Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF Full Episode - 1/28/2026

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

Legal AF, with Popok and Karen Friedman Agnifilo at the controls, covers breaking news in law and politics, from Minnesota to DC to Massachusetts, as the American People demand justice for Alex Pretti and Renee Good, and call for the impeachment and firing of Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller. Mack Weldon: Go to https://mackweldon.com and get 20% off your first order with promo code LEGALAF. Trust & Will: Get 20% off when you go to https://trustandwill.com/LEGALAF 3 Day Blinds: For their buy 1 get 1 50% off deal, head to https://3DayBlinds.com/LEGALAF. Delete Me: Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to https://joindeleteme.com/LEGALAF and use promo code LEGALAF at checkout. Become a member of Legal AF YouTube community: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgZJZZbnLFPr5GJdCuIwpA/join Learn more about the Popok Firm: https://thepopokfirm.com Subscribe to Legal AF Substack: https://substack.com/@legalaf Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum with Dr. Steve Hassan: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the midweek edition of Legal A.F. We sit at the intersection of law and politics so you don't have to, and we don't blow smoke or sunshine. Karen Freeman, Ignifalo, and Michael Popak, your usual anchors, been sitting in these chairs for six long years. They've gotten even longer with this Trump administration, but we can't think of a better audience to spend our time with than the legal AF in Midas Touch audience. A lot to talk about. We would be remiss if we didn't start with Minnesota and everything that's happening there. We've got several judges from Judge Toasted to Menendez to Schultz, who are valiantly holding the line and protecting our democracy and rulings. We've got the Trump administration and open warfare with itself. People are lining up against Stephen Miller and Christy Knoem. If we're ever wondering, would there ever be a moment when Trump would lose confidence in Stephen Miller and or Christy Kome? we may be at that point now and certainly continued public outcry, which we will help lead here on the Midas Touch Network and legal a.F. We'll only help exert pressure to change the political calculus for Donald Trump.

We've got an update in the Epstein saga with a second circuit court of appeals hearing in which the Trump administration took an unusual position. and letters sent again to federal judges who don't want to exert any jurisdiction over the issue, but being updated again about the extent of the production of the Epstein files. And finally, we've got our first of many lawsuits. People always ask, Popak, we see the civil rights violations, we see criminal law violations, we see civil liberties violations. What is the next phase? The next phase is what we're starting to see, the lawsuits that are being filed,

by plaintiffs lawyers on behalf of people and or their families at estates who have been murdered, maimed, injured, had their property taken, due process rights taken away in violation of the Constitution and statutes. And the first of many cases being brought by people killed, murdered by the U.S. government in boat strikes in the Caribbean since September and October until now has just got filed. Tartar to believe it's the first one. One, two Trinidadian, the estate of two Trinidadian fishermen who were killed, have filed a suit in the District of Massachusetts. And this is the natural consequence of a lawless presidency,

is that we talk a lot about the civil cases filed by the public interest groups against Donald Trump's policies. But then there's the people that are actually injured, maim, killed, murdered, worse, tortured by the Trump administration, his agents, his henchmen, his federal officers, and security teams. And this is how we hold them accountable. And this suit is important that we'll talk about this sort of next phase that we're going to see play out over the next months now into the end of his term.

It'll be just a series of lawsuits brought by groups who have been horribly injured. I mean, Alex Preti's family obviously bringing a lawsuit. Renee Good already has her lawyer. There's been 38 people that have. died by the hand of ice since Donald Trump's been in office in just a year. That's different from the people who have disappeared who are in dark, dank custody and detention centers where they could be subject to torture, be sedated, and or killed. And so that is the repercussions for that.

Let's bring in Karen Freeman McNifalo. Karen, what were you doing yesterday? Very funny, very funny. So it was fun yesterday. I flew down to Florida to accept an award on behalf of my husband. It was for a trial team of the year. He and his partner, Tenny Garagos, got an award for criminal defense team of the year last year. And this was by the National Trial Lawyers Association, a fairly prestigious award,

but my husband couldn't receive the award because he's on trial, which is what happens when you're a trial lawyer. So I flew down thinking, oh, this will be fun. I'll go accept the award, give a little. speech. And as I'm sitting there, Popak was texting me. And he's like, oh, I know, it was hilarious. And it turns out, neither one of us knew that the other was going to be there. And Popak was one of the keynotes, giving, doing a moderated discussion with Amarosa, who used to work for the Trump administration, was on Celebrity Apprentice. And I was accepting the award. And it was just a funny little exchange and my flight was delayed. So the best part of the whole day was after I got to

come back to the Popak residence and see where the magic happens, see the studio that you record in and meet your amazing, adorable Francesca, who I know has been on the pod a few times and she's just the cutest little thing. So it was just a fun little surprise to be at the same place together. And neither one of us knowing we'd be there. You were up on stage. I was up on the day, I said, I'm like, oh, the Garagos firm, I mean, not the Garagos firm, I'm sorry, the Mark Aknifilos firm, just won for, that's amazing. And so knowing you and knowing Mark, I start, because I heard he wasn't there, and I knew he was on trial in New York, I start recording the video presentation of the award.

And then I hear it, but his wife, Karen looked down and there's you going up to give a speech that he had written for you, so to speak. And then I trolled you for a good few minutes. without you realizing that I was on the room of like, look over at the day. I know. And then we did the rest. But that's what happens. That's what it's great.

There's a lot of people there. Yeah, it was like a thousand people. Oh, yeah. That natural trial lawyers thing, which I've done now a couple of years, was absolutely packed. And it was funny. I was trying to get Omarosa to finally spill the beans, spill, spill the tea, as the kids say, about somebody she had a friendship with and a relationship with for 17 years, named Donald Trump, she's very hard to get information out of it was like, and tell us about this.

And then it was, we were talking about something else. I was like tried two or three times. Then in the middle of it, the lights went out in Miami Beach. As I was talking about Trump, literally the entire Miami Beach lighting system went out, including in the entire. The power went out everywhere. Power went out. We just ended up standing up and yelling. And people, of course, thought of Trump had something to do with it because I was bashing him, bashing him pretty hard at moment but really really really great to see you let's let's turn serious because it's serious of what's happening you know i see minnesota as a crucible for all that is wrong and depraved and immoral

about the trump administration and i'm not alone and the miscalcul the political miscalculation of donald trump in particular and i'm not alone that alex prete his death changed the weather in the room Not because it was a greater tragedy than Renee Good. It's not. It's that for the MAGA world, a VA nurse packing a Sig Sauer, you know, P230 under his jacket, exercising his second Amendment rights, along with his First Amendment rights, changed the calculus for them. And then they watched the Trump administration struggle with how to react.

