maxwell. And also, I think we'll have a little time for it. I just want to highlight Trump appointed judge who, and we're seeing a lot of this, these federal judges, you know, across the board. Not all Trump appointed judges are like this, but we're seeing a lot of unity amongst federal judges pushing back against the fraud on the.

the court, the carelessness, the callousness, the incompetence that they're seeing in their court from Trump's DOJ. So we'll cover this all on LegalAF. Good to see everybody. Michael Popak, great to see you. We've got a busy docket on the show today. Yeah, even things like fall off, because you and I try to curate, keep, we're respectful of the generosity of our audiences' time. You know, like Jay Clayton, the Southern District of New York prosecutor, who's now going to be the director of national intelligence, despite the fact that he's never worked in the intelligence community, violates the statute by his nomination, is a golf buddy of Donald Trump's. None of that makes anybody feel more secure today than we were yesterday, while a president

decides that he's going to use a war, and Iran will not be the last one, unfortunately, to bolster his failing presidency at home and to have his buddy who will do anything. he says to do and has since he was the Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman in his first term and now has already signaled that he will be he's he will be a willing tool in pawn in going after voters because we're we're all scratching her like why is j clayton commenting from his perch as the southern district new york prosecutor on california voter issues oh right two days later he was nominated to be Director of National Intelligence and he'll be pulling at Tulsi Gabbard, I'm sure, lurking around, you know, some sort of cosplay, acting like there's some sort of fraud in

voting or in mail-in voting. But yesterday, particularly Ben, you and I were joking before we started, what a terrible day for Donald Trump, but what a great day for democracy and the rule of law. When you and I talk about what happened in Judge Brinkum's courtroom, Eastern District of Virginia and an order she just issued, same time in Judge Williams' courtroom in Miami, about the same settlement and anti-weaponization fund. I think they're in deep shit. That's a legal term in Miami, about, and the lawyers and Donald Trump's lawyers, and even Department of Justice lawyers as well.

And then bang, bang, back to back, Judge Cooper, the Kennedy Center judge, and the appellate panel, and even a Trumper on the appellate panel, for taking down the name who denied the stay, which we'll talk about, Judge Katzis, he didn't even dissent. You know, normally a Trumper would write at the bottom, well, Judge Katzis would have granted the stay and would have prevented the names from coming down.

Nope, nope. All three judges were like, yeah, we're not preventing it. And on your live stream on Midas and on Legal A.F, of watching the names come down, the letters come down, it was very cathartic. It was like watching, for me, it was like watching Saddam Hussein's statues was being pulled down by horse and rope during the end of his dictatorship.

So I felt great about that. And now it's in the hands of the appellate court and maybe the Supreme Court one day. But that was all like in the last 24 hours. Right. You know, but the Trump regime did put tarp over the, over it because Trump was so pathetic and he's such a loser that he didn't want people to see his name being taken off of because of you, because you were running a live feed and so was I to show it and he'll like, oh, the scrims going up.

Well, you know, they were, look, I, I'd like to take some credit for that, but he's such a narcissist that they seem to be building the scaffolding all morning. And people are like, what are they building the scaffolding before? Last time they used those, kind of cherry picking cranes to just put his name on. It's an hour and a half job. You speak to someone in construction. I mean, it's an hour and a half job max to remove those letters. Arguably, it takes more time to put it, to put it in than to remove it.

you have to at least do measurements and things like that just taking you up. But one more thing on that, before we go into that, and you caught too that the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees, talk about pissing off the judge. The Board of Trust, Judge Cooper already said they were not prudent and they violated their fiduciary duties by on an incomplete record, no record at all, declaring that they were going to shut it down for two years. What is also two years left? Oh, right, the Trump administration. So he didn't want to have a Kennedy Center that was, you know, with Lee Greenwood doing, you know, 365 concerts a year.

So he's like, oh, we'll shut it down. We'll say we have to shut it down for a pair. The judge says, no, you're not going to shut it down. You have programming obligations that are statutory. You can't shut it down. You have to serve the community. And you have to do a better record if you're going to do that because you weren't prudent. So what do they do?

They turned around and said, well, the name's coming down. Oh, we got to return all the fundraising. All the money that we brought. from immediately return it, even if the donors haven't asked for it, because they all donated the money because of Trump's name on it. Is that a, this is rhetorical, is that a proper exercise of fiduciary duty to just refund everybody because you're pissed? You're going to take your name and go home?

Is that what the board is supposed to be doing? Yeah, Judge Cooper, the Washington, D.C., federal judge who made this order in making the original order said, look, not only did this board, this Trump appointed board breach its fiduciary duties, and there's so much illegal conduct taking place, but the judge also said there's also no irreparable harm in the sense that, look, take the name down, and if I'm overruled, you could put the name back up. Okay, so there is no irreparable injury that requires us to keep the name up pending the, you know, other steps of the, you know, other steps in this litigation, the appeal, the Supreme Court.

So it was at that motion, the Trump regime tried to game the system. It just shows you how bad faith they are. So then they created irreparable harm against themselves that didn't exist by amending the bylaws to say, Popak, exactly what you said, which is that they got to return the money of Trump's name comes down. So now they go and argue, well, look, now we go bankrupt because of your order. It's well, because you just inserted a poison pill to bankrupt yourself that didn't exist before. What are you doing?

Like, that's not, there's no donor who's like, you know what? I donated specifically because it was called Trump's name. You know, and we know that because that wasn't in the bylaws before. There wasn't in the agreement. They literally changed it this week. Now, some of the board members of people who's on the board are like the wives of J.D. Vance, the wife of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutton. Some of them were required to make donations.

But I was like Howard Lutnik didn't make the donation because Trump's name was on it. He made the donation so his wife could sit on the board and because his boss told him to. So let's get into just this order because, you know, I think it is also now being used as precedent in a lot of these other cases where the Trump regime, and it's based on precedent

in other cases, by the way, that we're seeing in the East Wing. And just think about what Trump did there. It's kind of, you know, a festival. The federal judge says, look, I understand Judge, Judge Leon, you can, I can't interfere with your article two, like national security, but the ballroom isn't a national security thing. You say you're building a bunker underneath. The bunker underneath is national security. That's fine.

I'm going to stay away from that. So what does Donald Trump do there? He goes, no, no, no, no, no. The ballroom is a shield. What? Yeah, the ballroom is a shield against ballistic missiles and drones. And it's part of the bunker. So we have to build the ballroom.

And then we're going to build a drone port on top of the ballroom. Then he posts all of these AI images turning the White House into a literal military facility with drones all over the roof of the ballroom. And he's like, this is what we need, the drone port. And it's like, okay, the thing that we should all recognize is that why didn't this happen before? Like, why are we confronting a lot of these issues right now for the first time in American history? and it's because our Constitution is a contract, right?

