Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF - 8/23/2026

Episode Date: August 23, 2026

The Legal AF podcast has the band back together again with Ben and Popok providing breaking commentary about: the Judge in Katie Phang’s Epstein Files case about to lower the boom on the DOJ and Todd Blanche; the Judge in Don Lemon’s criminal prosecution looking for prosecutorial misconduct in secret grand jury transcripts; NYAG Letitia James’ big win in getting Trump’s handpicked attack dog prosecutor fired from his job; Former FBI Director James Comey showing how embarrassingly thin the evidence in his criminal case really is; the Supreme Court stepping into the Ballroom scandal, and Canada’s PM with full “elbows up” stealing Trump’s lunch money in tariff negotiations, and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Support Our Sponsors: Spring Sleep: Thanks to today’s sponsor, Spring Sleep: eXciteOSA is an FDA-cleared, prescription-only device for primary snoring and mild obstructive sleep apnea. Go to https://springsleep.com/legalaf and unlock 20% off with the code LEGALAF Qualia: Go to https://QualiaLife.com/legalaf for up to 50% OFF! Hims: Get a personalized, affordable plan for you at https://HIMS.com/LEGALAF Select Quote: Get the right life insurance for you for less at https://SelectQuote.com/legalaf today! 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=2179cd85 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 Sidebar with Katie Phang: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sidebar-with-katie-phang/id1886801652 The Parnas Perspective: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-parnas-perspective/id1869165949 The Intersection with Michael Popok: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-intersection-with-michael-popok/id1818863274 MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Ken Harbaugh Show: https://meidasnews.com/tag/the-ken-harbaugh-show The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats 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 Five Minute News: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/five-minute-news/id1471715443 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We've got a lot to discuss on this weekend's episode of LegalAF. Michael Popak is back and we are side by side so you know it's going to be a very good show. We're going to talk about Katie Fang from the Midas Touch Network, pushing forward with her case under the Epstein Transparency Act and fighting hard for the survivors and for all people here and abroad who want transparency. You've got other independent reporters, Don Lemon, standing their ground, along with. with other independent reporters in the criminal case brought by the Trump regime against Lemon and other reporters for reporting on what was going on in the Trump invasion of Minnesota

and the nearby areas. We'll talk about that. You've got Letitia James, New York Attorney General Otisian James having a big win in federal court that we'll talk about. You've got Prime Minister Carney and Canada who are trying to be bullied by the United States, holding their ground and pushing back and saying,

no deal is better, than a bad deal as the Trump regime tried to change the terms of the negotiations last minute yet again. Howard Lutnik apparently kind of came back into the picture. Where has that guy been for a while? And then I think one of the terms that wanted was Canada to agree not to do good trade deals with other countries. Canada was doing such good deals with other countries. That became a term that the United States wanted to do in its very predatory way. We'll talk about Canada's response briefly as well. And so you've got a lot of people pushing back and winning against Trump and his regime. But I'll tell you, we got to be honest, too.

You've got this corrupt right-wing extremist Supreme Court here in the United States. And they're kicking our ass a little bit. You know, on some critical issues that matter, Donald Trump is being handed L's by the Supreme Court. Like they wouldn't even hear or entertain the case where he wanted to petition, where he lost the E. Gene Carroll lawsuit, where Trump was found civilly liable for sexual assault and defamation, then Trump went back to the Supreme Court for a rehearing. On cases like that, the Supreme Court has not allowed Donald Trump. More of those personal cases, Donald Trump, and disgusting ones I might add, Donald Trump has not prevailed in front of the Supreme Court.

But whenever he kind of cites the Constitution executive power, I can do whatever I want, absolute immunity. That's what our founders wanted, something beyond the king. Our founders wanted Supreme Leader kings that are completely incompetent and idiotic losers. That's where they're like, okay, let's pause a little bit. And so we'll talk about the Supreme, we'll talk about the Supreme Court Order, which extended a stay of lower court orders, which would have eventually blocked Donald Trump from building his ridiculous golden ballroom that nobody in the United States wants, but that he's obsessed about while he's engaged

in this catastrophic and unlawful wars. My golden ballroom with Natalie, my golden ballroom with Natalie. The Supreme Court was like, all right, we're going to hear briefing on this, but let's just delay this. Let's just stall this even longer. And I think people are seen and people are fed up with the Supreme Court and they get it. Let's bring in Michael Popak. And Popak, I wanted to say that from the outset because where people are standing up to this idiot, to this psycho, to this criminal, to this felon, to this person found civilly liable of being a sexual predator, people are winning, man. Left and right.

The people power cannot be defeated. And Trump will try, you stand your ground against that psycho. You will win. You will win big. I mean, just even look at BBC fighting back. All these people fighting back. They're winning. And then you just have like the Supreme Court, you know, in like a one sentence order saying,

well, let's allow them to continue to build the ballroom a little bit longer. And then we'll see. And we could set a briefing schedule a little bit later. And people like, yeah, we see what needs to be done. The people need to be the ones in control right here and make sure that this whole system, Popak, is we reflect on it because this is not working. People power, as you phrased it, is working. And not just in the courtrooms, but even in forcing Donald Trump to abandon some of his policies.

Does anybody have a doubt that if it wasn't for Midas, Legal A-F, and independent media, forcing the attention about the warship in Iran that was sitting there for 10 months and all of the deleterious impacts on the crew members, you think they decided to turn that around and sent another battleship there because they, because, you know, Donald Trump, you know, is in favor of it, of it. No, it's because we criticized it so long and so long, and so hard that they had no choice but to turn it around. And every time they try something crazy like that, like they just fired the editor-in-chief

and the publisher of Stars and Stripes because they had the temerity to say they will draw a red line around independent journalism as they cover the armed forces and they got properly fired. But if we continue to talk about it and the lawsuits that relate to it, good things happen. There's been so many cases of not just wins in courtrooms, but of Trump and the DOJ and other departments abandoning their positions because of the public

you and cry against them. Then you've got the math. Over 10,000 habeas corpus cases have gone against Donald Trump, 10,000 in the last two years. You've got almost, he's over 32 or 33 in his attempts to try to steal our voters. data and voter registration data from states, he loses every time they file. Then you, so you've got all that going on. And then you've got, yes, he's on a bit of a losing streak, maybe interrupted now by a temporary stay by Chief Justice Roberts on the ballroom.

