Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF - 9/10/2026

Episode Date: September 10, 2026

Popok joined by Karen Friedman Agnifilo on Legal AF, provide real-time breaking legal and political news commentary about Trump’s latest “Trump-a-palooza” and the notable no-shows, including developments involving Canada and Mexico; the Tate brothers being denied bail; the growing legal and political mess surrounding Missouri’s maps; the latest battle over mail-in ballots as briefs are filed with the Supreme Court; and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. IQBAR: Get 20% off all IQBAR products. Text LEGALAF to 64000. (Message and data rates may apply) SMALLS: For a limited time, get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping and free treats for life, when you head to https://Smalls.com/legalaf DELETE ME: Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to join https://joindeleteme.com/LEGALAF and use promo code LEGALAF at checkout. SUNDAYS FOR DOGS: Get 50% OFF your first order of Sundays. Go to https://sundaysfordogs.com/LEGALAF50 or use code: LEGALAF50 at checkout. QUO: Try QUO for free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to https://Quo.com/legalaf Become a member of Legal AF YouTube community: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgZJZZbnLFPr5GJdCuIwpA/join Learn more about the Popok Firm: https://thepopokfirm.com Subscribe to Legal AF Substack: https://michaelpopok.substack.com/labordaysale 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

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free of charge. BetMGEMGEMP operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. Welcome to the Legal A-E-M-E-E-M-Gon-E-Gy-L. podcast. You know where you are. You didn't just stumble in. You're on the Midas Touch Network. I'm Michael Popock, joined by Karen Friedman McNifalo. We normally say we sit at the intersection of law and politics and curate stories so you don't have to. Things are moving so fast right now. We're talking minute by minute up and back at the Supreme Court like a pickleball game or a ping pong match about voting, about maps. We're going to cover it all here because it doesn't

just matter what's going on in Missouri. It matters around the country. I don't think. think, again, I don't think that it's going to come down to one seat in the house for control, but it could. And that one seat or two seats could be from Missouri. And we've got some updates there as well. We're going to kick it off talking about, what are they calling this? Trumpapalooza? They're all excited because John Federman finally found something that he wants to do for a living because he doesn't want to be a senator. He doesn't want to represent the people of Pennsylvania. They hate him. He has poll numbers that are the equivalent of Donald Trump. He's so unliked at his own state. And John Federman decided, I'll get nothing better to do. I don't like

doing my job. So I'll make a video and they'll play it during the Trumpaloosa. We'll talk about that. Why doesn't Donald, where's Karen? How about they make a big announcement tonight? John Federman is going to change his name to Federer America. How about that? What do they do? Of all people, We knew we couldn't trust John Federman. And they think, oh, this is going to own the libtards. It's going to own the Democrats. We don't like John Federman. You picked the wrong guy if you thought you were going to troll us.

And we'll talk more about, I guess we're the counter programming tonight to Trump Paloosa, that nobody is watching. Nobody is broadcasting. And frankly, other than people named Donald Trump or Trump, nobody's really attending. And I want to ask Karen, the fundamental question is, who's the, audience for this. What new voter for Donald Trump is being manufactured over the next two days? That's sort of a rhetorical question, but I would like to hear from my colleague on that. Canada and Mexico, Mexico and Canada. So it's pretty terrible when you run out of moves in your perverse, demented dumb trade war with our trading ally Canada, you're getting your ass kicked

after you did your counter-counter measures and counter-counter tariffs, you kind of out of moves. And instead of going to Ottawa to meet with Mark Carney, who's frankly kicking your ass, Howard Lutnik goes to Mexico. Why? Because he needs a Mexican bailout. He needs a Mexican bailout because they've screwed things up so royally, no pun intended, in Canada. And it has impact on the electoral map. This is why Republicans that do this for a living, professional Republicans, unlike Donald Trump, they're in a cold sweat right now about what his fight is. He's in a cold sweat. his economic fight, tariffs in Canada and Mexico is doing to good old-fashioned Midwestern voters when things are hanging in the balance in Michigan and Ohio and Indiana and Kentucky and the rest.

Professional Republicans, you know, the ones that get paid for a living to try to win races, they're not happy right now with what Trump's trying to do. I want to talk about that with Karen as well. Then I'm going to sort through because at least for today, and I mean right now we're, alive 8.04 p.m. Eastern time. The plates have stopped spinning until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning about what's going on in Missouri. State Supreme Court, federal judges, up and back to the United States Supreme Court, a round trip with Justice Kavanaugh. Threats of contempt against the Secretary of State, the guy that walks around with these blaring red jackets like he's some sort

of lounge singer on a cruise ship. There he is. And when he's not holding a baseball bat, that's the Secretary of State of Missouri, by the way. And we have to sort this out because it matters about whether the Republicans are going to be seven to one advantaged in the Congress or it's going to have two seats for Democrats as well. Mail-in ballots, big filings, last filings today to the United States Supreme Court about postal service interference with mail-in ballots, which are supposed to be run only by the states. And is the Supreme Court going to let Donald Trump with 56 days left on the clock to let the post office get into the driver's seat about mail-in ballots? I also had a very rewarding and exclusive last 36 hours on behalf of the legal a half audience in Detroit. I was in Detroit this morning interviewing 15 of the Democratic Attorney's General. And the sole topic is vote, vote, vote, and voter protection.

And I'm going to play a clip of one of the panels that I did yesterday. Good news, takeaway is I've got the survival kit for this election season provided to me by those Democratic attorneys general. And, of course, I'll share that with you while I'm on the show here today with Karen. And then we've got to talk about the tape brothers, not because I want to. My skin starts to crawl as soon as I do. because there's been a big decision made by a federal magistrate judge in Miami. And this is yet again, let's frame it for a minute. I have to talk with Karen in our audience about a second international child sex trafficking

ring that involved rape and abuse and pornography and this president of the United States and his family. I mean, I'm not being sarcastic or smug about it. we're not even done with the Epstein scandal. And I got to talk about the relationship between the Tate brothers, these right-wing social media bro podcast influencer types, how they sucked it up with Baron Trump, how Baron Trump convinced Daddy Trump to use influencers like the Tate Brothers to get elected,

and how close the Tate Brothers are to the Trump inner circle, including with Paolo Zambole, who's a special envoy for Donald Trump. Trump, one of his best friends, introduced him to Melania. Ben always follows that up with at the Kit Kat Club. And that's who they were partying with the day before they got arrested on an extradition, provisional arrest warrant from the UK on 59 charges and new charges I want to talk to Karen about coming out of Romania that'll make your skin crawl.

Why do I have to talk about a president in a connection to child sex trafficking? I have no idea, but we will do it here on legal AF. Hi, Karen. Hi, Popak. How are you? Doing great. You must be exhausted from all your travel going back and forth. Oh, and it started, you know, and my sympathies to the families who have lost somebody because of the Amazon contractor plane that blew through a runway into a roadway, smashed into a cleaning van and killed five people with three others clinging to life right now. in Miami. It also shut down two of the four runways, which, you know, it's small measure to me. But I didn't get until 3 a.m. to Detroit the other night as a result. But I feel really bad for the

families that, you know, literally we're just doing God's work on Labor Day weekend working and got slammed by a 737. Yeah, so sad. Yeah, really sad. So we're here. We're here. We're back together. Let's kick it off with this Trumpapalooza thing. This is about the extent of our coverage of it, okay, throughout the much touch universe. So Trump comes up with the great idea that since he's so unpopular nationally, and rather than release each individual candidate to try to win or lose on their own merits, no, no, he has to suck them closer, make this election about him. and make it a national referendum on him on the midterms.

