Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF Full Episode - 12/20/2025

Episode Date: December 21, 2025

Trump’s relentless assault on the DOJ’s credibility has lead to Grand Juries, Juries, Judges and law students all rejecting the DOJ leading to pile up of losses. Trump’s criminal defense team masquerading as the DOJ leadership are also moving closer to possible criminal prosecution and indictment related to the continued obstruction around the Epstein Files coverup and the coverup of the coverup. Federal Judges are ramping up the pace of their blistering orders against the Trump DOJ at a record pace. Public support for lawsuits against the Trump Administration is contributing mightily to Trump’s loss record. As the lower courts are “holding the line” against Trump’s lawlessness, the need for Supreme Court reform in the next Administration is laid bare for all the Voters to see. And the Legal AF Youtube channel likely gets its ONE MILLIONTH SUBSCRIBER this weekend! All this and so much more as Ben and Popok take the controls tonight of the top rated Legal AF podcast. Support Our Sponsors: Corn Bread Hemp: Head to https://cornbreadhemp.com/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF to get holiday BOGO savings. Miracle Made: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://TryMiracle.com/LEGALAF and use the code LEGLAF to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. Aura Frames: Visit https://AuraFrames.com and get $45 OFF their BEST-SELLING Carver Mat frames with promo code: LEGALAF Udacity: For 40% off your order, head to https://Udacity.com/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF Learn more about the Popok Firm: https://thepopokfirm.com Subscribe to Legal AF Substack: https://substack.com/@legalaf Check out the Popok Firm: https://thepopokfirm.com Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum with Dr. Steve Hassan: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen 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 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Experiencing that sweet and salty satisfaction again and again and again. Santa gets cookies. You get Rees. Nothing else is Rees. What a complete and utter disaster this Trump regime in their Department of Justice is. We're getting more data right now about all of the cases that have had to be dismissed in jurisdictions like the District of Columbia where it's like a 20% dismissal rate where it used to be a 0.5. percent dismissal rate. They're sloppy. It's been infected by brain drain. All of their top talent, the DOJ is basically leaving. And it's being run like a Trump organization, just a

complete and utter failure. You know, and the criminality is there, too. Like, who wants to aid and abet crimes? Like, in plain view as well, we're going to talk, of course, about the crime being committed by this Trump regime in continuing to cover up a child sex trafficking ring. Despite the Epstein Transparency Act being a law and requiring the full production of the files that are in the DOJ's possession by Friday, Donald Trump and his DOJ, they didn't even do the cover up with like intelligence. It wasn't even like a, whoa, I see, you know, the decent cover up. It was like the most pathetic cover up. They started in the morning saying, yeah, we may just, we may just dump 100,000, 200,000 documents. what, like 0.1% or like 2% of the entire Epstein files when it was all due.

And then when it turned out that they actually produced things, if you even want to call it, it was all redacted. And then get this, they treated the perpetrators, the bad guys, the billionaire men who were involved in the sex trafficking ring as the victims. They said the same redaction standards that apply to the. actual survivors and victims are the redaction standards for the men who were involved with Epstein. And so they then used a broad view of redactions that, yeah, we're not going to produce anything at all. We'll go through that. You even have people like Thomas Massey, the Republican,

who is behind the discharge petition with Roe Kana, saying this is a crime. Pam Bondi should be charged. She should be impeached. And frankly, anybody involved in this. should be charged and impeached throughout. You know, I started by talking about the DOJ. If your hands touch this, you to me are a co-conspirator in a massive RICO violation of engaging in the cover-up of a child sex trafficking ring at this point.

You are on par, you are in the sex trafficking ring. So, and I think that these people need to be held accountable what all is said and done. We'll talk about some other developments as well. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., also made an order with, nationwide implications saying that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security can't block Congress members from going into these detention centers. There's a law that requires that they

be able to go into these detention centers. If they just show up, I mean, they're members of Congress, their senators. This was being blocked by this despicable Trump regime. And then there's just another criminality in plain sight as well. You've got Donald Trump vandalizing the Kennedy Center and calling it the Trump Kennedy Center and then putting his name on it. For those listening on audio, I'm showing the video of him defacing the Kennedy Center. You know, when this regime is over,

it's going to feel a lot like when an authoritarian is toppled because that's exactly what's happening here. But we destroy the golden ballrooms and rip down his name from these stupid things that he's doing with putting his names on these buildings. And I think people do feel hope, though, heading into this new year even though it's a grim time in this country and I think the rest of the world's looking at us like what the hell all right let's bring in michael popock great to see you

hey popock that legal a f youtube channel what are you three thousand subs away from hitting one million yes we are i think we could hit one million tonight oh i i i've made a few videos today uh for the channel and i've said you may be the one million person this weekend and that is such an honor and testament i got to chill down my spine i know you do too when you and i made the decision in september before the election to form something called legal a f youtube channel sort of standing on the on the shoulders of the legal a f uh podcast that you and i created five or six years earlier and it's just um it's just i'm overwhelmed by the amount of support that we have gotten and and some people i've seen it in comments like it's not ego i could care less if it was

if it was less than that. It's street credibility. The bigger we get as legal AF, the more we can bring on, you know, the Michael, the Mark Wolff, the judge who we'll talk about, who resigned in protest to the Trump administration in order to get out and start fighting the existential threat against our rule of law. We can bring on the attorneys general. We can bring on senators. We can bring on the newsmakers, the ACLU. We're going to be onboarding the ACLU to start with us with a new playlist starting in general. January, and it's all because of the, we are citizen-powered. We are crowdsourced, and that gives us tremendous weight to bring in the content that everybody's looking for. So thank you. If you haven't had a chance, in the notes below, there is a link that will take you and let you know right away whether you subscribe. Maybe you forgot. And if you're not free-subscribed, we have no outside vesters and no paywall. But let me just comment on a couple of things that you let off with. It's got me all jazzed up. We, look at the start. of this week, Ben. You've got Donald Trump, who spent 18 minutes yelling at the American voter

to effectively get off his lawn. The more, if I keep yelling at you, will you love me more? Will you credit me more for the failed economy? And that combined with all of the other micro distractions that he tries, let me throw my, literally throw my name up on the Kennedy Center. He's going to do the same thing on Reagan National, the airport, I'm sure, one day. He's making a coin, a U.S. dollar coin, first time in our entire history, including George Washington saying, no, I'm not a king. I don't want to be on the money. Donald Trump's putting himself on the money. These are all desperate acts of somebody that knows his time is up. And that's what dictators did and building statutes as you referred to. And we had all those great images of the liberation of these countries

where you toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein or a Stalin or what. And Donald Trump knows his time, is short that his grip on MAGA, there's no more MAGA. It is completely splintered. You've got Elise Stefonic, who was a leader for Donald Trump, not even going to be running for Congress, let alone New York governor. She's resigned. Marjorie Taylor Green. Nancy Mace is going to do the same thing. This thing, whatever this thing was, a turning point that was presided over by Charlie Kirk's widow with just MAGA attacking each other because they no longer had Charlie Kirk to hold them in place. you know, this Ben Shapiro against Tucker Carlson, Tucker Carlson against this podcaster and his widow presiding over it thinking she can anoint the next replacement in MAGA,

the next leader of MAGA as J.D. Vance, while at the same time, Donald Trump is to stabilizing his own leadership by having Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, go after and deflate J.D. Vance in a wide-ranging Vanity Fair set of interviews, all in the same week. And we haven't even talked about And we will, the Department of Justice. I just had, I'll leave it on this. I just had Attorney General Rob Bonta, one of the favorites of the Legal A.F shows that we do. Come on with me yesterday. It's up right now as our first video on Legal AF.