But on all the things that mattered to him, like birthright citizenship and the tariffs, if you were to ask me what were the two most important things that Donald Trump to start his term based on when he signed his executive orders and otherwise, it was birthright citizenship, which he signed on the first day, hours after his inauguration, and that big April Rose Garden, whatever that was supposed to be, Liberation Day, apparently Donald Trump wanted to liberate us from our checking accounts in the tariff announcement with Howard Lutnik by his side. And those went down to a harsh defeat. He's tried to revive some of these things with ridiculous new tariffs that are also being

subject to lawsuits or to opposition by our once former economic allies like Canada. and the birthright citizenship that's being challenged all over again because of his new executive order. But you're right. I mean, we have to cover things because we don't blow smoke or sunshine. You know, like, oh, ballroom delayed for another few days. And I'm not sure that means that he's got the five votes to build the ballroom. But, of course, we didn't like the delay at all issued by Judge Chief Justice Roberts. But there's also judges doing Lord's work, God's work, like,

a judge you and I are going to talk about extensively, which is a senior judge Sullivan in Katie Fang's case. There's Judge Cooper that's dealing and is about to deal a significant blow to Donald Trump in the Kennedy Center case. And there's a bunch of attempts by Donald Trump to subvert the rule of law and undermine the appointment clause that says, you got to have U.S. attorneys confirmed by the United States Senate. He's just on a losing streak of epic proportion this last week alone that you and I'll talk about. with John Zarkoni up in the Northern District of New York going after Letitia James, no longer, because he's been bounced and disqualified. Same thing happened in the Ninth Circuit.

He's got another judge, another appointee who got fired after 54 minutes. Judge Rogoff up in Washington State, who's suing to get his job back, not because he fell in love with the job after 54 minutes, but because he's trying to protect the rule of law, which is something that I think our audience appreciates. Look, Donald Trump is a predator and you have to understand that he is evil, bad human being. He is a felon separately. He is a sexual predator and he will relentlessly be evil. You're not going to make deals with him.

You're not going to compromise with him. This is just a horrible, putrid, evil human being. You just have to deal with that. So you could allow him to destroy. destroy your life and think that you could compromise here or there, or you can do what Canada's doing. You can do what Katie Fang is doing. You can do what a Don Lemon is doing. You can do what Midas Touch Network is doing. The illegal A.F is or you can do whatever. You just say, you know what? Elbows up, gloves off, and let's go. Let's go. Because it's coming for you no matter what. With a predator

like that, they're not happy unless everybody else is suffering but themselves. That's the real situation. You can't do deals with them. It was Warren Buffett, I think, who first said, you can't do a good deal with a bad person. I would say you can't do any deal with Donald Trump. He's incapable of doing deals. He just says, deal, deal, deal, deal. And there's no actual deal that he does. It is a tool to be used in order to lure people into good faith negotiations. and that's when people let down their guard, and as the predator that he is, that's when he misrepresents the terms,

he tries to pitch you against each other, and he tries to sucker punch you basically because he's unable to achieve his objectives through existing outside of that, whether it's an objective through litigation, whether it's an objective through a war, whether it's an objection just through normal human dealings and interactions,

and reaching compromises and rolling up, your sleeves and relying on experts. He doesn't do that. So he just goes to, okay, want to do a deal? Okay, let's do it. And then when the other side lets down their guard, he manipulates it, and then he uses it to trap you. Canada saw it. They smoked it out. Prime Minister Carney said to his negotiators who were in D.C., go back to Ottawa. You can't do a deal with these people. You know, and you had the same story. You had Donald Trump and Lutnik and Jameson Greer and all these people with different views. There was nobody speaking. with a unified message.

At the very last minute, Trump was changing the terms already, and Lutnik was injecting himself into it. And they were like, okay, well, now we want Canada to agree that you can't be doing deals with other countries unless we approve it. And there were so many things like that that Prime Minister Carney said, look, we were going to perhaps even tolerate a little bit higher tariffs, provided our business community could deal with it. And we were consulting closely with the business community in Canada

to make sure they did in exchange for some reciprocal movement from the United States that could benefit Canada. But we're not going to just do a deal. You're not going to bully us. Okay, you want to put 50% tariffs that impact $28 billion of commerce? We'll do it to you too. We'll do it to you too. And by the way, not sure if you've been following lately there, Donald, but the price of crude right now is $94 a barrel. The price of diesel is getting close to $200 a barrel, $5.57 a gallon, for diesel nationwide, probably by you much higher.

$4.11.1 nationwide gas, the highest, probably by you much higher. The highest gas price and diesel price nationwide average at this time in the history of the United States. You know who provides a lot of energy and a lot of oil and a lot of things that the United States needs? Canada. And you know why there is a slight deficit between U.S. and Canada? It's an artificial one because you're getting great energy.

deals from Canada. So why are you whining about that? This is a net plus benefit to you. And you're saying that that's some negative and exploitation that you get your energy from Canada. So Carnes like, okay, we won't give you the energy then. Good luck. You own the straight of Hormuz, right, Donald? You said you controlled the trade of Hormuz. And so Popak, you and I have been in high profile negotiations. To be clear, I've never negotiated a trade deal with another country. I've negotiated very large settlement agreements and litigation context that involve very high-profile issues. I've negotiated with Howard Lutnik. As you've negotiated with David.

So let me toss it over to you, Michael Popak, who has negotiated with Howard Lutnik. Yeah, I love the Canadian coverage because, well, a number of reasons, elbows up to our Midas Canadians, Canada Midas people. And just watching two different leaders navigate this treacherous world, the Don Donald Trump has created against our economic allies, Mexico with Claudia Shimbabom and Prime Minister Mark Carney, who, let's be frank, is much smarter than Donald Trump in many areas, all areas, including economics. He was the central banker for the UK and the central banker for Canada. He's the perfect person at the right, he's the right place, the right time, the right job to oppose

Donald Trump and to strengthen the Canadian economy and to walk. walk away, you know, it takes a lot of gravitas to push back from a negotiating table where you're being abused by low lights like Jamie Greer and Howard Lutnik, who've never run anything global in their life, about things that matter like the auto industry, which were so intertwined with Canada. And as you said, the power grid, there's no other way to put this. You can put it on a bumper sticker. Canada's electricity and fuel, fuel. the American economy and the GDP, at least it had. We cannot run the engine of our economy without the fuel line of Canada, something that Donald Trump never acknowledges. And the thing that

that also gets missed, and I'll mention it here, is that when you look at trade deficit, it's not just goods, it's services too. And yes, one of the reasons there's a slight or had been a slight trade deficit between Canada and the United States is because the thing Canada was selling us, like raw materials and power and electricity and oil and all that, was a lot more valuable than the things we were selling them. So there was a trade, like the dollar amount of them. But also, when you add in services, there is no trade deficit. When you add in the service economy, which is part of our economy, whether it's law firms or consulting firms, because America has a lot of consultancies, everybody's a consultant. Everybody's a lawyer or an IT or an AI expert or whatever.