In fact, he said it out loud. He said to the senators and the congresspeople, you should just run on my record. The more you talk about my record, this is how delusional Donald Trump is. If you thought 60 social media AI posts in a 24-hour period said something really bad about his mental state, him telling as a political strategist,

other Republicans just cling to me. I'm your life preserver. Life preserver. He's their anchor. He's their albatross. So Karen, all right. So the big surprise, you know, the big September surprise was John Federman's doing a video. Good for him.

Kick him out of the party. Be done with it. Let's, you know, if it was, I can't trust him, even if we won the Senate, that he's going to caucus with us regularly. So we've seen the pictures. Nobody's there. Nobody's covering it. Except Fox News, the property.

and a platform. It's the, it's the, it's the, it's the foam hat and button and suspender people, if you know what I mean. Well, what, what, what, who, what is the audience for this? What person is sitting on the fence going, well, he's terrible in most ways that matter to be, but he puts on a good convention. Who's saying that? I mean, look, to even call it a convention is such a misnomer because it's not doing anything that a party convention normally does, right? It's usually just for presidential election years. It doesn't include any delegates. There's no debates. And it's just basically a show. It's a show for Donald Trump and his party and try to raise money and to put something on TV. And that's all he does, right? He's Mr. President's smoke

and mirrors where he likes to do things that are sort of shiny on the outside but have no substance, right? And that's exactly what is happening here at this rally. I don't know what it is. They can call it a convention, but there's nothing about it that's a convention. They're not voting on issues. They're not holding party business. It's literally a two-day rally that is half empty and has kind of the B team. And a lot of Republicans are staying away from a lot of people who are up for election are staying away from this because they are seeing this as a nuclear kind of, you know, stay away from him like you'd stay away from a nuclear reactor. So this is really, I don't know what to make of it other than it's just another one of his shows that he likes to put on,

whether it's the F1 show in Washington, D.C. or the, you know, whatever he, whatever the county fair that he tried to put on, or he tries to do things. like rename, whether it's buildings in his name or lakes or other things. Everything is so superficial with him and non-substantive. Because when you look at the substance of what has he actually accomplished, right? The economy is worse since he's been here. Oil prices and gas prices are much higher than previously. And interest rates are up, right?

It's everything is, people know, people feel it. People see that he is making life worse for everybody. Everybody's waiting, you know, for the results, whether it's dragging us into another war, whether it's not resolving wars, et cetera, et cetera. You could go on and on. Anything of substance that he touches or goes near falls apart under a house of cards, but yet he likes to present it as, oh, the reflecting pool. I'm going to make it great.

You see the reflecting pool. It's currently drained and has like algae scum on it, right? Because he screwed that up. He just screws up everything substantively. but he tries to wrap it in a shiny, you know, with a bow and make it glossy and shiny and smile and pretend that everything's great. But I think everybody's on to him and people are on to him. And the voters, more importantly, are onto him.

They know what it's like every single day trying to pay their bills or live their life or live the freedoms that we are used to having and he's making it worse. but he tries to dress it up and put on a show and lie to everyone's faces and make everyone feel like, oh, everything's great, everything's wonderful. And so that's what this is. Yeah, I liken it to, you know, I have a two-year-old daughter, you know, and she's got a play driving set with a steering wheel and shifter and gas, and we have it in the car.

And occasionally she thinks she's driving the car. I really think even those in the inner circle around Donald Trump just came up with something to inflate his ego, to keep him out of harm's way. When you look at the numbers and the stats, he's not campaigning like eight years ago to maintain the Senate or the House. He's just not out there. He's doing, as you said, F1 races, World Cup events, MMA fighting, Super Bowl, you know, the New York Knicks getting booed all along the way for adulation.

but he's not doing the hard work as a party leader to help his party at the midterms. When you compare eight years ago to now, by now he had already done fundraiser after fundraiser, speech and rally and speech and rallies. He's not doing any of that. They're just giving him things like putting him in a round room made out of rubber. And so he doesn't hurt himself. Let him have the cameras and the spotlights and make him feel like something's going on that's a positive. But there is no one who's a professional.

Republican strategist or communications director or somebody who's a pollster who thinks this is a good idea. That's why they're staying away with it, or staying away from it. As you mentioned, like he's radioactive. John Thune, who's the Senate Majority Leader, you know, he's not there. It's a bunch of low lights. It's Don Jr. It's Carolyn Levitt back from her, whatever, having resigned. it's a bunch of other Ted Cruz. I mean, this is a tired, sad, a bunch of people, as you said, to the American people see right through. And a bunch of Senate candidates whose campaigns were not in jeopardy in May, but now after tariffs and the Canada fight and Donald Trump's plummeting poll numbers, seats that were not in jeopardy necessarily before. are now either toss up or moving towards likely Democrat.

I mean, at the start of the summer, I was hard pressed, even though I was hopeful, to pick up the seats that we needed, like the six seats, or the five seats, whatever it is. Now the Republicans are so worried about keeping the Senate that I heard Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's alter ego, say out loud in the last 24 hours, the best they can hope for is to win the House by one seat. That's why that Missouri discussion is going to be so important.

And to break even in the Senate, to tie the Senate, and then have J.D. Vanceby, the tiebreaker. That's the best he thinks they can do. That's not a big rallying cry. You think anybody's going to be saying that at Trumpapalooza? Let's tie everybody. And so since he's not doing the hard. things because he doesn't want to, he's mentally checked out. He's in his legacy building phase.

He's left with, let's trot him out. Let's run him up the flag poll. See if anybody salutes. But it just gives you and I and legitimate commentators and voters one last opportunity before the midterms to say, no. Yeah, it's true. Isn't Michael Cohen going to be there too? Is that true? Am I making that up? I don't, I'm going to wait for my producer to say something. Yep, he's there. So can we just, I don't even, I just, I just threw up in my mouth. I used to do substacks with that guy because he turned a new leaf.

Remember, Mayaculpa? Yeah, okay. Anyway, Michael, my God, it's so disgusting. Sorry, I didn't mean to ruin your night. No, that didn't ruin my light. It just, it just, it just put that rally that in proper perspective. It, and so, so let me ask you, is there any, that he needs to get to vote Republican, that off of this is going to come over to the other side.

Is he manufacturing any new voters? I can't imagine that that would be the case. But, you know, in what way? I mean, they're not really discussing anything substantive. They're not making any. They're just sort of gaslighting, right? This is like the gaslight of all gaslights. I hope Cohen gets booed, by the way.

along with with Federman. I mean, he's not that popular in those circles. We'll see what happens. I mean, I don't know how many times you can do Mayaculpa and then go back to the other side and get away with it. We'll find out. Canada and Mexico, another, not only egg on his face, but economic disaster for us.

Mark Carney, I mean, talk about a moment making the man. I mean, his leadership skills, his gravitas, the way he's uniting the Canadians, not only against Donald Trump, but just in terms of, looking inward to build a stronger Canada. And what does Donald Trump do? Oh, you put out a video about historically,

you're not going to take the United States as shit. I'm going to do counter-counter tariffs on your motorcycles. And all you Americans are like, Crown, Royal, the booze, you're not getting it anymore. This is what he's left with. So instead of flying to Ottawa, which is where any adult, mature person would send his commerce secretary to or his trade representative to,

where are they today? Why is Lutnik not on the Lollapalooza list? Because he's got to go to Mexico. Because he's got to go fix it down there and men fences down there with Claudia Shinebound, who now holds all the cards, steel, auto manufacturing, all the things they just screwed up in Canada. He's now got to try to convince Mexico. And if I'm Mexico, I mean, listen, they'll be very diplomatic. They'll be very gracious. But you know behind closed doors, the Cloud is. Shambam's people and her are high-fiving each other about how she's navigated, you know, in a slightly different way than Canada, and to put herself in a position of leverage in negotiating with the Trump administration.