The initial reaction, Christy Noem, Stephen Miller, the rest, FBI, domestic terrorists again, brandishing a weapon, running, you know, they had to be, yeah, he was threatening to shoot people. Then the video came out, you know. You had Stephen Miller, oh, would be assassin. Nobody should bring a gun to a First Amendment protest. And that freaked out MAGA and the NRA and the Second Amendment people. I may not agree with their interpretation or the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Second Amendment,

but they certainly do. And they freaked out. They recoiled in horror at the Trump administration attacking Alex Prettie for having a weapon or blaming his death on him carrying in an open carry state a weapon. And Trump miscalculated, and they had to start walking it back. And we watched it day by day, hour by hour,

from Trump saying things about Alex Prattie, that Todd Blanche, and then they sideline Christy Noem and completely humiliating her, took Stephen Miller's now, well, you know, let's talk about the Second Amendment. Yeah, let's talk about it with a big vigil and memorial for Alex Prattie. We can't forget Renee Good in all of this either. And so for me, the Alex Preti moment is where this administration, if it was already circling the drain of history for the American people,

is already now, I mean, really, based on polling, is really beyond that. So let's start with your view of sort of Alex Prettie, changing the weather. Then we'll talk about the cases led by Menendez and Tostrad and Schultz, doing Lord's work, if you will, in Minneapolis against this administration. Yeah, this is clearly an inflection point. think for the Trump administration and everybody, because, look, at a certain point, you can say, the Trump administration can say what they want, but people can also see with their own eyes what's happening. And the Alex Preti massacre, this execution, was absolutely undeniably not okay. And I agree

that the whole thing, the whole narrative around him carrying a gun, really backfired. And And it backfired to the Trump administration. I mean, everybody remembers Jan 6, right? Look at any picture from January 6th of these peaceful protesters that Trump talks about. They're all carrying guns, or many of them were, certainly. And they were open carrying these guns. And they all talked about how this was their right,

and this is what they're allowed to do. And that's what Alex Pretty was doing. The only thing he had in his hand was his cell phone. And he was a nurse. He's a VA nurse, which means he helped veterans in the military. By all accounts, he's a great guy who really cared about people. And they had just tossed a woman on the ground. And he, as a nurse, was bending over to help her and was recording what was going on as part of what he was doing to help hold these ICE agents accountable for their violent and vicious acts that they were committing, lawless acts, frankly. It's not just ICE. It's Border Patrol. It's Department of Homeland Security. There's a whole alphabet suit. of agencies that are showing up and they are going there and there are people who want to document this for the American people because it is absolutely lawless and the fact that

he was shot and killed in doing that is just I think a bridge too far even for right wing even for MAGA people and look it's even all I've been listening to law enforcement commentary on that shooting. And when they talk about it and they talk about de-escalation training or even just training on what to do when you're trying to subdue a suspect, any suspect, even an armed suspect, the amount of mistakes that they were making that these agents, God only knows who they were from, because again, it was a bunch of different agents from different agencies who were there, all of the mistakes they were making. You're not supposed to have five, six, seven guys on one person.

It becomes very complicated. You have different agents yelling commands at the person, sometimes conflicting. And so who does Alex Prady listen to? Does he listen to the guy who says, put your hands behind your back? Or does listen to the guy who says, stop moving? Or does he listen to the guy? You've got different people saying different things. And there's lots of arms and legs going around when you have so many people there trying to subdue him.

You don't know if that's an agent's arm. or Alex Preti's arm who's moving around, etc. You also had them spraying tear gas in his face. That's very disorienting. And that should be enough to subdue someone enough so that one, two, or three at the most officers are necessary to subdue the individual. But just all the mistakes they made, all of the brutality that they exhibited by just the way they treated him, the way they beat him, and then the way they shot him. And this just was a bridge too far for everybody. It doesn't matter who you are.

It doesn't matter what political party you belong to. And I think Trump is really reeling at the response, the nationwide response. There's only a few people who are still defending, oh, well, you know, he, whatever, agitator, that kind of stuff. But the vast majority of people aren't. And I agree that this is really, this is a turning point. And you're starting to see the crisis.

acts widen in the administration for sure. Yeah, you're exactly right on the inflection point. And a complete political miscalculation. The reporting is that Susie Wiles is we're struggling behind the scenes to open up a back channel to Minnesota. She's the reason that Tom Holman was sent in. Greg Bovino was sent out. Christy Noem was in a humiliating fashion, completely sidelined. Stephen Miller has been ordered to roll back his comments about the second amendment about the gun. They're all, I mean, when you have the NRA berating Cash Patel, like, read the Constitution, what do you mean?

He's not allowed to bring it. I mean, for them, Alex Pretti is Kyle Rittenhouse. And you know what kind of hero worship they did about Kyle Rittenhouse during Black Lives Matter? That's a guy that killed and maimed people. And he became a hero in the manga world. Alex Preti is, for them, another version of it. And it's just, as you said, just a bridge too far for MAGA. And it's allowed this coalescing of public opinion and a targeted focus in the martyrdom,

if you will, of Alex Preti and Renee Good. I mean, the right, the alt-right, try to use Charlie Kirk's killing to rally the troops to crush dissent, to crush First Amendment expression. But here you've got the cross-section of the First Amendment, Freedom of Speech, and, and press, Second Amendment, the right to carry, right to bear arms, and the Fourth Amendment, because right until the moment when Renee Good is killed, murdered, and Alex Preti is too, you have a Fourth Amendment violation of illegal search and seizure. They should not have been stopped. They should not have been gang, tackled like a pack of wolves for Alex Prettie,

as you pointed out, Karen, and Renee Good should never have had an interaction with law enforcement in that way where they were grabbing her door handle and reaching into her car to motivate her to try to drive away from the scene at that moment. That should never have happened. That's a Fourth Amendment violation. Now we've got the judges, right? That's what the crowds of the courage are doing. Now you've got the judges.

So Judge Menendez is, I thought the case that was brought by Minnesota, the state of Minnesota, with Menendez having already, the judge, having already been. slapped back a couple of times by the Eighth Circuit about trying to regulate how ICE and security officers operate on the street, I thought she was a little reticent and a little bit hesitant to issue an order about Minnesota's demand that the ice surge and her substitute her judgment for ICE and Border Patrol until Pam Bondi, the day of Alex Prettie's murder, without acknowledging his execution, wrote a letter to Tim Walls, the governor, in which he made an extortive demand that if you play nice, it was like the mob again. It was like the godfather again.