So we have all of these big three accounting firms and big three law firms and big three AI firms and tech firms, whatever it's supposed to be. And we have more of those that a lot of other countries do even like Canada. So we export a lot of services. So there's actually no deficit, trade deficit, whatsoever between the two countries. Instead, we've lost billions of dollars of Canadian dollars invested into America. Second homes, business investment on the other side of the border, tourism. Vegas is like a tumbleweed down Las Vegas because there used to be a whole influx of Canadians that came to Nevada. They're not coming anymore. I used to live in New Jersey, grew up as a child. I used to watch the Canadian license plates come down the Garden State Parkway.

and hang out in places on the Jersey Shore like Cape May, those are gone because they've looked inward and outside the United States for trade. So good on Mark Carney for saying, no, if you're not gonna give us favorite nation status for these key industries, then we'd rather not, and we'll retaliate against you, dollar for dollar, you know, for what you're doing,

and we'll see who cries uncle. We know that Trump, we haven't covered it lately, Trump always chickens out. He chickens out in Iran. He chickens out in trade deals. He chickens out everywhere. So you just have to sort of wait him out, you know, make real hard decisions about your own people and your own economy, which is what Mark Carney has done, again, perfectly

in the moment. And then just wait out Donald Trump. And this has real world impact. Because as Donald Trump's giant hole in the bucket, as our deficit reaches 40 trillion which is like $120,000 per person in America. Talk about generational burden. You know, while all that's going on, what's Donald Trump doing with his time and our resources?

Oh, he's gilding everything. Everything's golden. Everything's a ballroom. Everything's a, I need another U.S. Air Force One to be built. I need a reflecting pool. I need a, what about the suffering of the American voter at the school, the hospital, the target, the food store, the gas pump. Where is that?

Is there any wonder why, Ben, that the random Democrat versus the random Republican, the Democrat is now up for Congress by about nine to ten points? Is there any doubt why that is happening? People are like, you know, I heard somebody say recently that I won't name. I don't know why they're talking about Trump so much at the midterms. He's not even on the ballot. Are you effing kidding me? Maga is on the ballot, how they have run the country for the last two years in the House and the Senate,

with a do-nothing Congress that hasn't passed any laws at all to help the American people. It is one of the most lowest producing in terms of bills and laws Congress ever. That is what is on the ballot. Donald Trump knows he's on the ballot. He's busy trying to get people through primaries, and he's on a losing streak related to that as well. Look, I want to talk about the Katie Fing lawsuit. I want to talk about the Don Lemon lawsuit. I want to talk about New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Then I want to talk about the Supreme Court. But I wanted to start off talking about this because it is a framework within which we evaluate, frankly, everything, our system of governance and our legal system. And a lot of this has been enabled by some of the systemic problems in our legal system that we're, we've been pointing out, I mean, this absolute immunity ruling by the Supreme Court. We'll talk about the Supreme Court later and how they also went about the absolute immunity ruling, drip, drip, drip, extending and delaying as much as possible expeditious resolution of certain critical issues that inured to the benefit of Donald Trump. So then we got very close to an election and our system works so slow that Donald Trump was

like, you see, it's weaponized against me, it's weapon. when of course it wasn't and he's a sicko and he's a horrible human being and the system the system was working but we can see where there are massive and major defects in the system in the constitution and how we address this that's what you built at legal a.F and you talk about with Canada that Carney's the right guy right time right place but that wouldn't have been possible if i think Canada was infected by some of the systemic issues we have here in the United States. The Voting Rights Act passed on a bipartisan basis has been destroyed over the course of many a decade by this right-wing federalist society and this kind of right-wing issue,

these right-wing people who have been causing severe and significant harm to our system, bipartisan legislation. I mean, you have the rule and, you know, putting these right-wing judges who ultimately moved the country in a direction when our Congress actually did some good bipartisan legislation together 50, 60 years ago. And you even have things like McCain-Feingold. You're talking about campaign finance reform. And then you have a right-wing Supreme Court doing the Citizens United case allowing all of this Elon Musk money and all of this oligarch money to pour into. our system. And so is it a shocker that when you had a decade and a little more of all of this right wing money, all of this oligarch money, that you would get a vessel of the oligarchs

who would just tear apart some of these safeguards that protected most Americans from the scourge that these right wing oligarchs were going to release? It was very predictable. There was a reason why, at a bipartisan basis, our Congress did campaign finance and try to address these things. So my point also is that, and we talk about this in WTF America, Trump didn't just come out of nowhere. There has been decades and decades of erosion and an accelerating erosion of our democracy here, which produces an outcome of Donald Trump in Canada where they don't have the same or anywhere near, nowhere close, the type of money that goes into their elections where you have you have to have people rise through the ranks of their political

parties you know in their systems the people were presented with the choice of someone like a mark Carney or they were presented with a pierre poliet and the people made the right decision there you look in australia and you see they had their teamu maga over there um in peter dutton and what they were trying to do over there in australia and australia went albinisi and labor and so You have to look at the systems and then we go into the cases. And I think a major reason you see two completely different outcomes as reflected, though, in this negotiation. And it is because there's been a breakdown. There's been a real poison injected into our legal system and our constitution that we need to fix for the people.

Let's take a quick break right now. Then Popak, I'm going to throw the next segment over to you to really talk about these individuals. Fang, Lemon, James, side by side. So Popak, I know people are like, Ben, I miss Popok. I want to hear from Popok. Shut up, Ben.

I'm going to add Comey. We'll add, no, let's add Comey. We'll add Comey to the third segment. A reminder, make sure everybody subscribes to the Legal AF YouTube channel and the LegalAF substack. Right now, the LegalAF YouTube's on its way to 2 million subscribers and more. So just subscribe to the LegalAF YouTube channel. Also, subscribe to,

to the substack. And if you or somebody know has been injured in a car accident, trucking accident, go and reach out to Popok's firm, 877 Popok A.F or visit the Popokfirm.com. If you or somebody know, you think you have a case, you've been injured in a catastrophic injury, or you know someone who was catastrophically injured or even worse, tragically killed, reach out to Popoc 877 PopaFaFaFiFiFiFi or visit the poppacfirm.com or let's take our first break of the show. Do you snore? Did somebody hand you a CPAP and did you quietly stop using it? The mask that never quite seals, the hose tugging at you every time you roll over,

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Michael Popak, let's get into it. Let's talk Katie Fang from the Midas Touch Network, developments in her federal lawsuit under the Epstein Transparency Act, following the hearing, which we previously talked about last week, where Judge Sullivan not too happy with what the DOJ was trying to

sell him. I think the Judge Sullivan, a very wise jurist, knew what was going on there. Let's talk about Don Lemon, where the federal judge in that case is saying, yeah, we don't really trust what went down in that grand jury room. And we've been seeing grand jury misconduct permeate the entire federal judiciary with the Trump regime, U.S. attorneys and their AUSAs going into these grand jury rooms and just like lying about the law and bowed. Jing and saying, come on, can you just sign this document in the case of Comey, which we'll talk about in the next segment as well. The first one with Lindsay Halligan, she like gave a different document to the grand jury left.