And you know who's the beneficiary of this? Let me talk about electoral. The whole electoral map, Karen, is inflamed in the Midwest, in the Rust Belt because of the tariffs and because of Canada. If Susan Collins loses, for instance, in Maine, it's because of Canada and the tariffs. which is one of the seats that the Democrats need to turn in order to take the Senate. But China benefits. China's now running around saying, see the crazy guy in the White House, we're the stable

alternative with trillions of dollars. Won't you do business with us? Is that what Donald Trump promised us when he ran for office, that we'd push, he'd push all of our allies and global economy off to China? Look, China's been playing the long game for decades, right? They've been establishing these long-term relationships with countries by doing things like building bridges, building infrastructure, getting people and countries dependent on the money that they have. And we are the opposite. We're blowing up our allies.

Instead, we're sending people to Russia to meet with Putin. We're kissing Kim Jong-un's fanny, you know, saying nice things about him. I mean, we are literally blowing up our allies. whether it's Europe, but Canada, I mean, one of our closest allies. Like, it just doesn't make any sense why Trump is picking fights with the people who we've had long-term relationships with, at least so we thought. And, yeah, of course they're going to go running to other, to make other friends, if you will, internationally. If for no other reason, then I think they've realized becoming dependent on us or becoming trade partners with us is now not, no longer a given. It's no longer stable. And so it's like diversifying your portfolio. And of course,

that's what they're going to do. And we're just pushing our friends away from us and kissing up to our enemies, frankly. And it's just mind-boggling to me. It's absolutely mind-boggling. But, you know, you see kind of what's behind it. You see in Germany, a small area of Germany and Eastern, East Germany is now gone far, far right. You've got Elon Musk, who is a big fan of that party and wants to funnel money to those types of causes. It's just terrifying how this administration, really, all they admire are these far-right dictatorships or oligarchies, and stable democracies are somehow now our enemies. And I just hope the voters who will see that and really kind of make a statement to this administration and to the far-right Republicans that that's not what America's about.

We aren't about that. We aren't about, we don't want to go back to those types of times, not that we ever were, but we don't want a country that emulates that type of values or vision or whatever it is. And, you know, it's just, it's just kind of unbelievable to me to see that. And I just hope the voters who, who in addition to feeling that the economy, et cetera, that their own personal kind of situation is not made better by Trump, in fact, it's way worse, that just as a democracy, as a whole, we are, we are in jeopardy. And I think with Canada and Mexico, it's no, it's no greater, it's no more kind of stark than when you see what we're doing with them. Yeah, I mean, we've lost soft power because nobody in the administration understands diplomacy.

It's a bunch of, what's that line about? You put a thousand chimpanzees with typewriters in a room. You're not going to get Shakespeare's sonnet out of it. And we have a group of people who don't understand diplomacy, don't understand what, soft power is about don't understand how the state department using u.s aid created spheres of influence around the world because we got out of that business because marco rubio at donald trump's and Elon musk's be asked shuttered consulates and offices around the world took away money and who stepped into the breach who stepped into the void chinese the russians their spheres of influence have

increased now in africa the african the african convales in South and Central America, in Europe, in Canada, because we've abdicated our responsibility. This whole America for this pernicious America first mentality just means that we've abdicated our responsibility around the world. We've given up on diplomacy and soft power. And all we're left with is to rattle our saber and hope nobody fires back, except today as we came on the air, Iran fired back at 10 different sites, American sites and ships. using some new optical laser guided missile system that I don't even know if we knew they had. And what is the end game in any of the...

That's the problem. There is no end game to any of these things because it's being run by an erratic madman who has a bunch of narcissistic sycophants around him who are making lots of money or are lustful for power. That's what we're watching. We're not watching a true functional administration. We're watching stitch together a bunch of bunch of, this is the island of broken toys, the cabinet around Donald Trump. These are a bunch of misfits who never fit in in any of the industries that they allegedly were part of. And Donald Trump brought them all together, right? Well, I could go wrong under his leadership. And this is where we are. So I want to do a couple of things. If you're interested in asking questions of

Karen and or me put it in comments tonight, and our team will catch it and start throwing some up. I got a couple right now before we take our first break. Let's see. This is from Ellen, from Ellen. Can Trump pardon a federal prosecutor or Blanche specifically if they're found in contempt? Depends on the level of contempt. If they're convicted of the crime of contempt, sure,

they could be pardoned and washed away. If it's civil type contempt, which is the general contempt, no, right? Or a state court. They can't pardon the state court. Yeah, although he's tried. He tried to pardon, you know, Tina Peters out in Colorado, which that didn't work. Let's see, Divine Right said, Donnie said the war would end, gas prices will drop after the midterms. Is that because he's surrendering to the Democrats that they will be in power in Congress?

Yeah. there is a little bit of reality that occasionally seeps into his inner sanctum of his brain and he realizes he may lose control of the House and the Senate. I think that's why we may not have liked it, but I think that's why Hakeem Jeffries met with Kushner, Kushner, his son-in-law, because people realize that in the New World Order, Trump's going to be moving towards powerless in the sec now. He's done so much damage that we have to fix, but he's moving towards powerless in the second half of his presidency. Not that it matters to him. He's busy trying to reshape Washington, D.C. and his image. But I think that's sort of where we're at. So put your questions

in comments for tonight. When we come back from our first break, we're going to do what's going on in Missouri and why it matters for the control of Congress. Mail-in ballots, another deadline today at the United States Supreme Court that matters. We're going to talk about the Tate brothers. Before we take our break, though, I do want to talk about, and you're going to start seeing this content up on Legal AF and started today, I was invited to the Democratic Attorney General Association, Daga, their conference quarterly.

This one was in Detroit. I had the opportunity to be in the room of 15 Democratic Attorneys General and interview them on our behalf here on Legal A.F. about voting and votes. I got a video up right now of my interview with Rob Bonta, the Attorney General of California, and Dana Nessel, the Attorney General of Michigan, and here's a clip.

And I will say this for people say like, well, what's the harm? Why not turn that information over? Well, the federal government under Donald Trump, they've not been good stewards of our personal information. And we've seen these data breaches. We've seen people who come in who have not been vetted using, you know, unsecure systems in order to obtain that information. And then we've actually seen some of these people sell our private personal information

to third parties who are trying to sell us things or who are trying to manipulate us from a political perspective. And so if the federal government has demonstrated anything to us, it's that they should have as little of our information as possible. And in my opinion, I think they're currently. trying to create a surveillance state. That's one of the biggest reasons why they want this, whether it's so that, you know, Trump's friends

in the AI community can obtain our information to sell us products, goods, services, or whether or not they want to influence us on things critical to our democracy. But there are very specific laws in place. They are not permitted to have that information, and that's why we've won every single time when we've challenged an effort like this.