You know, if you do these three things for us, nothing's going to happen to you. So you don't like the ice search. Okay, give us your voter data. That's what she writes in a letter to Tim Walz. Stop being a sanctuary city or state, which means help. federal law enforcement, catch, detain, arrest, abuse, in prison, undocumented. And they're like, we're not doing that. And third, give us all your, which they have a right to anyway, give us all of your welfare and entitlement program, SNAP program, all of your personal information and data. They're like, go pound sand.

But the judge said, hmm, the other side makes a compelling argument about this letter. how is this not a quid pro quo? How is this not an example of the Trump administration trying to accomplish through force that which it cannot accomplish through a court proceeding? So I want you to write another brief which she's going to get, I think, tomorrow or Friday. Until that letter was written,

leave it to Pam Bondi to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory or to do like in sport and own goal. She kicked the goal into her own net to lose the game. Because if she hadn't written that letter, I'm not sure Menendez gets there because of other things going on in the other case that she's handling related to protesters, First Amendment protesters.

But this certainly was a gift. And the U.S. Attorney, sorry, the Attorney General for Minnesota, of course, Keith Allison jumped all over it and said, yes, that's what they're doing. So she wants briefing on that point. With that, she may end up making some sort of ruling. She's really hung up Karen on remedy. Like, I see the violations.

But what can I do about them to prevent them from happening in the future? Because I'm just a federal judge. What would the remedy be? So that's what she's struggling with. So let's have you here comment on Menendez. I don't want to get to one right up your alley from your former prosecutor days, which is the crime scene collection of evidence and everything else related to Alex prentice executions.

Yeah, look, I agree with you that I don't know that Judge Menendez would do anything because there's this whole separation of powers argument. and the Eighth Circuit has basically said, look, not so fast. You don't necessarily have the powers to stop Operation Metro Surge or to stop the executive branch from doing what they want to do. But don't forget, the whole executive branch justification for Operation Metro Surge was we need help, essentially enforcing immigration laws.

And we need help to, we need to be able to send people to help enforce immigration laws. And that letter was basically an admission by the Trump administration saying, well, actually, you don't really need these agents because we're willing to bring them back. We're willing to pull them back if you give us this information that we want from you.

And so that is not okay, right? Either they're necessary or not. And if they're not necessary, and you're only using this as leverage to try to get them to do what you want, that I think the judge is not going to buy and it's not going to like. But you're right. At the end of the day, what can she do? That's the open question that I think she's going to struggle with. But I just really think that it shows a few things. It shows that the left

hand isn't speaking to the right hand, right? The fact that Bondi would send that right when this shooting just happened and Gnome's under fire and the administration is reeling in this. I don't know if she thought it was going to be a distraction. I don't know if this is her way of saying, oh, let's just talk about something else so that we don't focus on the shooting. But it was very misplayed and very mishandled from her point of view if she wanted to win this lawsuit because she just gave something to the judge, which is really her true motivation and their true motivation for being there. So I agree it was absolutely snatching defeat from the jaws of it. And, um, You know, and it's absolutely going to backfire because everybody sees what they're doing and why they're doing it.

It is not necessary to send in all these agents and all these troops to Minnesota. Minnesota's don't want it. People are losing their lives, and they're not enforcing immigration. They are trying to squelch protests is what they're trying to do. They're trying to basically infringe on people's First Amendment rights to protest and to speak freely. And they don't like it. They don't like it. And they don't like that there's nationwide support for what's going on in Minnesota.

And so this was a gift. This was an absolute gift that Bondi did by sending this letter and saying the quiet part out loud and saying, basically telling the judge what their true motivation for being there is. Absolutely. You hit the nail right on the head. Is it a necessity based on violence and that the federal troops during their surge, there have to be protected by other federal troops in order to execute on federal law? Or is this just the, we're going to keep punching you in the face from the federal government until you give us what we want.

We want the voter data. We want to investigate your state for fraud. Because for everybody to remember, this all stemmed from an allegation that there's fraud in the entitlements program that part of it is federal funding in Minnesota. the Somali community is participating in. You know what? If there's hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud, it wouldn't be the first time.

Healthcare companies do it all the time and have been prosecuted for it. But if that's what's happening in a state program, great. You have a Department of Justice. You have an inspectors general, send them in. That's what white-collar criminal defense lawyers like you and I get paid to do is represent states and entities that get in the crosshairs of government

about an allegation of fraud. What you don't do and what no administration has ever, done is say, gitty up, let's get the troops in. Let's send in the federal security forces with their guns and their masks and their long rifles and their allergy to respecting the Fourth Amendment or any part of the Constitution. Put them in the street in conflict with First Amendment citizen protesters, and let's see what happens. You want it to stop? You don't like the deaths in the shootings? Give us the voter data. What does what the F does voter data have to do with you having to send and create a powder keg of conflict and resulting in death of innocence because you want the effing voter data.

That's where it comes in. You want voter data, you go to court. If the court allows it, you get it. Court doesn't allow it, and many courts have blocked it or dismissed it. You don't get it. Oh, no, we have something else at our disposal. We've got masked men who can come in and burst into your house without a Fourth Amendment warrant. Yeah, no, F that.

And that's what judges like, I'm very salty today. And that's what judges like Judge Menendez are struggling with, quote, unquote, this remedy. They see it. They can taste it. They know it's happening. But now they have to thread that needle that you outlined about separation of powers. And, you know, I use this on one of my hot texts. I said, you know, we've had courts like Seventh Circuit and Eighth Circuit, say a version of, I'm going to bring this into like late, you know, sort of, you know, black and white terms.

You can't step out into the street and stop the car accident. judge, you got to let the car accident happen. And then once the party sue, you can provide equitable relief and proper remedy. And a lot of us are like, what do you mean? They can step out right now and tell them the lights out. Like, no, no, that's not your job. Your job is not to do that. And that's, that is that friction and tension that we have.

I want to, I want to, when we come back from a break, I want to pick up with Judge Telstra, who is another, you know, Trump-appointed, conservative who is issuing orders about what happened at the crime scene of Alex Preti's execution, the refusal, the boxing out of the state investigators by the feds, and what he's not, and then, you know, there's been several affidavits filed, where I think the Trump administration thought, well, this ought to answer the questions. And actually, it asked more questions than it answers about the chain of custody, about the evidence and who's got it, where's the gun? I mean, there's lots of things that actually were made worse by the declarations, not better.