And then she said, hey, Foreman, can you just sign this one? It was like a different document than what was showed. And for her, the benefit for Lindsay Halligan was that she was an unlawfully appointed United States attorney because if that's like the luckyest she ever got because if they would have got to the issues that actually took place in the country. grand jury room, there would have been exposed for some heinous misconduct, which then brings me to Letitia James because yet another United States attorney in the Northern District of New York, John Sarkone, he was declared to be an unlawful United States attorney and his actions attacking

Letitia James were attacked by the, were deemed as unlawful by the Second Circuit Court of Appeal. So Popak, let's talk about Fang, Lenin, and Letitia. Yeah, all good. And all people that I've either interviewed or I'm about to interview. Next week, I'm going to have Don Lemon on talking about his case on Legal Aaf, Brendan Ballou, the lawyer for Katie Fang. And Katie, I'll join me next week as well to talk about developments there again. And I've interviewed Letitia James, of course, as have you in various places in her role

as Attorney General of New York. Katie Fang, what's the phrase I'm looking for? The Department of Justice and Todd Blanche are up Schitts Creek without a paddle. We are watching, even though some commentators haven't figured it out yet because of how nice Judge Sullivan writes his orders. We are watching Judge Sullivan about the lower the boom on Todd Blanche and his lawyer, Andrew Block, for contempt of court. And we have moved, I think, a large chunk of real estate closer to the old. ultimate relief sought by Katie Fang and her Public Integrity Project lawyers, which is not only millions of more documents being released to the American public in the name of the survivors of the Epstein scandal,

but that the Department of Justice is ruled to have forfeited their right to control that process and to have a federal judge like Sullivan instead install a a special master in the form of probably a former federal judge to not only take over the future production, but look back at and audit the prior production and do a full accounting to a federal judge. That's how bad things have gone for them. We just had new filings. So we had the hearing that you and I covered last week. I had Adam Classfeld all rise news in the courtroom,

and I had Brendan Ballou also testify or talk to our audience about. about what he observed in the courtroom, which was, Brendan Ballou's, Katie Fang's lawyer said, in his career, and he's been a US attorney, he's never seen the government act this way in a courtroom. And what he said was, there were just these moments where Andrew Block would just stare down at his podium and this uncomfortable silence for like minutes

in answering questions of the judge. You know, I called it. the close examination of your shoelaces where you're just and he couldn't answer basic questions. Andrew Block, by the way, is the pinata of the moment for the Department of Justice. They trot him out, ill-prepared, willfully blind, doesn't know the answer to questions, answers them wrong, either intentionally or otherwise. They've used him here. They're using him in the Judge Brinkema case about whether the Jan 6 Fund and the next day immunity deal that Todd Blanche gave to his boss is legal or not, same guy in both courts and with the same result.

And they called right before they submitted their proposed order. You know, it's a bad sign for the Department of Justice when Judge Sullivan at the end of the hearing in which he used the C word, he said contempt and said, it's not a threat. It's a promise. He's already using the contempt word, okay, which is a bad sign. There's things he doesn't even want to hear from the government about. Like, why haven't they, despite court order, translated the foreign language documents? He doesn't even need new briefing on that or information.

He's like, I'm just going to do this subset here. Bring me the evidence to my courtroom as to why you did not produce the handwritten FBI 302 interview notes. for the one person who says she was sexually abused at 13 by Donald Trump. Why are those handwritten notes missing? And the reason the handwritten notes are missing is obvious from a new filing that Katie just made, which is when you look, as we know from our own practice as lawyers, what you write down in handwritten notes

and what you use then to type up the official notes, there's a big delta. There's a big discrepancy. Because you make editorial decisions about what, It's not a verbatim transcript from your handwritten notes that you're trying to scribble down. So there is a lot of good stuff in handwritten notes that don't end up in the final 302s. So they produced the 302s for this victim who says she was abused by Donald Trump, interviewed four times demonstrating the credibility of the FBI thought that she had.

But they didn't produce the handwritten notes. What are they hiding? And when they had to produce them, they said to the judge, They gave them in a binder to the judge to review, but the judge asked one question during the hearing. Mr. Block has the Department of Justice ever produced handwritten 302s in the Epstein File Transparency Act production related to typewritten or written 302s? And he said, as to 302s, I don't believe so.

Liar, wrong, either intentionally or otherwise. he just misled the court. Corrected by Katie Fang in a new filing, notice of court filing. Mr. Block, in response to the question, said that other handwritten 302s not involving Donald Trump have not been produced.

Wrong. Here's 100 examples from the files of it, and here is one example where you can see the delta the difference between the handwritten notes and the typewritten notes, which is why we need them. And while you're looking at the files judge

in what we call an camera review, keep that in mind as to whether their justification for not producing the files that you ordered is legitimate or not. So that got filed. You're a liar, pants on fire, about Trump's FBI handwritten notes of an alleged victim. And it goes downhill from there. So now the judge holding on to a proposed draft order by Katie Fang's side, because the judge said, you draft the order. They were like, oh, should we share it with the other side first? No, no. Basically, I don't trust the other side.

You draft the order for my review. So they drafted an order about the, what we call the reduction law, the 200,000 pages from the 3 million that were effectively withhold from the American people without appropriate cause, just blocked out. and we all have a working theory that they never contemporaneously prepared that. And so the order says, do you have it? If you don't have it, why don't you have it? When did you start it? Why haven't you started it? And we want a declaration under oath from Todd Blanche or somebody with knowledge to supply it.

So the judge got these two pieces of paper in from Katie's side in the last couple of days. This you lied about the handwritten notes and the redaction log proposed. and said by the middle of next week, I want a response from the government as to these two pieces of paper before I make my ruling. This ruling is going to be devastating. And the thing that I never want to have lost the forest from the trees when we talk about Katie's case and the importance of Katie's case, is that what we talk about regularly in updating our audience about the preliminary injunction is only about a small subset of what her lawsuit is about. Okay, it's those five categories, but that's not what the case is about. The cases about all of the Epstein files, the millions that we believe exist that were rejected

improperly by the review team at the behest of Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche. We want all of it, and we want the, and Katie wants, for us, wants the, wants the Department of Justice taken out of the equation of reviewing what is left and to re-review. what previously was produced, and that a special master who was an officer of the court take over this project. That's what she is seeking. That's why they had a move. There's another script by the Department of Justice.

They didn't file their answer in the case. The answer was due a month ago, and they didn't file it. They had to file a motion. I told, Brendan, you're nicer than I am. I would have filed a motion for default and let them argue why they missed the dead. And so they have to answer, which they will, and then they can move for summary judgment on all of these points. But Katie has just hitting home runs with her legal team every day in that courtroom, and it's only going to go worse for the Department of Justice and Todd Blanche following that.

So before I turn to Don Levin, I'll bring it back. No, just an honor to have Katie Fang in the network, an honor to have your Popak team at LegalAF who break this down. and what I love about the legal AF channel is it's not simply reporting on the news. You know, the people who co-host with you are the newsmakers. I mean, they're filing the lawsuits. And so whereas they would normally in the past have a two-minute segment and a soundbite on whatever cable news network, they're letting people know on the legal AF YouTube channel on a day-to-day basis what they're thinking, what the strategy is to the extent they're able

to share certain types of strategy and deliberations, but to provide that detailed analysis. Let's go into the next one, which is Don Lemon. We know about this criminal prosecution, although, like a lot of things Trump does, splashy headline, Don Lemon gets arrested, I think, while he was at the Grammys or a big award ceremony taking place in California.