And he, I asked him, point blank, are you seeing? Normally, there's a power imbalance in a informational asymmetry between even the state attorney's general and the Department of Justice, or certainly individual defense. in the Department of Justice. I've done criminal defense work my whole career. And it's always like you have this, you know, this giant leviathan of a government agency that has unlimited budget, unlimited time and unlimited resources. That's, that what's it, what it used to be. But he can, he, uh, confirmed for me, but they're seeing the same 10 DOJ lawyers because of the numbers you put up at the beginning of the show. And they're all mentally, emotionally,

legal argument, bankrupt, morally bankrupt, fatigued, and they're taking full advantage of it because now there's no more asymmetry. If anything, the resources and the creativity and the brainpower is all on the attorney's general side, on the ACLU side, on the public interest group side in a way that it never was before.

Because the Department of Justice is stretched so thin, and now we're seeing the results, the grand juries who don't indict, the juries who dismiss, the judges who roll their eyes effectively when a Department of Justice attorney makes an argument, it doesn't believe it, and sets evidentiary hearings as a result. This is now the 11 months into the administration. Trump's destabilizing and undermining of the Department of Justice and the rule of law and attacking judges has backfired on him because now he can't win in the courts because of, what he's what he's done you know i have a guilty pleasure i'll confess to i watched the jake paul anthony

josh oh i watched that by last night and the reason the reason i bring it up is that the doj right now is jake paul and criminal defense lawyers are anthony joshua just smacking him down and after all of and it's similar right because after all of the hype and the fugazi behind it and oh whatever you know these criminal defense attorneys with a smile and glee are now defeating the DOJ in case after case after case where the DOJ used to have a 95% conviction rate, you're having massive dismissals right now. And let me just read for you this one case that I think is symptomatic, you know, one of what's actually happening here. And the case was called United States versus Butler. Okay. I'm just going to read for you what the magistrate judge recently held.

And I want to read it word for word so that I'm not characterizing it in certain way. This is a federal magistrate judge in Washington, D.C., describing what is happening in this case. And this is what they say. You know, this case is a prime example of recent unprecedented prosecutorial action. Zooming out, for the last several weeks, judges in this district have seen case after case involving unprecedented prosecutorial action. In some cases, prosecutors have elected to pursue charges, even after federal grand juries have refused to return an indictment. In others, the government has been charging cases notwithstanding apparent constitutional violations. Most troubling, prosecutors have rushed to charge cases before properly investigating them, resulting in individuals being detained for days, only to have the government voluntarily dismissed the charges against them at early.

hearings. Prosecutors have also seemingly disregarded the requirement in Rule 5 of the federal rules of criminal procedure that the government bring a defendant before a magistrate judge without unnecessary delay. As a result, individuals have been detained for days despite the government having no reason to detain them and in fact not seeking to detain them when it is finally brought to the court. And it goes on to say how the government does this over and over again. Go zooming back into this case, on August 19, 2025, law enforcement arrested and detained Mr. Wilson and Ms. Butler based on their own probable cause determination. On August 21st, 2025, the government filed a complaint, charging both Mr. Wilson and Ms. Butler with felony offenses.

Indeed, Mr. Wilson and Ms. Butler did not see a judge until the afternoon the fourth day after their arrest and detention. On August 22nd, 2025, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Wilson and Mr. Ms. Butler appeared before the court for their initial appearance. The government agreed to their release on conditions. On August 22nd, 2025, Mr. Wilson and Ms. Butler moved to dismiss the charges in this case. On August 29, 2025, Mr. Wilson and Ms. Butler appeared before the court. The government moved to dismiss the felony charges only a week after bringing them and then recharged Mr. Wilson and Ms. Butler with misdemeanor violations of the same statute.

In response, Mr. Wilson and Ms. Butler requested a speedy trial and moved to dismiss the new charges. These were misdemeanors. The court said a trial date and briefing schedule on the motion to dismiss. But then on September 18, 2025, the government filed a second motion to dismiss. This time, the government was recharging, it said, defendant Wilson in superior court and decided not to proceed with any prosecution in a federal court. Confusingly, the government moved to dismiss without press. Apparently, the government hoped to keep the door open to recharge a third time. And then it talked about how they then tried to recharge a third time.

The government indicated that they objected to this request and would file an objection. But like a glitch in the matrix, it was deja vu. On October 2nd, 2025, the government filed a motion to dismiss for the third time. But this one was with prejudice. The winding path that took to get here makes this no happy ending. The term unprecedented is casually bandied about, but as Judge Supnan identified, these recent weeks literally have been unprecedented. To contextualize how unprecedented things have been, the undersigned, meaning the federal judge here, had the clerk's office run the number. Specifically, the court pulled every motion to dismiss filed by the government in cases charged by complaint for 10 years.

The result speaks for themselves of over 4,000 cases charged by complaint. Between 2014 and 2024, the government moved to dismiss less than 20 defendants cases. In the last eight weeks, the government has charged 95 cases by criminal complaint, and in that time, the government has moved to dismiss 20 defendants cases. These numbers further corroborate the judge's concern that prosecutors have rushed to charge cases before properly investigating them, resulting in individuals being detained for days, only to have the government voluntarily dismissed the charges at the, again, early hearings. The court again reminds the government that the Justice Manual states that the U.S. attorney should only commence prosecution

if she believes that the admissible evidence will probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction. This sets forth the longstanding threshold requirement from the principles of federal prosecution that a prosecutor may commence or recommend federal prosecution, only if he, she believes that the person will more likely than not be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by an unbiased trier of fact and that the conviction will be upheld on appeal. Michael Popak, I'm sorry I had to read that whole thing, but I thought that by reading it, people can actually hear what these federal judges are saying who are seeing this ridiculous behavior. This while more than 2,900 attorneys have quit the justice. department or were fired during the first 10 months of this year about triple the number who depart in a typical year. The number is actually even higher. It's 5,000 if you add in staff and analysts and paralegal. I've had the Department of Justice Alumni Association people on. And it's not being

replaced. It's one thing to say, well, you know, he's got the right, you know, in a non-independent, completely captured Department of Justice to put his own people in. Nobody wants to work for the Department of Justice. The top 20 law schools, the applications are non-existent when it relates to people wanting to work for the Department of Justice or even out of law school. There's a whole generation, whereas in your and my generation, if you wanted to go work in the Department of Justice as a stepping stone to other things in your career, you did the normal thing. You went, law school, and you did a federal clerkship or two, and then maybe you went out and worked at a law firm for a year or two, and then you hit the Department of Justice.

and you become a white-collar criminal defense lawyer or something like that. That's gone because this whole generation is saying pass on the Department of Justice. They may wait until 2028 when the Democrats return to power and then they'll be a little bit older, a little bit more wiser, working it out in law firms. The Department of Justice itself is not replacing these people with anybody. That's why the same, as Rob Banta put it, for the Attorney General of California, the same 12 people are showing up all across America in the cases. How many times do I have to see Brent Schumati's name,

who's a senior guy at the Department of Justice signing a brief? It's because there's nobody else. They're gassed. And he said he's seen them in Corpanta, and they look fatigued, and they look tired, and so are their arguments. I mean, we just had a filing that was done by the Department of Justice in a major, major case that had Eric. error after error after error in the first several pages of their filing and I was like how could this ever happen so they're not being replaced they're doing it on a shoestring and these are the results you're seeing dismissed indictments juries and grand juries that are not giving them the benefit of the doubt it used to be when it was and I've done plenty of cases against the United States of America and that's how government lawyers identify themselves when they're in court

And it's very awe-inspiring. You know, it's like my little guy over here or my company over here against the United States of America. But now the juries are not giving them the benefit of the doubt. The courts are not giving them the benefit of the presumption of regularity, which you normally get. Like, well, I'll have to presume the grand jury process was regular and normal. No, you're not presuming that at all. They're saying, tell me about your grand jury process. Who was in there?

