Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF - 7/8/2026

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

The award winning Legal AF podcast, with Popok and Lisa Graves in for KFA, provide searing commentary in real time on breaking law and politics events. And tonight are joined by Special Guest Marc Elias of Democracy Docket and the courtrooms. Tonight the hosts cover Trump being ordered to pay one of his sex abuse survivors $5.7 million today and Trump’s reaction; an appeals panel refusing to put Trump’s name back up on the Kennedy Center; judges blocking his DOJ from going after election workers; other judges calling Trump racist; and Todd Blanche refusing to turn over any documents or testify before next week’s Senate Confirmation hearing. Read more from Democracy Docket: https://www.democracydocket.com/ Support our Sponsors: Qualia: Go to https://QualiaLife.com/legalaf for up to 50% OFF! Quo: Try QUO for free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to https://Quo.com/LEGALAF Leessa Mattress: Go to https://Leesa.com for 30% off select mattresses PLUS get an extra $50 off with promo code LEGALAF, exclusive for my listeners. NOBL: Head to https://NOBLTravel.com for up to 46% off your entire order! Become a member of Legal AF YouTube community: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgZJZZbnLFPr5GJdCuIwpA/join Learn more about the Popok Firm: https://thepopokfirm.com Subscribe to Legal AF Substack: https://michaelpopok.substack.com/subscribe?coupon=c0fc8f5c Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum with Dr. Steve Hassan: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show The Ken Harbaugh Show: https://meidasnews.com/tag/the-ken-harbaugh-show Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Shopify thinks ahead of us, you know, and it thinks about the customer more than anything. Every day I'm thinking about some other new business. But Shopify is doing it to me because it's so easy to use. It's like I can't stop. I'm addicted. Start your free trial at Shopify.com. I'm Keanu and I leveled up my business with Shopify. Once I figured out that Shopify was a thing, I never turned back. I can create a site with my eyes closed.

Shopify thinks ahead of us, you know, and it thinks about the customer more than anything. Every day I'm thinking about some other new business. But Shopify is doing it to me because it's so easy to use. It's like I can't stop. I'm addicted. Start your free trial at Shopify.com. My name is Shannon Maldonado. I'm the founder of Yowie, a gift shop from the lens of art. artist and handmade objects. I chose Shopify because when I was testing other platforms,

it was definitely one of the most user-friendly. It was important to me to think about where we would be in the future. All of the tools for reading your sales like planning inventory, they're just right there on your dashboard. For anyone starting a small business, the biggest thing I can tell you is it doesn't have to be perfect. Shopify can help you build upon it. Start your free trial on shopify.com. Welcome to the Legal AF podcast at the midweek. I'm my Michael Popock and standing in for Karen Freeman, Ignifalo is one of our other co-anchors on Legal A-F. Lisa Graves, first, Lisa, thank you for stepping in and doing the show with me tonight. My pleasure. Happy to jump in and help.

And what a great show, not only because Lisa's here, but we got Mark Elias, Democracy Docket, Litigator of All Things, Voting Rights, Maps, Databases, Databases, He's in the courtrooms. He runs an amazing organization called Democracy Talkit, and we're going to have some exclusive briefing with Mark coming up right after a couple of other major topics today. Just to do our rundown, we're going to do E. Jean Carroll, or as Judge Kaplan has said, pay up Donald Trump. Y'all were $5.7 million for having sex abused her.

She's waited long enough that it is time for him to do equity and pay. the judgment. And so no, he did not stay it to allow Donald Trump to run to the Second Circuit. And the Second Circuit is very unlikely to stop the payment. But when I get when I get Lisa back, one of my favorite lines in the opposing paper by Donald Trump's lawyers, he's currently represented by Alina Habba's old law firm. One of my favorite lines is, she's, Eugene Carroll has said she's going to give all the money away. So I'm irreparably harmed because I won't be able to get it back. if I'm able to convince nine members of the Supreme Court to change their mind in a week. Right, Judge?

No, not exactly. And I love that comment because E. Jean Carroll was on with me a year ago, almost a year ago to the day. And she said, I'm going to give all the money away. And we had a whole great discussion. E. Jean Carroll, such an amazing, amazing person. Being a sex abuse survivor of Donald Trump does not define her in the least. Kennedy Center, no, the name is not going back up on the Kennedy Center. And another bad day for Donald Trump as even one of the Trump appointed judges,

Judge Katzis on the D.C. federal appellate court said, no, I'm not going to issue an order during the appeal to put your name back up. And we'll go over all the good reasons why, including the major one that the Trump administration, the Department of Justice often forgets, which you're taught, I don't know, the first or second week in law school, or at least when you get to move, court board. It's all about the evidence. What evidence do you have, sir? What evidence do you have in this court of law? This is not about social media posts. This is, look around. Does this look like, this is like Instagram? This is a courtroom. They constantly forget it. And it gets them into

trouble. And then we're going to have a Mark Elias teaching about voting and databases. I mean, it seems like every day. Some people might be thinking, is this a repeat episode. Donald Trump loses again about voting databases. Donald Trump loses again about trying to get election worker data. Hasn't stopped him, has not stopped him from writing nasty letters to election workers wagging his pointy finger at this bony finger at them. But I think Mark's a great person to kind of bring it all together

where we are as of July the 8th in America on these issues. As we are one week away, July 8th also marks a count. of sorts seven days until Todd Blanche. Remember him is up for confirmation with a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. And Lisa Graves will be great for some insider view of some of these issues on Capitol Hill. And as public interest groups and law firms, all array against Todd Blanche, including former Department of Justice personnel at the highest level, former federal judges, Lisa Graves and others having signed letters. to oppose Todd Blanche.

And I just had, and it'll be up tomorrow, number one video on Legal AF YouTube. Lisa, I had the head of American oversight. You might have bumped into her. He's amazing. She's amazing, right? Because she was also on the House Oversight Committee and the Chief Counsel when Elijah Cummings headed up that committee. And you brought, did you work with her?

Only since she's been an American Oversight. And Chirona is fantastic. They're so lucky to have her. We'll talk about her. We'd have a great interview going up with her. tomorrow morning. So why don't thank you for being here for those that don't know Lisa served all three branches of government. Who can say that? Donald Trump can't even name three branches of government, let alone serve in them. She knows how they're supposed to operate. A constitutional scholar

in her own right. There's a book jacket right above her right shoulder without precedent. If you haven't filled out your summer reading bag yet, you need without precedent an expose of the Roberts court. Lisa Graves puts the Roberts court and John Roberts through her version of an MRI. Right? Right. X-ray machine and you're going to find it. You won't want to put the book down without precedent. Let's kick it off with E. Gene Carroll. What do you say, Lisa? Well, she's an absolute hero and it's ridiculous that the Trump team continues to try to not pay her. She's gone through so many appellate channels from this operation, the Trump operation. And it's been years now since the court found that Donald Trump sexually abused her and that he was defaming her.

And so pay up. Pay up already. And that's what Judge Kaplan said in that order. Pay up. No more delay. They've run to the Supreme Court. They didn't get what they wanted from the Roberts Court. And it's well overdue for them to pay her.

the damages that she's due. You know, for Donald Trump not to get, just to round it out, a week or so ago, a little, we covered it, but among the many drops and decisions by the Supreme Court, they rejected, finally, a petition for writ of cert to take up this particular case, which was there were two EG and Carroll cases, right? We call them Carol 1 and Carol 2.

Carol 1 was about Donald Trump, defaming her when he wasn't president. So between the presidencies about saying she's not my type. I would sex abuser. I don't even know who she is. She's a shakedown artist and all this other crap. That case went to trial. Lena Habo was one of the lawyers there.

Donald Trump did not testify. And a nine person jury in New York, federal jury, found that Donald Trump sexually abused, E. Jean Carroll, in 1996, in a dressing room of a famous department store about a block from, Trump Tower. Okay. That's this case. And now with interest, it's now up to five point, almost $5.8 million. Trump posted a cash bond out of pocket deposited in the court registry under the

auspices of one judge Lewis Kaplan pursuant to a stipulated order. And what the judge said is, you want to take your appeal, post your bond. So if you lose, she doesn't have to chase after you. and you can take your appeal until they're exhausted. And we're all exhausted. I'm sure we're where Egypt, Carol is too. But he finally exhausted his appeal because after 13 conferences from February in which none of the judges,

there weren't four votes to take up this petition, let alone five votes to get into the weeds about whether certain evidence of past sexual misconduct should come in or not come in. And finally, they rejected it. And not one, not one of the MAGA 6 dissented. Not even Congress. Not even two people who have had sexual abuse allegations.