Trump did it like at the hotel in order to make a whole scene about it. it, Trump and Maga do all of their social media posts. And as you and I have always said, well, that's your best day in a very bad way if you're Donald Trump. Now you have to fight at this case. And someone like a Don Lemon is not going to just sit back and not just Don Lemon, but others. There were other top journalists, you know, who were also criminally prosecuted for reporting on the Trump regime invasion in Minnesota. And, you know, that Lemon, and the other journalists were at a church where there was a protest because of alleged connections

between people at the church and ICE and how that was impacting the community. That was what was being reported on and alleged by reporters. And by the way, Lemon live streamed it. So we all saw what was happening. And then the Trump regime turned this into like anti-Christian, like hate crime prosecution against Don Lemon for reporting. And we saw on the video, Lemon was actually the one telling the people and the, you know, one of the church leaders over there who I guess is supposed to be the victim,

please just don't touch me. I'm here to report. That's all I'm like, like Lemon literally said on the street, I'm here to report. I don't want any physical touching or contact. I'm just doing my job as a reporter when the other guy tried to like touch Lemon on the shoulder. And Lemmon's like, I know, you're doing that. in maybe a friendly way. I'm just, I'm not, I don't, let me just recover what I'm covering.

So what you and I said immediately, Popak, when this criminal case was brought against Lemon, is a grand jury had to ultimately sign off on the true bill to get this indictment and find probable cause, which is a lesser standard than beyond a reasonable doubt, which you have to prove. But you and I were saying, did they show the grand jury the video? or did they just bring in some FBI agent who may not have been telling the truth to the grand jury and never showed the video to the grand jury of what went at what went down? Did the Trump regime instruct the grand jury with what the law is, what our First Amendment rights are,

or did they provide false legal instructions in order to trick the grand jury into believing a crime was committed when it was First Amendment protected speech by Don Lemon because there was no crime objectively. There's nothing, there's no criminal conduct that took place. place. Then you and I had been hearing and we've been seeing and reporting on this rampant grand jury misconduct that's been taking place across the country by Trump regime United States attorneys and their AUSAs who go into these grand jury rooms and they'll say things like, all right, everybody, want to get you out here quickly. This is a really good case. Can you just sign the bottom over here? I'm exaggerating slightly, but we wouldn't bring this case if it wasn't good. It's your obligation to sign this

We'll prove our case in trial. This is the preliminary step anyway. Don't worry about it. So when people have called out the DOJ and said, there's a lot of red flags here about what went down in the grand jury room, which is supposed to usually be secret, the judges said, you know what? I'm going to review the grand jury testimony in camera meeting.

I'll just look at it. And then let me see if there's a misconduct. Where the judges have done that in other cases, they found, whoa, these Trump prosecutors, they're not behaving lawfully. We can no longer give them the presumption of regularity, which was one of the reasons why you had grand jury proceedings done in secret. And it was never really, it was always very hard to go and get the grand jury testimony.

But now, Popat, case after case, when you see the grand jury testimony, the Trump regime is engaged in horrific misconduct before the grand jury. And this federal judge said, you know what? I want to take a look at the grand jury about what you said about Lemon and the other journalists send it to me submit it to me I'll review it I don't trust you DOJ you're you're not to be trusted so let me review it and then we'll go from there so Popak this seems like the beginning of the end of that case as well I agree I mean I've never in my 35 years had to report or have knowledge of a department of justice who has so methodically

abused the grand jury process and has been caught doing it by federal judges you You can count on no fingers on both of your and my hands the amount of times the Department of Justice willfully tainted a grand jury or lie, cheat, and stole their way through grand juries in order to obtain tainted indictments, either suborning perjury, putting on false testimony, creating false evidence, giving wrong instructions of constitutional law or law involved in the case, the violation of the Fifth Amendment. and the Sixth Amendment, not just Lindsay Halligan in the Eastern District of Virginia,

but in Chicago, in two separate judges are looking at abuse by the Chicago U.S. Attorney's Office. We know it's happened in other places time and time again. It's a product of pressure being placed by Maine Justice on local prosecutors, local prosecutors, who are incompetent for their jobs or have just felt the tremendous pressure beating down their neck or breathing down their neck

from Washington by Todd Blanche or then Pam Bondi or Donald Trump himself. And it results in really bad things happening, trying to use the secrecy of the grand jury and weaponize the secrecy of the grand jury to hide their misdeeds. So if you are a criminal defendant, especially one who is an obvious political target,

a critic of Donald Trump. I've said this before, not just the Don Lemon's lawyers, I just said it out loud. If you don't try to get the grand jury transcript to find out what was actually said in that room to get your indictment, then you've committed professional malpractice. And here, think about what happened in Don Lemon's case. In Don Lemon's case, the chief judge of Minnesota, Judge Schultz, roused out of his bed to try to overturn a ruling by a magistrate judge, Judge Mikko, who at the time refused to issue the arrest warrant for Don, his photographer, his videographer, and for the others. They tried to get Schultz to do it, and Schultz said, no way. basically exonerated Don Lemon and said, at worst, he was a journalist doing his job.

And the First Amendment protects him. And I was like, well, that kills that case. You got the chief judge who's effectively said the guy can't be indicted, let alone arrested. Well, they kept going back to the well. And that's where the corruption in the grand jury process could have happened to get a, what did they tell that grand jury? What did they show that grand jury? and how did they instruct that grand jury about the law or the facts without Don present, of course, in the grand jury proceeding or his lawyers, to get the indictment? That's why we were all shocked after magistrate, after Chief Judge refused to find that Don had done anything wrong, that suddenly a grand jury returned an indictment.

So they went back as they should have, and they filed immediately in February. a motion to get the grand jury transcript. Now, the magistrate judge ruled against them. They said, well, I don't really think you've made it out. I'll take a look at a small subset of the grand jury, but I'm not. And they said, no, we're going to take the appeal to the district court judge who sits over the magistrate judge. And she said, you know what? I'm going to look at the entire grand jury transcript indicating to me that she's searching for prosecutorial misconduct.

So she gave the grant, she gave the Department of Justice another couple of days until early next week to turn over the thumb drives and the transcripts about their openings and their closings and their witnesses and the instructions to the jury and everything. Now, it has always been my experience in handling federal criminal cases that really everything within the grand jury process gets recorded by a court reporter. But we have found that you, a prosecutor, like the one in Chicago, for instance, effectively told the court reporter to turn off the machine and or did not have certain aspects of the proceeding transcribed. Or did things in the hallway with grand jurors that were not transcribed, and then we only found out

about it because people had to finally fess up. So the grand jury, with this Department of Justice, you can't even trust the transcript that it's going to be a complete recitation of everything that might have gone wrong in that, in that proceeding. But it's a start. And the fact that Don convinced this federal district court judge to take it in camera and review it. And that is while he has his motions to dismiss the indictment, motions to dismiss for vindictive prosecution. Who's been more vindictively prosecuted, maybe other than Kilmer Obrigo-Garcia, than Don Lemon? How many clips do you and I have to show in our hot takes or have gone on and talk about it, of Todd Blanche going after him, Pam Bondi going after him, Harvey Dillon going after him of the Civil Rights Division,

or Donald Trump himself going after him over and over and over again. And when you have destroyed the, and you've created a complete top-down management of the Department of Justice led in Washington, no longer decentralized among its U.S. Attorney's offices, because all the shots, are being called by Trump down to Blanche, Blanche down to his right hand, his right hand on top of the local prosecutor, and you have that chain that's easily established, despite Todd Blanche saying, oh, the Trump would never tell me to do something and I wouldn't do it. Bullshit. There's enough evidence that have been produced in other cases like the Kilmer Obrigo-Garcia case that demonstrates that that is false, giving hope to everyone, whether it's James Comey, the former FBI director, or Don Lemon, or Leticia James again, or Adam Schiff.