It's a contract between the people and the government in a way that empowers the people by the people for the people and creates a democracy and creates checks and balances. And in contracts, move aside from the Constitution, there's something called an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing in that a contract can't lay out every specific scenario and term. Sometimes you try as much as possible to list all of the details. But at the end of the day, courts will often look to, okay, what's the general thrust and color of this contract that if someone tries to find some loophole, you can make an argument. Well, look, that completely goes against what the contract says. You know, the contract doesn't use those exact words, but it uses

words very similar. So clearly that's what was intended. It's an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, which is in every contract. there is an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing in our Constitution. It's called the Take Care Clause, and it's an article two, and it's that the president in effectuating the laws takes care that the laws, which are passed by Congress, are faithfully executed. So the Constitution doesn't list, no, you can start doing this or that, you can't do this or that. The Constitution sets out these broad parameters. Then you have the Take Care Clause, which is the covenant of good faith and fair dealing that presidents, by and large, generally followed and executed laws,

even if they didn't like it. Now, occasionally, they can do an executive order that gives an interpretation of an existing law, but you can't change the law with an executive order. You need to go to Congress, and Congress needs to pass a law. And the same thing, laws that are passed by Congress are often created by compromise, so they don't list every specific thing as well. But the president's job is to take care that the law is faithfully executed, and you have to follow what the law is. Trump doesn't do that. He does not take care. He's violated his oath every day, and he does not take care that the laws are faithfully executed. And so that's what we see here. And even where a judge makes the ruling, take your name down from the Kennedy Center. What does he do?

He puts up top to block it and goes, well, if nobody, if I can't have my name up, then nobody sees anybody's name. And it's like, what are you, two years old? And no offense to like, you know, bully, you know. No offense to our daughters. What do you do? What are you doing? What is this, like, what is this behavior? I'm going to toss it to you, Popak, but just also like, I don't want to veer away from the legal stuff. But it's like, you know, it seems for the first time they were they were close to doing this framework of a deal with Iran, even though we heard that 38 times. It seems like Pakistan and Qatar worked together to really do this. All of the Middle East nations kind of worked together, you know, to try to figure this out. And then, you know, this morning, Donald Trump posts a message that basically says, you know, We're going to work great with them, but if they don't do what I say they're going to do, basically I'm going to nuke them into oblivion. I mean, he makes a threat that clearly indicates that he'll blow up Iran with nuclear weapons. And it's like, why, like, why are you, like, why are you, like, why are you like, why is this,

like, why is your behavior? It's truthfully, like, you are a sick, mentally ill, like, like horrible human being. Just shut, just like, shut up. Like, and behave with dignity. This isn't a Democrat, Republican thing. Just honor your commitments. behave with dignity. Stop with this shit. It's just, you know, and I think when you see his approval declining so much, people see something like the Kennedy Center. It's more symbolic of just how

this guy moves. He's a grotesque thing. And people are just like enough. Tosa do you, Popa. Yeah, I totally agree with you. And when we finally announced some sort of deal with Iran, it's going to be, let's just manage expectations. It's going to be better for Iran, the United States. It's going to be worse than the deal that Obama was able to negotiate and Donald Trump pulled out of without warfare, without the loss of human life, including American soldiers, without trillions of dollars being spent. And in addition, there's going to be a component of it. I'd be shocked if there's not a component of it that requires America to rebuild Iran without regime change. It's one thing during the Marshall Plan to kind of rebuild Europe after Hitler and, Mussolini and everybody was taken out.

It's another thing to rebuild Iran while the government, which hates us, is still in power. So that's what's going to happen. The Strait of Armuz is going to be a toll, continue to be a toll fund raiser for Iran. We're going to release money to them. That's been embargoed. They're going to be able to transit oil more than they were before. And Donald Trump's going to go light a candle in some sort of church to hope the economy recovers, which it won't. not because I wish it not to.

It just won't by the time of the midterms. And so, yeah, that is the erratic behavior, social, foreign policy by social media. And I am convinced, I'll get your opinion too about it, that if Donald Trump was doing well at home, right? If his approval numbers were high, if his economy and tariffs are doing great, and Americans were like humming along, right,

giving us very little to talk about on the economy part, he would not have started the war with Iran. Iran was the tail wagging the dog to try to improve when he had dismal. He was almost the reverse of Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon Johnson did great on the domestic front, terrible in the war of Vietnam as he continued it. Donald Trump was like, I got to start a war. I got to be a wartime president. I need a war.

And so he bought himself and the American people a war. He would not have done that had he been riding at like 70% approval ratings and everything was hunky dory over here. And that's the truth. Now, let's, I forgot where we started, but we're talking about, I believe, the name on the Kennedy Center. So the name on the Kennedy Center is Donald Trump's continued scarring of the face of Washington. He's trying in, because he knows he's going to get, he's going to get white, he's going to get

wiped out at the midterms in terms of his power. So he's trying to cram all this in within the next seven months, right? Put up aluminum letters on the, on the Kennedy Center and build an arch and, and, and, and, and, and, and paint the reflecting pool, tidy bowl blue, and everything else he can do, all this shit that we're gonna have to take down and pay for, come when the Democrats get control. You know, I have a thought about what the ballroom should be used

for when the Democrats get control of the White House. And I think it should be dedicated, it should be split into a museum, half of which is a wax museum about all of Trump's and his enablers and the insurrection. And the other half should be an Epstein survivors and victims commemorative or memorial. Maybe you take that Epstein Trump library

and you stick it in there, but it shouldn't be used as a ballroom. We should not, the next president should not acquiesce to Donald Trump's lawlessness and use it for its intended purpose. I'm just sorry, I just don't think that should happen. On the Kennedy Center, it was very clear. 94-page decision, so clear that the general counsel of the Kennedy Center sent out a memo a week ago that instructed his staff to start

taking the name down. Take it down from the website, take it down from emails, take it down from literature and postings and signs. In fact, Judge Cooper referred to that yesterday when he said, how could it be irreparable harm? You've already started the process of changing the name. It just seems to be the public letter thing that bothers you. And so they ran to Judge Cooper, having sort of ignored the name for a long time. In fact, I thought they weren't going to fight the name change any longer. They were going to fight the closure, the closure. They didn't like the fact that they couldn't close the thing for two years, and they were considering their options there. But no, lo and behold, last minute, they throw in an emergency motion to stop the judge's order that the name come down by Friday.

And Judge Cooper, who got mercilessly attacked, side note by Donald Trump, as always, not only Cooper, But his wife, you know, oh, and his social media posts, Chris Cooper's wife doesn't even have his name. She doesn't even carry his name. She's embarrassed. I'm like, are you kidding me? That's how you go after a man's wife, Judge's wife, you know, in the middle of all of this. So now they've got to run back to the same Judge Cooper. I mean, at least Judge Cooper didn't bury his wife on the 19th Hall of a golf course. I mean, if you want to talk about how you treat your wives or vice versa.