Cavanaugh and Thomas. So when you can't get Kavanaugh and Thomas on your side, so that happened. So, okay, time to pay up. Oh, no, oh no. Trump files a motion for reconsideration and rehearing. You just lost 9-0 a minute. ago. You think they're going, what's the basis for reconsideration? So we must, we, that he must win no matter what. And in the middle of that, right, after the,

after the Supreme Court rejected his demands, they went to E. Jean Carroll's lawyers and said, will you consent to a delay? And they wrote back, I think, basically a one sentence reply, we do not consent, which is both accurate in terms of this particular posture. And, you know, the fundamental issue in this case was that she did not consent. consent to his treatment of her, his sexual abuse of her. And so the fact that they're still playing these games, like you said, Michael, trying to get the federal district court to delay it further so that they can run to the second circuit, this is just more dilatory tactics by Trump, refusing to own up, refusing to pay what she's due. And, you know, enough already. Yeah. And she has a second judgment

that we're not even going to talk about yet tonight, except to tell you that with interest, it's now up to $90 million. He had a post-assurity bond for that through a company. That's still posted. He's still trying to delay paying her on the $90 million, which had to do when he defamed her while he was president. Another jury after he testified and walked out on closing argument in front of Robbie Kaplan, the lawyer for E.J. and Carol, which was not a great look for the jury or for Donald

Trump, they came back and said, great, I'm glad you testified. It's now $83 million, now up to $90 million for defamation and punitive damages. She's still running that to ground through various levels of appeal. But we have hot off the presses, Judge Kaplan. We got the order earlier today, which I did a hot take on on YouTube, an order which just was an order of a disbursement, if you will, telling the clerk to disperse in sort of plain, simple decrees. declarative, emphatic, judge-like sentences. But we got the order. And let me read to you from the order where the enough already comes from. This is on first page, Lewis Kaplan, Judge. More than three years ago, a jury returned a verdict against defendant for $5 million for sexual abuse and defamation.

The judgment was appealed. Defendant posted a $5.5 million bond with the court to secure payment of the judgment. In due course, the judgment was affirmed on appeal. That was by the Second Circuit. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied hearing the case en banc, meaning he needed a majority of all of the judges to toss the three-judge panel ruling. And he didn't get that. On June 29, 26, just a few days ago, the Supreme Court denied without dissent defendant's petition for writ of cert.

He now has moved for, a plaintiff has now moved for disbursement. Defendant resisted contending the payment must or in any event should. be stayed against the possibility that the Supreme Court might change its mind and grant Sir Shari. Having considered defendant's arguments, the court by separate order has directed that the money owed the plaintiff be dispersed to plaintiff. Defendants rely heavily on the claim that he has filed a petition for rehearing with respect to the petition for cert. It is wrong in his view to treat the Supreme Court's denial of cert as the last word. sorry, there are another court above the Supreme Court? That is so, he says, because you have to get a final denial of a petition for cert,

and although final does not appear anywhere in the order, he then says over to the enough is enough section. He says on the back of page, the last page of the order, page six, finally disbursement of funds would not cause defendants irreparable harm it is highly unlikely in the highly unlikely event that the Supreme court were to grant his petition for rehearing reverse itself in grant his previously denied cert petition and reverse the judgment in this case defendant could still bring suit to recover any funds that were dispersed in other words go get him go sewer for him in the last analysis defendant has been stalling this case for years. This is Judge Kaplan. A jury unanimously concluded that he sexually abused and defamed plaintiff and awarded her damages accordingly. The judgment on that verdict has been upheld. On bank rehearing has been denied. The Supreme Court has denied cert without dissent. It is time for him to do equity and pay the judgment. So ordered Lewis Kaplan,

United States District Court judge. Yeah. And yet, and yet, and yet Trump still still. filed a motion for stay with the Second Circuit, right? Yeah. I mean, it just is, it's incredible, like what his lawyers will do for him and what he'll claim. And this notion that there's supposed to be some separate cert order that somehow final is absurd. That's not how cert works. And his team certainly knows that that's not how it actually works. And I think that that, that penultimate paragraph of what the judge is saying in terms of in the event that this unlikely series of events were somehow to happen, he were somehow to be relieved of. of this obligation, then go get the money.

Like she's been trying to get the money for years. Right, go after her. He's held it on his side of the ledger for the last three and a half years. Right. Chase her if you think you are somehow in the history of, I don't even know if you know how many times in the history of the United States Supreme Court, they have granted rehearing after no dissent,

nine zero denying a petition. I know of no such example, I have to say. And, you know, I mean, that's not to say, some people haven't sought cert a number of times, but like basically you go to seek cert in this term, that's it. You don't get to go every year for the rest of your life and seek cert the next year, and the year after that, and the year for that. You lost. He lost. He's a loser. Can't accept that he's a loser. Yeah. He's also a sexual abuser. Sexual abuser and a loser. And, uh, and kudos to E. E. Jean, to come on the show. They've been on separately before, but they're kind of in the thick of it

right now, but I don't think she wanted to rock the boat until she actually gets the money on both sides. I actually wrote back to her team and I said, well, as soon as they get the money, I would love to have them on. Put on your secret decoder ring. Let me take advantage of you being on here with your Supreme Court background knowledge. Put on your secret Dakota ring. How did you make out the fact that at 13 or 14 separate conferences, they couldn't find the votes to grant that petition? They finally denied the petition, which means they got votes to deny the petition and no one dissented. Is this a Supreme Court that's going to? Is that too far even for this Supreme Court to let Donald Trump off of a civil judgment for sex abuse? Well, I was surprised that it took

that long, quite frankly. And so I wondered what was happening behind the scenes. We don't know. We may never know. There might be some notes in some archive someday decades forward about why it was, why it was allowed to linger for so long. But I sort of wonder part of it is, I think the way that John Roberts plays politics, in my view, with the docket and the ordering of the docket, you know, this idea of, you know, pushing the most important decisions to the end of the term, having some where he's deciding in favor of Donald Trump and then, you know, on the rare instance, deciding against him, ruling against him. And so it's sort of packaged up. I wonder about that. But I think the point you made, Michael, is so really important to underscore,

which is not a single justice dissented. And there have been a number of dissents from denials of cert over the years. And in particular with this court, this Roberts court where there's disagreement. But when you look at the numbers, right, the Republican appointees have the numbers. It's a six to three court. You only need four to grant cert. It's the rule of four that's been around for, you know, for quite some time. And they couldn't get four of the Republican appointees to go along with Trump or stick their necks out. Maybe there were three. Who knows. And if they couldn't get a fourth, they weren't going to risk it or have their reputations tarnished. But the fact is, is that not only did they deny cert, but as you point out, not one of them said that there was any merit to his, to his claims, that there was any real heartburn over denying this in terms of actually stating some basis why their colleagues should have granted cert for him. And so he lost. He lost flat out like it was just a flat out loss, not a closed place. Yeah, you can't right. There's no lemonade to make. Yeah. And I, listen, I'm not surprised that Alito and Kavanaugh didn't want to raise the specter of their own sex abuse, which would have been mercilessly covered by legal AF and Midas

Touch in mainstream media. If Clarence Thomas dissented on a sex abuse case, you don't think you and I would be talking about Anita Hill right now? You don't think we would have been talking about Dr. Blassie right now about Kavanaugh? I think we would. Exactly. If Thomas or Kavanaugh had decided to stand up for him after after Trump stood next to Kavanaugh, despite the very compelling evidence that Dr. Christine Blazzi Ford gave after the Republicans stood by Clarence Thomas, despite the very painful and graphic testimony, you know, that was given against him by Anita Hill. The Republicans, you know, have stood by some of these sex offenders, and obviously Donald Trump is an adjudicated sex abuser. But in this instance,

those justices did not go along with him, nor did Alito, who doesn't have that kind of scandal background, but has certainly demonstrated his right-wing bona fides, both when he was a lawyer and as a judge and his willingness to basically serve Trump and aid Trump at almost every turn, but not this turn. This was the bridge too far. Absolutely. And, and, you know, listen, we know blow smoke or sunshine here. You know, the Democrats have a platyneur problem in Maine over sex abuse. How many women have to come forward to say that they were sexually abused, attacked, or raped by a candidate before the Democrats will say, hey, I think it's a good time to separate from him. I mean, I think now it's just a matter.

It's just a matter of moments for Graham Platner. What is he saying? He might be on the belt, but as long as he said, yeah, okay, he better just get off. Yes. I mean, according to our producers, he's dropped out. So, which is good. I heard they brought in the heavy guns, including apparently political operatives for Mayor Mendami down in New York, try to find an exit and exit strategy for Platner.

I mean, for a party that sent Al Franken Paken, as a senator, because he had a picture when he was a comedian that they didn't like about, you know, about, you know, some, whatever it was. Yeah, like he was joking with another comedian on a plane and we had no problem throwing him to the wolves and out of the Senate. This guy, are you kidding me? I mean, we got to be consistent in our values, shall we? Yeah, yeah, I agree.