or John Brennan, the CIA director, or anybody else that's on Donald Trump's hit list, Barack Obama, that this is motivated by animus and ill will, not of the local prosecutor, which is what they keep arguing. Well, local prosecutor didn't give a shit. No, no. It's the pressure being exerted by Maine Justice and Donald Trump on Maine Justice that leads to the prosecution that is the heart of the vindictive prosecution motion. So we start with the grand jury transcripts.

It'd be great if Don gets them. Hopefully he will off the ruling after the judge reviews of herself. If she sees anything hanky in there, anything hinky in there, he's going to be getting them, which will help support his pending motions to get rid of his indictment. As Donald Trump continues to attack all aspects of the media that doesn't agree with him, whether it's female reporters who are asking pertinent questions about his relationship with a 35-year-old staffer who leaves him love notes, or it is him firing the editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes in the last day or so, or going after James Comey for writing a book of fiction, whatever it is,

or ABC, we'll talk about that probably next week, ABC moving on an emergency injunction to try to make sure they don't take away their broadcast licenses for eight television stations in retaliation for the reporting that Donald Trump doesn't like. All of this fits that same bill of dictatorship. And this is why having our audience informed and committed and connected and knitted together here on legal AF and on the Midas Touch Network is so important. Because in order to keep track of and platform all of these things and expose them, we need an audience that knows what we're talking about.

And thank God we have that audience. Natalie Harp was born the same time Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were throwing those parties at Marilago in the early 1990s, which relates to the Epstein Transparency Act that Katie Fang is trying to unearth. You've linked that also to these other systemic issues of Donald Trump's destruction of our democracy while he hides and cowers in catering trucks, believing that Iran is going to blow up the Air Force one leaving the NATO summit, while also claiming that we've obliterated all of Iran's military and that all of their navies under the sea and that Donald Trump controls the Strait of Hormuz and everything is just going to be so amazing.

I mean, as he said in South Carolina, this is the golden age. Doesn't everybody feel amazing? This is the greatest we've ever been, Donald Trump says. And the American people are saying, absolutely not. But the intersection of law and politics is so critical because, as we said at the outset, it is so important that we understand and reflect on the fact that Donald Trump didn't come out of nowhere. There was a broken system that was intentionally broken by oligarchs who wanted to break it. And if you go through the Epstein files, Epstein's talking to oligarchs about breaking the system and destroying the system in order to basically make money from the confusion.

I mean, all this stuff is plotted out on the Epstein files with a lot of these right-wing oligarchs. I mean, that's one of the things that I think is a profound observation of what we've been able to see and what is being withhold, withheld, you know, I think is going to be profoundly important to, one, critically understand the individuals who were the perpetrators and the co-conspirators in this anus sex trafficking ring that the Trump regime continues to cover up. I think it also provides another layer of this broader cabal. And I don't mean this in like some hyperbolic conspiratorial sense is real. this cabal that has been engineering the destruction of a way of life that benefits most people in favor of sucking up all of this wealth for the rich and rigging the game against most people in this country and throughout the world. When we come back, let's talk about New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Let's talk about a little bit Comey. And we'll talk briefly about the Supreme Court decision, although I think we mostly covered it. It was a one-sentence stay of the prior orders, allowing at least temporarily for, you know, whether it's going to be a few days or weeks before there's further briefing the continued construction of that ridiculous golden ballroom. We'll talk about that and more of. Let's take our last quick break of the show. AIMA.F. YouTube channel and subscribe to the Legal A.F. substack.

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So let's get back to it. And yeah, we'll put the discount codes in the description below. Let's talk New York Attorney General, Leticia James, haven't heard her name for a while. Although she's been working on a lot of important cases I had her on a lot about six, seven months ago. There were a lot of big AG cases that she's been leading. You've interviewed her before about a lot of those cases. with AGs as well in some of these important cases against Trump. But she's always been a target of Donald Trump.

She was a target of him in Virginia. Remember that? Part of those like Lindsay Halligan malicious, vindictive prosecutions in Virginia. But then there were subpoena efforts that were taking place in the Northern District, federal court of New York as well against New York and Attorney General, Leticia James. But she's, you know, been undeterred, never scared, just pushing forward and continuing to do great work for the people of New York. Popak talked to us about the big win that New York Attorney General

Letitia James had in federal court. And then we've talked briefly about Comey and then we could round this out with some Supreme Court. A little bit on the Supreme Court. Yeah. Donald Trump saw it. You put it great a couple weeks ago while I was still traveling, which is this is the era of a if you look back, you write the history books. This 2026, 2027 is the era of accountability. This is the chickens come home to roost against all of those abuses of power by Donald Trump and the abuses of the rule of law. And one of the ones that we covered from the very beginning was Donald Trump's undermining and breaching of the constitutional appointment statute or appointment clause about how U.S. attorneys have to be, how that position gets filled.

There's 93 U.S. attorneys around the country in 93 federal districts. And you, until Donald Trump, you nominated somebody for the position. You may have filled it temporarily if there was a vacancy for 120 days under the Vacancy Reform Act, a statute of Congress. But then, and that could be extended by district court judges of that, district to keep a person or appoint a new person. But then you finally got around at some point to getting your nominee who you wanted for U.S. attorney confirmed by the Senate. That's what you're supposed to do. And that's what the voting rights. That's what the reform act says you're supposed to do. Well, Donald Trump didn't want to do that. First of all, you wanted to handpick people who have

no prosecutorial credentials or bona fides. Their only credential is that they were MAGA. to the Corps and would do anything Donald Trump told him to do. And so Lindsey Halligan, who was like barely a lawyer, let alone a prosecutor, gets made the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and Alina Habo becomes the District of New Jersey, and then John Sarkone, who nobody ever heard of except these maggots of the Corps, he's going to be the he's going to be the Northern District of New York and so on and so on. He put somebody in Nevada to be the head there. And then none of them could be confirmed because you have to go through a process where the state senators approve you.

And both senators have to approve you. So in blue states, like New York, they were never going to get, or New Jersey, they were never going to get two senators to approve Alina Habo or John Sarko. So Trump would just let the 120-day initial term, which he has the right to do, expire. And then he would play fast and loose with the law. And then he'd say, well, I'm going to make her own first assistant. Or him is her own, his own first assistant. And then I'll elevate that person. Or I'll just make them a special attorney.