So with your prosecutor background, crime scenes, collection of evidence and things, chain of custody, I want to talk about that. And then I want to touch on Judge Schultz, who's a chief judge. He's the judge involved with Don Lemon, and whatever's happening with Don Lemon. We'll talk about an update. and then also about him ordering Todd Lyons from the acting director of ICE to show up in his courtroom unless he's got a little extortive power too, unless a detainee was released from custody. Talk about Epstein and this warfare that's now spilled out inside of the White House and what it means for the midterms, Miller, Noam, Wiles, Trump. Are we seeing the beginning of the end as these aids start backbiting each other and,

not waiting for Donald Trump to throw them under the bus as they throw each other under the bus and all of that. But, Karen, let's pay the bills. Is that the right friend? Let's pay the bills. We've got a number of ways for people that if you enjoy this show to vote for us, to support us, now more than ever, independent journalism under attack. We've got reporters whose houses are being rated with search warrants and having all of their electronic equipment picked up. Others like Don Lemon being threatened with arrest because he was covering a protest inside of a church. And Midas Touch is often threatened.

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our day. We've got reporting that the FBI got around to raiding the Fulton County, Georgia election office. They're looking for fraud again in 2020. Donald Trump just can't come to grips that he is wildly unpopular in Georgia, especially in Fulton County, which he lost by like 70%, 70 to 30%. No, it must have been the hard drives and the software and the fraud and... Find me the 11,780 votes. All I need, you know, Fulton County. I mean, it's just, you know, Rudy Giuliani has $150 million judgment for going after, you know, the two election workers. Seamus and Ruby Freeman.

Right, the mother-daughter team. And so he's still searching six years later for fraud over there. It's just what a waste of taxpayer dollars. But again, flexing, whatever muscle he thinks he continues to have. it usually backfires. So we've got that going on. Why don't we turn to, what's your observations about Christy Nome, who has been defanged and sidelined now, Tom Holman taking over, Bovino out, she's not, they're not trotting her out,

talking about Alex Prattie anymore. Miller, who made a big Second Amendment boo-boo in how he approached it, and then kind of Susie Wiles trying to hold all this crap together as Chief of Staff. Well, let's just say the first thing. I want to say is in the midst of all of this, right, with all of this going on and the horror of Alex Pready, just sort of the death, you know, at front of mind, top of mind, to get on an airplane yesterday and to walk into the Fort Lauderdale Airport and to be greeted by TV screens all around of Christy Noem's face with this smile and, you know, all her makeup and, you know, whatever.

It felt very like Westworld or some kind of a, you know, like handmaid's tale or something. It just felt this terrible, like, oh, my God, you know, all the country's on fire. And here she's got her fake smile, you know, talking at the TSA. It was quite jarring and very unsettling. But it seems like the reporting is despite Trump trying to defend her, it seems like she's on her way out and that there seems to be a. huge rift going on in the administration. And Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, is long-term person who's worked for him for a long time, who many have said was the grown-up in the room,

is really trying to keep things together. And she's opened up a back channel with Minnesota officials trying to work out a way to get Trump out of this situation since the mess that's been created by Nome. And it seems like Stephen Miller has also been left out of certain key meetings as well as part of this backlash. And so, you know, it looks like they're all pointing fingers at each other, but it looks like Noam and her longtime-rumored boyfriend, Corey Lewandowski, who works for her, that they're the ones who are really on the outs with Susie Wiles and that Trump is holding meetings without Christy Noem about this.

And, you know, I think they're doing what they have to do, and they're all, of course, protecting Trump, but it looks like I've seen both that Miller has been left out of certain meetings and he's been noticeably absent, but also that Nome, also in Lewandowski, and Bovino is being pulled. Greg Bovino, the guy in the, you know, Nazi-looking SS troop jacket that walks around, he's really going to be the fall guy and he's been taken out of Minnesota and sent back to California. and Nome and Lewandowski are apparently responsible for Bovino being the face of all of this. And so I think they're realizing that the puppy killer, you know, that the fact that she should kill a puppy should have been enough to tell people what she thinks of human lives and, you know, other lives. The way this is being handled and the things that she is saying, I think, is really backfiring.

and they're pulling her out, it seems, or sidelining her, I should say. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, I don't think there's any doubt on that. When you have Tom Holman reporting directly to the president, you have him sideline, and you've got the Democrats who are leading pretty good charge now against knowing that Christy Noam is on the ropes. They're going for the knockout. Yeah, they want to impeach her.

Right. And so you need 218 to impede. people think well that's far-fetched it's not because right now the democrats have 213 there's four runoff of four special elections to fill vacancies like marjor taylor green and and mikey sherell the governor now of new jersey if we flip one of those seats it comes down to like 216 you just need to flip two republicans and there's plenty of republicans that are not happy with christineome right now and depending upon their own political calculus about what would win in their district they decide to vote with the Democrats. That might be a safe bet. In other words, you may not get harmed at home if you take out puppy killer Christy Noem over the death of Alex Preti. If you're a big Second Amendment district, it may be time to take out Christie and vote with the Dems. And they've already seen, like that glass ceiling has already broken with Epstein. I mean, when the entirety but one of the House chamber voted for, it wasn't, remember we were talking about,

forever. Will we get to 218 signatures on the discharge petition? You have 434 votes for the Epstein Transparency Act at the end. So that's already been gone that you can vote against Trump and against a Trumper. And he's doing, Trump's doing very, very faint praise of Christy Noem. You know, that old line about damning faint praise. Oh, what is it? Who? Christy Gnome? Will you fire her? No. I was watching the press conference. Like, what? No, the border. She's doing really great on the border.

Next question. I'm like, oh, here we go. And for people that think he'll never fire anybody, he'll never leave them twisting in the wind, I refer you. Look at the first Trump administration. Well, that's one. And I'd refer, that's true.

And I'd refer you to the, he fired his chief of staff every five minutes. But I refer you to Exhibit A, Lindsay Halligan, who's no longer the prosecutor, in Virginia is no longer in the Department of Justice. Alina Hamba, where did she go? So he has a way, and then he has the Susie Wiles of the world, make the phone call. It's got Todd Blanche waiting in the wings to be the new Department of Justice head when Pam Bondi finally falls through the ice, and she's, no pun intended, but she's very close.

So I could see, especially before the midterms, as he tries to write the ship, Bondi out, Blanche in, gnome out, I mean, the bribe taking Tom Holman in? I mean, somebody like that, or a governor, another governor that he can support. Maybe they move somebody who's not that controversial, like the Interior Secretary over, Doug Bergham or whatever's name is, and sort of start shifting this around because this current crop of AIDS, not only are they going to be impeached at the midterms. once. I mean, they're definitely fodder for impeachment in January of 2027. Because by all the

statistical models looking at the polls right now, the Dems are going to get like 224, 225 seats. More, it's there, it's impeachment proof. It's more than enough. Now, to convict and remove, you need two-thirds of the Senate. That's a look. I mean, listen, if people really hate Donald Trump, they'll flip about six or seven seats Senate and give the Democrats the 60 filibuster proof and two-thirds they need to get rid of somebody. But impeachment is enough for us at this moment. Stephen Miller would be impeached.