I agree. And also, like, I just think we need to not have. have this sort of, I don't know what the pollsters behind part of this or the people who help prop him up. But you need people who actually have been really vetted who have served, I think, in some capacity, in some elective office to show that this isn't just sort of a flavor of the month, some sort of overcorrection in some pollster's view of the elusive voters that he's going to somehow appeal to. And the lack of vetting here, and in some other instances I've seen over the years is just really, it's really disappointing, quite frankly. But hopefully,

you know, hopefully the next person who comes forward for this Senate seat will be properly vetted. There's a lot of debate that needs to go forward about Susan Collins, about the Democratic candidate, about what Maine stands for, about, you know, who they want to lead, who they want to represent them in the Senate. And it, you know, this situation is, you know, certainly a moral disaster and also a huge distraction. He needs to get out of the way. Yeah. And, he has. I think that's the breaking news. I think in the last few moments he has. Oh, good. Well, great. I was testing right above your head, but not in real life. There is a scan for listen code. For those that are wondering, we're trying to increase the downloads. It's on the other side.

The downloads for legal A.F. Scan that, hit the download. Make it really simple. Hey, oh my God. Look at this. We're putting lots of things up on the screen, which I like to see. So good news in the E. Jean Carroll case. What a lovely dignified woman. I really enjoy. enjoyed interviewing her. And in fact, we were trying to make arrangements. I think I might try to do it in the fall to have dinner with her and hopefully with Robbie Kaplan when I'm back in New York. So good news on that front for everybody, for all sex abusers and survivors.

And I don't know what she's going to do with the money. She said she's certainly going to, she has the right to do anything she wants with it. I know Ben Micellis joked with her once. Spend a little on yourself, will you? But she doesn't see it that way. She's a very happy person, that abuse did not define her. except as an advocate against it in her own way. She said she's in her 80s.

She said to me in an interview, a good plate of fetichini is basically all I need in my pups, my dogs. Right. I'm like, she didn't do it for the money. She didn't do it for the money. She didn't do it for the money. So Trump can't understand that because he only does it for the money.

So he can't understand somebody of character, high moral fiber. Yeah, exactly. Totally crazy. Totally crazy. and said he's busy wasting our time in the Department of Justice's budget, trying to get things like his name back on the game. He spends money. Like this is a phrase I remember from my grandmother,

like a drunken sailor. Yeah. Our money, like a drunken sailor. All of these two old drunken sailors. Yes, exactly. Sure, there's some nice ones out there. But in this instance, it's like this just willingness to spend our money to spend our resources. Every time the Justice Department is involved in defending him in one of these ridiculous claims,

It's a case that they're not actually bringing and putting resources in to actually defend the real public interest. It's like it's a wasting and squandering of our resources for his vanity. It's absurd. But with this Department of Justice, maybe that's not such a bad thing because they're untrustworthy. I have a new name. Have you heard my new phrase for them? Now, what is the new phrase? Oh, they're the wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump organization.

Oh, yes. Yes. I mean, I think that's accurate. Commerce, Commerce Department. Treasury Department and Department of Justice or wholly owned subsidiaries of the Trump organization, period. Period. Period. That's true. And it's also been made possible because John Roberts has used Trump to impose this extreme and outlandish theory of unitary executive, this unitary executive theory, this really terrible, destructive aggrandizement of presidential power. And so it's not just that Trump is asserting this control. It's not just that he has these. these licks spittles, these sycophants who are willing to do his bidding no matter the consequences

for the rest of the American people. But you also have a Roberts court that has recreated, you know, basically changed the law in order to advance this imperial presidency, this notion that a president can just commandeer and direct these agencies, even in ways that are in defiance of the laws passed by Congress. So, you know, I like to make sure people understand. And Trump is a terrible actor in all of this. He is trying to use the Justice Department to do his personal bidding, to advance his personal agenda, not necessarily a policy agenda, although sometimes that.

But he's been aided instrumentally by a Supreme Court that is filled with right-wing operatives who are using Trump to impose their personal wish lists, like what John Roberts just did in the Slaughter case, imposing this unitary executive theory to reverse, you know, nearly more than 90 years of legal precedent about independent agencies, he's using Trump to advance his pet agenda, something that he wanted to accomplish as a lawyer, but couldn't and is now using the court to accomplish, is using the judicial power, wielding the judicial power to accomplish something that he could not win as a lawyer in the Reagan administration. And so Trump is, you know,

doing deep damage, but he couldn't do it without the help of John Roberts. Yeah, great, great point, great context. Let's turn quickly to the Kennedy Center. Trump gets a terrible for him. Great for us. 96-page decision by Chris Cooper a couple of weeks ago in which the judge said on the name, permanent injunction. I don't need any more evidence. It's against the organic statute, establishing the Kennedy Center as the living memorial to JFK following his assassination. You don't get to put any other name on it, including Donald Trump. As to the shutdown of the center by the board, which is under the Donald Trump's thumb.

It's like a lot of the wives of Howard Lutnik and J.D. Vance's wife and everybody's wife. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. As he said, I don't like the record you've established for the need to shut down the Kennedy Center and end its programming. You need to create a better record to show that you're doing something prudently.

And then as to the representative Joyce Beatty, Bady, who's on the ex officio member, he re-installed her. He said, she's a voting member. You can't change the rules midway. You can't bow and gag her. And she has a role to play. Right. Trump did, and the name's got to come down by a date certain, which they sort of did.

Except the tarp is still up. Right. Right. The white sheets are still up. So we answer a question. And people put your questions in chat tonight because, you know, we're alive. somebody asked, what about the tarp? Yeah, when the case is still in front of Judge Cooper

on many of these issues, like some of the ones I'm going to read to you about, like, another foundation, another shadow foundation that Trump sets up to try to take money and divert it away from the congressionally approved entity or foundation, much the way he did on July 4th. There was a thing called America 250, bipartisanly created,

which was supposed to, fund all the activities to celebrate our 250. Trump created a freedom 250, a sound-alike Kennedy, run by all of his insiders and fundraisers and grifters. And they started to divert money away from Congress's allocation to their freedom 250 that they control. He did it again with the Kennedy Center. He set up the Trump Kennedy Foundation.

Like, what the F is that? That's not even a thing. And why is it any money? Why is it fundraising for the center? Why is it the center fundraising for itself to keep the money? Why is it being strangle held by a fake created entity by Donald Trump? Right. Another front group, basically, to capture the cash.

And then they come in and claim they need that cash or the Kennedy Center won't survive. Well, the Kennedy Center was surviving well before this Motley crew arrived, before this board was taken over by sycophants to Trump. And, you know, boards have duties to the institutions that they are the board overseeing. They're not supposed to have their primary duty to be whatever Trump's vanity demands. They're supposed to actually protect the money that comes in from Congress and from other donors. And in this instance, you have not just the situation where this board is basically doing whatever Trump wants, whatever he says. That's why they were, that's why they were installed in those roles. But then, like you point out, Michael, there's his whole other

new front group that sprung up in order to take donations and basically peel off money from what would otherwise go directly to the actual Kennedy Center nonprofit entity and quasi-governmental entity and instead have it go into this other brand new thing that we're not going to get actual reports on, you know, possibly four years. They can get extensions. We won't know until next year what money came in and went out this year. You know, it's just no way to run a railroad. But it is a way to run an operation that is basically trying to siphon money into the hands of Trump's friends in order to advance Trump's agenda. It's a way to railroad the American people.

Speaking of railroads, here's what a three-judge panel at the United States Court of Appeals in D.C. Millett and Wilkins, who were appointed by Obama at the same time, came on together, and Katz, who was appointed by Trump. And one of the thematics here in this beginning of legal AF is no dissents from Trumpers in a 3-0 decision, including Tatsis, here's what they ruled about the motion to stay and put the name back up while the appeal continues. Here's what they said.

As to, we'll go to on page two, appellants allege financial harm, pardon me, to the Kennedy Center if they are not permitted to reinstate President Trump's name. To your point, Lisa, they argue that removal of President Trump's name threatens to impede the center's fundraising efforts, it will contribute to the financial decline of the center.