I just really want to agree with Aegee Nessel here that the federal government is trying to surveil the American people and amass a master database with as much information in it as possible. And they're trying to collect from all sorts of different sources. Voter rolls is one. But, you know, Doge was, you know, collecting bank account information, social security information of millions of Americans. When they go after our Medicaid data, our SNAP data, they want to collect that data and use it across the different parts of guns. including for immigration enforcement, which is barred and prohibited. And then, of course, they're seeking voter data. I do want to note they are zero for 23 in their efforts.

They have a goose egg in terms of never winning, yet continuing to try. And they're not just going after Democratic states data. They're going after Republicans' states' data who are fighting back and winning. And so they have no right to this data, but yet they try because they, you know, for whatever nefarious purposes they want to use it for. But the bottom line is they have no business owning that data, storing that data, using that data under the law. And so we're going to, to your viewers who are worried about their data, we're going to use the most powerful, most potent tool that there is, the rule of law to defend it. And we will keep winning.

And hopefully we'll keep that goose egg. Yeah, the fascinating interviews. We talked a lot about voter data, as you saw there, and also about voter protection. And we come back from our first break. I'll talk about the kind of survival kit that I picked up in talking to them. And if people are interested, which I hope they are, one video is up already from today. And then tomorrow and the rest of the week, we'll be putting up all of the kind of the content that we created. And it's very timely that one piece, Karen, that one interview clip, because today, one of the main programmers at Open AI came out and said, I guess he's resigning, came out and said,

AI will kill us within the end of this decade. Yeah, I saw that. That was crazy. Super intelligent AI will, like a fire, will rage out of control and will kill us. I mean, this is what the guy wrote, and he didn't come off like a crackpot. He came off like a guy that says the bridge is out ahead down the road and trying to warn us. And a lot of people actually came and supported what he was saying. He absolutely did not come across like a crazy person. And I'm surprised that this is an issue that the Republicans aren't all over. You know, so many Republicans are against, for example, these flock cameras that are being put up all over the place that are collecting information about people and their cars and license

plates and where they're going, et cetera. I'm surprised that this issue hasn't kind of crossed over to the Republicans yet and why the Republicans aren't putting guardrails up in this area. This is, I mean, I think I know the reason is because the, you know, the, the, the, the billionaires are, are going to make lots of money in with, when it comes to AI, et cetera. And so, you know, we know that that's who the Trump administration, who, who kind of holds the, holds the strings to the Trump administration. But Republicans, really, this should be something not just that Democrats are fighting over, that this should be something that everybody is concerned about. And I hope that this issue, uh, is.

is another issue that just reinforces why Democrats have to have to win big in the midterms and beyond. Yeah, they're doubling. The Republicans are doing the opposite. They're doubling down on these data centers, which are terrible for communities environmentally and otherwise. Trump has doubled down on it. But I think they've mis-estimated the will of the people and the mood of the people, because

The mood of the people is not in my backyard. I don't want a data center draining resources and electrical output and spewing things into the environment that are unregulated. And there seems to be a bipartisan opposition to data centers, which are the backbone of the artificial intelligence that we just, in data collection, that we just got through talking about. So many different ways to support what we do here. This is a podcast. It's called Legal AF. It's here on the Midas Touch Network. To support Legal

AF, we're award winning. We won the Webby Award for Best News Podcast this year. Download the audio. You might be watching us tonight. We got about 6 or 8,000 people watching us. We're going to have a half a million people that are going to see this episode before it's all said and done this week. But still, it's still really important to the ratings, to the prestige of the podcast that we get more audio downloads. We made it easy for you. There's a QR code at the top. Find us wherever you get your podcast from. Download the audio, subscribe, whatever it's supposed to be for free, and then do five-star reviews. Then there's the Legal AF YouTube channel. We are now eight days away from our two-year birthday. We're about to hit 800 million views of our work on that channel. And we're already at

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One more time, that's legal AF to 64,000. Message and data rates may apply. See, terms for details. You can tell what I do ads on the road, for sure. Let's look, where's our producer? Let's go back to the Trump of Belusa Stadium and see, okay, I just wanted to make sure things had really changed there. I don't think they were screening anybody, and Donald Trump doesn't like metal detectors. I think of the place is empty.

It's empty for a very good reason. Anyway, I like to just, we might do that a few more times, before the night is over as a form of trolling the Trump administration. So, Karen, let's turn to Missouri, to Missouri, shall we? What a mess. What a mess. What a mess. I mean, I'm just in all complete fairness, it took me longer than normal to just try to

understand this topic enough to talk about it tonight. It is so complicated, confusing, and a mess. You want to go first? No, please. You go first. That was what we call a hospital pass. Go over the middle, Karen. Here you go.

I'll lay up. Okay. Let's start in Missouri. You got a Republican Secretary of State. You got a Republican governor, and you got a Supreme Court that's dominated by Republicans. Okay. And you have the Republican legislature who, listening to Donald Trump, tried to shove down Missouri's throats, a new map for Congress seats,

to turn what was a five to two, no, seven to one, it would have been five to three advantage into a seven to one advantage for the Republicans. Getting rid of completely a safe Democratic seat by cracking it and getting Mr. his last name, I think is Cleaver, cleavage out. So it can't be cleavage. It must be Cleaver. So I think that's something else. It's been a long day.

So there is a statute, a congressional, sorry, let's start again. There is a constitutional provision and statute in Missouri that says if you don't like what your legislature has done, if they voted on something and you do not like it, you can trigger a requirement that the voters vote on it, yes or no, by making it a referendum. on the next ballot if you get 300,000 voters to sign a petition. They got more than 305,000 voters to take up the issue of whether the new 2025 map was going to be used changing a 222 map, which was based on the 2020 census, which made it a little bit more fair. It was more like six to two or five to three. And so when they presented the petition to the Secretary of State, Danny Hoskins, he said no. He said it's unconstitutional. You can't, legislature can do what they want to do when it comes to voting. Okay. That's nowhere to be found

in the in the state's constitution. So a group of pro-petitioner people, people that ran the petition that are against the remapping, went to court and got to the Missouri Supreme Court in one case. and they got three or four days ago a seven zero ruling from a a uh a a um supreme court that's dominated by republicans five to two and they said this is easy this is easy there's a supreme court case on on point and this provision of Missouri law says without exception you could always do a referendum if you get enough signatures and so this is easy and entered an injunction requiring, this last week, requiring that the Secretary of State used the 2022 map,

therefore the congressional seats on the ballot. Okay. That, he then takes an appeal to the United States Supreme Court, comes up to Justice Kavanaugh because he's covering the Eighth Circuit and on an emergency application. He doesn't even bother. It's so ridiculous. He doesn't even bother sending it off to the other eight of the Supreme Court.

He rejects the request for an emergency stay, meaning he leaves in place the Missouri Supreme Court injunction requiring that the 2022 map, not the 2025 map, be used. That should be the end of the story. Except, and I'm going to turn it over you, Karen, except the Secretary of State got a Trump-appointed federal judge from St. Louis in a different case. to make a different ruling. Why don't you take it from there? Yeah, I mean, he ran to federal court. So what you just described all happened in state court, Missouri state court interpreting the Missouri Constitution,

which, as you said, has this provision that allows voters to kind of override their legislature. And the Missouri Supreme Court's agreed with that. That is what the law says. And he didn't like that. And he didn't like that Brett Kavanaugh left that in place. And so he ran to federal court and essentially said, tried to get them, is trying to get that reversed. And the federal court, of course, he pulled a Trump appointed judge basically is treating this issue.