I think half the Department of Justice leadership would be impeached if not all of it. And so we are sensing, you know, here in the Midas Touch illegal AF world based on our total review of what's happening that as you said at the top of our podcast tonight, there's an inflection point. And when you look back in history, the death of Alex Preti,

the way a lot of times the death of one person encapsulates everybody's feelings. You know, what is it, Prince Ferdinand, assassination starts World War I. Sometimes it just comes down to one person. And that being the straw that broke the camel's back. And I think in history, we're going to find that. Let's talk about Judge Tostrad, who is a Trump appointee first term. So that means he's not MAGA. And he issued an order right away, which I've never seen before, ordering the Department

of Justice and the FBI not and the Trump administration not to destroy evidence. The fact that you have to issue an order for them not to destroy evidence tells you everything you need to know about how federal judges feel about the trustworthiness of the Department of Justice and this administration. And what you would think is to bail themselves out that the Trump administration would respond with, Judge, you don't have to enter a order like that. Of course we wouldn't do it. We'll do it by a consent decree or an agreed order.

No, they filed an opposition paper telling the judge he didn't have the right. He's preserving the evidence so that the state, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in Minnesota, can do its job and do an independent investigation related to Alex Preti. with the weapons gone, with the crime scene polluted, with shell casings, well, witnessed, I mean, and just preserve that. And then they filed three affidavits. Did you get a chance to take a look at those affidavits? I did.

All right. So why don't you tell you got one from Border Patrol, one from FBI, and one from Homeland Security. When you lay them on top of each other, what struck you? What struck me, even before I saw, you know, before I get to those three orders, is what you just said about the fact that how incredibly unprecedented in order to not to destroy evidence to the government is. A judge can do that and has done that in civil cases, right, to plaintiffs or defendants counsel when there's a dispute over things or in or to a criminal

defendant or to witnesses in a case, right? Because you're worried that evidence or information might be lost or destroyed, but not the government. That does not happen. The government of course, they're in the business of collecting evidence, securing evidence, analyzing evidence, and utilizing evidence. For the judge to issue an order to prevent federal agents from destroying or altering evidence related to this shooting, like you said, tells you everything about how this Trump-appointed judge views law enforcement at this particular time in history, at this particular moment, and in this particular case. Now, as you said, that there were three different affidavits, right, which are sworn under oath statements by three different people saying what their position is about these different, you know, about the, about the

evidence. And these affidavits filed by these three different Trump administration agencies with the memorandum of law basically doesn't say what you just said, oh, you don't have to do that. judge, of course we know our obligation. Of course, we're the government. We would never do that. And we're investigating this. First of all, we know that there's no criminal investigation. They've already said there's no criminal investigation. They're just looking at it as a, you know, the officer involved shooting investigation, like an internal investigation. Just look at our internal policies and see what happened and see if the officer should be disciplined. That's very different than a criminal investigation that could be conducted and should

should be conducted. That's what usually happens. Doesn't mean it goes anywhere. It doesn't mean that anyone ever gets charged. But you should have a joint investigation, state and federal law enforcement, people who have this expertise, because that is what every single local law enforcement entity is trained and equipped to do. If not the local, then the state, right? That's what all states have this ability to do, because what happens? Officers, guns go off. and officers sometimes shoot people. And so you have these investigations that happen, and they look at these investigations.

District attorney's offices do it. State AG's offices do it. And they have a lot of experience in officer-involved shootings or officer-involved fatalities. And so guess who doesn't have this experience? Not ICE, not DHS, not Border Patrol. And the FBI does have some. experience. But the FBI, they're not the 24-7 shop that responds at an incident, right? And so

the FBI relies on local law enforcement who does respond to a 911 caller or a shooting because they're 24-7. They have officers everywhere. They secure the crime scene. They put crime scene tape out. They put little cones near all the shell casings. They don't let people walk in to contaminate the crime scene, they go there with an eye towards, let's preserve the crime scene. And if it does go and get turned over to the FBI to investigate, it's usually done in conjunction with local law enforcement who is in this rapid response 24-7 kind of, you know, how they respond to incidents. So when I was a prosecutor, for example, that's how we did it. We were always with the NYPD, we were the first responders. We were the ones who showed up at the crime scene.

and did that. And then again, if it needs to get turned over sometimes to the Attorney General's office, if they had jurisdiction or to federal law enforcement, that's how it happens. But you do it in conjunction, you do it together. And so these three affidavits basically saying, oh, judge, you can't do this from these three different agencies essentially acknowledged that the crime scene was not secured, that Alex Prattie's firearm, that they don't know where it is, or at least they're not telling the judge where it is. And two out of the three declarants refused to say or represent to the court that they won't destroy any evidence, which that's what I found most astounding. Now, of course, the FBI said they won't because the FBI knows that they won't and can't and shouldn't. But, you know,

it was Homeland Security got there 40 minutes after the shooting. They said that they didn't do evidence collection because, but they're in charge of it. Border Patrol said they aren't, they didn't collect evidence, but they do have some body cam footage. And the FBI agent said basically, you know, we work for evidence recovery team. They're the ones who said they have the gun and the cell phone, but we turned over the cell phone to HSI, but didn't say anything about where the gun is. I mean, it just, it really didn't answer any, it asked, to me, asked more questions than it answered questions. It seems like evidence is missing. It seems like nobody's in charge and that you've got this cluster of agencies seemingly not working together,

but somewhat saying that they're working together. And it really, I think if I'm the judge, I think it makes those affidavits made matters worse, not better. I totally agree with you. And I think he's going to keep the order in place, extend the temporary restraining order. and I it it there's where's the gun I mean they said and why are three different agencies none of which are the one or two different agencies none of which are in charge why are why is the evidence spread out between these three agents the FBI has the phone but not in the body this one's got the body cam this

one says they got the phone but not the gun I'm like and then they just decided only because the public outcry they just decided to put the five ice border patrol agents on leave they up until now they were out, what, and where were their weapons? Were they retained? Were they still shooting them? I mean, for forensics purposes? Well, they have to, they have to retain them, again, if this was a real investigation, we still don't know whose guns went off. We don't know if Preddy's gun misfired. We don't know which ones of the agents fired their weapons. We have no idea. They have, they have to take their weapons in this situation. I don't know. Do you know? No, no, I'm saying that's what they should.

Right, exactly. Right. And in terms of the gun going off, now it looks like a gun may not have gone off at all to start to start the shooting, that they reacted not to a gunfire. Because remember the beginning was like, oh, maybe his sick sour accidentally went off. No. Now there's reporting and testimony that they heard gun when one of them reached in and found a gun. The guy was already prone on the ground and effectively hogtied. How did they think he was going to get to his gun?