However, they have failed to support this assertion with any specific facts or evidence. They only offer the conclusory assertions of the Kennedy Center's executive director that were made in a factually unsupported declaration. Let me translate. Let me let the two lawyers here translate that for you. That means it was a naked affidavit,

that's what we call it, that have no factual support, no citation to a document, a record, a sworn testimony on precipient knowledge. Somebody had factual, with their five senses, knowledge of something, nothing to support that. And, you know, courts are funny little things, aren't they, Lisa? They like a declaration to have facts. They really, they really like when you swear to a declaration at the bottom with the notary seal and everything that what you said was true and also that it was based on actual facts. Let me put it this way. All bullshit is left at the courthouse steps. As soon as you walk through the mahogany or whatever doors of a courtroom with a judge

up on a bench wearing a robe, that's the ultimate bullshitometer. Okay. And if you don't have the facts and you can't prove it with the evidence, you're not winning the motion or the trial. Yeah, I mean, and that's exactly what we saw over and over from Trump's lawyers during the 2020 election. Rudy Giuliani making these grandstanding statements in front of, you know, what, four seasons, you know, not the four seasons hotel,

but the four seasons, you know, lawn service or whatever. Landscaping, right. Landscaping, right, landscaping. How could I forget this? It was such a moment of great, you know, cosmic beauty. But the fact is that when he would actually go into court where they would require, you know, evidence, actual evidence, he just kept losing. And it wasn't because he's a bad lawyer, although, you know, I think there's a case to be made for that. It was that there were no actual provable facts. It was just a bunch of conspiracy theory, nonsense, opinions, and fever dream

stuff from some of these right-wing operatives about the election. And when the court, when the courts are faced with those sorts of claims that aren't based on facts, it's the job of the courts to rule based on the facts. And so that was a, you know, that order is very interesting the way that the court put it in terms of having this affidavit that has no facts. Siding back to Judge Cooper's own finding, because that's what trial courts do, finding that there is no proof that current or future donations hinge on President Trump's name being on the building. I would think it's quite the opposite. This is their third comment. Third, the appellants argue that a new entity named.

the Trump Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Foundation. Hold that point for a minute because Judge Cooper is not going to be happy that there is a Trump Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Foundation, which I believe violates his order in any event. They say that they'll no longer be able to fundraise and they've got to return all the money raised because Trump's name's not on the facade. Here's a problem though, Lisa. You've done appellant. Appellants never raised that factual contention in the district court below and they have no explanation for failing to do so. Therefore, a post hoc argument cannot demonstrate an abuse of discretion by the district court. In other words, if you never raised it with the district court, judge, you can't accuse him of abusing of his discretion by not ruling in your favor on it.

Right. I mean, it's such a, that's such a, like, you wouldn't actually get a good grade in your moot court class if you actually went and said, hey, I really need to win because the lower court or the, you know, the mock court basically didn't rule in my favor on an argument I didn't make. Like it is absurd to make such a claim. And also, if it was such a good argument, why didn't they make it below? And even if they have some, you know, random billionaire who's like, I'm not going to give money if Trump's name isn't on it, so what? That doesn't actually mean that this setup is legitimate given the actual original documents creating the Kennedy Center. Just because he may have some billion. like theoretically, if there's evidence to support this, it doesn't actually make the case

that needs be made because there's no reason for Trump's name to be part of it in the first place. And in fact, it's legally inappropriate and I think unlawful, the way the courts have ruled, that it's unlawful for his name to be attached. And aside from that, I'll just say in my personal, in my personal view or my personal capacity, it's immoral and grotesque for a living sitting president to try to attach his name to the memorial to an American president who was assassinated. It is just plain wrong. Why didn't he, on that point, I totally, that's so well put. Why doesn't he just attach his, why isn't it the tomb of the unknown soldier and Donald Trump?

Yeah. Why don't we just put it on there, the eternal flame? Right, Grand's tomb and Donald Trump. It's tomb and a Trump hotel. Yeah. And liberty and Donald Trump. Donaldson. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. We got the bullet on the Gulf of America because it could have been the Gulf of Trump. Well, based on rulings on slavery plaques that should be posted in Philadelphia, what, I mean, I mean, is the next thing going to do? You're going to pry Emma Lazarus's poem off the base of the Statue of Liberty and replace it with an ad for Trump hotels? I mean, like, seriously, this is the problem when even courts give him a little bit too, a little bit too much leeway.

But I'm so glad you're here today to bounce these ideas around with. When we come back, we're going to have Mark Elias, who's waiting patiently in the green room to join us to update our audiences about all things, voting, voting rights, lawsuits, the long string of uninterrupted losses by Donald Trump's Department of Justice in cases involving our election integrity. And he's not just talking about it as a commentator or the runner of the great democracy docket, but he's a litigate. trial lawyer as his own firm and he's in the trenches doing this work. You're going to really enjoy Mark Elias. So many different ways to support what we do here. If you appreciate this kind of content, you're here. You obviously appreciate it.

We've got a few thousand people here with this tonight. One of them is to download. Where's that download thing? Yeah, go download the audio for legal. We're Webby Award winning. We're one of the top law and politics, if not the top law and politics podcast. But we still need your help. Need your love.

And it's simple. Everything I'm going to talk about here is absolutely free. I do my work and so does Lisa on Legal AF YouTube channel, which is 12 different videos every day, fresh videos, amazing contributors, court accountability action, Adam Klasfeld, All Rise News. We've got the ACLU regular contributors. I just did a, if you're interested, I just did, I just hosted actually two Supreme Court roundtables, one for court accountability action, and last night for the American Civil

Liberties Union, something you're not going to want to miss. When you hear Anthony Romero, one of the longest serving heads of the American Civil Liberties Union, talk passionately about what we can do in the audience and in the community to defend democracy. It's going to get you all jazzed up. Go watch it. It's over under the live tab for Legal AF YouTube channel. We also have a substack. Sure we do. Legal A.F. Substack. You want to be there. I do a live report every day. I just did one today with Adam Klassfeld. I call him wind-swept Adam Klasfeld. He's got great hair. It's out in front of the Milwaukee federal courthouse stepping out from the Hanna-Dugan, Judge Hanna-Dugan sentencing. And we did a quick

exclusive for our audience on our substack channel there. So we've got all that going on. And then I don't know if you know, at least you probably know this. I founded a firm dedicated to our community law firm about a year and a half ago, frankly, exclusively to our community. I think all of our clients have come from the Midas Dutch and Legal AF community. It's called the Popak firm. What else would I call it? And I think we have a little ad campaign for it here. There we go. Brand new website, same tireless fighters. Use the QR code. If you've been injured, negligence of others, catastrophe that's turned your life for those of your family members upside down. Come to the Popok firm. I've got amazing trial lawyers in all 50 states. I stand behind it.

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Some of those ads were done so long ago. I didn't have a beard. They were great. They were great. And I just want to say, I am a former lobbyist for the ACLU from way back when. And I remember waking up on the Wednesday after the election results in 2016. And the ACLU had a big ad that said, we'll see you in court. And they have seen them in court. That's exactly what Anthony Romero said. He sat, he said. He said. he sat behind and one, sorry, he said he sat behind and one foot away from Trump during the oral argument of birthright citizenship, which they won. It was their lawyer, Cecilia Wong. You probably know Cecilia. She argued in the United States Supreme Court and came away with a victory. And I said,

I said to him during the interview, how did it feel to be like so close to Trump? And he says, I loved every minute of it. And I let him know that we are here. We're not going anywhere. He is. And I said, Anthony, that's so. You've got a 106-year-old organization like the ACLU. It's so great. And speaking of institutions, sorry, Mark, without further ado, bring in Mark Elias of democracy, not 106 years old. I know that because we went to law school together.

We did. And I know, I know I'm not. I'm so glad here. You are ahead of me. Yeah. There's no doubt about that. I've forgotten more than you will ever forget. The reason I, there's so many reasons I love having you here on legal AF with our overlapping audiences.

But, you know, this is a, you know, this is like Dunkin' Donuts. It never stops. It never sleeps. You know, every time I do a new hit, a new video about another lawsuit of Donald Trump's that has failed or been blocked by a federal judge about voter data or databases or election workers. names or something like that, as many of them you're involved with. I know people are thinking, is this a repeat? Is this a repeat episode? It's not. But this is what is required to chop down this tree.

It's just chopping and stacking, chopping and stacking every day. And you're out there with your team, with your acts, doing, doing Lord's work. Yeah, you know, it's funny you say that because I try to describe this to people that, you know, Donald Trump brought more than 60 cases after the 2020 election, and we beat him in court in 63 of 64 of those cases. And, you know, like the thing that people don't realize about election litigation, as opposed to the other kinds of litigation, a lot of which I was listening to you just covering, is that, like, we don't have one big showdown in like a federal district court in Washington, D.C. I wish we did because, you know, I practice in Washington, D.C. You know, we litigate these state by state by state, and that's because states set the time, place and manner of elections.