The judge says, yeah, I know what Brett Kavanaugh just did 30 minutes ago, but I'm still going to say, use this. You can use this newer 2025 map. And the Missouri Supreme Court wants to hold the Missouri Secretary of State in contempt and have a contempt proceeding. And he is trying to, the Secretary of State is trying to get the federal courts to, under the Supremacy Clause, saying essentially federal law, Trump's state law, to not hold contempt proceedings and allow this to go. So that's kind of where we are. But it's a head scratcher because Brett Kavanaugh is this federal judge's boss. And Brett Kavanaugh essentially just affirmed the Missouri Supreme Court. So I don't know how this federal judge thinks he can get away with this.

And I think Brett Kavanaugh will hopefully smack him down very quickly. But this is all happening very quickly in real time right now. And I think we might get another Supreme Court ruling with respect to this as early as this week. Well, and to make it even more urgent, as we came on the air, two Trumpers out of three judges on the Eighth Circuit affirmed the judge, the federal judge and his ruling refused to disturb it. At the same time, the Secretary of States trying to get the federal judge to protect him and insulate him from the contempt hearing that is tomorrow. Yep. He had to file papers today. Here's the guy with the red jacket.

By the way, he looks, you know who he reminds me of? He reminds me of the guy at the Kentucky Derby that blows the opening horn in the red jacket. I mean, literally, that's what that jacket is. Yeah, just put a hat on him. You call to the post. So he's got a busy day tomorrow because he, he, he's got a busy day tomorrow. because he had a file papers today about why he shouldn't be found in contempt. He's got to show up in court tomorrow for a hearing before the Missouri Supreme Court.

In the meantime, it's already gotten to the back to Kavanaugh, who's given the Secretary of State until 10 a.m. tomorrow, that's it, 10 a.m. tomorrow to file some sort of opposition to the emergency application made by the people that brought the petition, the people that want to go back to the 2022 map, he has to answer them by 10 a.m. And then, I mean, I think sometime tomorrow, Brett Kavanaugh didn't say,

I'll take a few more days. You got ballots that were supposed to go out on Tuesday in Missouri. Okay. We don't have more days. So he gave them 12 or 14 hours to get the brief in. I think Kavanaugh rules tomorrow, if not early on Friday. And I would be, I've been shocked before, I'll be shocked again,

I would be shocked if he reverse his course and says that there's a federal supremacy, election, voting rights act issue in play. As you so perfectly framed it, this is a state law issue about Article 1 of the Constitution says states are in charge of running their elections. The highest court of that state interpreting Missouri law on this issue has spoken, period. And this other bullshit about, well, maybe we'll get a federal

judge to see something else. That's just forum shopping. I heard that guy in the red jacket say out loud, supremacy clause. The supremacy clause has no place here. That's why most election litigation that doesn't involve the Voting Rights Act ends up in state court and not in federal court. So something you want to stay close to legal AF, stay close to our substack and YouTube channel, because sometime tomorrow, you're going to get the new filing that we'll report on, and then right after, boom, boom, Brett Kavanaugh. Why is it matter? Because I'll make it simple.

I mean, it's very, very black and white. If the 2022 map is used, then the Kansas City Congressional District goes Democrat. And maybe one other. And if it doesn't, it's going to be seven to one Republican advantage. At least one Democrat seat gets picked up off the 2022 map. But more importantly, it's representative. The people of Missouri have taken to the streets. And they're out in front of the Capitol.

They're out in front of the Supreme Court demanding that their voice be heard. Yeah, this might backfire. Yes. 300,000 people signed, 305,000 people signed a petition. And now they're going to try to take that away? And how do you think that's going to play out at the midterms? Yeah. So, you know, safe Republican seats may not be so safe when the ire of the public ends up being expressed in voting.

So as long as we're in the voting mood, mode, mode, mail-in ballots. Mail-in ballots. So mail-in ballots. All right. Trump issues an executive order in March, puts the Postal Service in charge of deciding which ballots gets delivered and what the hurdles and regulations and databases that the states are required to use in order to get their mail-in ballots delivered. Nowhere in the Constitution is there a discussion or a power of the post office. I've heard of the power of the purse. There's no power of the post office in elections. Article 1, Clause 1, says states and then Congress rule supreme in the area of federal elections, period.

There is no role for the executive branch other than to back the F up and get out of the way. And for the post office, and you live in New York, and I lived in New York for a long time, I mean, when you look up at the post office on 8th Avenue, which is now part of the Moynihan train station, they still have the inscription, that famous poem about post office. carriers, you know, neither rain nor sleep nor gloom of night will stop the mail carrier for making his appointed rounds unless he's controlled by Donald Trump and there's an election. I mean, I really don't understand it. And they created this portal, which is not even complete yet. The ballots are already supposed to go out. Portal of voter data, which they're not entitled to, that they're going to use to check against the states, why, how is that allowed? And then, decide who lives or who dies in batches of ballots going through some sort of optical scanner.

I'll say this, Karen, as I turn it over to you, to a person, every attorney general for the Democrats told me it is impossible for them to comply if the Supreme Court this week rules in favor of Donald Trump on this issue, millions of people will not be able to vote by now. Yeah, no, this is, again, another mess. This is the kind of thing where on paper you would think, okay, this could be a good thing. The fact that you have standardized ballots with barcode scanning and that they can kind of go through and be read quickly. You know, you would imagine if this were done properly that you would have states signing up for this and wanting to be a part of this because we would have results so much faster and it would be so much more efficient. But because this is just a bald-faced way to try to disenfranchise millions of people at the 11th hour,

I mean, so many states already have their ballots sent out without these special envelopes, without these special barcodes, without these special lists that have not yet been created, right? None of this has been done yet, including this portal that you were talking about, that has not been able to be built, tested, debugged, all of it. of that. And so this is just another way to try to disenfranchise voters because there is no way it can be implemented in the next month and a half, which is all we have before the midterm elections. And so to try and create this new rule at the 11th and a half hour that now has to go into effect, in addition to it being illegal, because this is something that, as you said, the Constitution

specifically says that the time, place, and manner of elections are supposed to be done by the states. Sometimes Congress can change it, but nowhere does the executive branch have a role and the post office is part of the executive branch, but that it just can't be done. And this can't be done by the midterm election. So there's something called the Purcell principle or the Purcell doctrine, which essentially is this kind of this standard that the Supreme Court is chipping away at. But it's basically said, look, you can't do things that are going to create chaos or confusion too close to an election, and they make that window around 60 days. And this is, the Supreme Court has to say, has to say, this cannot be done and this cannot be allowed because there are certain states like

Alaska, for example, all they have is mail-in ballots, mail-in voting. They don't have in-person voting. And they have the system on how they do this. You can't disenfranchise all of those people. So it's not as easy for some states who can just say, oh, well, just show up in person. Don't do mail-in ballots. Just everybody show up in person to make sure that your vote is counted. It's not so simple in these states that have either all or most mail-in voting. And so in other states, You have people who live hundreds of miles away from the nearest polling place. And aside from that, different states use different voting machines and different types of voting machines, right? They don't have ones that can do the special scanning barcode thing.

I mean, this is just a kind of ridiculous, and I hope they get called out for how ridiculous this is, and to try to do this and screw things up right before the midterms. I really hope the Supreme Court smacks them down on this one in a big way, because this is truly not only unlawful and illegal, but it's a disaster. Well, we're going to know soon enough because the final brief came in today as ordered by Katanji Brown Jackson. The good news is there was no administrative stay. So days have ticked off here, which I think is an indicator that there are not five votes to side with Donald Trump on this. Otherwise, I think they would have moved quicker to stay, the issue of the administrative stay.