So this is how Judge Cooper enters his. order with a little dig at Donald Trump and his administration at the very end in denying the he's the first stop on the train can I get the district court judge to stay his own order so I can appeal and he goes through it we'll post it up here on the screen it says effectively that you haven't made out a reparable injury given that there'll be de minimis resources that would be required to restore the name if you win on appeal and you've already taken some steps towards complying. He notes a June 4th memo, which you and I reported on from the Kennedy Center's Office of General Counsel directing everybody to comply with the permanent injunction on the renaming. This shows that you don't have a reprimable harm. Then at the end, now this is a little bit gratuitous, although I'm glad he included it. A little bit of a dig at Trump starts with what's more last sentence. What's more? Issuance of a state pending appeal would not be in the public interest, which is rarely. served by the perpetuation of unlawful, unlawful governmental action. And then he cites a case. So,

Trump gets that for the judge. So they run off to an appellate panel. And they pull a terrible panel for them randomly. They pull three judges led by Judge Millett. If that name sounds familiar, it's because she just presided over the ballroom hearing in which she asked that, you know, there was that seal team six moment where instead of seal team six can trump you seal team six to kill biden get away with it as came up in the immunity appellate case she asked um are you saying that if don't trump wanted to destroy and knock over the statue of liberty nobody would have standing to come into court to for the court to rule on that and and the uh the uh lawyer for the department of justice Yaakov Roth said, yes.

So that Judge Millett, the judge that they spent a considerable amount of time saying that she doesn't have jurisdiction over anything related to the administration. They now want her and the rest of her group to issue an administrative stay on an emergency basis. The other judge is Judge Wilkins. Millett, Wilkins, and Pallard all came on with the same class. They're all classmates appointed by Obama in 2013. Wilkins and Millett have been on hundreds of appellate panels together. They work really well together. And then you have Judge Katz, who's the Trumper.

Now, I would have thought the Trumper would have at least dropped a footnote when they denied the emergency motion for administrative stay and said, I would have ruled for the stay. Nope. He didn't even, he didn't think an administrative stay to stop the letters coming down was worth it right now. Instead, they're doing a full briefing schedule on the state. the issue, which will happen throughout the month of June, and then they'll make their decision. But with Millett and Wilkins, I don't think Trump is going to be a winner, just my view,

especially given the ballroom arguments that were made without real credibility by those advocates. God forbid, Yaakov Roth shows up again, which he could, because they have a very thin bench here at the Department of Justice, could be the same guy again. By fact, when you and I start talking about Judge Brinkama, there is an overlap of a lawyer in two cases a day apart, which did not serve him well. But that just shows you how brain-drained the Department of Justice is. They've got to trot out these people.

Look, sometimes I'm sure, Ben, you've done it too. Sometimes, you know, advocates, you know, if I've argued a bunch of cases in a row, or I'm not getting great results from a judge, I've been known if you're a mature lawyer and you're doing your client service, you'll say, I'm not resonating with this judge. And you'll turn it over to an associate or another partner. I've done that.

Or vice versa. It's like, I keep getting losses with this person. Can you go in and argue it? They don't have that option here because there's not that many people that still work for the Department of Justice. And we're starting to see how those chickens are coming home to roost. Yeah, they also are so delusional that they keep. or just are so arrogant and narcissistic or just so malicious, they really don't care.

Like when we talk a little bit about the filings that are taking place in the Miami federal court regarding the collusive settlement between Trump and Trump, where in the $10 billion lawsuit, Trump's lawyers attacks the judge. Judge, you don't know what you're doing. Essentially, I'm simplifying it. You don't know what you're doing. You don't have jurisdiction. This was a real settlement.

and stay the hell away from it. Not a great way to speak to a federal judge. And this is how the Trump DOJ approaches it. That's why we'll talk a little bit later in the show as well about even Trump appointed judges saying the behavior borders on the surreal. And because there is no presumption of regularity anymore in the DOJ, we view things very differently. I'm doing it.

I'll talk about on this episode as well very briefly. But the entire federal courthouse in Chicago, right now is tainted by grand jury misconduct quite literally like almost every case there there's been vouching i'll talk about it right now where the federal prosecutors have gone into the grand jury and committed misconduct the broadview six case right the six individuals who were uh were protesting peacefully outside of broadbo who were then arrested by the trump regime um they were able to get the doj transcripts and it turned out the prosecutor was basically saying all right i'm going to vouch like like literally said that i'm going to vouch right now it's friday i only bring you good cases

I need you to get me an indictment here. I'm going to show you some other cases. I'm only going to bring you the good cases, okay? And because of that, other cases that, whoa, whoa, whoa, you committed grand jury misconduct. Judge, we want to see the grand jury transcript. And now what's coming out is that the Trump regime on a nationwide level has been engaged in grand jury misconduct. And all these criminal defense lawyers are getting cases dismissed with very serious allegations on procedural grounds. I mean, people who are involved in heinous and horrible conduct, they're presumed innocent.

until guilty, they're getting off as well, not just the high-profile Trump weaponized ones, these other cases also. So I covered it right there. All right, let's take our first quick break of the show, a reminder. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, but most importantly, subscribe to Michael Popock's YouTube channel, subscribe to the legal AF YouTube channel, subscribe to the legal AF substack. Also, if you or somebody who knows been injured in a car accident, auto accident, if you've been injured by the negligence of a company or the negligence of a third party in some, you know, horrible situations. Popok represents people in. If you know somebody who's been injured, sadly killed in an accident, reach out to the Popok firm. Don't be shy. 877 Popok A.F is the phone number.

Or visit the Popok firm.com. They've got lawyers available 24-7. The consultation is free. Seriously, he's representing a lot of people who listen and watch this show. So really, don't be shy. Call them up. 877 Popak AF or visit the Popak firm.com. All right, let's take our first quick break of the show. Oh, I'm excited to tell you about the world's number one. expanding garden hose and their brand new product. The pocket hose ballistic. Look, I'm tough on hoses. I drag them across the driveway, yank them around the yard, and somehow they always kink or leak. But the pocket hose ballistic has been a game changer. It's super lightweight, easy to manage, and easy to store. Turn the water on and it grows. Turn the water off and it shrinks back to pocket size. And this thing is built to last.

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Thank you to all of our sponsors who make this show possible. Support our sponsors. They support our show. Let's get back into it, Michael Popock, just as the Trump regime quite literally cover up the removal of Donald Trump's name, vandalizing the Kennedy Center. They continue to cover up the Epstein files. It's one of the totality of circumstances that led to this unlawful and catastrophic war in Iran as we were all getting closer to finding out more and more and more what's really in the Epstein files and, of course, identifying this massive Trump regime cover up.

Lots of people believe, and I'm one of them, that one factor, there's a lot of factors, But one of those factors was the continued cover-up of the Epstein files for this catastrophic war. Now, the cover-up obviously continues. Pam Bondi refused to go under oath. As Howard Lutnik refused to go under oath, both refused to be videotaped for their depositions. Bondi refused to answer questions that predate 20-25 on. She refused to answer any questions about communications with Trump or anybody in the executive branch. What else would you be asking her?

What did you do on vacation in Tuamonia? What do we think you're going to be asking her? All the questions are going to be, what did you tell this person? What do you speak to that person? Sorry, I can't answer privilege. Privileged. It's not a valid privilege claim to cover up child sex trafficking, but that's what they're going with. Oh, and then if you asked Pam Bondier question, that was not who did you speak to or what did you say?

Like, so did the DO, are you aware of the DOJ did search terms to try to find Trump? And did the DOJ try to, you know, delete or destroy files? and photos and audio and things that have Trump's name on it or that involved Donald Trump. I don't recall, but you don't recall that. That's something you don't recall, really. That's not a significant import that you would delete documents and videos and photos of the president. You don't recall that. Well, now we're learning even more about this cover up.