So disarm him, sure. That's appropriate in that situation. But that, apparently that led, and I've been involved with shootings where you get this kind of jumpy trigger finger, and they flinch and they shoot. But they shot some combination of one or two guns fired 10 bullets into this person and killed them. So, yeah, they're just now on administrative leave, only because we continue to talk about it because we're on the streets, because we're arguing. I mean, you've got such a heartless callous administration. Donald Trump once again, when he's not going after gold star families and besmirching the reputation and name and memory of somebody like John McCain, he hears about a Democratic member of Congress.

This is a guy who allegedly had two assassination attempts against him, right? So you think he'd be a little more empathetic. and he finds out that Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota while she was at a town hall had some crazy come up to her yelling shit

and had a brown liquid in a syringe and shot it out her and they reached Trump and his immediate reaction is no I don't think about her I think she's a fraud I really don't think about that

she probably had herself sprayed knowing her so disgusting and I've said this before and of course it'll be born out at the midterms. America will tolerate a lot in political discourse and will tolerate, obviously, a lot in who occupies the Oval Office. But a heartless president is not one of them. And that's what we're seeing. Now, the question is, politically, will the Democrats rally around a candidate and

candidates for the midterms and hammer home a message to make him pay politically a price for all the things that we watch. You can't, you can't run a campaign against him talking about the 500 craziest things that he's done in the last year, okay, because it's just too much. But you can take the top five, you can take the top 10, and you can run ads and in debates and in town halls and in messaging, discipline, messaging, you can make the point home. We don't expect our audience to have encyclopedic knowledge or have this data. is seared into their frontal lobe the way we on legal a. F. and Midas Dutch Dutch, because this is our business, this is our profession, the way we do. And the average voter

is not tuned in the way that our audience is. I mean, that's a shame. But the average voter is not tuned in the way we are. They'll learn it at the end during the campaign. They hear it here and there bits and pieces. But, you know, our audience is devoted and focused and and, and, and it reads up on this stuff and and what but the average the average person frankly doesn't and so we need that kind of discipline to to and that's the mistake we'll make hopefully we won't make hopefully midas will lead the way legal a half will lead the way you can't just fire out a fire hose of a thousand you know for every every one of his it would be it would be it would be tens of thousands of things that he's done said did he started in office. You can't, but we have to. So we've got a embarrassment of riches. We've got to

narrow it down and talk about, but this is one of them. This is the thing that sticks in people's mind, right? Alex Preti and his reaction to somebody harming, you know, when people die, he said nothing about the Minnesota law. We're always talking about Minnesota. Sorry, shout out to our friends and family and loved ones in Minnesota. Such horrendous things happening. there. The two lawmakers killed with their dog in the middle of the night. Donald Trump doesn't say anything. Neither does it in his administration. Nancy Pelosi's husband almost gets brained with a hammer by a deranged person looking to hang Nancy or interrogate her wearing a costume, whatever this crazy bullshit was. And it was like, oh, he's probably a gay sex looking for gay sex and

did it to himself. I mean, just this depravity. They'll say anything. And then, of course, the American people, have to respond to it. I want to talk about Epstein and developments there and then that new lawsuit a first of many. It'll probably open the floodgates related to those that have been what's the word unalived, killed, murdered, executed by the Trump administration in the Caribbean in dozens and dozens of boat strikes with 100 people. 100 people have lost their life. We've got the first lawsuit in Massachusetts. But we're at that point where we need to talk about some things together. hard truths we need your support we need your commitment to us legal a f youtube channel 10 12 new videos every day that i curate along with about a dozen contributors of ours the american civil liberties

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One last time. That's buy one, get one, 50% off when you head to the number three, d-a-y-blinds.com slash legal a.F. It's a little known fact that many years ago, the National Enquirer of all things, sought the Epstein files. Did you know that, Karen? I actually did not. Right. I did not know that either. I mean, way before, maybe Ford Midas Touch was even, you know, anything was even formed back in 2017, 2018, they were going after the administration, which was the Trump administration, and seeking the Epstein files. back then off of the reporting of what was happening and the deals that were being cut with Jeffrey Epstein. And they sued for it.

They made a FOIA demand, a Freedom of Information Act demand. And that case kicked around for a number of years. Nobody really paid attention to it, except they did. And they won at the federal court level in New York with an order. It wasn't really covered. with an order of turnover. I love learning something. Yeah, who covered this?

And then it was just kicking around in there, a little dusty lawsuit, until the survivor movement and Midas and legal A-F, we sort of bang it away about the Epstein files. But that case didn't get preempted because there's a new law. And they had their own obligations.

So they, the Trump administration appealed and it went all the way up to the Second Circuit. And they trot out this Department of Justice lawyer, and they basically start, she starts ignoring many of the things that we've heard about. For instance, that there is a, remember when Pam Bondi-Karon announced with great fanfare, that they were going to open up an investigation

into all the Democrats? who were listed in the Epstein files. Yep. And to bring those child sex predators to justice, ignoring the person she worked for, and the Republicans that were in there as well. And then, you know, she said it was going to be the Southern District of New York and Jay Clayton was, and then we didn't hear about it again, right? So it came up during oral argument at the Second Circuit because the lawyers for the National

Inquirer's Parent Company brought it up. Why don't you tell our audience about that Second Circuit hearing? I'm learning about this now for the first time. No, I'm saying, no, tell me. Oh, all right. So the Second Circuit was not buying most of what the Department of Justice was saying in their arguments. It looked very askanced at it. They may end up sending it back to see if the Epstein Transparency Act solves the problem.

But basically, because of what's going on with the Epstein Transparency Act, including a late-night filing last night by the Department of, justice, talk about one hand, not coordinating with the other hand, in which they filed an update with two judges. I don't even understand these updates. They keep filing these updates with Judge Engelmeyer and Judge Berman, who preside over the effectively closed Galane Maxwell case and the closed Epstein case. But they keep filing it because they ran to these judges originally about getting, quote, unquote, the files, and they keep updating them on the millions and millions and millions of documents and the hundreds and thousands of hours that are being spent and when they're going to finally get around, which is in the near term, whatever that means.

I saw all of that. I just didn't see this as the Second Circuit thing. No, no, I know, but I'm going to tie it back. So my point is they keep running to these judges. And my point is if they keep running to the judges, and the judges keep saying, we have very limited jurisdiction in these closed cases, I think their jurisdiction has been expanded by the constant letter writing to these same judges to inform them about the process. It's like telling the judges, you get, what do they just get to be, voyeurs?