And maybe on the briefing schedule as well. You can put the briefing schedule out as far as you want if you give an administrative stay. But the clock that's really important here is the one that's now down to 55 days until the midterms. And so final brief is in, including a lot of amicus briefs in support of the Democratic attorneys general, back to my group that I was just with in the last 36 hours. It's their case that is before the United States Supreme Court conjoined with a case brought by the League of Women Voters and the ACLU. really being led by California, Massachusetts, and that type of thing. And so you've got 250 former and current members of Congress. You've got Republicans for, I mean, they find their courage after they

retire, but former members of the of the Congress and the GOP. I mean, there's not one brief, really, of any, of any really merit-based organization that's in favor of, let's turn over mail-in voting and have it regulated and run by the post office. The post office can barely run its main function, which is delivering the mail. I mailed a check for something recently for a bill. I'm still waiting. Somebody's mailing me a book because I'm doing an author interview for legal AF on something really important. And it's been like eight days. They're like, is the book there yet? No. So if you hate the post office in terms of their reliability on delivering your junk bail, you're going to despise them when it comes to them overtly

blocking your ballot. And to put a shiver down people's spine, and then I want to talk a little bit about the emergency test, the emergency kit that you need to build between now and Election Day that I developed with the Attorney General. Dana Nessel, the Michigan Attorney General, said that, you know, this is a repeat of what happened in Trump One, where he used the post office to slow down the delivery of ballots.

So oops, they missed the deadline. Bags of ballots, meaning your vote sitting dead letter in a post office. She got orders, as all the attorney generals are ready to do, from federal courts, showed up herself with her groups to the huge distribution and processing centers for the post office in Michigan, got the officials there, showed the order, and basically directed with the order that bags of mail that she knew held ballots get delivered before 8 p.m. so that they could be counted. While she was there, she said she saw bags of undelivered mail-in ballots. I'm talking about the last time Donald Trump ran. That should have been delivered weeks before, sitting around the post office. So here's a couple of things that came, if I had to distill

the advice of the attorneys general that I met with. One, vote early. Leave yourself some time. take advantage of whatever the early voting rules are for your state. Every state basically has it. They may be super short in red states, you know, four or five days. Could be 30 days in some states. Whatever it is, vote early in person, right? That's one. Leave yourself some margin of error.

Two, if you're going to vote by mail and you get the ballot, you know, you pick it up yourself. You don't have to rely on the post office. Go pick it up yourself. You can deliver that back to secure. boxes of the election officials. And you have to trust them. That's the one thing that came across with the attorneys general. Even if Republicans are in charge of these processes, right now, they trust them as professionals to run the election pursuant to law. There's always a wild hair. We saw it during 2020. We decides, I'm not going to certify. Or, well, let me let me let in

the cyber ninses to go look through my voter data. There's always a wacko. We'll deal with them but by and large in the 90,000 precincts, they're being run properly. Trust the process. But take your envelope. You know, trust but verify. Throw it in that box. If you do mail it, there is usually a tracking system around the mail-in ballot, a code. You can check online if it's been received.

If you're coming up close to the election and you see it hasn't yet been received but really should have been because it's sitting around in a post office, then go, go to the election office and vote a provisional ballot. They won't count both, but if the mail-in ballot doesn't come in on election day for counting, and they have your provisional ballot, they'll count the provisional ballot as your ballot. But if you don't do that, and the mail-in ballot doesn't arrive, game over on election day. So vote early. You're going to vote by mail, pick it up yourself and put it in the box yourself. Now, some states, like in the Pacific Northwest, they got the right idea. They're mandatory vote by mail. Everybody votes by mail. They have a couple of places you can

actually walk in. And of course, they've had no voter fraud. So these are the ways. And then once you do that, that also frees you up to volunteer to be the eyes and ears of the attorneys general. What they also told me is they need us to report on things that don't look right. All of a sudden, an ICE checkpoint, a half a mile from a voting place. Why? Call the attorney. General of your state. There'll be a hot lineup by then. You see armed security forces, you know, working for the feds, some badge inside the polling place where they're not voting. Call the Attorney General. You can call a lot of different. You can call the Democratic Party. You can do all the, call the Attorney General. They're standing by. They need you to report on things

so they can rush into court in the various counties and precincts and state and federal courts and get temporary restraining orders on the spot, they're willing to do it, but they're not going to be able to hear about everything. They need us. If you see something, say something, and say it to your attorney general. Karen, you have any like tips and tricks and hacks for voting?

I think if you can vote in person, I think you should. I just think that's going to be the safest way to make sure that your vote gets there and your vote counts. But as you said, there's so many states that you can't do that. And so exactly, you vote. vote early and just try to make sure that your vote counts. Most importantly, vote, right? Everybody has to vote.

And I think the Republicans that look, they're showing how scared they are by trying to rig these elections. If they thought they could win fair and square, they would just be like, okay, you know, everybody just, everybody show up and vote. But they're so afraid of losing this election. I think they see what's coming, that they're doing everything they can to try and stop people from how to have. having their vote counted. And so we have to fight that much harder to make sure that we are counted. And I think that the more we can do that

and the more we can ensure that the more people can vote, look, if you have someone, if you have a neighbor who normally votes by mail and maybe they're disabled or elderly or maybe they don't have a car and you could give them a ride, you know, anything you can do to help your fellow neighbor to get as many votes out as possible, I think is the most important thing and just make sure that we get that we get

people voting. Absolutely. So stay close to legal AF because we're going to get a ruling now that they got their final briefs. We're going to get a ruling out of the Supreme Court, I think this week because of the fact that we're down to 56 now 55 days after tomorrow left in the, and the states have said, you could give us 550 days. There's not enough time for this. We're running an election right now. We don't have time to go double check and check a portal and get the envelopes right because the post office tells us to. So for those in many reasons, I know they have a lot of confidence in their case, the Democratic Attorney General, that they're going to win. And I think they're going to hear about that. It could be as, pardon me, could be as soon as tomorrow. We're going to talk about the Tate brothers and their connectivity to the Trump family,

but I just got a word from my producer. We're going to cut back to the Trumpaloosa convention site for a moment. Yeah, yeah, okay. I just wanted to make sure nothing. Same, same people, same dwindling audience. I just wanted to make sure that's the case. We've got a huge audience here tonight. We've got a couple hundred thousand people who are already engaged.

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Sponsors, all right, we're going to round it off here. You and I got to talk about a second international child sex trafficking ring connected to the Trump administration. I know Donald Trump likes to post AI images of himself partying with George Washington, but I don't think any other president has ever had to fend off accusations of their involvement, one way or the other, or friendship with people involved in child sex trafficking. And so we haven't even gotten to the bottom of the Epstein scandal in Donald Trump's connectivity to it. And now we've got the Tate brothers. So you got Tristan and Andrew Tate,

who made tens of millions of hundreds of millions of dollars in this broverse world of influence peddling and social media right-wing, MAGA right-wing influence peddling. Andrew Tate became friends with Barron Trump. He was reporting that Baron Trump was so close to him that when Donald Trump had a shot, you know, was shot at, Barron Trump went to the Tate brothers to be consoled, and they're connected to the government.