The cover up has been a major topic, and I think we all intuitively knew this was taking place, but a bombshell expose by the New York Times, Maggie Haberman, she put in a book out called Regime Change, where they talk about J.D. Vance leading multiple meetings in the situation room, in the situation room, where they would say things like, well, like, there are emails where people allege that Donald Trump, you know, has these sick, disgusting nipple fetishes with these girls,

and, you know, should we release these emails? I mean, it's literally, I mean, I'm, these are discussions happening in the situation room and then you would have like bondi and wiles we can't release that email and then jad d vans like but people know that he's got a sick dark path so let's just release it i mean that's how this was and then then ben gino is always involved in like like like crying like dan like the way dan bonjino's always described the deputy i former fbi deputy fbi director he always like is like crying and like running away like like the job's like too too much for him you know and and he like breaks down is how at least that's how it's being

described. So that's, you know, that was the bombshell reporting there. We'll get into more detail, of course. Then on Capitol Hill, they have Leslie Groff, Epstein's assistant, who appears in the files like 170,000 times. Again, the MAGAs refused to have her testify under oath or on video camera. Again, it's one of these informal interviews. It's like, come on. But we know that she did, Leslie Groff did say that she would not infrequently. I mean, frequently, she would book meetings between Trump and Epstein, but guess what? She doesn't recall how many times, but she knew it was enough, but she doesn't recall how many times. And so one of the things that Democrats have been saying also is, all right, look, let's get attorney general or acting attorney general, Todd Blanch in here right now,

Donald Trump's former criminal defense attorney. I think I always got to mention that, that Trump's formal criminal defense attorney in a case where Trump was found liable of dozens of the felony counts is the acting attorney general. And boy, as he behaved like Donald Trump's criminal defense lawyer, if you know what I mean, that's how he's behaving. Anyway, so let's depose this guy under oath. Like, let's do a whole here. If we care about transparency, it shouldn't be a Democrat or a Republican or an independent,

like, just like, let's let it out. I mean, just as an aside, too, I did a video about it this morning, like Butler, Pennsylvania, too. Like, you know, why are you redoubt? are you redacting all of these files? Like, why aren't you turning over the files about what really happened in Butler, Pennsylvania? Just release them. And then Trump's former, like, top legal advisor guy, even though the guy's not a lawyer, Tom Fitton, had to do a FOIA request to get the Butler Pennsylvania documents. And those files are being covered up. All of those are redacted from July

2024. And now the Trump regime's like Tom Fitton is fake news clickbait. He's literally Trump's guy. You don't get much closer to Trump before this. term than Tom Fitton when it comes to these types of things. And Fitton had to sue Trump. And then once he got the documents, it was all redacted. And then they called them clickbait for saying that there were communications in there between Thomas Crooks, the alleged shooter and police before the incident took place. It's like, okay, then just release the files.

You know, just release it? But you know what the Trump regime did on Friday? They're like, okay, we've got more alien files for you, more UFOs. That's what you want, right? everybody, the UFO files. We got some orbs, northeastern orbs. It's like, okay, I mean, I don't not want that, but that's not what we're looking for. That's not what we're looking for right now. And then you have Tulsi Gabbard go, how about I'm releasing, this is her last act as the ODNI as the head of the ODNI, Director of National Intelligence. She goes, I'm releasing

all of this information about U.S. bio labs across the world, but basically she only mentions Ukraine. Gain of function, you know, one of the conspiracies is that biolab gain of function research out of Ukraine and elsewhere was one of the things that developed COVID. And this was used by Russia as a pretext when Russia invaded Ukraine that we have to get rid of the bio labs with Ukraine and the U.S. To be clear, there's biological research that takes place across the country. But this idea of like a biolab that is developing these weapons of mass destruction, and that's why Russia invaded, that's what the head of OD&I did, which is just pure Russian propaganda on on on on Fridays that's what they did release what they didn't release

Popeck I'm going to turn it over to you just to take the rest of the segment but let me just show everybody what James Comer said about should we be deposing Blanche here's what he said let's play it franking under Garcia said you put in a formal request to have Todd Blanche subpoenaed are you to act on that subpoena we'll Todd Blanche because you know Todd Blanche came to speak to us for a briefing and the Democrats got up and and tiptoed out and ran to the press and clutching their pearls in outrage. What a wasted opportunity. We had Todd Blanche and Pam Bondi in there.

He's always won. Garcia always wants more. Popak, like, you always want more. Popak, isn't that like the idea of, like, what you do in an investigation when you uncover a little? You're supposed to want more. And then you're, why are you asking for additional details? I don't know, because there's a lot of rent.

Like, that's what you do. Make it make sense, Popak. Yeah. Make it make sense, Popak. Yeah, I'll try. So, um, Look, there's going to be impeachments in criminal investigations coming out of Maggie Haberman's reporting in the New York Times. She has one or more moles.

This is the leekiest administration I've ever seen. Thank God for that. And she has copious notes. I mean, when you read that article, the freak out session in the Situation Room is a paraphrase of the title, freak out referring to J.D. Vance, Sweatily freaking out because he was the only one in the room. including Susie Wiles, James Blair, Cash Patel, and Pam Bondi phoning in. Hold that thought because I've got an idea about the leak. Todd Blanche, Stan Woodward, Stephen Chung, and others in the room,

all trying to conspire, like in the Iran-Contra, on how to cover up a maybe criminal or statutory violations by the Trump administration about the Epstein files and the Epstein Transparency Act and, you know, later, later adopted. And every one of those people who are quoted, that's why Mag is reporting is so brilliant, because somebody is taking either copious notes and having turned them over to her, or they recorded what was going on in the Situation Room in those events. Now, you can't, it's hard to literally record with an electronic device in the sit room. for obvious reasons.

But two people phoned in. And according to Maggie, that was Pam Bondi and Cash Patel. Now, does anyone put it past Cash Patel to have Dan Bongino in the room with him to talk about the Epstein files since they made their bones as podcasters promoting, getting to the bottom of the Epstein? I mean, they also had conspiracy theories related to the Epstein of the Epstein files and the Democrats. But, I mean, I definitely can picture Dan Bonino in the room. I can picture one or both of them recording it,

who would put it past the director of FBI hitting a record button. And Pam Bondi, I mean, the fact, even though Bondi and Patel were at each other's throats and blamed each other for undermining each other, they were also on mutual thin ice in the administration. And that's the kind of person that takes notes and copious notes, you know? And there's other people that are trying to save their own hide, too. I mean, I wouldn't put it past somebody like Stephen Chung,

even though he's disgusting. in confirming some reporting because he's also worried about this is every this is when you put crabs at a bucket and they fight their way out which is what we're watching you know it's every it's every man for himself with a sinking administration her reporting was too crystal clear it wasn't like well like it wasn't like passive voice somebody may have said this was quotes quotes um and so robber Garcia, Representative Garcia, issues an immediate letter to Comer and says, this is a massive cover-up that has now been disclosed at the highest level of senior leadership of the Trump administration.