And that special attorney, but with all the powers of the U.S. attorney, like, no, these are all violations of the Vacancy Reform Act and of the appointment clause of the Constitution. And different people have challenged them in different ways. Like, we've got a person who was appointed by, district court judges in Washington State to be the U.S. attorney in one of the districts who got fired 54 minutes later. He used to be a judge. Judge Rogoff, he sued not because he fell in love with the job after 54 minutes, but because there was a violation of the Vacancy Reform Act. And he's got a very good case at the Ninth Circuit. Then people who were like criminal defendants

challenged U.S. attorney Chotwa in Nevada because she's overstayed or welcome over. Overie. a year without being properly appointed. And the Ninth Circuit 30 just said, yeah, she's illegally appointed. Get the hell out. You're not allowed to do it that way. There's ways to fill the vacancy, and this is not the way to fill the vacancy, which brings us to John Sarkone. So Sarkone gets picked by a combination of Pam Bondi and Ed Martin, who just got kicked from the Department of Justice as the pardon attorney. He's the guy that couldn't get confirmed as the U.S. attorney for D.C., that's why Janine Piro is in there. He's so bad, he couldn't even get confirmed by the Senate. And then they kicked him upstairs to the

Weaponization Committee, where he was of the Department of Justice, where he was busy advising people like Lindsay Halligan to go after Letitia James, and he brings in John Sarko, which nobody ever heard of. Sarko's 120-day term expires. He announces he's been extended by the district court judges, except the district court judges announced that they didn't vote to extend him. So he has egg on his face. So then what do they do? Oh, they make him his own first assistant after the vacancy was created, which is too late. The only person that can take the job is the existing first assistant, not somebody who gets

the job after the vacancy is created. Certainly not the person who just created the vacancy. So this comes to a head because Letitia James moves. to quash subpoenas that were issued by a grand jury on behalf of John Sarkone, who was charged with going after Letitia James and her New York Attorney General Office for civil rights violations against Donald Trump, because she's not only successfully got a judgment of persistent fraud against Donald Trump and his entire family, a fraud judgment that is so powerful that for the next three months, and for the two and a half years that preceded it, Donald Trump's organization

has been under a court-appointed monitor in the form of Barbara Jones. Your term doesn't expire for three more months. That's how bad the fraud is, that Barbara Jones, a former federal judge, has to sit on top of the Trump organization. Okay? The amount of the fraud is still up for dispute with the appellate court, but that's what Letitia James was able to accomplish. She also collaborated with Alvin Bragg's Manhattan DA's office who successfully prosecuted Trump or his entities twice. 17 count felony conviction against two of Trump's companies for tax evasion and tax fraud and other things and the 34 count felony conviction against Donald Trump.

She worked in the background. They collaborated on the case. And so ever since then, Donald Trump has gone after Letitia James. He just attacked her again in a recent appearance. And Letitia James, they went after. her with Lindsay Halligan on mortgage fraud because she let a cousin live in a house that she owns that's worth $100,000 in Virginia. And Lindsey Halligan's indictment was bounced because Lindsay Halligan was fired as a unconstitutionally illegally appointed U.S. attorney.

They tried again against Letitia James. And another grand jury somewhere else in Virginia, they refused to return an indictment. So John Sarkony is going after her. on the Attorney General's office and her personally. She moves to quash. It ends up being reassigned to a judge, not in the Northern District of New York, but in the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, her name is Schofield.

Judge Schofield says, I'm not going to deal with a lot of these issues, but I'll tell you the one issue I'm going to deal with, whether he was illegally appointed or not. He was illegally appointed on the Vacancy Reform Act. I'm going to not only quash the subpoenas because he's illegal, but I'm also going to bar him from being, being involved in any prosecution going forward in any role against Letitia James.

That goes up on appeal to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and in a two to one decision written by Judge Calabrese. Of course, the one in dissent is a trumper, Judge Parker. But in two to one decision, they rule that Judge Schofield was right, that Sarkony was illegally appointed, that Bondi and Blanche did the wrong thing when it comes to trying to keep Sarkony in office. They said the quashing of the subpoenas was correct. So that investigation through Sarkony ends. And they also noted, talk about Keystone cops, that the Department of Justice screwed up and didn't bother appealing whether Sarkony should be barred from involvement in any

investigation involving Letitia James. So they declared that that argument was forfeited. And so he is forever barred. If Trump doesn't like this ruling or or the 30 ruling at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, or any of the other rulings that have come out against him, every time against his illegal appointment of a U.S. attorney, that he's going to have to go look to see whether he's got five votes at the United States Supreme Court. Let's talk about Comey.

Let's talk about SCOTUS. Okay. So Comey, if you thought his indictment for Seychelles was weak, and pretty weak tea, that he and his wife, while they were vacationing at their North Carolina house, came across a seashell collection that spelled 8647, and that he posted that on a social media a couple of days before his book called FDR Drive, a fictional novel about a prosecutor making a case against a right-wing podcaster for some sort of stochastic terrorist. where he effectively put out the message,

won't somebody writ me of this meddlesome priest, and somebody actually killed somebody as a result, and they were trying to make the case against them. If you thought that case against James Comey was weak, wait, do you see and hear how they tried to support it against a series of strong motions to dismiss the indictment for vindictive prosecution and other grounds? They came forward with, well, if you thought our case was week before, here's three major pieces of evidence.

I'm like, okay, what are they? One, he appeared on the Colbert show. Okay. And so, like, what is the clip? Oh, it's where Colbert asked him about the 8647 seashells, and he blames it on his wife. He says, well, my wife saw it. She didn't know what it meant. We went and looked it up, blah, blah, blah, and we posted it.

Okay, so what? So we went and looked it up. So if you go to like the fifth definition in the shorthand, what's the not nickname, but yeah, like a slogan dictionary, 86, the fifth definition is to kill. It means to remove, look, I worked in a diner. I know what 86 means. Okay.

When the short order cook told me to 86 the chopped liver or the tuna salad, That meant didn't mean kill it. It meant take it off the menu, don't keep selling it. Okay, that's what it means. It comes from the days of soda jerks and diners and short-order cooks. Okay, no mobsters ever said. We got an 86th the guy. I've never seen that in a movie.

It's never been in a transcript. But the dictionary definition, the sixth one in Miriam Webster says it's, yeah, no. Okay? And you think that's what went through the mind of James Comey and his wife when he posted this snarky tongue-and-cheek thing? The question is whether that is a true threat to the president. We've already had one federal judge declare that something similar is not, could never be taken in the context as a true threat.

All right, so they got the Stephen Colbert clip. What else you got? Oh, there's a couple of excerpts from his novel. I'm like, I started rolling my eyes as soon as I saw the excerpts. I'm like, really? They're portraying James Kobe as a charismatic leader that gave out a message. for people to kill the president. Are you effing kidding me?