What was said? Well, what did you do? Would you violate constitutional law when you were doing it? And so Donald Trump's attempt through his former criminal defense lawyers, so you and I are going to talk a lot about tonight, who are still operating as his criminal defense lawyers in Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche, in a way, Stan Woodward, and the rest are subjecting themselves to criminal prosecution and exposure.

I'll just leave it on this. Donald Trump has for himself a get out of jail, get out of jail, get out of jail free card. It's called the immunity decision. We've talked ad nauseum about over the last three years. He is not going to get indicted for anything he does in the presidency. I mean, virtually anything that he does. That does not extend.

And I can say this with quiet confidence. But even with the Maga Supreme Court does not extend to anybody not named Donald Trump or the president of the United States. We're looking at you, Pam Bondi. We're looking at you, Cash Patel. we're looking at you, Todd Blanche, we're looking at you Stan Woodward, we're looking at you Stephen Miller, we're looking at you, Russ vote, who make up effectively the administration on a day-to-day basis and J.D. Vance, whatever. There have been, and there will be, again, attorneys general who have been prosecuted and convicted and jailed, such as Richard Nixon's attorney general during the White, the Watergate cover-up, which seems like, preschool compared to the criminality that's on full display and obstruction of justice with

this Department of Justice and Donald Trump. Once he announced that he was the chief legal officer, not Pam Bondi, that the Department of Justice was no longer independent. Nothing was independent in the executive branch. And the FBI was not independent. Then all the people that are now working for him and doing his bidding have tremendous targets on their back, which it's amazing to me that they don't seem to recognize. Because if you and I went somehow on that side of the aisle decided to go in with this administration and throw our lot in and become, as Todd Blanche said, who, why did I turn? I wasn't going to turn the criminal cases down. Look where I am now. I may be the attorney general one day. Right. But a tremendous risk to your livelihood and to your liberty. If I got in there and I's

like, holy crap, this is what I got to do is at this position, I would resign. I am shocked that there are not, besides Dan Bongino, that there are not more resignations at the top level with a recognition of criminal exposure. Right. It is like the old Aesop fables or the parables of yesteryear. Like, you know, you make a wish on the magic lamb for infinite wealth and infinite power, but at what cost and expand. I mean, it literally follows almost in a way that seems parity, but that's the world.

we are living in. I mean, you have people like Pam Bondi and Todd Blanch and Pete Hanksith and others and in their quest for power, they've created all this exposure and the dystopian realization you come up with is that if there's any logical thinking going on in these people, their futures only exist in a world where there is no democracy, right? Their futures are tethered to a bet putting all those chips on whatever it is, you know, red or black or double zero or snake, whatever, right? That, depending on what you believe the odds are, that there won't be democracy because if in the future, the pendulum swings back and that's what usually happens and where there's pendulum swings like this that goes so much against the interest of the people,

When that pendulum swings back towards law and order, you better believe that a community that wants to see our institutions restored are going to be looking at the people who were the facilitators, who were the aiders and abettors of this, who were the co-conspirators. That's where this, I think, is going to head. And I think that you will see a very, as Trump gets less and less popular by the day in his. you know, it's already the least popular like presidential history, you know, I think you're going to see a very popular desire to make sure war criminals are put on war tribunals. And these people could be charged with murder. I mean, and I think that it's going to be a prerequisite, frankly, for any Democrat running for president to speak with that level of clarity. We've got a lot to discuss because this regime is covering up a child sex trafficking ring. They are now co-conspirators.

If they weren't before, they're certainly now co-conspirators in a child sex trafficking. Before our eyes, it's not hyperbolic to say that. Congress passed a law. Heck, Donald Trump signed the thing, but he signed it knowing that he's going to violate any laws that exist. And just what, claim national security or this or that to try to get that absolute immunity from what the Supreme Court did a few years back when they betrayed our Constitution. in its most pure sense imaginable. And right now, violated the Epstein Transparency Act.

And they did it and basically gave the middle finger to the American people, but worse, re-traumatizing the victims and the survivors who waited for that day and were re-victimized by these perpetrators, these sickos. We'll talk about that and more. A reminder, check out Michael Popock's law firm if you're a legal A-F. if you're a legal AF viewer, check out the Popok law firm. Call 877 Popok AF or go to the Popokfirm.com. If you or anyone you know has been injured in a accident, car accident, trucking accident,

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Let's get them there tonight and then subscribe to Michael Popock substack, the legal AF substack, one of the most popular and most well-read substacks out there. All right, we'll take our first quick break of the show. And we come back. Let's talk about the Epstein file cover up. Every year, I feel like I'm on the same hunt trying to find that, perfect holiday gift. You want something personal, something meaningful, but not so over the top that it feels like too much. And honestly, that search can be exhausting. That's why aura of frames has

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By the way, Popak, I was out and about in Pasadena yesterday. And a guy by the name of Jaime Camacho was working in Pasadena. He said, he saw me, he saw my wife and our little baby said, Ben, I'm a big legal A.F. fan. Give me a shout out. Say, Jaime Camacho, biggest legal A.F. fan out there. And he said, I listened to your partner, Popak, all the time, he said to me. Jaime Camacho. Thank you for being such a big... Shout out to Jaime Camacho. He gave him a shout out. Let's talk about Donald Trump not turning over the Epstein files as required by law. This is a law. Violating the law is a crime. The law says, that you can't withhold records or delay records on the grounds of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity. And by the way, what the Trump regime said they did is that if you were mentioned, other than Bill Clinton, I guess, because they did all these photos of Bill Clinton.

And they undermine their credibility, though, showing photos of like Bill Clinton, Diana Ross, and Michael Jackson. Then they redact the kids and make it seem like these kids are victims of Clinton. They're Diana Ross's kids. And it's like, it's not even a good, like, if you wanted to go after him, like, there's not even a good way to do. You know what I mean? Like, it's not just, it just ridiculous.

Anyway, so they show Bill Clinton, but other than that, if you were a man referenced in these files at all, they treated you as the victim, as according to them, which is exactly what the law says you can't do. They turned over what some people said maybe three to five percent of what the DOJ actually has. and from that 3 to 5% they redacted 90% of that 3 to 5%. And here's the thing, Popak, too, like, it wasn't even a sophisticated document dump. Because if you were going to do a, you and I have seen people try to trick us on document dumps.