And so there are relatively few issues that can just be sort of, you know, dealt with in one fell soup. It is very much like, you know, chopping, as you say, chopping the tree and, and split in the logs and stack in the wood. And, you know, so, for example, when Donald Trump wanted to get access to the voter file information, in those cases that we've talked about, you know, he had to, they, the Department of Justice had to file 30 separate lawsuits. Now, we are, we had to intervene in 30 separate lawsuits to oppose him. And so far, he is 0 and 11, and we're undefeated. So, so like, that is a good example of why these election cases really do just take a lot of time and effort,

which is to have to go state by state by state through all of these things. Absolutely. Let's talk about threats to election workers, because you've got these letters. I know, that you're covering that the president and the Department of Justice have tried to send out. But let's start with William Ray the second, a Trump appointee in the Atlanta Division, Northern District of Georgia, who just issued yesterday an order in which the Department of Justice, or what he almost refers to as the carpetbagging prosecutors dropped into my district, went and argued that they needed the name rank and serial numbers, emails, phone numbers, and the rest for all election workers who in Fulton County, Georgia from 2020,

whoever touched or came near a ballot, they needed the, not them, the grand jury needed it. It was a subpoena from the grand jury. So Fulton County ran to this judge. The judge was the one assigned to it. And he quashed the subpoenas. Boy, wherever I heard that before, quashing subpoenas when Donald Trump wants to go after political enemies or try to relitigate the 2020 election. And here's what he said, Mark, and then I'll turn it over to you about what is this angle of attack on election workers and what's Trump trying to accomplish.

On page five of his order, he says at the bottom, in these hyper political times in which we currently live, there are sure to be some who disagree with this decision because they believe the allegations of fraud in the 2020 election and believe that light should be brought to those claims. But a couple of points are in order. First, nothing prevents a continued inquiry into those allegations by like Congress or the Department of Justice, not through the grand jury, he says. But the information sought herein, names, addresses, phone numbers, emails is private and sensitive. Thus, everyone, whether you support the president or you do not, or whether you believe the 2020 election was fair, or you believe that it was not, should be concerned about the DOJ's ability to utilize the power of the grand jury to appropriate your private information. information without a legitimate purpose. You know, I read some of these decisions like this one. And it reminds me, you know, when I was a junior associate, I was assigned to a criminal trial in Newark, New Jersey.

And I got to participate in the trial, I did some motions, put on some witnesses. And in the end, it was an eight-week trial and our client got acquitted. And the judge afterwards called us all into his chambers and gave me a copy of of the judgment of acquittal saying, you know, you're a young lawyer, and there are lawyers who go their entire careers without having get one of these. And I sometimes think, like, you, I could have gone my entire career without seeing a no bill in a white-collar criminal. Oh, yeah. Right, which we've, which we've now seen. And for our audience, a grand jury returning a no bill refusing to indict based on what was presented one-sidedly by the prosecutor.

Right. extremely rare, like extremely, extremely rare in federal court. And, you know, I'd never seen it before. You know, I won't say that I have never seen a judge quash a grand jury subpoena, but boy, there aren't a lot of judges quashing a lot of criminal grand jury subpoenas in this country. And yet here we are. You have, as you point out, a judge appointed by former president Trump, sorry, by President Trump during his first term, who has quashed this grand jury subpoena. And we're just continually to show these instances of just extraordinary overreach. I mean, you know, I know you've no doubt covered the various cases where they've had to dismiss the indictments for essentially prosecutorial misconduct. For themselves, the Department of Justice standing in a well over courtroom telling a judge,

they need to dismiss the indictment that they just received because of some sort of misconduct or false testimony or false fabricated evidence. And you know, just like, this just like never happens. But this is the Department of Justice we have right now. And so I'm glad the judge did the right thing, protected the privacy of these individuals who have done nothing wrong, who, you know, other than being good citizens and showing civic engagement by volunteering or working for typically close to nothing on election day,

you know, not getting dragged into this. So good for the judge. But it goes to show just how far this administration will go and that the judges are holding, you know, in the most extreme instances, at least, preventing the administration from going too far. Talk about for our audience, these are all the things that concern them,

that this is part of your bread and butter every day. Talk about the database cases that are now coming out because I don't want them to be confused about different orders and different attempts by the Trump administration to get access the database is not get access. Talk, kind of give an overview at the teachable moment about these database cases. Yeah.

So, look, we live in a world in which big data is central to every aspect of our lives. And I will tell you, because in addition to being a voting litigator, I have been representing campaigns, Democratic presidential campaigns, House and Senate campaigns, political party committees for more than 30 years. and the lifeblood of politics are voter files. Like if you want to turn out voters, you need a voter file. If you want to fundraise these days, use a voter file. If you want to think a poll, use a voter file.

The voter file is a master list of every person registered to vote in a particular state or a particular jurisdiction. And states maintain these and are very careful in which parts of them they share with whom. So in some states, there are parts of it that are public, but not all of it's public. There are parts of it they may provide to the political parties, but not all of it. And the Department of Justice has been trying to get its hands on every state's full unredacted voter file, something that is just an extraordinary step. And the federal government has no reason to have any voter file. They don't administer federal elections. So there has been this question that has been sort of lingering in the air. Before you get to the legal questions, before you get to the

lawsuits, lingering in the air as to why it is that Donald Trump wants so badly to construct a national database that has all of your personal information, your social security number, your date of birth, whether you, where you've lived, where you've moved to and from, whether you are registered as a Democrat or Republican, whether you typically vote by mail or in person, whether you skipped elections in the past, whether there's a pattern to which elections you don't vote in, right? Like, it's a wealth of information that these states have. And so hanging in the air has been this question of why it is that the Department of Justice and why it is that Donald Trump has invested so much energy for him to have access and to collect all this information. And

there's really only one answer, which is that just as you use a voter file, if you want to turn voters out, it is also the building block if you want to suppress voters, if you want to disenfranchise voters, if you want to purge voters, if you want to challenge voters, if you want to contest the outcome of an election. The voter file is the basic building block. And that is why the Trump administration is trying to collect all this data. It is why there are so many lawsuits to keep them from getting it and from assembling it at the national level. But I want to end on again a point that is beyond. the courts. You know, there have been off and on discussions over the course of the last 20, 30

years about whether the federal government should have such a database. You know, there have been arguments in favor of it. After 9-11, there were arguments about this. One of the reasons why people say it's a good idea is, for example, it would allow voter registration, portability, automatic voter registration between and among states, right? So this idea has come up. Do you know who has been the biggest opponent to it, the Republican Party. Of course. It was the conservative Republicans who said we do not want the federal government compiling a big database of all American citizens. It was the Tea Party movement that killed these efforts. The libertarian strain of the Republican Party. Absolutely. And so we have to ask ourselves, why now? Why now are they willing to do this?

Lisa, let me turn it over to you because I know that you've got some great insight here as well. And I think our audience would like to watch you and you and Mark. I'm sure the ACLU has been against the collection of this data, by the way, from the beginning. Yeah. 1,000 percent. Go ahead. I was going to say, yeah, I worked on some of the Patriot Reform efforts where we were aligned on the right and the left against 1,800 big brother of having all this data going into the federal government, not from the voter files, but just in general to be able to work in this country and have the government decide whether you are who you say you are, you know, someone in Washington denying you the right to vote and. have no time to appeal or the right to employment have no real basis for appealing in the real-time

way. So I go back to those days. But I was going to ask, I guess, to say one thing and ask another thing, Mark. One is this whole issue of the effort to access the names of these poll workers in Georgia. It's not just in the abstract, right? This comes in the aftermath of a $148 million verdict for, you know, for Ruby Freeman and Chey Moss for how they were smeared by Rudy Giuliani. that were, you know, their actions as poll workers, lawful actions, counting the votes, where they were basically called out and their lives were threatened as a result of the way their name, just their names being out there was weaponized by the right. So I just wanted to just, you know, make that note. Yeah, we know two people that are in that, in that list.

Ruby Freeman and her mother, Jay Moss, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. And, and, and I think that, you know, we can never forget the, that the price is, oftentimes born when we see these doxing efforts and we see these intimidation efforts. And when we see the tactics that Donald Trump uses, he often, they oftentimes go after not just the James Comey's of the world and the Tish James of the people at the top who have, you know, resources, but oftentimes they try to go after people who they think can't defend themselves and who, as you say, they can, you know, in the case you were Giuliani, they can defame. I do want to say, by the way, on the Giuliani thing, because I heard you in the lead in, you know, I was very

careful and I'm always very careful to be try to be generous with the lawyers who we are up against you know they have they have clients they don't necessarily choose their cases you know they don't always you know make the what I think are the strongest arguments but I try to be charitable ruz Giuliani was not a competent lawyer you know he didn't just have a bad case I was hoping you were going there he didn't do a good job yeah I you know I that's been my view but I just you know I pulled back at the last minute to say, look, I don't know, but it seems like he didn't have the fact. Yeah, you know, he was like a really good parking lot lawyer and not such a good, like, courtroom lawyer. And yet all of those people from what was referred to, you know, came out of the Jan 6 committee,

team crazy, captain by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, they're all back in some way or, or ones that were so crazy that they weren't even allowed on the first team, you know, like Joe DeGiliani. or his wife or Joe DeNagos is down in Florida now as far as I could tell running a I mean, your neck of the woods. As far as I don't know running a criminal investigation. He couldn't even make the varsity squad for Team Crazy. Yet here he is.