The only person not in the room was Donald Trump, but he was in the room because Haberman reports that Trump made it clear he wanted nothing to do with the disclosure of the documents. He did not want them disclosed. At best, what they wanted was a just, listen to this term, Ben, a just, a judgment. of transparency, not transparency, a gesture. Like you said, we need to distract our masses that follow us. You have released the JFK files again.

Release the Martin Luther King file. Release the UFO files. How about release the Epstein files in full transparency? So Trump didn't want it. So that warped the decision-making of everybody in that room. And the best line, there's two great lines that come out of the reporting. One is Stephen Chung quoted as saying, giving a pardon to Galane Maxwell

who's been convicted of girl child sex trafficking would be a PR nightmare. That's an understatement. See, he always puts things, not in terms of morality, not in terms of doing what's right or what's lawful, a PR nightmare. Yeah, I think it is a PR nightmare to pardon Galane Maxwell. The second greatest line was James Blair,

who's also the young deputy chief of staff that is part of the gerrymandering, what we call the dummy mandering, a plan. You know, James Blair said, with all due, somebody was pushing like J.D. Vance for a press conference. We did a press conference. We need a press conference. And James Blair looked around and said, with all due respect,

people in this room and the plan, the communications plan, they originally designed, is what got us into this mess. And I don't think a plan coming out of this group is going to get us out of it, which is I thought was a very telling comment about it. And then Todd Blanche, who is going to be our attorney general unless the Senate grows a set of balls on the Republican side during confirmation hearings, he says, we should use Tucker Carlson to do the interview of Galeigh Maxwell. No, I'll do it. Okay. Part of the cover up.

And that was a pretty weak tea for James Comer, even for James Comer. That was pretty weak in terms of clutching pearls again. they had the guy before the story came out, why didn't they ask the questions about the story that hadn't yet been released? Like, what edible are you on? But you know, it's just, so let Garcia and the Democrats and Jamie Raskin.

I was wondering why Trump freaked out about our friend, Jamie Raskin, the day before, or right after Haberman's report came out. Because he knows that Raskin, who was his second impeachment manager, and is a big, along with Garcia and others, is a big defender of the survivor's dignity and going after Donald Trump for being, you know, and for the cover-up around it, you know, and he wanted to kind of undermine him in advance.

You know, I was like, you can always tell, Donald Trump's tell, his skin is so thin. You can, like, see his beating heart, like when he stands in front of you, I mean, underneath the obesity. But in any event, this reporting will have the impact, if not now, with oversight committee hearings. In January of 2020, after the midterms, when we have, no, 2027,

after the midterms, when the Democrats hopefully get control of the House and the Senate, because they're going to open up impeachment investigations, forget oversight committee, into everybody in that room that is obstructing justice.

I mean, that is a good argument. and try to lay the groundwork for it between now and then getting them under oath in oversight committee hearings to testify. Top Blanche coming back, whether it's to the oversight committee hearing. I mean, you can just ask the question in any hearing about it and see how Todd Blanche is going to respond to that. So I think this, you and I report a lot about the Epstein developments, but this one is pretty momentous because I think it lit the fuse for something that's going to blow up in Donald

Trump's face in a very short term. as soon as the Democrats get control and get the gavel in the House and the Senate. Yeah. And Democrats get to set the rules of the time. So they want Blanche for 12 hours. Remember when Hillary Clinton testified about Benghazi for 12 hours? She did it willingly. She showed up. She spoke about it. And she embarrassed the MAGA Republicans. I guess they were the Tea Party Republicans then in the House. I think you're going to be seeing, you know, at least. Blan showing up, except ain't going to be, he's going to look real. He's going to be invoking privileges.

I mean, when I read that transcript of Bondi and Lutnik, if that happened in public, I can't even, I mean, they are, they are lucky and the DOJ knows it that that stuff was in that these were dense transcripts with lots of objections and it feels technical and there was no video camera. I can tell you from reading it was bad, bad, bad, you know, also I'll just leave us with this point before getting into some other topics, which as you mentioned, impeachment. I reflect on the impeachment, the first impeachment against Donald Trump, not for trying to overthrow the government, but for trying to overthrow a different government in Ukraine. And it was really, you know, the quid pro quo javelins for you need to launch investigations. Basically, you know, it all goes

full circle, especially with Hunter Biden in the room right now. You need a launch in criminal investigations against Joe Biden and against my political enemies, Zelensky, right? So this law goes full circle. And Trump was impeached over, you know, over these quid pro quo representations that violated a lot of our national security laws. And that, you know, it was literally a mobster style quid pro quo that, that occurred. Now, when I think about Trump's first impeachment regarding the threats he made to Zelensky, I'm like, oh, my God, dude does that every day. Like, that's the least bad thing.

I mean, he's a horrible thing. I mean, it is, it is shocking where we've come. It shocks the conscience that the Overton window has basically been shifted, that every single day in public he probably does, in my opinion, 10 to 15 impeachable. offenses that we can observe, things that he post, things that he does, says on any given day, maybe on a slow day, right, maybe three to five on a day where he's out a lot. I mean, he may be doing 20 impeachable offenses a day. So the question also that I'm interested in is, where are the Democrats going to focus on that? And I'll tell you a spot they're going to focus on too, one of the areas. And that's a nice segue to this next topic, which is Trump in his personal

capacity suing the government for $10 billion and then entering into a collusive settlement where he waives all of his tax liability for the past forever, basically, and then had the slush fund. And we'll talk about what went down before Judge Brinkima, what's going down before Judge Williams in Florida. This is a big, big deal, folks. When we come back, we'll talk about Trump's going to be in a lot of trouble in that federal court in Southern Florida. This is going to be an issue that's going to linger. I'm going to that hearing. And we'll talk about what happens. We'll talk about what happens in Virginia as well. A quick reminder, if you or somebody who knows been injured in a car accident,

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Come back to LegalAF. Thank you to all of our sponsors who make this show possible. Support our sponsors. The discount codes for all of those sponsors are in the description below. Jordy and Popak, they spend a great deal of time working with those sponsors to bring you those discount codes. They actually negotiate real deals, not Trump fake deals. And they think you'll like the products and the services and go and check it out. Popok, let's get into the topic that we were saying before we ended the last segment, this collusive settlement, that Donald Trump individually sues the IRS and sues the Treasury Department for $10 billion. Trump alleges that when he was president in 2019, Trump's IRS through a contractor who was hired

by Trump's IRS leaked 450,000 people's returns. Trump was one of them. He said he suffered a great deal of emotional distress in 2026, while he's been president for a year a half or so, and that he has to now sue himself, basically, not just in the current sense of suing the Trump government right now, but his government would have been responsible for the data leak because he was in charge in 2019. It was a contractor of his own IRS. So he's suing himself from 2019 and himself again in 2006. He filed a lawsuit in January, and basically we the people are the ones who have to pay it. It's our tax dollars. I mean, the fact that he was

demanding that we pay $10 billion that he gets paid to himself. I mean, again, like, not only is that like to me per se impeachable. I mean, it's like quite literally a racketeering criminal offense before our very, I mean, it's as heinous as he's stealing our money. Like, what are you doing? Dude. I mean, it's horrific. But I'm doing it in plain view. No, you're still committing a freaking crime. We see what you're doing. I guess I'm giving you my legal opinion. You're entitled to different legal opinions. Then he enters into, then he dismisses the case in Florida. He filed it in Florida, Miami federal court. He then dismisses. dismisses it, doesn't tell the judge that there's a settlement agreement, then the Trump DOJ

enters into the settlement agreement, which looks more like a decree. Like Trump doesn't, that's like an order where one party signs it, which is weird too. And it's Todd Blanche, Trump's former criminal defense lawyer, and it's framed as like an order. And then it has an addendum. And then the order creates a January 6th slush fund for insurrectionists to get paid like $1.8 billion, 1.776 billion to be exact. And then Trump settled. which Congress member Raskin refers to it as a super pardon that basically says any of Trump's past, you know, tax evasion, past failure to pay taxes, all gets wiped away. He gets his total immunity.