I just got one recently. So if you were to do it, though, they know that the Epstein estate did 18,000 emails already that has Trump's name on it. And that's in the DOJ's possession. So if you are to do it and you wanted to be a little bit sophisticated about your time, that, redump that and say, yeah, they did it first, we released that, here's all of this, people go through it. And at least you drag, like, it wasn't even a sophisticated doctor. You had Todd Blanche, Donald Trump's criminal defense attorney in the morning, say, this is phase one.

What do you mean phase one? Don't you notice, though, like everything with them because they're a bunch of frauds is always It's phase one, it's two weeks, or it is a concept of a deal, or it is a framework, right? They never actually do the deal. It is a framework of something, and it's like, oh, what are you even talking about? So Blanche in the morning is like, it's phase one, a few hundred thousand documents, like, all right, you already violated the law. That's a violation.

Then the DOJ spokesperson account says, oh, we're being transparent. The initial deadline is being met as we work diligently to protect victims. Don't you dare invoke the name of victims in a sentence that says initial deadline. There's no initial deadline. It's the deadline. You produce all the records. And then I'm going to toss it to you, Popak, right now. But here's the thing.

You and I have done lots of reporting on this. The guy who's been the best reporter on this about this aspect is Jason Leopold at Bloomberg, who did the FOIA requests, who went through and said that, look, there's a thousand agents back in March, back in March who were working on this what they clocked 14,678 like overtime hours or something wild like that in like March like in one month and then one week they were working on it national security thousands of national security officers that they took between the most recent review which was about a thousand national security officers and a thousand FBI agents back in March. So how many hours were spent on this already, Popak? 200,000 hours,

300,000 hours that have been spent on this alone. You factor in, like, one attorney at a big law firm billing 1,800 hours is a big amount, and that's the entire year. That's all they do. A document dump like this, if you and I were involved in it, we'd put what, three or four associates on it. They'd work three to four weeks on it and they'd get it done. You'd work with the technology companies. You'd get it done in a diligent fashion. I mean, that's just the reality of this. Let me pass it to you. Yeah. So the good thing about the Democrats is that unlike in when you and I do what we call discovery, which is the process of information exchange and document dumping and document production in federal cases, I don't have as a test pile another, usually,

another set of documents, unless I've obtained them through subpoena, of things I know exist because I got them directly from another source that I can use to keep the other side honest and what the Democrats have are the servers and the email box. and the photographs and the evidence that was produced directly through subpoena to the House and the Democrats by the Epstein estate. That's why you and I have been, some people, you know, I don't want it to be confused. Like, haven't we seen a lot of these documents before? Or haven't we been talking about documents for a long time?

Yes, because when we say the Epstein files, Donald Trump wants to conflate a lot of different piles of things, a lot of different tranches of things, so that you're confused and we're confused and they're confused. Maybe we produce, maybe we didn't. That's the Epstein files. this isn't, no, forget all of that. The Epstein files that we refer to are the mass and the treasure trove of information obtained by the Department of Justice and the FBI before the Trump administration came in or in its first term about Jeffrey Epstein, Colleen, Colleen, Maxwell,

this child sex trafficking ring. It's the information that was used in part to indict and investigate Epstein and Maxwell and go to trial against Maxwell and convict Maxwell and be ready to convict Epstein if he hadn't hanged himself. It's all of that from all the different government agencies, not just the FBI, the IRS, the banking records that were obtained, the social media records that were obtained, the subpoenas that were and search wards that were executed. That is all in the hands of the executive branch. They've always been in the hands of the executive branch. They've never been in the hands of the legislative branch in Congress. That's the Epstein files, so to speak. Then there's another tranche, which are the public documents and or at one time

secret grand jury documents in the hands of at least three different federal courts. One in Florida, because Epstein was first prosecuted there in the Southern District of Florida, and two in New York, in Manhattan. One for Epstein, one for Maxwell. And that's what we reported on. related to in the summer, Donald Trump trying to deflect attention from that first giant batch I just described. That's the thing that FBI and Cash Patel and Pam Bondi went through overtime, triple shifts in March and April to report to Donald Trump, but his name was all over those files. That's that file. The second tranches this group of things that are in the court filings and grand jury proceedings. And finally, after that law was passed, because of the public

pressure brought by the survivors, including ones that have appeared on my disdutched on Legal AF. And one of the things that you and I will be announcing in January is that LegalAF is working very closely with the survivors and Lisa Phillips in particular and in organizations that are devoted to getting the survivors justice and returning dignity to them. And that's going to be kind of a collaboration of Legal AF in the Popak firm. So we're very focused on all of these things. And when those documents over here, the Epstein files, once they got the law passed to release from the executive branch that first tranche, then they went to the federal judges. And in the last several weeks, three different federal judges said, all right, based on the law, you can release the grand jury transcripts. So let me short circuit.

Is the grand jury transcripts in a fashion that is, that is appropriate, been released now to the public after the government went to these judges? And the answer is no. 119 page transcript, for instance, from the Southern District of New York, 118 pages are black. And one page has been released. That's not a good faith redaction to protect the victims and the survivors with their identifying information. That's trolling of America, hoping we. we wouldn't find it. So that's the government, that's the grand jury stuff. Then there's the stuff that's been obtained by the legislative branch from the Epstein estate. And those are just

lawyers working for this thing called the financial estate of Jeffrey Epstein and other sources like that. You know, like Michael Wolfe's got stuff as a journalist. And they've gotten this trove of information that we've reported on over the last six months, emails we didn't know existed and Galane Maxwell didn't either, about email communications and gift records and who Epstein was paying and who was on his planes and who was on his island and photographs and birthday books and all of that. That's in the materials obtained by the committees led by the Democrats, but in a little bit of a bipartisan way from the Epstein estate and other places. So that is an Epstein pile, but we have that.

And so with all of that, you would think Trump, knowing that the Democrats have 90,000 photographs, 90,000 images, hundreds of thousands of documents that they're slowly releasing to remind Donald Trump of what they have, you'd think you'd do a better job producing the documents on the deadline. And instead, as you said, they're over-redacted to treat the predators, the same. same as the victims. That's disgusting. And they've already been reviewed. We heard that they were doing redaction to get rid of Donald Trump's name from back in March and April. You know who's seen the quote-unquote files and that was finally revealed? Susie Wiles, the chief of staff,

because in a series of interviews that started in March and just got published recently, she said, I've seen the files. The reporter was like, What? Oh, I've seen the Epstein files. Donald Trump's name is in him. She's the first government official to admit that Donald Trump's name is in the quote-unquote Epstein files with the executive branch and that she had a chance to review them. And oh, he's not really doing anything bad, but he's in there. Bill Clinton's not doing anything bad either. You know what, Susie, let us be the judge of that when everything is released. At the same time, she went after Pam Bondi, who should get her resume out looking for a job between the social right-wing influencers like Laura Lumer and now Susie Wiles saying she swung. She was a swing and a miss on how she handled the Epstein files and then criticizing her during this interview on behalf of Donald Trump. Bandbani's not long for this world, at least professionally. So that is the backdrop. So you'd think with all of that, all of the ways to put their feet to the fire, they do a better job. No, they over-redacted, they underproduced.

And now you've got the sponsors of the bill that led to the law, Rokana and Massey, coming out with their video. saying, are you kidding me? We're calling for a criminal investigation of Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche in the next administration, if not before, based on obstruction of justice and the violation of the law. Wait so you and I start reporting on the lawsuits that are going to be flying out by the survivors, by public interest groups, about the violation, about these documents, because now we've seen, as AOC put it, now the cover-up is writ large. It's now public. You can see the cover-up and the cover-up of the cover-up and the way they're producing the documents.