And who's the guy you know and well? Who's the guy that's inside as some sort of special employee who's in charge of election integrity, a huge conspiracy theorist in election and denier? Who's the guy that's inside? They used his, he used to the guy that was on Shannon, unbearable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The FBI agent used him to support the other case where they grabbed the voting data and the machines in Fulton County. Based on this guy, it'll come to me later.

But, well, the good news is you're not dealing with that guy because you're in the courtrooms. Let me go over one more thing with you on it. So you've got a couple of things. You've got this new thing that Gavin Newsom is coming up with, right? Yeah. where he's going to criminalize anybody that tries to take away ballots. At the same time, you've got Trump on the other side who's threatening to cut anti-terrorism funding unless people turn over the data and federalize the elections, despite what the Constitution says.

What do you make of all of this as people are leading into the polls? We're counting down here. Summer's halfway over at Fourth of July. We're going to be talking midterm soon. Absolutely. we are talking midterms. Look, I think that, I think that the end of the Supreme Court term in June, you know, and then obviously have the July 4th holiday. But then, you know, after that, you're kind of like in the fight. You know, I mean, like, we're in the beginning of the end period here of the midterm elections.

So the midterms are fully engaged. I mean, I think a couple of things. I think number one, I think Governor Newsom and other Democratic governors are trying to do the things they think they can do now to protect elections. this fall. And, you know, kudos to all of them for trying the thing that they can, they can do, including what Gavin Newsom is doing here. You know, they have limited tools because, you know, after all, what they're really trying to prevent is not right-wing vigilanteism, which has, like, been a problem for years and something I've litigated against. But they're trying to, like, prevent, like, the people with the badges and the guns, right? The people at the Department of Justice are supposed to be the good guys are now the bad guys. And that's harder to do as a governor or through

through state law. But I think that the cutting off of funding, I think that what it proves is what you and I have talked about before. Donald Trump doesn't care about anything, anything other than holding power. And so if that means exposing U.S. citizens to risk of terrorism or not having access to FEMA funds, then like that's okay with him. Like, because the only thing he cares about is holding power, and he believes that the midterm elections are existential to his ability to do that. And he is not trying to tackle his problems in the midterms by becoming, for example, more popular on economic issues or by trying to reach across the aisle. No, no, he's not doing those things because he's using the levers of power to try to make

it harder for people to vote who he does not want to vote and easier for people to cheat who he wants to be able to cheat. And that is something we are going to see over and over and over again. between now and the final certification of elections. Now, Mark, I know, if I can tell from the chat, I know people are very, very supportive of all of your work and you personally and that of your team. I just had one of your lawyers from the Mark Elias Law Group join me

to talk about some. I saw that. I didn't even know. I would have promoted it. It was my first one. I broke through. I got the guy behind the guy. You did.

I said, you're the brains about it. I actually said it to embarrass. Let's be honest, you're the brains behind the operation, right, for this case. But my audience often says, all right, I want to follow what Mark does. I want to help the firm. I want to help these cases. What can I do? And many of them are not lawyers.

What can I do to support Democracy Docket or your work? What would you commend to them? Look, I started Democracy Docket in 2020 to be a information news and analysis site that, is focused just on the fights for free and fair elections in court. And so if you are not already signed up as a subscriber, go to democracy.com, democracy docket.com and sign up now. There are free options. There's a premium membership for $10 a month.

Either way, you know, welcome to the community. I'm sure we have a lot of overlap, but I'm sure there are some people who haven't yet signed up for DemocracyDocket, so go do that. Absolutely. And to be frank, you know, I have a lot of different sources for my, when I start my day with, but at the top of the chart is going on Democracy Docket and seeing what you think is important, curating for me what I need to know

and then what I need to communicate to my audience. If I see it there, I'm thinking, I'm going to be doing a video on that any minute now. So I really do appreciate you, putting it all in one place as a clearinghouse of information about all things, elections and voting and campaigns using your great experience. Mark Elias, joining Legal A-F as a special guest.

Really appreciate you being here and being so generous with your time, Mark. Anytime. I look forward to, I always look forward to coming back and talking to another Duke La La La. Thank you. Go Blue. And you just lost like half your audience. I know. I'm sorry, guys. Sorry, everybody. All right. Thank you, Mark Elias. I think at least it was great, right? Have you had, did you know Mark from the past? We haven't met in person, but I have a big fan, and I also go to Democracy Docket to get the scoop. It is an invaluable resource, and he is a real-life hero. Yeah, yeah.

And by the way, a genuinely nice person, genuinely nice person, which goes, you know, listen, we live in a world of not genuinely nice people. So it's always nice. Lisa Graves. A hero and a nice person. Yes. Right. Somebody exactly. Some people say, you know, be careful.

You don't want to meet your heroes. If it's Mark Elias, you do. You won't be disappointed. So I really do appreciate them taking time. And we're trying to build our overlapping communities together. That's one of the nice things about independent media, especially sort of where we sit. It's because we're so supportive of each other. You know, you don't see that.

You know, like a mainstream media, you don't see like one host bragging about another host show, especially if it's on another network. Right. Right. With one exception. The only exception, right, was when the late night comedians rallied together. Oh, yeah. Oh.

They all got fired afterwards. Well, there was that. There was that. But no, this is a great, you know, one of the things I think you've enjoyed in becoming a podcaster, something we'll talk about in a second, is that. the camaraderie, the community, fellowship. And it's just so, you know, I don't have to twist arms to get a Mark Elias to come on the show or get the ACOU to do work with us or anything else.

I had a great conversation today. Fingers crossed. I don't want to, should I jinx it? I don't want to jigs it. I'm talking to the NAACP about being regular collaborators with us on legal. I think I'm this close. I don't. It's because I'm so, I'm so.

overwhelmed with joy with the opportunity to do work in the NACP. So hopefully that will definitely come true. So many different ways to support what we do. We just heard about how to support democracy docket. First of all, Lisa Graves, if you're loving what you're watching and hearing from her and her insightful analysis, you're going to love what she does on Monday nights at 5 p.m. Eastern Time on the legal AF YouTube channel. There it is Monday Night Live.

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They'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. I am so glad we're back. I took time to look at the chat. It's 99% support. of Legal A.F, of Lisa Graves, especially, occasionally of me, and a couple of trolls. I appreciate the trolling because, you know, to the algorithm, it's just another number. It's just another person who's watching. So, you know, bring your whole family is what I say. But I think you've got a

pretty good thing going on here. And I really do appreciate everybody's generosity of time and spirit. Let me turn it over to you to kick off Todd Blanche. Next week, a week from today, we'll have it up live stream on LegalAF YouTube. We've got, although day one, I think it takes more than one day, of Todd Blanche's confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He's got a body of work that he has to defend it. I'm not talking about when he was in private practice. Look, whenever he did representing Donald Trump and criminal defense lawyer and leaving

it and, you know, all of that, that's all water under the bridge. just what he's done as the DAG, the Deputy Attorney General, now the nominee, that's enough. If you are, and you've advised senators and Congress people and the like, if you were to, if you were to start questioning Todd Blanche, right, where would you start? Well, I do think I'd start with the January 6th situation, in part because what has happened there is just so, extraordinary. You had our law enforcement offices and resources being spent to protect the interests of the American people by prosecuting people who engaged in violent attacks on January 6th. Those were legitimate prosecutions. It would have been outlandish for the Justice Department and the FBI not to prosecute those individuals who attacked Capitol Police officers, injured them, and resulted in the deaths of some

of those Capitol Police ultimately. And so the idea that, you know, Todd Blanche would come in and try to dismiss any prosecutors who were involved in those prosecutions is its own just outrageous action by, you know, by him. But also, you have this completely absurd and outrageous settlement where Todd Blanche, you know, agrees to create a $1.776 billion slush fund to pay more money to these individuals who Trump has pardoned. And I think personally those pardons are illegitimate because you shouldn't be able to pardon your co-conspirators, the people who went forward and attacked the Capitol at your urging as the indictment that Donald Trump was indicted for details. Even though John Roberts tried to cut off our ability to hold Donald Trump accountable, that doesn't mean those crimes didn't happen.