He doesn't have to pay his taxes, you know. And by the way, I believe that includes a lot of his quid pro quo deals with Middle East countries that have taken place recently where he would owe at least capital gains taxes, I'm most regular income taxes. And so if he's earned $5 billion, people don't talk about this side of it from these quid pro quo deals with Middle East nations and all these grifts across the world, he could potentially be avoiding a billion dollars in personal taxes or more because he'll say, I've got free immunity from engaging in tax fraud and tax liability based on what was said here. People have cited $100 million because they said that was the number of like what the original IRS audit was that went back a decade or so. But I'm like, you're missing the bigger billion dollar pie right here, which he's just going to say, I don't have to pay any of my taxes right now and all of these deals I just did where I owe between 25% to

37% taxes on it, depending on, you know, how it's how it's ultimately characterized. So I think it's a big deal. So Popak, you know, I just wanted to give that framework just to remind people of like what we're talking about here. The Trump DOJ then said, we're not going through with the January 6th slush fund. We're not, we're not doing it. They went silent about waving all. of the tax liability to Donald Trump.

And we're not going to speak about that, but we're not doing the slush fund. Then Maga Mike Johnson, the Trump MAGA people on the Hill goes, we're not doing the, you know, he's giving us his word. Yeah, thanks, Ben. Look, as we said, or as I've been saying, Friday was a red letter day for the Trump administration when it came to that anti-weaponization fund. You had a little bit of a stutter step earlier later in the week before the 12th, when the same issue about whether the fund was going to be blocked by a federal judge

was before two different federal judges. One, Judge Leon, the ballroom judge, as we like to call them now, in the District of Columbia in a suit brought by two Jan 6th officers by Public Integrity Project. And Brendan Ballou, I've had on Legal AF recently for an interview, they brought one from their vantage point of being at the Capitol on Jan 6th and not wanting to see insurrectionists get paid or insurrectionists get paid and have their debts relieved,

a violation of the 14th Amendment. At the same time, Judge Brinkama had a case brought by Democracy Forward, which is our collaborators also here or on the Legal IF YouTube channel. In fact, I'm going to have Sky Perryman, who was in the courtroom during the hearing in front of Judge Brinkama on the show on Wednesday

to talk about it. So you had two different cases. Same lawyer for the Department of Justice as guy named Andrew Block is arguing in both places. but from very different results before two different judges. And to answer the question that often comes up among our audience, why are there multiple cases and what happens when you have rulings

that are inconsistent or even consistent, you have multiple cases because different plaintiffs for different reasons file in different places or maybe even the same courthouse, but with different judges. Those cases aren't generally consolidated. Judges then rule, they're not bound by whatever another judge, even in their own courthouse says. They're bound.

by what their appellate court says above them. They're not bound by a colleague, even if it's right down the hallway. Although, you know, I've been known and it happened in this weaponization fund case as well, if I get a favorable result from somebody, I take the transcript, I go, Judge, I got a favorable result, although that backfired

for the Trump administration in front of Judge Brinkma, which I'll talk about next. And the other thing that happened on the 12th is that Trump's private lawyer, a guy here in Florida named Alej Bredo, without an affidavit, without sworn testimony, without support from the Department of Justice or testimony from Todd Blanche, tried to get out from under Judge Williams' order, really in order to show cause, order to show cause that he and the plaintiffs, along with the federal government, didn't commit fraud on the court,

didn't deceive the court. Those are some pretty big charges. Like you never, as a bar member, like I am, want to be on the receiving end. of an order to show cause where a federal judge wants to know why, wants to know whether you defrauded her or not. Like, that's a bad thing. And as I reported, that issue came up because 35 former federal judges led by Judge Michael Ludig, who's a friend of the podcast, been on the show with me a number of times.

He, they filed a unique motion under a certain rule of civil procedure, arguing that there was fraud on the court, but the parties are fraudsters of both sides, so we have to come into court to ask you to reopen the case and take a look. Even if strangers to the case had not filed, the judge has inherent, every federal judge has inherent authority and power to punish bad conduct in their courtroom or in the court process. Even if a case is dismissed. I mean, if a case is dismissed, if a case is dismissed, but right before it's dismissed, somebody dropped their pants and took a crap in the courtroom. There's repercussions. You can't say, well, Judge, I dismissed the case. You don't have jurisdiction.

I'm sorry, I just crapped all over your court, but there's nothing you can do about it. That's not right. It's not accurate and it's not right. Sort of what Trump's arguing, but we can take a crap on the court and you can't do a darn thing about it and filed that way. So, but let's start in chronological order. Judge Leon holds a hearing. He finds that he's not going to block the fund. He finds that it was enough that Todd Blanche, during a Q&A with a member of Congress, I think was Grace Ming of New York,

said, no, the weaponization fund is dead. He never talked about the next day when he alone, without anybody else participating, amended the settlement agreement to give what we now referred to, or Jamie Raskin coined, the super pardon to the Trump family against any criminal prosecution by any future Department of Justice or current Department of Justice for anything that Donald Trump labels lawfare or weaponization and also out from under tax and audit liability. I mean, a golden get out of jail free card.

It is the, you know, blanche Donald Trump's former. criminal defense lawyer, now attorney general nominee, it did and filled in the hole that the United States Supreme Court, when they gave the immunity decision, Blanche gave a super pardon. Even the Supreme Court didn't give that one. And he never wants to talk about the next day settlement amendment that he did. And all, all, so Judge Leo was fine. He said it's not going to be, he's not going to go forward with it. Get out of my courtroom effectively.

So Andrew Block, the lawyer, who argued it there, got all excited. And he filed that transcript with Judge Brinkuma. Now, she sits in the Eastern District of Virginia, not in D.C. They're both senior status judges of about the same vintage. But I don't know what her relationship is with Leon, Judge Leon. He was a Republican appointee. Brinkumannes was not. So she starts, she opens a hearing on Friday.