When Romania, which is where these British guys ran to, to try to get out from under investigations about taking young girls, raping them, forcing them into pornography where they made the money, and they went to Romania to lead their life and lifestyle. There's now criminal investigations in Romania as well, and along with it in their own hometown in the UK. It was the Trump administration. It was people like Richard Grinnell, who's on the Kennedy board. Paolo, Paola Zampoly, oh yes, who introduced Donald Trump to Melania Trump, is Donald Trump's special envoy and sits on the Kennedy board. That's who the Tate brothers were partying with the night that they were picked up in Miami in July on an extradition

provisional arrest warrant. And now turned out that the reason the Tate brothers got out of Romania and their freedom of movement was restored and that their cell phone and devices were returned to them is because of the intervention of the Trump administration. So don't stand here and tell me that you're not related to the Tate brothers. So Karen, what happened today with the Tate brothers in Miami? And then you can tie it together with the Trump's. Yeah. So essentially, if you are charged.

in another country, but you are caught in a different country, right? And there's an arrest warrant out for you. We have treaties with various countries that you can arrest them and hold them to be extradited to that other country. And we have such a treaty with the UK, which is where the Tate brothers are indicted. They're also indicted and charged in Romania. But in Romania, they were allowed to be free. and fight their charges not being incarcerated.

So they're in Miami, they're in the U.S. parting, and this arrest warrant drops from the U.K. And because we have this reciprocity or this agreement with the UK, they were arrested in Miami and brought before a judge. And the judge can decide whether to hold the person, hold the bodies, the Tate Brothers, and keep them incarcerated until such time as the extradition issue is resolved,

or they can release them and they can fight the extradition while not being incarcerated. And so that's what was before the judge. And of course, the Tate brothers wanted to get out on bail and wanted to be released from custody during this extradition fight. Now, the standard for whether to hold someone in on extradition is usually kind of a difficult high standard and there's almost like a presumption of release. There's there's unless you find three special circumstances, the person needs to be released. So dangerousness, risk of flight and special circumstances. And and the Tate brothers were saying, look, we're not a flight risk because we're

such public, we're so high profile that we couldn't hide if we wanted to. So we're known all over the world. So there's no way we're a flight risk, right? That's that's number one. Number two, we're not dangerous. We're not at a danger to the community of re-offending because it was all an act. We're not really child sex traffickers. We just put on this show, this persona. We just pretend and play one on TV, essentially. And number three, the special circumstances was kind of an unusual one. They said, look, we need to be free because we have to be able to fight the Romanian We can't fight those charges if we're incarcerated. So you have to release us so that we can go out and fight those charges.

Well, the magistrate judge in Miami rejected all three of those arguments and essentially said, number one, you have lots and lots of money and lots of resources and you could go, you could flee to a country that there is no extradition treaty with, right? That happens sometimes. People will go and flee to these countries that that, that, that, that, don't participate in extradition treaties. So you have the resources. So you are a flight risk, number one.

Number two, found that you are a danger because, and didn't buy this kind of, you know, this is all a show. They said, no, these are very serious charges and that you are facing. And so we think you are a danger to the community. This isn't just a one and done type thing. This is an ongoing pedophile ring that you've been running,

child sex trafficking. So you're a danger. And number three, didn't buy the special circumstances, oh, you have to be free so you can fight the charges in Romania, which, by the way, amended their charges this week to make them even more serious. And the allegations against them in Romania are even more strong and more serious. So these guys are not getting out anytime soon. What they're waiting for is for the United Kingdom to provide the extradition paperwork. They'll fight the extradition or not, you know, they can waive extradition and agree to go back to fight the charges or they can fight the extradition. But ultimately, that will play out in court. And then they'll have, they'll be sent back to face the charges in the UK and in Romania. So yeah, these guys are,

are as bad as it gets. And, and thankfully, the judge saw right through all of those arguments and kept them incarcerated so that they can't flee. and that they can't hurt others. So this is a big loss for them. And I think they are, we're hoping that the Trump administration was going to weigh in and try and get them released. But so far, the Trump administration has been holding strong. I don't think the Trump administration believes they can handle another sex scandal, another trafficking scandal with like the Epstein one that they're already dealing with, but that's sort of where the Tate brothers are. I mean, the reality is if Trump didn't have an Epstein problem, he'd be siding with the Tate

brothers. They helped him get elected in his mind. Barron's close to them. Paulus and Polly's close to them. Richard Crenel is close to them. He would be, if he didn't already have an Epstein problem, he'd be siding with the Tate brothers. There's no doubt in my mind about it. Here's a couple of things that the magistrate judge, Judge Lewis, or Lewis reminded us of in doing her analysis about why she's going to keep him in the Miami Federal Detention Center while the extradition to the UK on the 59 counts plays out.

This is on page two. The warrant set forth allegations that Andrew, his real name is Emery, his real name is Emery, choked and raped two women in their homes in England at various times between 2015 and 2025, that Tristan, his brother, choked, raped, and otherwise physically assaulted a woman with whom he was in a romantic relationship. He has eight children, by the way. There's also the allegation coming out of Romania that they took a 15-year-old from London, where they're from or from England, brought her to Romania, forced her into doing live stream pornography and made a couple of million dollars off of it. And one of the things that the

judge said about flight risk, because they kept saying, we're really nice guys. Here's my girlfriend. She's going to, I'm not making this up. Here's my girlfriend. She's going to testify. We don't really have all that money. So we're not really a flight risk. But they had a lot of other problems, like social media posts where they bragged about their evading law enforcement and that they couldn't be caught. So the judge on that one said, it says at the hearing, they had a hearing, the Tate brothers advanced evidence, including their own testimony, that what wealth they had has been seized by the Romanian government, and that to the extent the government's evidence, that's the U.S. government's evidence, draws on their statements on social media regarding

their extreme wealth, those statements are attributable to characters they play online. which are vastly exaggerated or outright false. Attention Tate followers. Emery Tate additionally advanced evidence that social media posts where he boasts about his willingness and ability to evade law enforcement are just the hyperbole that they disseminate in their public-facing figures selling an image.

But she didn't like those postings, and she didn't like the fact they went to 43 different countries on flights in a year and a half period. Think about your own travel. 43's a lot and that they had multiple passports when they were picked up. So no. They also made the argument, Karen, that the U.K. jumped the line and that they were really under the jurisdiction of Romania based on the indictment there, although that indictment has now been superseded, adding new charges, and that how dare the U.K. try to extradite them for their 59 counts when they should just be under

house arrest or something similar in Romania. I mean, you've done extradition before. What kind of argument is that? Yeah, no, I don't think that any of these, those arguments, I mean, thankfully the judge saw right through that. Yeah, go back to the federal detention center. You'll meet with your lawyer there. I've met with clients at the Miami FDC.

They come out in orange jumpsuit. you know, they get a vending machine, you sit down with them in a room. And that's what you do, because there's another 30 days or so, because the UK, now that they're not going anywhere, can take its time under the statute to prepare its papers to have the formal extradition proceeding. The magistrate judge says, effectively in her 30 pages, we're going to be here a while. This extradition thing's going to take a while. Have a seat.

Go back to your cell. You're not getting out. And that's what this was all about. And no, they can try to appeal it to the district court judge above her. These guys are, these are, I mean, listen, you're innocent until proven guilty. These are potentially really, really bad people. And then the Democrats, if they ever get the gavel in the House and the Senate, they want to open up investigations as to the true relationship between Barron and these guys,

Donald and these, Donald Trump and these guys, maybe Malani in these guys. Why are so many people so close to Donald Trump involved, with keeping these guys free for so long, right? Who? Why do people in positions of power protect the tape brothers? That's a story that hasn't been told yet. That hasn't been investigated. And it's yet another thing that Donald Trump and those around him are trying to hide.