And so I would start with January 6th. I would also go into questions about the Epstein files and how Todd Blanche was at the center of the effort to redact the names of men. who were predators of the women and young women mentioned in the, and girls mentioned in these files, how he presided over the redaction of the names of Donald Trump's friends. Remember, he was telling Marjor Taylor Green that he couldn't get the Epstein files out because some of his friends would get hurt, whoever those friends may be. But what Todd Blanche was engaged in was redacting the name of Donald Trump where possible,

limiting the ability of people to see files that directly referenced Donald Trump based on FBI reports from witnesses coming in, and one witness in particular coming in and making allegations about Donald Trump, his actions toward her allegations when she was a young person. And so you have this extraordinary conspiracy. You have Todd Blanche at the root of giving Gilane Maxwell a major transfer from a regular prison to a country club prison with all sorts of perks after she says out loud on tape for Todd Blanche that supposedly Donald Trump was always a gentleman, something we've yet to see, actually, in real time. But somehow we're supposed to credit Gillane Maxwell's claims. Galeigh Maxwell, who is a convicted sex offender, a convicted sexual predator. Not only did she try to procure people for Jeffrey Epstein, but she herself was convicted of also abusing individuals, abusing other women. And so, you know, these two scandals alone are extraordinary. And on top of that,

you have the other part of the settlement that Todd Blanche wrote his name on, the settlement that they denied to the actual court presiding over the IRS case, in which Todd Blanche, wrote a statement, in essence, agreeing on behalf of the United States purportedly that Donald Trump, his family, his companies could not be investigated or prosecuted by the IRS or basically any other governmental agency forever. No lawyer representing the people of the United States in their right mind. No lawyer doing their ethical duty to the people of the United States would have signed off on any such agreement. And in fact, other lawyers at the Justice Department have been in the process of trying to dismiss claims involving that leak of IRS data that affected Trump and hundreds of other individuals based on the statute of limitations and other standing grounds, as well as the fact that the person who leaked the information wasn't even the U.S. government. It was a contractor. But Todd Blanche is doing the bidding of Donald Trump. And so I think that those are the lines of questioning I would pursue. I think you did it exactly, exactly in the right order. Not shocked or surprised.

I asked the head of American Oversight in my interview over that's going up tomorrow. I said, Is there anything? Is there anything that you think Todd Blanche would not do in order to get this job? Is there anything beneath him? And she so eloquently said, no. But there is just, I mean, it reminds me of that old joke. I'm sure you were told it. I was told it by a law school professor about, you know the joke about the scientists,

who has to justify using lawyers instead of lab rats for his... Oh, no, I don't know that joke? Yeah. So he has to come in and defend his thesis. And they say, well, I think your science is very strong. We just have a couple of questions. You use lawyers instead of lab rats for your testing. Why is that?

He says, well, there's several reasons. One, he says, I don't have to worry about my teaching aids becoming emotionally attached to the subject matter. Oh, dear. That's one. This was told by a professor of law to other young law students. That's what.

Secondly, lawyers are more plentiful than rats. And third, there's just some things that rats won't do. Oh, dear. Well, you know, and let me, I appreciate that joke in its own way. But let me just say,

to your original point of what he did before he became the Deputy Attorney General and what he did since. I think that that's a really good distinction. And it's also the case that I don't think he really ever stopped being Donald Trump's lawyer. Maybe technically he did. You know, he became the Deputy Attorney General. He was confirmed.

He never should have been confirmed to that job. But when I looked back through the questions for the record around his nomination to be Deputy Attorney General, there were a couple things that I thought were important to note. One is he wasn't just Donald Trump's criminal defense attorney. He said in one of those answers that he represented Donald Trump on a number of other civil matters, but he has never enumerated what those civil matters were. One of them was Eugene German. Right, right. And yet you have the Justice Department involved in trying to investigate her purportedly now, right? And he is the acting head of the Justice Department. And then on top of that,

there's this other fact that sort of got left behind in, you know, the kind of the fray of Bondi becoming AG and him becoming deputy and all the other stuff that was happening. But when I looked at his questions record, he said that he left the big law firm, Catawley, Walleter to primarily represent Donald Trump in April of 2023. And he said that he estimated that he worked on average 70 hours per week for Trump from the time he started until January 2025. So in that 92 week period, he worked possibly 6,400 hours for Donald Trump up through the time that he became the, you know, the deputy attorney general. And I will just raise this question. I don't the answer this question. When he was asked how much he was paid, he wouldn't say. He said he was paid a

regular rate. If that were a thousand dollars an hour, that would be like six million dollars. And it wasn't a thousand an hour. And it wasn't a thousand dollars there. And in the middle of this, Todd Blanche moved from New York to be nearer to his, you know, the man he was kissing the ring of, to be near to Mara Lago. And in 2023 slash 2024, he took out a mortgage on a one of a house where worth $1 million to $5 million, a 30-year mortgage at a pretty high interest rate, 8.5%. Now I say that as someone who looks at the interest rates for mortgages, and I'll tell you, if you were taking down $6 million for this fabulous representation of Donald Trump, I bet you'd buy your house in cash, and you certainly wouldn't get an 8.5% interest rate. So my question is,

how much of the job he was rewarded with at the Justice Department is part of the payment for what he did before he became deputy attorney if you if you if you find what Lisa Graves just did on the fly of her assembling this Rubik's cube in real time fascinating then you're going to love everything that Lisa Graves does with true North research and court accountability action because this is the kind of stuff they do every day go on court accountability action under the playlist on legal aFC all of their work Lisa does a lot of videos on her own. They follow corruption wherever it hides from the Department of Justice through the federal courts up to the United States Supreme Court. And they tell you about it. As I only half

joked, they put this through a MRI, you know, whether it's John Roberts Court or anything else. And it just with just the way you do it is, I mean, there are many reasons I enjoy being your friend. but your intellect is, I like to surround myself with people who are smarter than me, and you were certainly in that category of people that are smarter than me. And I really do. No, you're so smart, Michael. It's a joy to be on this show with you. It's so wonderful to be part of this legal A-F community.

And thank you for that lovely, lovely compliment that was so generous of you. This is what you do. This is you like the kid in the corner that solves the Rubik cube in like a second. Like, look, it's all the same colors on one side. Like, what did you just do? What did you do? I can't actually solve a Rubik's cube. I'm going to confess.

You can? I cannot. No, all right. Well, you too. I have other skills. I have other specialized skills, as they say. The only thing I will add on to the things that need to be covered by people that you and I know well, you even better than me, Senator White House from Rhode Island. Right.

And Corey Booker and Senator Blumenthal and the rest is this entire other body of work that about the complete destruction of the integrity of the Department of Justice. Justice. How many, I mean, Mark was being kind about never in my lifetime, never in anybody's lifetime has a Department of Justice had to go to a court and dismiss indictments by admitting and confessing fraudulent, suborned perjury testimony and fabricated documents or evidence. And I don't mean just like once, like oops, I mean like on a regular basis. example, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago. Okay. How many times have prior, you've been around as long as me,

how many times have prior Department of Justices, but on the receiving end of an order dismissing an indictment for vindictive prosecution? Yeah, I can't recall one. Never. This is all laid at the feet of Todd Blanche. You did the Epstein files. How many times has a court started criminal,

contempt proceedings against the Department of Justice or its client, the Trump administration, or any administration. Zero. How many times of courts? We have a court right now, and I think, based on exquisite timing, right in my backyard in Miami, Judge Williams has not yet been heard from about whether fraud on the court has been perpetrated on her by Todd Blanche and Donald Trump's lawyers. I think she will time that sometime this week, just in time for the inquisition of Todd Blanche. at the Senate Judiciary Committee. And the fact that judge after judge after judge have quashed subpoenas, finding them to be politically motivated or improper exercise with prosecutorial discretion

or abuse of power over and over and over again all across the country. Trump judges included, how many times did the Trump administration have to lose on rits of habeas corpus 10,000 times before. I mean, 10,000 judges can't be wrong. How many federal judges have to, former federal judges and state judges have to yoke together to file motions and briefs? Right.

How many thousands of alumni? Let's talk about that. Did you sign a letter? I did. I signed the letter. I'm one of the more than 1,000 former Justice Department officials who are demanding that the Senate not confronts. Tom Blanche. I'm proud to have joined that letter. It's a bipartisan, transpartisan, nonpartisan

letter of former DOJ lawyers who have come together to say that Todd Blanche is unfit to serve as a leader of the Justice Department. And that letter, I've never seen a letter like that, that wide, that deep with that many people crossing so many different administrations ever. And I spent a number of years as the Chief Counsel for nominations for the Senate Judiciary Committee and have tracked the nomination process quite closely, that letter itself is unprecedented. And then on top of that, you had the complaint filed about a week or queue ago with the New York bar, an ethics complaint against Todd Blanche for not fulfilling his job as an attorney to put the interests of the United States of America first, to defend the interests of the American people first,

and not pursue the sort of the cause of the American people zealously versus Trump. And that complaint was filed by public interest groups along with more than 100 former state and federal judges, retired judges, who rarely, until this administration, speak out publicly. In general, you do not see lawyers, pardon me, letters from judges like the one in your district down there in Florida, saying we think we're judges and we think a fraud was perpetrated on the court by Todd Blanche. He is embroiled in extraordinary scandal. And Trump is counting on the Republicans on the Senate on the Senate Committee and in the Senate where they have a bare majority muscling him through, even though he, you know, he's already, in my view, the worst acting attorney general in U.S. history.