And we had a man on the ground. We had a reporter in the room, Adam Klassfeld of All Rise News. She starts it, I mean, the very beginning, when you come, for those who have never been to a hearing, federal or state, you know, the ritual of it is pretty established. The lawyers come into the room. They set up at respective council table, these wooden tables. They cross a wooden bar that's in the room that separates the public from the well of the court. That is the bar when people say they are members of the bar. that means they have the ability, they have the right, the privilege to cross that wooden bar

and interact with the court as an officer of the court. So you pass the wooden bar, you sit at your table, you set up your materials, there's courtroom staff in the room, and usually the judge is not in the room unless she's already, or he or she's already conducting hearings, then you all rise when the judge walks into the room, and then you start, you state your name, you make appearances, it's called. the case, case number, blah, blah, blah. You know, who's here for the government? And Andrew Block will stand up.

Who's here for the four plaintiffs against the weaponization fund in her case, which is Andrew Floyd, a former U.S. assistant U.S. attorney, a city, New Haven, Connecticut, an abortion rights group, and common cause. Who's here for that? Blah, blah, blah, blah. Democracy Forward. half of the plaintiff. Soot as Block stood up, having made all his filings, he said, Andrew Block for the United States

of America. And Judge Brighamma said, you are a very brave man to come into my courtroom. Now when I've been on the other side of that, you know, not getting that reception, but like watch one of my opponents that happened to, you know, you're, you just write, you know, to your colleague next to you like, I'm not going to be saying much here. Don't snatch defeat for the jaws of victory. You know, just the discretion is the better part of valor. Just sit down.

If the judge is doing your work for you, just take the win, as they say. And here's Adam Klassfeld. Moments after he left the courtroom yesterday in the Eastern District of Virginia reporting about what he saw. Let's play the clip. It was a brutal hearing for the government. Just as soon, just to give you a picture, as soon as it began, The attorney for the Justice Department registered his appearance, saying Andrew Block for the government.

Judge Brinkam's reply was, you're a brave man, Mr. Block. And then it went downhill from there because she took out the hearing, the transcript of that hearing that you mentioned. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Hold it. Hold it, all that. She actually said at the top of the hearing, correct. his appearance. You're a brave man. That's what she started with? That's what she started with. And Michael, it got worse from there because Block was the same attorney who had argued in front of Judge Leon in D.C. She took out the transcript from that hearing where Judge Leon asked him multiple times, why not just rescind the legal paperwork behind this whole thing? And multiple

times during that hearing, Block said, I don't know, that he hadn't spoken to Todd Blanche. He just didn't have the information. So she put him on the spot, said, well, it's been two days. Do you know now? And when he said he doesn't know, he doesn't have ready access to Todd Blanche, she said, I cannot believe, given the significance of this case, that you just simply do not know this. You couldn't get the answer to that question. Yeah, that was a little shaky cam.

He was literally on the street. I feel like I was making a mumblecore movie. But that, you know, we bring it to you. You know, we got reporters in the courtroom, or outside the courtroom, because he can't do it from the courtroom, like Adam Kassfeld through all rise news, support all of his independent commentary and journalism when you can. So she then enters an order, and she effectively tells in the order,

which we have up on LegalAF substack, should look. I'm going to paraphrase the word. Judge Brinkham says, look, if you want this case to end, and you want to get out from under my jurisdiction, it's very simple. Todd Blanche, Stan Woodward, the number three, and Todd Besson, who runs the Internal Revenue Service as the Treasury Secretary, you each, there it is, you each file a sworn statement under oath called an affidavit,

telling me that you are going to kill, put a stake through the heart of that fund, You won't create it, you won't fund it, you won't distribute from it. You do all of that and that you haven't already distributed or there's not already money in there. And if there is, you, you reverse it. You do that and you don't have to see Judge Brinkama ever again. If you don't want to do that by a date, she gave a date, then we're going to stay in this case till the very end. And I'm going to enter preliminary injunction, which she did from the bench and that and with the order that we just posted. In addition, she indefinitely, until further order of the court,

she has now preliminarily blocked indefinitely the fund, its creation, its exercise, any kind of agency or commission that Todd Blanche was going to create around it, and all aspects of the fund. Now, she doesn't address the settlement agreement, and that's troubling to me, but that brings us next to Miami. Because the settlement agreement and the amended settlement agreement is what I'm most concerned about, because it's not just the money handed out to the Jan 6th.

Believe me, the Department of Justice can find other money to do that. They have other funds to pay the Jan Sixers. And there are more than 600 claims against the government by Jan 6th insurrectionists. For cash, hundreds of millions of dollars, proud boys and oathkeepers, they want to re- they want to recapitalize their paramilitary and white supremacist, white Christian nationalist entities with our taxpayer dollars. So Brinkama issued that late yesterday. You heard Adam Glassfeld in the courtroom about it.

And she turned, she flipped the script. She flipped the transcript because Andrew Block came in because he had won in front of Judge Leon. He had filed the transcript. So basically just follow what Judge Leon did. It says, you know, I noticed something in the transcript. I noticed that you told Judge Leon that you had not talked to Todd Blanche. And you didn't know what the government's position was because it was asked by Leon, why don't you just rescind the settlement documents?

You know, there's this concept in the law of rescission or novation or you just, but where you declare a legal document to be null and void. Why don't just do that? Just do that. So we don't, and he said, well, I've spoken to Todd Blanche and I don't know. I don't know what the position is on that, blah, blah, blah. All right. Fast forward two days later, Judge Bray.

him a flips the script as you heard classfeld talk about and say i can't believe you haven't spoken to him in all of this time so i'll give you a choice file the affidavits and you'll get rid of me but if you don't i'm going to continue to manage and monitor this fund and i've blocked it i'm sure and sky parramy will be on with me on wednesday this week i'm sure champagne corks were popping first in the brain in the brains and then in reality for democracy forward to the plaintiffs because it was a masterful job, especially when you come off of, you know, I'm sure it was deflating a little bit when Judge Leon ruled against another set of lawyers on a similar issue. Another reason you file in multiple places, like what attorneys general do it, is like a portfolio theory. You figure we'll file

in three or four places, we'll see which judge we get, we'll see which ruling we get, and that's the one we'll work with. And so that's often done as well. Now we'll fast forward to Miami. because Miami was a different set of issues, but effectively would put a stake through the heart of the weaponization fund. It would sanction Donald Trump's lawyers and those in the Department of Justice as well, and it would get rid of, I believe, the superpartan attempt by Todd Blanche to amend the settlement to give the Trump family all of this immunity. So Judge Williams took the overest,

responded to the overture by 35 former federal judges, the led by J. Michael Liddick, to reopen the case after the Trump administration had settled, rather than respond to her order that a few weeks ago, that they tell her how she has jurisdiction. In other words, how is this a legitimate lawsuit where Trump is versus Trump, where Trump is versus his own Treasury Department and IRS. I don't get it. This doesn't look adversarial. This looks collusive. And you file a, and everybody here file a document separately, Trump, IRS, and DOJ about why I have jurisdiction,

why this is a real lawsuit. Because if it's not a real lawsuit, then it's not a legitimate settlement. And if it's not a legitimate settlement, then the Department of Justice doesn't have the power to settle a lawsuit that's phony, which they did, and that would unravel the whole ball of wax. And so the day before their papers were due, the Trump administration filed a notice of voluntary dismissal saying, good news, everybody, we got a settlement. We're not sharing it with you, Judge, but we got a settlement. And they published the settlement. We all saw it on the Department of Justice website. And in the settlement, it said, we had a lawsuit. It was before Judge Williams. Here's the case number. Here's just recital after recital about the phony lawsuit.

using it to give it imprimatur of the legitimacy to do the settlement. They even went so far as to have the lawyer for Donald Trump say, I was even thinking about amending my lawsuit before Judge Williams, to add a class action for all Jan Sixers. You were going to amend a lawsuit that the judge was about to throw out the window, and it already said she didn't think she had jurisdiction over? That's a lie. And so she entered an order after these 35 judges asked her to.