So if Donald Trump thought that in a week that he started yelling at the American people to love him more and ending with the release of the Epstein files, but not all of them, that this would be a successful news cycle for him,

you can see why if I was somebody not named Donald Trump in the administration, I would be worried about his obvious grip, loss of his grip on power, the splintering and emulation of the MAGA party, and of what's going to happen, and it's going to be a bloodbath at the midterms. Look at his polling numbers. And so that is just the weak that you and I are commenting on through the lens of the Epstein production. Let's talk about

what the legal actions could be now that there were violations by the Trump, now that they violated the law. In a normal world, there would be criminal referrals, and the Department of Justice would prosecute the violators. But the Department of Justice, which is why I wanted to start our segment talking about this corrupt and pathetic DOJ that's been gutted and brain drained and is essentially its own criminal cartel at this point, at least at the upper rings and the non-line prosecutor rings, although it's hard for me to still believe how you can even work at a criminal cartel like the DOJ, but, you know, people, it's a tough economy, so I get maybe it's hard to or to leave that situation. So criminal referral, but the reality is, is the DOJ would need

to prosecute. They're the criminals, right? So that's it. So then you think about, is there civil actions or are there actions to compel? Do you open up a new lawsuit that has a judge, you know, basically appoint a independent discovery referee or a forensic person to go in there and report to the judge about what's actually taking place. And what does that lawsuit look like? I think that that's one that really needs to be discussed. You'd probably file it in Washington, D.C. That's where there would be, you know, an obvious place where there would be jurisdictional, though, as I'll go to the other options, I think Southern District of New York and Southern District of Florida, maybe other options as well for some of these survivors.

But, you know, maybe a member of Congress, it's a congressional law, as we'll talk about in the next segment, Congress had standing to sue to get themselves access to the detention centers. Maybe they sued to get access to these files pursuant to what this law requires. You get a judge to order like a discovery referee or a special master, sometimes it's referred to as, to go through the documents. and then the federal judge takes over the process and then starts making these things public pursuant to the Epstein law

and you maybe frame it as like a declarative relief type of action or an injunctive relief action. I'd be thinking about that and what jurisdiction that type of action could be filed because you want someone independent and you'd probably want a former federal judge to be appointed as a discovery reference. or as a special master, you may be saying, that sounds familiar. Ben, Popak, when did you talk about that? In other Trump cases where he hit his finances and he hit his documents, remember the fraud case where he was found liable for all that money and he wouldn't turn over and produce the

documents. So eventually, like, the court had to put someone into the Trump organization to get these records and get these documents. This is how Trump behaves this whole life, right? So, you know, maybe you need to appoint somebody like that and initiate a new lawsuit. And then Popock, the third one that I've been thinking about is, look, you already have people like Judge Engelmeyer in Southern District of New York, Judge Berman in Southern District of New York, and then you have that federal judge in the Southern District of Florida, who were petitioned by the Trump regime to release the grand jury transcripts when the regime was trying to frame them and basically say, you see, they're not the ones turning it over, but they turned over

the grand jury transcripts, which now the Trump regime has basically redacted the entire thing when they asked the judges to turn it over. But if you look at what Engelmeyer's order did, Engelmeyer's order also talked about all of the other categories of documents that are in the possession of the DOJ. Engelmeyer made the DOJ respond with all the categories of documents. And so I wonder if Engelmeyer, because he's one of the judges in the Epstein-related cases,

or Berman, one of the judges in the Epstein-Maxwell-related cases, if they still have ongoing jurisdiction for a survivor to intervene and file a motion there and make that request for a referee now for the production and say, look, you're already involved in this case because of the grand jury transcript pursuant to the Epstein Transparency Act based on the Trump regime opening that door. You already have jurisdiction. Can you go and demand that all these other stuff? be produced. Anyway, that's how I've been thinking of it, Popak, about what these actions could look

like. I think you're right. Certainly there's going to be actions and I think the people withstanding of it and the people have the moral gravitas to bring it are the survivors. I'd love to see the group that has been galvanized as a new movement led by people like Lisa Phillips take the lead on that. I mean, it's very hard for the Trump administration to even the Trump administration as corrupt as it is to bash the plaintiff's group that would be this group of survivors. We all have a vested interest in having the law, the law complied with. And when you have a law that doesn't, that has a lot of great language, and you've read some of it, it doesn't have a lot of teeth for violation, then it's up to people to be the enforcers

of the law and finding the right groups. and I agree with you, members of Congress and survivors and others, there's a way to do it. And there's certainly, it's worth the fight to find somebody withstanding to bring this kind of case. And then the oversight I like, you know, there are three judges. You know, the one for me would be Berman or Engelmeier, Engelmeier over the Galane Maxwell case. Side note on interesting side note on, or P.S. on Galane Maxwell. It looks like she lost her lawyer because she just filed, you know, know, or as I joked on a recent hot take, you can add jailhouse lawyer to her long list of

titles, you know, Epstein co-conspirator, child sex trafficker, and abuser, and now jailhouse lawyers, looks like she got access to the legal resources in her low security prison, and she wrote her own writ of habeas corpus, filed, I think, in the wrong court in New York and not in Texas to try to get sprung from jail raising, it was the rantings of a mad person, which is, I think, one of the reasons her lawyer fired her and is no longer around, the only question I have is whether the Trump is going to use that with his corrupt department of justice to try to cut some sort of deal with her and give her some sort of release from prison. I just don't, that's why the public outrage and uproar that we're helping to lead and galvanize on legal AF and on the

Midas Touch network is so important at this moment in time. Our audience often, asks us, is it worth it? What can we do? Yes, this is a citizen-powered people-powered movement, and we can move heaven and earth if we do it together. I just did do back-to-back interviews, one of Rob Monta, as I mentioned, the Attorney General of California, and one of, I don't call him retired Judge Mark Wolf, Judge who resigned in protest to Donald Trump to go fight him in the streets, so to speak. And they both said the same thing, not knowing each other, which, which was the we aspect, not what you can do for your country, as JFK said in one of his inaugural speeches, but what we can do together is so critical right now. Things happen because we are bound together

and criticizing this government, this regime. And we have to do that now about the Epstein files and bring to bear the public criticism at tremendous levels, you know, at tremendous volumes in order to get what we want. Because when Donald Trump is always making political and financial calculation, is this good for me politically? Is this good for me financially? Can I absorb this financially? Can I absorb this politically?

And we have to teach him, no, you're going to be punished, because that's what he's worried about. He's worried about his legacy because he knows he's lame duck in 10 months or 11 months, like stick a fork in it, lame duck. And that's why he's busy running around, spending taxpayer dollars, that we're going to have to spend money to reverse, putting his name on everything, and building statutes, and building false idols to himself.

And so that to me indicates not that he thinks he's winning, but that he knows he's losing and he's trying under a very short time interval, to try to do maximum damage and build up his reputation. That's why he's out doing all these crazy interviews and rallies. One of the things, I don't know if you caught it then in some recent reporting in the Atlantic and the New York Times is about this administration is done. And the reason it's done is because Donald Trump refuses, because of his narcissism and his megalomaniacal aspects, he refuses to have any interaction with ordinary Americans, even if

even their representatives in Congress, he refuses to have those conversations. He goes from Trump golf course to Trump golf course, from billionaire meeting to billionaire or trillionaire meeting. He never gets exposed. And what Susie Wiles pointed to as him being like an alcoholic, her words, not mine, is that he needs, he feeds off of public adulation that he gets with these artificial, let's put him in a casino in Pennsylvania to talk about the economy. I mean, that was no, I thought the Great Gatsby Party during the shutdown was a bad image.