They get, oh, this is very interesting about the process. But if they see something wrong with the process, have you ever met a federal judge that doesn't jump in when they see something wrong in a process they're being updated on? Exactly. Right. So that's going on. So if they're going to send it back to the judge handling FOIA,

what I don't want is him somehow, you know, punting it over to Engelmeyer or Berman. I mean, I would like the Second Circuit to make a ruling. which is they need to comply with FOIA. The Transparency Act doesn't vitiate the obligations under the Freedom of Information Act. It's been kicking around for years. They had a very funny back and forth on the Second Circuit today about Colleen Maxwell, who's now unrepresented. Remember that lawyer we kept talking about, David Oscar Marcus down in Miami of all places,

and now he was angling for a pardon? And then he watched her testify under oath with a deposition. She's going to be testifying again, apparently. Oh, my God, by herself. This time with no lawyer prep. This is going to be a high wire act. That guy that climbed the building in Singapore or Taipei, wait to you see Galane Maxwell without a lawyer prepping her go before Congress.

That's going to happen in the next couple of weeks. She has an audience of one that she's going to be speaking to. Absolutely. I love, oh, he's such a kind and gentleman. He never did anything to me. I never observed anything. That's exactly right. Her lawyer got out as soon as I think, as soon as he saw that she perjured herself.

He's like, I'm out. So she's writing her own from the jailhouse, like on toilet paper. She's writing her own writs of habeas corpus and whatever. And it came up in the second, like the toilet paper imagery, you know? Right. And the second circuit was like, isn't there a writ of habeas court? Like, isn't that case closed? Like, oh, there's a, she's filed a writ of habeas corpus.

And the judge has said to the Department of Justice, she's unrepresented. presented. What are the chances that she's actually going to get a new trial? Right. In other words, because if these courts have limited jurisdiction, because they get pointing to Engelmeyer and Berman, because Engelmeier and Berman don't want to do anything, even though we're imploring them. Full disclosure, Lisa Phillips. So I think so Jake Tapper tonight is a client of mine. We filed a declaration, an affidavit on her behalf to encourage Judge Engelmeier to appoint a independent monitor and special master. He quoted her. He quoted her affidavit approvingly in his order, but at the end, almost like bittersweet,

like, I see the problem, but I have limited jurisdiction here. I don't think you have limited jurisdiction, or they shouldn't be writing you as if you do have jurisdiction. That would sort of be my point. So that's, you know, I was maddening once again, without, with impunity, the Department of Justice telling a federal judge, you know, we got a lot of people, they're looking at it, and there's millions of pages. is why aren't they doing, two questions for you.

One is rolling production. Why aren't they rolling out as they finish 100,000 pages or documents every week as they finish? Why do we have to wait for this indeterminate period to get millions of pages when you and I do rolling productions all the time with bigger, even bigger numbers than some of these I've been involved with? Why do they get to not level to the American people? And then, I mean, it is having such an effect, Karen, on the Southern District of New York, that it's backing up into their other cases because more than half of the office is doing Epstein file review.

In fact, they're actually at the point where they're asking federal judges for extensions of time in other cases. Like, remember, Maduro is being prosecuted by the Southern District, but there are other cases. It just came up in a case involving another law firm that I won't mention, who. said to the judge, we can't get our required documents while we're on trial because half of that office is on Epstein duty. And the judge had a great line. The judge came back and said, I would, I would think they would find a way considering that Epstein is dead and this trial is going on right now to provide what they need to provide in this case. But you see the gurgling going on with the Southern District of New York, once proud prosecutor's office, you know, has everybody on Epstein duty.

Yeah, you have to wonder if the fact that they're not doing rolling production. And rolling production, really what it means is as you go through the documents, you turn them over, as you redact them, they have millions of documents. And that's what they, this letter that was filed said, that we've gone through millions of documents. We have almost the whole office working on it day and night. okay, and that we're going to have it in the coming weeks, right? No date certain, but kind of soon is the impression they're giving. But that means they've completed some. That means they've gone through and they've redacted out the victim's names

and the victim's addresses and their phone numbers and other personal identifying information that needs to come out. And rolling production would just mean as you get to it, as you redact it, as you put the black line through it, you then turn it over like they did with the first 6,000 documents that they, they turned over. And it makes you wonder, are they doing it like this so that they can dump a million documents out at once? And so that anything in there gets buried. Because otherwise, if they do it little by little, then we can digest it little by little. And it would also be a story every day.

Every time you go through the next 10,000 documents or whatever they would dump at a time, you could go through it and highlight things that are in each of them, right? That's what the media will do. If they do it all, at once. I wonder whether this is a concerted effort on the part of the Department of Justice to do it like that. And that way they can just bury them all and make it a one-day story instead of a long, dragged-out, multi-day story. You think it's going to backfire because no matter what, as the media and as people start to go through it, you're going to see every single day because it's going to take time to go through it, right? No one's going to read the million documents or two million documents. What people are going to do is you're going to do word searches.

and keyword searches. And that's how you go through millions of documents in discovery or in any other way. And you'll put in various spellings of the same thing and people's names and you'll look for things that way. And then you'll find certain key documents that will refer to other documents. And so then you'll go and look for those documents. And so it'll be a very interesting process. And so either way, I think if that's what they're doing it for, I don't think it's going to work. And I think people are going to be going through these for a long time, painting a story, painting a picture, and ultimately we'll finally get to see. And more importantly, the survivors will get to see, you know, the thing that struck me

the most hearing from the survivors is many of them don't know what happened, right? They know what happened to themselves, but they don't know the full picture. They don't know the full picture of what was going on and who was involved and how big this was, who financed this and who covered this up and who allowed this to. to happen and who was protected, et cetera, and who are all the other people involved? And so they want answers for themselves, because they want to know what was that and what happened.

I know what happened to me, but I need to know what this monster was that I was a part of. And so I think that in addition to the stories that people are going to be talked about, are going to be talking about these isolated stories, I think what's really going to come out ultimately is the full picture. And once they turn all of that over,

hopefully we'll finally start to get answers about what that picture is. Yeah, totally agree with all of that. Again, we can't allow, you know, we do. We in our audience can walk and chew gum at the same time. And so we need to continue to follow these stories and not let them off the hook, not let fatigue set in like, oh, Epstein again? Yeah, Epstein again. Because we have survivors and victims and people that have to be brought to justice.

And it's going to be done on this watch, on our watch. and we appreciate our audience for bringing the public outrage and outcry. And it works. It works. I assure you that if there was not a Midas touch, if there was not a legal AF, if we didn't have the drill down focus that we bring to stories and even sometimes break the stories and didn't have the audience, which gives us the street cred and the power.