And that includes Matthew Whitaker, who has briefly Trump's acting attorney general way back for a few weeks, maybe in the first Trump term. Who's worse? Todd Blanche or Jeff Clark for a few hours. Oh, yeah. I mean, Jeff Clark, the wannabe or theoretical AG, right. He's terrible in lots of ways. And that, you know, this issue is also joined with the fact that this Justice Department under Todd Blanche is trying to prevent state bars from holding Justice Department lawyers accountable when they breach ethics codes. And so they know that, you know, even if Trump were to pardon them, if even if Trump were to pardon Todd Blanche, you know, if he were to committed a crime or if he has in some way that we don't know or some other thing that's happening. And the fact is that Trump cannot pardon people from their bar responsibilities. We know that with John Eastman, who was disbarred by the state of California for his role

in helping or trying to aid Donald Trump and subverting the 2020 election. We know that John Mitchell, the attorney at the attorney general for Nixon, was not just convicted and served time for his role aiding, aiding Nixon illegally, but he was also disbarred. And so these lawyers who are working so closely to advance Trump's vendettists, who are subverting, in my view, the mission of the Justice Department engaging in supporting these vindictive prosecutions, they are at risk of future consequences to their law license based on their activity. And that's why they're so desperately trying to say that the state bars, including the DC bar, should have no jurisdiction over anything they do while working for Donald Trump. Absolutely. I think I'll end it this way. I had a friend of mine who will remain nameless who has a contact with somebody deep inside the Trump administration, somebody very close to him, who will remain nameless. And this friend of mine said to that person, or no, that person speaking to the insider, said to the insider, so what's the plan? talking about the Trump administration. At the time, they were talking about Iran. But the remark back

from the guy who sits next to Donald Trump was, there's no plan. We don't know. There is no plan. It's Thursday. That's the plan. Now, that, I knew that was true because we're watching an administration that not only flies by the seat of its pants, but operates a kleptocracy in real time. And so, of course, there'd be no plan. How could there be a plan? He can't even get the name of Iran right today. And the Islamic State of Japan. That was news to Japan, I'll have to say.

His public state of Japan. That's what we got to print that up on merchandise. I support the Islamic State of Japan. You have to laugh or you'll cry. Right. I've said since the first Trump term, I laughed at the creative imagination. for the numerous ways in which they just are incompetent and otherwise, you know, not,

incompetent is a good one. Maybe I'll leave it there. I won't, I won't. Like, it is, like, I can't write, you couldn't, if you pitch this to Hollywood, they'd say, this is too unrealistic. Who would believe this? You could make a, you could not make a movie out of it. This is why, this is why the famous show on HBO Veep with Julia Louis Johnson,

off the air. They didn't do another season because they said, we can't, we, we can't parody this. We got to get off the air. We're done. But you're right. You either laugh or you cry and, and also just can't give up hope. We, you know, that we have to prevail. The people of goodwill, people devoted to our constitution, to our rights, to our freedoms, you know, people devoted to equality and dignity. Like, you know, we cannot give in and give up. Here's how I'll leave it. Resignation is not an option, right? This is a participatory democracy.

It's a contact sport. You can't sit out this democracy in this election like a lot of people did. Not blaming them, but a lot of people did because they just gave up hope. Even if it's just for one thing about the Trump administration, I'm sure there's more, that you vote against, vote, vote your morals, vote your ethics, vote your patriotism at the midterms. and have some confidence that people with their hands on the controls, like Mark Elias, the Elias law firm, like the 24 Democratic Attorneys General,

like the American Civil Liberties Union, like Democracy Forward, like Norm Eisen, like Katie Fang, who's filing your lawsuits, that these people and their law firms, Public Integrity Project, you know, American Oversight. And many of them I brought on a court accountability action in your group that there are people that from the minute they get their head off their pillow in the morning until they put their pillow, kiss their family or their pets or both and put their head on their pillow at night. They are working for democracy, for us. And they feel, and I speak to them, both on camera and off camera, they feel very, very confident in their ability, primarily through the federal court system. but in other ways as well. Through active protest and public outcry, which we hope we can harness here on Midas Touch and on Legal AF, they feel very confident that they will be able to defeat Donald

Trump and his attempts to stop voting, interfere with voting, scare the crap out of people from voting, and the rest. I'll give you one example. In the ACLU Roundtable that I hosted yesterday that's up on LegalAF YouTube under the live tab. The head, Deirdre Shefling, do you know Deirdre? I don't. So she's there. I heard of her, but I don't. She's their head of, she's like the public, she's the, the politics side, the lobbying

side of the ACLU. She said that they, the ACLU has tabletopped 25 different disaster scenarios that they think Donald Trump could try to pull off 25 of them. Right. And they are ready for all 25 of them or any permutation of that. And that's the same thing, the attorneys general, who I know from interviewing them, speak every other day together. Somebody on their staff is having joint phone calls with all of the Democratic attorneys general

about how to defeat Donald Trump. So whether him screwing with the post office, screwing with mail-in ballots, screwing with election hours, early voting, and the rest. And we'll get to see, you know, he'll get called out with a trap because early voting will be starting relatively soon and valid voting will be starting. And there'll be lawsuits early on

that will set the framework for future success. But I want our audience that have confidence. The number one thing these groups that I just identified need is public support. And I don't just mean financially. Sure, a lot of them use the money and go on their websites and vote. But they need volunteers.

Yep. Even if you're in a red state, they'll find a way to deploy you in a blue state, even it's from the comfort of your own home. A lot of things are done digitally by database and by phone banking and that kind of thing. That's one. They need you. You need your time. An hour a week, five hours a week, whatever you can spare. That's one.

But they need you to pressure your local official, your senator, your congressperson. Some people are like, ah, what are they? If enough people do it, they bend the will of those politicians. And if you got to hit the streets, you got to hit the streets. If you got to go to town halls, you go to town halls. Whatever it is you need to do to demonstrate public outrage and outcry, these politicians are at the end politicians, and they will succumb to the pressure. And that's why we join together.

Give a couple of tips or comments from your side about how people can be involved. What's the call to action we can end our show with? Yeah, that's right. I mean, we have to be making sure that those election officials know that we are counting on them to make sure that we can vote and have our votes counted. And we're expecting them to stand up to any thuggery or pressure from the Trump administration to try to subvert this election. And I also think, as you pointed out, Michael, there's power still in calling your members of Congress, calling senators. You may not think that they care. They don't necessarily answer your call when you call. Call the district office. Don't just call the Washington hotline. the district office in your state because that member is on the phone with their state, their state staff when they start getting calls coming in. Go to their offices if there are, you know, protests where people are standing up and saying, we demand that our votes be counted. We demand that you stand up to Donald Trump's efforts to commandeer our election or to intimidate voters. Those things count. And it still does count when people are talking to them in the

social media, responding to them, going to the town halls in August, saying that we demand better, saying that we demand that these members stand up for our rights to vote. So there's a lot of activity between now, July 8th and November and after Election Day to ensure that our votes are counted and that the people who are elected are sworn in so that we can have a thriving and functioning democracy. So the biggest thing is don't give up, don't give in. If you can't do something today, that's fine, do it tomorrow, and the next day and the next day. because like you said, democracy is not a spectator sport. This is a real crisis for our nation in terms of making sure that this baseline

of having an election and having our votes be counted happens. And so it's up to us. It's up to us to insist that it be so. And I will say I've got my hero over my shoulder, Frederick Douglass, and I'll paraphrase one of his famous quotes in which he said that the amount of injustice that people will endure is the amount that they'll put up with and that those in power do not give in to requests. They only respond to demand. So power concedes nothing without demand. And so we've got to

just keep demanding. Absolutely. What a great way to end our episode. Lisa Graves, she's the co-anchor of Monday Night Live, Legal AF on the LegalAF YouTube channel. So many different ways to support what we do. What a great audience we had tonight, too, for Mark Elias, to do. join us and make us feel better about voting rights and election rights. So subscribe to legal AF YouTube channel, that's free. Come over to LegalAF substack and hit the subscribe button there as well. Catch my live reports every day, along with some other great content. We've got our sponsors. We had some amazing sponsors tonight, which if you can spare it, you know, if you have spare change in this economy, that's a great way to support what we do as well. And then finally,

for those that don't know, I founded a firm dedicated to our audience. It's called the Popok firm. It's if you've had a catastrophic injury or those in your life, if had their life turns upside down and you've been injured at an accident or through the negligence of others, hit the free subscribe, hit the QR code. You can also subscribe to the Popat firm. You can tell it's been a long night. There's no recovery. There's no fee. I've got lawyers in all 50 states that work closely with me. and so come over to the Popak firm. Use that QR code. Brand new website. Same tenacious, heart-nosed fighters for you at the Popak firm. And thanks for being here. The programming note, great interviews that are coming up this week on Legal AF. I want to get Lisa back with me to talk about, are you signing that letter against Todd Blanche? Let's do that together this week. And then on Saturday, I'll be on with, of course, Ben myself as my co-founder of all things, Legal AF and Midas Touch.

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