How about you're only coming up craps in the Trump economy and he does it in a casino? But he's in this hermetically sealed environment that doesn't allow him to understand the American people, hate him, and he's crushing the hopes and dreams of our voters. You know what they did with Fred, right, Trump's dad, who died after Alzheimer's rapidly accelerated. So when Fred was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and he took all of these guys, cognitive exams and the family tried to cover it up, they built out a fake office for Fred is what the story was. So he would show up and he would feel like he was working for the Trump organization and they'd have like his secretary, but there was nothing really actually

going on. His phone wasn't connected. And so again, look, I have a First Amendment right to give you my opinion. Opinion speech is still protected. So I'll be very clear. It's my opinion speech. It's just that it seems that there are similarities, I'll just say, that it's creating, you know, in Pennsylvania, the Mount Airy Casino with like 200 people there. And then this North Carolina speech, he just gave similarly, like, 200 people. Like, it seemed that he needed it literally to feel that he was doing a rally. You know, and then, I mean, I did a whole video on what he did in North Carolina. I mean, like, you can't, anyone who normalizes, like, what transpired in both of those,

but, like, in North Carolina, the guy's up there. And he's just like, eh, a hippopotam. A hippopotamus is hard to identify on cognitive exams, hippopotam, and I'm watching, I'm like, I'm not even exaggerating this. It's like legitimately someone who is deeply mentally ill, you know, and it's like, it's right before my eyes, and he's like, I aced it three times, you know, Hillary Clinton, and he goes like topic, Hillary Clinton, you know, I want to call her the B word. I want to call her, she's a B word, right? But Melania will be, Melania, her panties are steamed. Exactly, Melania, you know, her pantyhoes. You know what they call them?

They call them panties. They call them panties. And they look at the panties, everybody. And I'm there, I'm watching this, Michael Popak. And this is, you know, look, did Biden have a terrible debate? absolutely. You know, was Biden old and slower than he was? Absolutely. On Biden's worst day, worst day is, is frankly sometimes every single that what I observed in North Carolina set aside the speech that took place when he addressed the nation. I mean,

all things considered, the speech would he address the nation, frankly? And I know that's when he's getting all these, like, horrific reviews, and he was yelling and he looked manic and all these things. That's Trump at his best right now. Like, and I hate to, like, that's him at his most normal stage, which he's addled and looked ridiculous. In North Carolina, it wasn't even sundowning. I mean, you were looking at, like, honestly, someone who's in a psych ward. I don't describe it. There's a big, but there's one big difference in your, I totally agree with everything. You just said there's a big difference between the Biden analogy, the Biden and the Trump. Biden quit. Well, Biden quit. The Biden didn't have.

Biden didn't turn over the levers of power that the Trump, that the Supreme Court keeps turning over to Donald Trump to two people, one named Stephen Miller and the other one named Russ vote. Stephen Miller and Russ vote, Stephen Miller for everything related to homeland security and internal security, all the immigration policy, all of the war on alien enemies act, the war against Venezuela, and Russ vote on everything else, including funding. They are the presidents of the United States. Donald Trump has become both incapable, incapacist, and unenthusiastic about doing his day job. That's why there's so many golf trips.

Like you said, there's so many kind of, let's put Daddy in a phony office moments for Donald Trump while Stephen Miller and Russ Fote run America, which is a scary proposition because the MAGA Supreme Court, led by John Roberts, keeps giving the unitary executive branch model that keeps giving, there's only one occupant of the White House, and it's the President of the United States, and he can do whatever he wants, regardless of whether it's an executive office created by Congress to be independent. Once it's executive, he's the only person that can make the decision. But the light is on, but nobody's home in the executive branch. There's no executive function in the executive branch, except for two guys that we didn't vote for, one named Russ Fote,

who was the Project 2025 architect and the Office of Management and Budget Head, Stephen Miller, who we certainly did not vote for. That is the major problem that we're observing. Nobody home in the White House, a Trump who's born and or incapable of doing his job, turning the reins over to people that are doing a job on the American people and the Supreme Court allowing them to do it. Yeah. And when you had all of these structures around former President Biden, independent agencies doing its function with the top people

in their professions who wanted to work for the government and you had the top people in the military who rose through the ranks, not at Pete Hegesith. You know, you had the top competent people, you know, running, you know, whether it was the FCC or this or whatever these agencies were, and then Biden just let him do it, you know,

and when you let good people do good work, and ultimately, as long as you're able to make sometimes these binary decisions, You don't have to be a fast talker and like you can just be there to say that's the right path. When it comes to Ukraine, I authorize this level of support. That's it. That's the decision, you know, that had to be made. And Biden would always instinctually make the right decisions.

Here's how you help manufacturers. Here's how you help this. Here's how you unleash investment and infrastructure. America's falling behind against China and this, that. Here's how we catch up, building the chipsacks, semi-conductor. You know, it was that level of thing. Let's take our last quick break of the show. Reminder, make sure you check out Michael Popock's YouTube channel, LegalAF, on its way to one million subscribers. Let's get one million subscribers tonight.

Would that be a great celebration? Also, check out Michael Popock's substack, the LegalAF substack. That's one of the top red substacks in the country right now. And also, if you or anyone you know has been injured in an auto accident and a car accident, injured by the result of someone else's negligence, if you know someone in a wrongful death situation, horrific as it is, victim of sexual assault or sexual harassment, medical malpractice, call 877 Popok AF or go to the Popok firm.com. 877 Popak Firm.A.F or go to the Popok firm.com. The consultation with Popok and his firm is free. They've got lawyers across the country who can help answer your questions. Last break of the show, let's hear from our great sponsors

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been fighting back. You know, we've been covering all of these horrific ice raids, border patrol raids, you know, whether it's Operation Charlotte's Webb. They always have like these names like in Mecklenburg County or whether it was Midway Blitz in Chicago or whether it was the operations in L.A. or Portland. But frankly, we've been seeing him all over, right? We've been seeing him in Minnesota, specifically Minneapolis and the surrounding areas. We've been seeing them. But, you know, really everywhere, though, you know, you've seen these ICE Gestapo going after not the bad guys, right? I mean, going after people who were working on roofs, right, and working the gardens or working the farms or in factories or in restaurants. And, you know, you've got

that guy, Greg Bovino. I mean, this guy is like right out of a supervillain movie. This guy. like a comically cartoonish villain if it wasn't so serious you know he goes into town i mean this guy's go this guy this guy's got like a demented past also like it's like a weird dude um he calls himself the commander at large and he wears his tactical gear and he goes into towns like any of this what he did in like chicago when he came back to chicago i think it was like in evansville and other areas and he's just like ho ho ho ho ho and then he starts like playing rock paper scissors like on camera about like who's going to go in and like torture the migraine like rock paper scissors i've showed videos on this i mean like throwing pregnant women on the ground and