For a president who constantly is calling for violence, violence against his opponents, punch him in the face, get him out of here, bang his head, okay? And if you want to talk about remove having the meaning of to kill, I've seen Donald Trump talk about removing somebody constantly. So I'm like, all right, so now you got the novel secret messaging in the novel? What else you got? Oh, so much like most of our audience, apparently Comey and his wife have a cousin that they don't get along with. And they put in a text

message from a cousin directed to Patrice Comey, who said, now you've gone too far. That is obviously a violent threat against the president. I hope James goes to jail. I mean, is that the new measure of prosecutorial discretion under the DOJ manual, whether you have a cousin who thinks the person should be prosecuted, it just shows you how weak and how grasping at straws this indictment is. If I was the lawyers for James Comey, like Patrick Fitzgerald, Patrick Fitzgerald, I'm sorry, I know his last name was Fitzpatrick, I'll get it in a minute, the U.S. Attorney for the, former U.S. Attorney for Chicago, I would be popping champagne courts and rubbing my hand in glee about they're making the case for us.

So that's what's going on in the Comey case. And then in Supreme Court, we're going to have to see in the next week whether there are four more votes besides John Roberts to stop the ballroom. My fear, though, on that, is that Sauer, John Sauer, the Solicitor General and Donald Trump's former criminal defense lawyer, has told the court that they are 65% done with the ballroom. And you know what happens when Donald Trump cuts corners and tries to speed up a construction project, right?

We just saw what happened with the reflecting pool. They're 65% done. So another week or two, they're going to be, and then they're going to say, oh, can't tear it down, made from nuclear reactor-grade concrete, can't tear it, got to leave it up. And you'll see what the Supreme Court has to say about that. So I would have liked to see a faster on the merits decision,

at least about the stay. But sometime next week, you and I will be reporting whether the five votes are there for a full stay through the appeal or not. And the problem is this building will be erected the ballroom before the appeal is over. They should stop the ballroom, allow the below ground security measures, whatever's going on down there to happen, but stop the ballroom. Question is, do they have the balls to do it? I don't know.

If you notice, what are the arguments that the Trump regime is making? standing. There's nobody in the world who has the ability to even bring this case. Moutness, it's already done. You can't stop something once it's already done. And then there, catch all. This is actually national security. It's a military complex. And so he abuses the Constitution's take care clause, that the president is entrusted to take care that laws are faithfully executed. And he only takes care of himself. It's why the Natalie Harp line by Senator Assoff was so impactful. And sure, I mean, look, there are probably some national security issues regarding Natalie Harp or security clearance, who is this person around him. There are personal issues, whether or not this is an individual

that has, you know, is well. I don't know one way or the other. I mean, you see some of these letters. This is a person who's around a lot of very serious communications, and what we've learned about her is deeply concerning. So there is a personal dimension. I don't want to say there's zero, but to me, the Natalie Harp story isn't about Natalie. It's about priorities as well, and it's Donald Trump spending his time throwing himself golf tournaments where he always wins, with Natalie by his side chasing his golf course, sending these weird letters to him while the American people are suffering while health care has been ripped away, while people are paying record high gas prices, record high diesel prices, while people can't afford groceries, while people can't

afford their rent right now. While you have all of these really horrible things happening to most Americans right now, you have Donald Trump doing 21,000 stock trades, gallivanting with Natalie in golf tournaments and talking about. about his golden ballroom all of the time. And then using this idea that national security is why we need a golden ballroom because it's a shield that protects him from drones. While by the way, the United States doesn't have protection

from drones, he's too busy building nuclear battleships for himself as opposed to actually dealing with the way modern warfare is even dealt with. I think that's why the Natalie line resonates, it's the contrast. Natalie, Ballroom, Reflecting Pool, all of these things, and he will do anything and everything to get what he wants for him while the American people suffer, including all of the, you know, what we see in all of these cases, you know, where he's, you know, attacking a two-time Olympian in the reflecting pool and fabricating a case, a criminal case against him.

And, you know, we see this behavior over and over again. And Popak, for people, people, it's so obvious what's happening here. And so when you see the Supreme Court, which is supposed to be something that we all should look up to, it's not anymore. And it's a ruling like this where they're like, we'll give you a little bit more time. It's like, no, it's a very basic issue. This is not a complicated issue. If Trump wants to build the ballroom, then get Congress to pass a law that says you can build the ballroom. If he's confident that everybody wants this and he believes its national security, go to Congress. Congress is elected by the people. They pass laws. He signs him. He takes care that they're faithfully executed. That's the way our system works. You don't like

that system, then go do other systems. But this is our system in the United States. And when foundationally, the United States Supreme Court starts accepting and allowing absolute immunity and on very basic calls. You know, it's like if they were the referee or if they were an official in a World Cup game and the person just picked up the soccer ball or the football and started running with it and the referees, the handball, you can't do that.

This is soccer. What are you doing? The example is we're seeing that happen. And then the referees are just like, eh, we'll just wait to the second half. Or we'll just wait till overtime. Or we'll just wait until that. And it's like, well, guess what? Now the game's over.

And you've ruined the game. And you know, and you've ruined our democracy. You've ruined our systems of checks and balances. And so I leave everybody with that. We talk about the cases. We talk about the day to day. Here's what happened. Here's what happened here.

Let's give an update here. Here is the ruling here. But what we need to do, and this is what we talk a lot about in WTF America, is we need to take a step back also, though, and say, our system is sick. Our system is ill. Our system has been under attack. And it's that broken system.

that's been intentionally broken by moneyed interests in order to take advantage of the chaos, to make themselves more money and to further enrich and entrench their power, that allowed this vessel to come along. So how do we get out of this hell? We have to take a step back and not just act like, whoa, these things are just happening out of nowhere. No, this was a plan that right-wing people implemented for decades and decades and decades. control of the media, control of law schools with the federalist side, control of the judiciary,

control of school boards and state and local politics with radio and then Fox state regime media pumping this stuff out. So we've got to think about all of these things in a deeper way. And we've got to create our own systems. So it's like, okay, Ben, you diagnose it. Well, then what do you do? Create our own systems. Create our own version of the federalist society that supports democracy, create our own media ecosystem that tells the truth. That's what you do, and that's what we're doing we're building every day. Subscribe to LegalAF YouTube, subscribe to LegalAF Substack. Let's get those channels to stay at the top of the charts. Also, if you or somebody knows who's been injured in a car accident, an auto accident,

catastrophic injury to yourself or someone you know, reach out to the Popok firm. The worst they say is you don't have a case, but don't be shy. Call Popok today. 877 Popok AF or visit the Popok firm.com. 877 Popak AF or visit the Popok firm.com. See if you have a case. Again, they really handle catastrophic injury cases. And so when tragedy strikes, that happened to you or someone in your family, that's when you reach out to Popak there and see if his firm can help out.

Popak, great to see again. Great to do the show with you. We appreciate everybody so much for joining us. Legal A.F. Popak, knee back together. Great to see everybody and spend time. with you. We'll see you next time on LegalAF. Shout out LegalAFers. Shout out Midas, Mike. Real Canadian Superstore has everything you need this back-to-school season. Save on lunchbox savers like Ziggy's sliced deli-mee products for always 375. And get Life Brand Pure

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