The hearings that the Democrats will be able to have in the House, whether it's about the Tate brothers, whether it's about Epstein scandal. I mean, that, even if, even if we don't get two-thirds of the House, you know, the Senate in order to be able to impeach Donald Trump and others. Just the ability, if we get the House, to hold hearings, I think, is going to be worth its weight in gold because there's so much corruption and so much nefarious behavior that we all see with our own eyes. And this is just yet another example of that. Yeah, absolutely. So no, this is, this story is not going away. And that's one of the reasons that we're reporting on it. Thank you for making this your counter programming. We had a

great and not only a very engaged audience, as we always do, but a big audience. And I think it's because, no, we're not going to watch. Do we have the last feed? Has that gotten any better in that convention center or that stadium? No. Okay. I was just checking in on Trumpapalooza and the the inevitable backfire in terms of lack of voter support there. And, yeah, you can't wallpaper over a failed administration. You know, if you ever wondered what a failed administration looks like, this is it, folks. This is what a failed administration out of control being ran by a madman whose mental state is being challenged

and questioned based on his crazy posts. I mean, I don't know who's crazier. Natalie Harp, who just got a $45,000. Did you hear this one, Karen? Natalie Harp and a couple of other people that are close to Donald Trump, got a $45,000 cash bonuses from him. Is this taxpayer money or is this just personal money? We got to get to the bottom of it.

$45,000 a piece. And the guy that Walt Nauta, remember him? He's indicted in the Mar-a-Lago case, still in the White House. He got a $20,000 bonus. I mean, it's just, first of all, it's illegal. And we'll talk about that probably as the week progresses. But I don't know, is Natalie Harp, who wrote most of these 60 posts with Donald Trump exploding the earth or Donald Trump partying with George Washington or all this other,

or Donald Trump as Hulk Ogan? I mean, seriously, we're just playing into the hands of our enemy, you know, who think, no, I tell you what they don't think. They don't think he's a madman and he's erratic and we better not test him. No, this is what we're watching. We're watching Putin test him. China test him. Iran test him. And he's failing, meaning our national security is compromised. Completely. And they know he's a big chicken. You know he's a big chicken. Taco Trump. Taco Trump. And I'm really glad everybody was here. The generosity of your time and commitment to the legal AF community. is really heartwarming, and I know that Karen and I are always thrilled to do our show together on Wednesday. Saturdays is the LegalAF show with Ben Micellis, and let's do the checklist one more time.

LegalAF, the YouTube channel, become a free paid member. That really helps us. If we didn't need these things to survive and thrive, we wouldn't ask for him, trust me. Hit the free subscribe button there, 10, 12 new videos every day. Legal AF the substack. Keep us in the top 10 with our growing audience there. You get a live report. You get all the filings in all the courtrooms.

We post them there for you to review as well on Legal AF. Substack, download the audio. I always feel like it's like Chick-fil-A, eat more chicken. Download the audio of this show. Leave five-star reviews. It helps. It helps with the prestige of the show. And programming note, I've got starting today my interviews with the Democratic Attorneys General about voter protection, these cases that we're talking about from their perspective, and they are on the front lines.

If you had to ask me who is the number one person in your state, the number one person in your state to protect your right to vote, it's your attorney general. If you live in a red state or a red attorney general, that's a problem. But we're not worried about it there. We're worried about the blue states being effed with. And fortunately, almost all of them, there's 23 of them that are now in the hands. And one other thing in terms of voting, I want to do a shout out or a public service announcement for the attorneys general. They have 13 races, and at least four of them are competitive, where they could flip and pick up four Attorney General blue seats. It's important there too. Trust me. They brought, that group has brought

a hundred lawsuits against the Trump administration this term. We're only halfway through. They got an 80% winning record. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been given back to the states because of the Democratic attorneys general. Adding three or four more is really important. For instance, there's a race in my home state or my current home state of Florida where we could take, the Democrats could take the attorney general position in Florida, a Cuban American lawyer who's running against somebody who's really unpopular. Pick up Florida, you know, make it really purple, maybe trending towards blue for the attorney general position. But the number one public servant that you need to have, like in your, in your wallet, on your palm, the number of the address is your attorney general.

I have a question for you, Pope. Yeah, sure, good. So is there any discussion in the, with the, with the Democratic Attorney General and others about what will happen. Let's say the Democrats do pick up so many seats and win the House that Mike Johnson might refuse to seat them, right? To call the House in order and seat them. Is there any talk about what will happen if that? Yeah. So they don't even, you and I talk about it and I got a new graphic going up on all the videos on Legal A.F now every day, counting down to the midterms.

They have a different graphic. It's not 55 days. It's 88 days because for them, they will not rest. That organization will not rest and the individual attorneys general until certification and seating of these people. So they are ready for the certification lawsuits. They are ready for the seating lawsuits and the swearing in lawsuits. So for them it's not like, yeah, they'll be happy on election day if the sea change election happens, but their work is only halfway done. So they've got all the law. lawsuits drafted already. They have so many, so many doomsday scenarios that they have played out in exercises. And they talk like, not only do they talk to each other every day or their staff does about the Trump administration and what to do about it, which is amazing. But they also, the Guardian just had a really great story about how the Democratic attorneys general, the Daga group, is coordinating with the other public interest groups like the ACLU, the NAACLU, the NAA C. Norm Isson's group, democracy forward, democracy defenders, Washington Litigation Group,

Public Integrity Project, and they're all coordinating and talking regularly. And to a certain extent, the power of the Attorney General is really important. They have these huge, I mean, Rob Banta has like 6,000 people that work in his law department. You know, other states, of course, have smaller versions. New York has a large version with Lettisha James as well. But They also pick up the knowledge and the legacy and institutional experience from organizations that have been fighting this fight for a hundred years, like the NAACP or the ACLU. I mean, this is their bread and butter. I mean, I only half joke, you know, we do a lot of collaboration with the ACLU. You know, one of their swag pieces that you can get on their website says, see you in court.

and the Democratic attorneys general are picking up a lot of knowledge and tactics and techniques from these other public interest groups. And I think the reason I'm mentioning it is because collectively they got about 400 cases against the Trump administration and a tremendous success record. So I want people to have more confidence, because I asked each one of them, can you give our audience confidence that their vote will be counted and their people will get elected and seated? And they said, yes. They're not losing, they're losing sleep because they don't know which of the, of the

hundred scenarios Donald Trump is going to execute, but they're ready for all of them. That's awesome. Yeah. I feel, I always felt a lot better when I'm in the room with them. Good. And I want people to feel the same way. So thanks for being here on the Legal A-F podcast on midweek on the Midas Touch Network. And we'll be right back at it, you know, wash, rinse, and repeat to,

on the YouTube channel and of course throughout the week. Remember, we're waiting on the United States Supreme Court to rule on mail-in ballots. Could be in the next 48 hours. We're waiting for Brett Kavanaugh to rule in the next 24 hours about Missouri and its congressional maps. We're waiting on the Supreme Court to rule about Trump's ability through Homeland Security to build a citizenship database. These are all things now up with the Supreme Court. And by the way, Supreme Court isn't even open for its new term. That's the first Monday in October.

We're still in the summer recess, folks. you know, so there we are. Anyway, I wanted to thank everybody for being here. Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the legal A-Fers.