burying their face in the snow and suffocating them and like um sep i you know we've reported on a story uh where uh they disappeared a woman uh had her give birth at the detention center and stole her baby uh after two days um you know these people are in these detain detention centers are like sleeping on the floor. They're all sharing like 20, 30 people sharing one toilet bowl. You know, it's like it stinks. There are bugs in the food. It's like the conditions are horrific. And there's a law that says Congress, because they're the ones who appropriate the funds for these detention centers. They're the ones who appropriate the funds in the federal government that a congress member can go to a detention center and show up and have

access to it right they're a member of congress right i mean there's not that many there's one per each congressional district two senators per state and they're in their state specifically too although they can go to other states as well they can show up especially if there's a detention center in their state and ask to have a tour and just show up and inspect it because it's it's it's the money of we the people and they're they're the representative of the people and so this was never a controversial law that they could show up to a detention center and get a tour but with everything with this trump regime whether it's trump medical records whether it's the video where the survivors of the first unlawful uh war crime strike were killed after they were after they survived a boat strike

on boat strike on September 2nd. They cover up that video after saying they're going to release it. The cover up of the Epstein files, the cover up of the conditions inside the detention centers. This is what authoritarian regimes do. Cover up everything is a cover up. By the way, did you even

know Popak that we had troops in Syria? I mean, you know, like when I found out that those troops were killed in Syria, I'm like, we have troops who are on the ground patrolling Syria. Like, that's news to me. And then you had Hegsteth like, We conducted a strike on ISIS, like right after the Epstein files were to be released to distract from that.

And we attacked at the heart of ISIS. Didn't Donald Trump say that he destroyed ISIS? So I'm just trying to understand. We have troops in Syria that were just pretend without authorization, patrolling the streets. ISIS is around, killing our troops. And he announces that. Anyway, you and I could do a whole other shows on that. Well, we will.

The good part about this new order that came out from Judge Cobb is that I think it helps people like Representative LaMonica McIver, who is still being prosecuted by the Department of Justice for doing her job, going to the Delaney Hall, which sounds very constitutionally interesting, but as a privately run detention center in the heart of Newark, New Jersey. And she, at the top of this administration, and people like Senator Menendez's son, who's a congressperson, and Mayor Barack of Newark, you know, now famously went there to do oversight and got caught up in a melee, a little bit of a scrum that broke out as the Congress people were trying to keep the obviously upset citizens of Newark. you know, sort of under control and not foment the problem, got caught up between them and the, you know, the Gestapo ICE police that were trying to reign in order, but that were given orders by Todd Blanche, this has already come out, to basically arrest people, including sitting members of Congress. And she's, and that was one of Alina Habba's specials. She indicted

McGiver. She indicted Baraka. Baraka's indictment gets dismissed and they get excoriated by a magistrate judge who liked the one you read from earlier the top of the show said, do better, Department of Justice. You have an awesome power. You can't come in here and indict first and investigate later and effectively name and shame, which is what they've all, this is what all these indictments are about. We don't even have time today to talk about to Lindsay Halligan. appeal and all of that. But Donald Trump doesn't give a crap about when it comes to Adam Schiff or Letitia James or James Comey or LaMonica McIver. He doesn't give a crap about actually convicting them because he knows it violates the Department of Justice Manual

and the rules of federal prosecution and is not in good fate. He just wants to get his pound of flesh. He wants to name them and shame them and have them spend a year or two of their life trying to reclaim their dignity and their reputation so that in their obituary it reads, and Hennem Schiff was the subject of a mortgage fraud investigation, and so was Letitia James, and yes, there's a complicated story, but, you know, or, or, or Trump posts that as a social media post, and then it affixes it to the White House, because now the White House has what he calls his, whatever, Wall of Fame, which is just his deranged social media post attacking former president. Yeah, it's ridiculous. Right, right, his whole, right, the whole hallway. We're now in brass plates. He goes after Obama. and Clinton and Biden, I mean, it's just, it's just mind-boggling. But that new law, that new Gia Cobb, Judge Cobb, who's also the judge that's responsible for, among other things, responsible for Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve Board

of Governor, which is up at the United States Supreme Court, but that's where we first kind of started following Gia Cobb as a judge. This is going to help LeMonica and McIver because it's going to say, no, they get to do their oversight, and you can't put restrictions, and if they want to show up, without notice that's part of oversight and I think laws like that are going to help and I'm going to call it out here I'm a legal I have whoever's going to finally take over for Alina Haba and they're shuffling around some other violations of law in the form of deputies that aren't or acting deputies that aren't that aren't appropriate

either in New Jersey they need to dismiss that indictment against Lamonica McIver and they may be they may be all fired up because they got a felony conviction from a grand jury in Milwaukee in the last couple of days against Judge Hannah Dugan because she, according to the jury and a dozen witnesses, she may have sort of shunted a

person ICE wanted to apprehend that was in her courtroom for her criminal proceedings, kind of sent the lawyer and the person out a back door to go down another set of stairs. I wasn't in the courtroom. Adam Classfeld has been reporting on it

for all rise news and legal a.F. But a jury What I do believe in is our jury process. And if the evidence, after listening to other judges testify and having court reporters testify and clerks testify, if that was the conclusion of the seven men and five women on that grand jury, then that's the, you know, subject to appeal rights, if they got it wrong or if things happen in the case I'm not aware of. But I'm okay. See, that's people, I think, come to legal AF because we are reasonable.

we believe in the rule of law, we believe in the justice system, and I believe in the power and the sanctity and the beauty of our jury system, having been a trial lawyer for most of my career and having had dozens of juries that I've spoken to, I believe in the jury system. So if that's what happened with Judge Dukin, then okay, then she got convicted of a felony and subject to her appellate rights. We'll see how that shakes out. But the rest of this, you know, we just have to watch the appellate courts, sorry, district courts do their job the appellate courts support them and then up to the supreme court

and this last word for our audience because because there is a fatigue i know that sets in a little bit about the legal stuff like where is it going to go and why does it matter the supreme court will just reverse it rob bonta reminded us yesterday in my interview with him that they're because they just hit the mark it's a it's a mark they're not proud of but they got to do it 50 lawsuits have now been filed by the attorneys general that that is 50, 100 for, hundreds for the democracy forward group, hundreds for the American Civil Liberties. There's like 500 cases against the Trump administration in the first 11 months, right on target for my, for my prediction of two or three thousand, but before the end of this

of his term. But they're winning. They're not only winning because they're getting preliminary injunctions that are not being appealed by the Trump administration, but Trump's folding in cases, especially over billions of dollars of funding. And you don't know whether Trump's going to fold or he's going to appeal something up to the Supreme Court. And that very narrow band of cases, yes, important, yes, constitutional, yes, come go to civil liberty, civil rights, women's rights, reproductive rights. But 99.9% of justice is done at the trial court level and at the first level of appeal. And so that's where we're winning, we're winning there to slow down and or stop Donald Trump's worst instincts.

And yes, we got jobs to do at the Supreme Court and we're now completely exposed as enablers and syncophanes for Donald Trump, at least the MAGA 6th. And there's things we can do about that. You know, that's where that national conversation has to happen starting at the midterms and at the presidential about reforming the United States Supreme Court.