She didn't need to wait for them. have done it on her inherent authority. And she said to the lawyers for the plaintiffs, which is the Trump side of the case, and we'll put the order up on the screen. Here's what she ordered on the 29th of May. She says on page three, the non-party movements, which are the judges, advance grievous allegations that plaintiffs voluntarily dismiss this litigation to avoid judicial scrutiny of a lawsuit that was collusive from the start. They point to the fact of the settlement in question includes a three-paragraph addendum that purports to forever bar and preclude the United States from pursuing claims against the defendants. Accordingly, it is ordered and adjudged that plaintiffs filed by yesterday a paper detailing their position on the matters set forth in the motion, including, one, the charges of collusion and whether the parties are truly adverse.

Two, the assertion that the dismissal in this case was premised on deception by the parties, meaning the Trump parties and the IRS. And three, the question of whether the case should be reopened because the court was the victim of a fraud. Those are serious charges. Fraud, deception, victim of fraud. And I'm like, okay, they better come up with something good when they file, right? So they file a 22-page response. They never mentioned the, it's not broken down to actually respond to the judge's order.

They skip deception outright. The D-word doesn't appear anywhere of the 22 pages. On fraud, they just say that the judges, the 35 judges, didn't carry their burden to show there was fraud. The judge already said there's been charges against you of fraud. Answer for it. The answer can't be, I don't think they can't. carried their burden, the burden is on you. You're an officer of the court. And then how they framed their entire filing, we have it up on legal AF substack, is to attack the judges. Oh, the judges are

political hacks. Thirty-five former federal judges, including Michael Ludick, who should have been the Chief Justice of the United States instead of John Roberts. Really? Political hacks, many of them were appointed by Republicans. And they don't know what they're talking about. about and they insult the rule of law and basically judge you too you don't know what you don't know what you're talking about either and then they go off to say judge you have no jurisdiction not that they didn't commit the fraud of the court because uh uh we dismissed and so you can't there's nothing you can do about it judge this is the i crapped in your courtroom and you can't do anything about it theory uh let me just put it this way this is an intentional file is a filing

that intentionally does not accurately appropriately respond to a judge's order if you were writing this, if I were on the receiving end of that after I was done crapping my pants for having received it, I would have, I would have prepared my own affidavit, testimonial, under oath that made the judge feel better that I didn't commit a fraud on the court. And I would have said, I am an officer of the court. I represented this. This is the reason the lawsuit is not collusive and wasn't a deception. This is why I didn't commit fraud on the court.

I did not commit fraud on the court. I never would commit fraud on the court. And I would get that together. I would get affidavits from people in the Department of Justice to talk about the settlement like Todd Blanche. See, Todd Blanche never wants to be under oath. He'd rather lose a case than be under oath. I doubt he'll file an affidavit in Judge Brinkumas courtroom on the weaponization fund.

He didn't file one here. He didn't file one in the Kilmer-Abrigo-Gargea-Garcia case. in Tennessee to avoid a vindictive prosecution dismissal. He's not going to go under oath. That's not him. So that's what you would prepare. Those are, that's the sheets of paper you would prepare to submit to a court to save your hide

and your law license from a sanction by a judge. That's not what they did. And so now the judges, the 35 judges get the last word, they file next Friday. And then the judge will decide whether she wants a hearing or not. If there is a hearing in front of Judge Williams, where she would throw the book at these lawyers, and I think she'll hold a hearing. I'll try to be there. If it's only Zoom or audio, I'll phone in. If it's something I can go to live, I'll get into the courtroom. I'm in Miami.

That, I assure you. But this just shows you the depravity and corruption of the Department of Justice. I think that's a common theme here, a golden thread that we pulled through this entire episode. And it usually now starts and ends with Todd Blanche. But federal judges are fighting back, you know, and how many times have we done a legal AF episode where we said this is an epic losing streak, five, like two weeks ago we did a show where we said it was 0 in 5 in one week. We just had a similar 0 in 4

and things that we also touched on like, you know, the entirety of the Chicago U.S. Attorney's Office up in flames and federal judges there of all stripes not believing a word that they say. This is what happens when you undermine the credibility, the legitimacy of the Department of Justice, and you make it a weapon for the executive branch that's not independent. Then grand juries don't trust you, juries don't trust you, judges certainly don't trust you, and of course the public and the voters don't trust you. And that's what's happened with the worm turning against the Department of Justice.

and Donald Trump's command of it over the last, you know, 19 months, 20 months. If anybody were to say me, what is the number one, besides the polling numbers, what's the number one thing that has changed radically since the start of the Trump administration? It's their now inability to get away with their attacks on the courts to their benefit, like benefiting from moving so fast and being so unlawful and getting a benefit from that. Federal courts are now hot to them. And it's the rejection of the Department of Justice by the American people and the very stakeholders in our institutions that matter to justice, grand juries, juries, and judges.

That has now changed 180 degrees from the start of the Trump administration, reflecting how the American people now also see Trump as being completely corrupt and untrustworthy. And no amount of bombings in Iran. And unfortunately, Iran's not going to be the last Iran. First of all, I'm not even sure Iran is going to be the last Iran, because I'm not sure whatever they're going to announce on Donald Trump's birthday with some confetti cannon is really going to hold or last or be good for the American people. But it's not the last one because every time Donald Trump fault,

in the polls in America, which is going to be a regular occurrence and a weekly occurrence, he's going to go run out and try to bomb somebody, you know, like he announced yesterday or today. We bombed the Trenda-Aragua guy in Venezuela. Okay, you control the country. I'm not sure that's that surprising at this point. People don't lose sleep, you know, on the scale, when they poll people, one of the things that keep you up at night, trend to Aragua is, doesn't make, you know, doesn't break the top 2,000 of things.

that keep people up at night. Affordability, housing costs, healthcare, immigration, and Donald Trump's assault on immigration and immigrants. Those are things that people are voting on. And it leads, it starts as it always has, historically, with the economy. And we'll continue to follow all of that. We're so glad you're here. You may notice I've been solo here for a bit then had a little bit of a technical difficulty. Sometimes it happens, you know, we do, when we do our taping and our live recording, So, but I'm glad you're here on Legal A-F. As you know, we do the show twice a week on the Midas Touch Network, Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. And then we have a new live version of Legal A-F.

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I'm going to shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal AFers. And we'll see you on Monday night for the live version on LegalAF YouTube, 5 p.m. Eastern Time, and again Wednesday at the midweek. Until my next report, I'm Michael Popa.