When you link six million people together, seven million when you add legal AF together, and we're all vibrating on the same frequency, and we're speaking in one voice, at least on these major issues. It has an impact. We are bending metal. We are bending Donald Trump to our will,

not on every issue, not at every moment, not in the, maybe not at the velocity that we would like, but it is working. And as the ice underneath him gets, no pun intended, thinner and thinner and thinner, he will eventually drop through. There's only so many people you can throw under a bus. How big is this bus that Donald Trump is using? I mean, there's only so many aids you can fire. There's only so many people you can blame.

This unfortunately is not the last Alex Brenty for that this response, that this administration will have blood on. its hands for or that'll ask Renee good it just won't be there there's going to be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that have been disappeared if not thousands without due process without a rid of habeas corpus in dark dank detention centers who die in custody who are abused who die on the streets in first amendment protests this is this is not the last first amendment protest against the trump administration this is this is we this is we this is we we we we we we we we we we we We are in progress, right?

This opposition is televised, is body-canned, is videoed, is on YouTube. And we see it because we're so close to our audience. You know, when status coup is on the streets of Minnesota, one degree and minus one degree weather surrounded by other patriots and Americans, reporting guerrilla style from the streets, we see how our audience is responding to that. that and saying, we are with you, what else can we do? And wait till the spring rolls around. And there are another hands off, no Kings Day, Law Day, 5501 protests. You think the last round

at 5 and 10 million, that was nothing. What did you see the next round as we get closer to the midterms? And so there is a importance. This is not, I guess is what I'm trying to say, is this is not wasted time for people on YouTube in case your family gives you grief. If you haven't been able to get them over here, this is not wasted time on YouTube, okay? This is not like a cat video or some sort of crazy dance craze on TikTok, okay? This is important that we are here together in chat, in community, in postings, you, you learning from us and us learning from you. and together that power that comes from six million and more,

because there's people that aren't subscribed, so to speak, you know, double, triple those numbers. It's a big number against an administration that, frankly, barely won the presidency. Popak, some of us actually like cat videos, okay? No, I'm kidding. You know, the thing that struck me about Minnesota in terms of numbers is that there's so many people out on the streets, and it's below zero.

I mean, it is frigid, freezing. It's there. I saw today about 10 people have died in New York from being exposed to the cold, and these are people who are out there for hours and hours and hours to protest. That says something to me. When the weather, when the frost chills

and the weather gets better, I agree with you. We are going to see numbers like we've never seen before. And it's perfect timing with the midterms. And I'm glad everybody's here. Karen, I'm glad you're here. More importantly, I'm glad that you and I got to spend some quality time together since I left New York. That's becoming rare.

You saw my wife again. You hadn't actually did in the same room with my wife in about five years. It was great. And you spent quality time as Aunt KFA with our daughter, Francesca. Do you want to talk about the boat, the lawsuit? Oh, crap. I'm like signing off. Okay.

Sorry, folks. Yeah. So there are a bunch of, you want to do it? You do it. You start. No, no, no. I know you. I know you so much now that I know when you're not pivoting to the next topic. Right. And right, everybody. All right. So look, we've got what we expect, Karen, right? You've got 100 people that have been disappeared permanently by the Trump administration in Caribbean, you know, executions in boat strikes, you know. And using that term turns me off because it's like it minimizes what's happened. You mean the violation of constitutional and international rights of people without any due process because Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump decided to push a button along with Marco Rubio. I mean, that is, it's not a boat strike. It's taking away someone's life.

They were, they're not all or any, as far as I know, drug smugglers. They certainly weren't smuggling fentanyl in the middle of the Caribbean. and two Trinidadian men who were fishermen and their families for the estates of these deceased men filed in the District of Massachusetts under a death on the high seas laws and international law for civil. These are civil cases to obtain justice in the form of compensation for it. And it's the first of many. The case just started. So there's no injunction hearing we won't be talking about. it's a case that the government is going to have to respond to. And what are they going to do?

Come forward with evidence that these two Trinidadians were smuggling drugs. I doubt it. There'll probably be a secret settlement that they'll try to do and quietly put this away. But I expect many of the hundred that have been killed will come forward, maybe with these lawyers that are representing them, and they should. But this is, again, this is the crack in the glass ceiling of cases that we're going to start seeing, as I said at the top of this podcast against the Trump administration and its violation of civil liberties and civil rights,

international law and the Constitution, because we just got the first wave of like 500 cases, 700 cases, but this next wave of cases off of the things that we're seeing, every time we see somebody blinded, beaten, maimed, tortured, or killed by an ICE office, there's going to be a lawsuit or Border Patrol, or National Guard, there's going to be a lawsuit behind it, following it, and then we'll follow those and bring attention to that, right? Yeah, and what I like about this lawsuit is it's going to really, I think, shine a bright light

on the pretext that Trump administration uses to justify these things, right? It's the war on drugs, so we have to, drugs are killing Americans, so we have to do this on this war on drugs, right? Well, on the one hand, that's how they also justified the Maduro arrest, right, because of that. But then they pardon the president of Honduras, who was actually convicted of smuggling drugs. And I think the fact that this is all pretextual and this is nothing to do with drugs, I think, is going to all come out through these lawsuits, through discovery, unless they settle, of course. And I do think that it's great that the families are bringing this. And look, the complaint brought by the ACLU

that the families are bringing, it talked about how these were fishermen and these weren't drug smugglers and what nice people these were and they were just minding their own business. And you can't just go and blow up a boat because you want to. We're not at war.

These were civilians. And the fact of the matter is, the legal commentary around this that I thought was so interesting was, look, not only is the illegal, not only can you not do this, this is a premeditated intentional, you know, strike of a, of a, of a boat. Even if it was, if you were at war, even if we were at war, you're still not allowed to do that against civilians. And so I think it's going to be very, very hard for them to justify this as, as they

have been trying to say, as this was targeted, designated narco-terrorists involved in, you know, bringing drugs to the U.S. Because, and I think they're going to have a hard time justifying that when they are acting differently in other areas as well. So they're going to have a hard time justifying this. It's going to be very interesting lawsuit through discovery. And I think you're right, because so far, we don't know a lot about, we just see the videos that the Hollywood style videos that they like to put out of a boat being struck by a bomb.

and I think we're going to learn a lot through these lawsuits. So I think it's great that these are being brought. Absolutely. I thank you for catching that I had forgotten to do that last story. So I'm glad everybody's here. We're running a little bit late today, folks. I appreciate everybody being here with us. Support Legal AF on YouTube, on Substack, on the podcast.

And, of course, this Saturday, we will be with Ben My Salas, catching you up on the week's breaking legal and political news. So until then, Karen Friedrich Nifalo and Michael Poppock, shout out to the Midas Mighty and Illegal A-Fers.