I just had just had Eric Holder on. the former U.S. attorney for Barack Obama, who runs a major redistricting organization. And he said, I think there should be at least three more seats or on the Supreme Court. It should be 12 or it should be 13, of course, democratically appointed that way. So we're going to have to focus on fixing the obvious problem of the Supreme Court undermining the credibility of the rule of law with the American people. It is fixable. We just need political will, the citizen power here, to focus our political, the politician's

attention on this matter. But the courts are holding. It's the Supreme Court that needs reform. And what the Supreme Court is doing now is it's involved in its own cover-up since its absolute immunity decision. Go back to the debates that were taking place before the Supreme Court when Trump was demanding absolute immunity and people were opposing that concept special counsel jack smith was specifically opposing that concept the arguments were that if you gave him absolute immunity

he was going to abuse it and that we are a nation that uh rebelled against kings we were formed as anti king king equals absolute immunity right that's what a king is absolute a monarch so if you wanted to go back to just the very structure of how our constitution was formed, the Declaration of Independence that preceded it. Our historical structure were no kings. By that, it means no absolute immunity. But you had this right-wing Supreme Court. Well, we're not worried about him actually doing all of these things. He's not going to order SEAL Team 6 to what, actually kill survivors of an already unlawful boat strike off the coast of Venezuela. That was pretty much the hypothetical that was given. Yeah, what, he,

he's, he's not going to cover up a child sex trafficking ring when there's a law that requires documents be produced. Oh, there. Can you imagine that hypothetical? There's basically hypotheticals like that in the sense of, would he hide, you know, or steal the nuclear secrets and give it, you know, give it to an enemy, basically. So now what the Supreme Court's doing, though, is notice they're not actually making rulings on the substance. They're using their shadow docket, as it's called, to make procedural rulings where they deem the status quo to be what Donald Trump has ordered,

even if that is unlawful, as opposed to ordering the status quo be preserved of what existed before Donald Trump. So what the district courts are saying, and they're mostly getting it right, They're saying, uh-uh, we're not supporting your violation of the law. You may have issued this executive order or you may be engaged in this behavior, but the status quo is what existed before Trump. That's the law. We're the district court judge. We're applying the law. That's what the

law is. The Supreme Court's been coming in and saying, sure, that may be the case, but we're worried about irreparable harm being caused to the executive branch, and we don't want to prejudice the executive branch. So what we'll do is we're not making a ruling on the substance yet. Let's let this get through a trial. The Supreme Court knows how long it'll take to get to the Supreme Court by going through a trial, going through the circuit courts, then to the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court eventually takes a rid of certiorari, five years, seven years, 10 years.

so they know what they're doing and they're allowing Trump to do what he did. And so they're just saying, ah, we'll just let the status quo be what Trump says it is and then come back to us in a few years. So they're also doing something, though, that is even deeper and more nefarious, I believe, which is what they want to then become in a future Democratic administration is the white knight who saves the day, but against the Democratic administration. Because then when the Democratic administration is like, okay, well, I'm just going to order this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, because that was fine. The Supreme Court would be like, well, actually, now the case has come to us, and we've had an opportunity to review it on the merits.

And actually Donald Trump was wrong. And so they're going to issue all of it, right, Popeye, they're going to issue these scathing rulings in Trump abstentia to try to act like they were right on history the whole time. but while also constraining executive power when a Democrat tries to wield it. Like, that's what their ultimate sick plan is here. I'll let you get the final word of the show. Yeah, well, I'll just, I'll use some statistics to show you. You're exactly right.

That court accountability action is with us on Legal A.F. And the New York Times show. When the shadow docket is used by the Trump administration, which is when you have two briefs, no oral argument, limited record on an emerging, emergency, a trumped-up stampede versus a thoughtful process that the Supreme Court is supposed to use, which is a year or more, record-developed, three briefs, oral argument, time for deliberation and all that. Shadow docket, Trump administration is winning almost 90% of the time on the

shadow docket. Biden administration, 50%. Okay? I mean, come on. The numbers don't lie. It's not that the Biden took worse legal positions on jurisprudence. It's that the ideological MAGA 6 are willing to give Donald Trump and MAGA and that right-wing philosophy a tremendous amount of leeway and ideological birth through their decision-making. And that's it. And you're right. When there's a Democrat, whatever his name or her name is going to be as President of the United States, and they try to do the same things, although certain things with Trump's name on it are now precedent.

You know, they make this ruling, which they're going to make to allow anybody named the President of the United States to fire anybody in any executive office, agency or otherwise, unless it's so judicial. as not to be executive like any of these regulatory bodies, any of these agencies, what's good for the goose is good for the candor. We're going to be firing everybody on the Federal Communications Commission when the Democrats take over. We're going to be firing everybody in these Securities and Exchange Commission and everybody on the FTC and every place else and packing them with Democrats for that four-year or eight-year period of time.

That is what is allowed. But there are other areas, as you've said, said where they've left themselves that wiggle room to say, no, no, no, it's not quite what we meant. You didn't quite do it right. You're not going to be able to fire that person or reform that thing and we'll have to watch the flip-flopping of the United States Supreme Court, which of course we are well prepared. We are well prepared to handle one last word to give our audience the confidence that they need and that they're reclaiming and that they're getting. I said to Attorney General Banta as a proxy for.

for the 23 Democratic attorneys general that are fighting so hard for America at this moment in time, I said, we were talking about the 50, the threshold, the 50 cases that they have filed already, that they never thought they'd have to file. And I said to him in a way, are you ready for the next 50? And he said, without even prompting, he said, we are fired up and ready to go.

We are not gassed. We are not beleaguered. We are not fatigued. We have hired a lot of people from the Department of Justice to work for us. You know, we're staffing. We are ready for the next 50 or the next 100 or the next thousand or whatever it takes to hold this administration accountable.

And I felt my whole body, like, relaxed when I heard that. And I want, one of the things you and I wanted to accomplish when we created the Legal IF YouTube channel is we wanted to give people where it was appropriate the confidence to know that there are other human beings that are working besides you and me. and the Lightest Touch Network that are working round the clock from the moment our head gets off the pillow to the moment their head hits the pillow for America and Americans at this existential threat of a period of time and that's why we bring on the senators and the congresspeople former federal judges ACLUs of the world to talk to our audience so that they know that you know it's a funnel

system here there's only so much no matter how many videos you and i do there's only so much that we can cover in a given week of the Trump administration, but that every day, thousands and thousands of lawyers and the support staff around the lawyers are working in courts and winning in courts. And we're here for it. And our audience, I know, is here for it. I want to remind everybody, Michael Popock's YouTube channel, Legal A.F and the LegalAF community of partners who work on that LegalAF channel is so close to hitting 1 million subscribers. Tell some friends. Talk to others about it. Make sure you're subscribed yourself. Let's get to that one million

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who are there to answer your questions and to see if you've got a case or if someone you know, got a case. Don't be shy. Popock's representing so many legal A.F. audio and video viewers and audio listeners. All right. Thanks, everybody for watching. We covered a lot of topics, a lot of ground. It's an honor spending this time with you as always. Yeah, we're going to hear let's take a look. Let me just take a look at the calendar right here, Popak, because it is possible that we won't be with anybody. I guess Christmas is this upcoming week, so we won't be with, we'll see them after Christmas or hear them after Christmas on this show. But of course, we'll be doing updates every single day on the Legal A.F. YouTube channel and the Midas YouTube channel.

So if we don't see it before Christmas, Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Kwanza. Happy just being you. And let's just stay in this fight together. Thanks, everybody. Shout out Legal AFers and shout out Midas Mighty.