Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF Full Episode 1/7/2025

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

Michael Popok and Karen Friedman Agnifilo on the top rated Legal AF podcast, break down a night of legal chaos and accountability. We examine the inhumane murder of a woman in Minnesota by ICE and the Trump administration’s disturbing response. A federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia questions why Lindsey Halligan is impersonating a U.S. Attorney, setting a judicial trap that could lead to serious sanctions or disbarment. We expose the mystery of 3.2 million missing Epstein files with no explanation. And on the eve of the January 6 anniversary, Donald Trump seeks $6.2 million in reimbursement from Georgia for a criminal case dismissed only after multiple lawyers around him pled guilty. All this and more—power, impunity, and accountability—on tonight’s Legal AF. IQ Bar: Text LEGALAF to 64000 to get 20% off all IQBAR products, plus FREE shipping. Message and data rates may apply. Arey: Slow the growth of greys and get 15% off by using code LEGALAF at https://Arey.com Sundays for Dogs: Get 30% your first 3 orders of Sundays. Go to https://sundaysfordogs.com/LEGALAF30 or use code: LEGALAF30 at checkout. Subscribe: @LegalAFMTN Legal AF Substack: https://michaelpopok.substack.com/20off Subscribe to the Legal AF by MeidasTouch podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/legal-af-by-meidastouch/id1580828595 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 The Influence Continuum: 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 Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You're on the midweek edition of LegalAF with Karen Friedman, Ignifalo, and Michael Popock here on the Midas Touch Network. It's very difficult in this time to set our docket for what we're going to talk about. Because with this rogue out of control and lawless presidency, things happen at the minute, at the moment. Even while we're on the air sometimes, court orders are dropped or new issues happen. But we'll do our best to curate for you the things on this Wednesday that we think are important for you to know. Of course, we're going to start off with talking about the tragedy in Minnesota. Soda, with Renee Nicole Good being shot in the face multiple times by ICE agents.

They say there's two sides to a story, but I don't really see it. Although Donald Trump has quickly sided with ice, it sounds like this was an observer, activist who was trying to get out of harm's way, and as she tried to back out and back up the police, as she was moving away from them, shot her in the face and killed her. And she was there to observe ice. And this is what happens when you put ICE and National Guard and law enforcement and hyped up emotions all in the same place at the same time. Tragedies will result. It looks like we just had one in Minnesota.

As we came on the air, Donald Trump filed a motion in Georgia a day after Jan 6th, asking for six. $1.2 million be awarded to him from the Fulton County DA office's budget to reimburse him for attorney's fees for a case that was ultimately dismissed, not because he was found innocent, but because the Supreme Court in Georgia didn't like the fact that the prosecutor had a relationship with someone in her office. Lindsay Halligan in the news again for all the wrong reasons. We now have our sixth judge in the Eastern District of Virginia, this time a Trump appointed one, Judge Novak, who is not happy that Lindsay Halligan continues to have a badge that says U.S. attorney, signs pleadings that says U.S. attorney, and is impersonating and masquerading as a U.S. attorney. Five other judges, including the chief judge in Eastern District, have questioned members of the Department of Justice as to why this still. happens and have expressed their displeasure with the fact that having been found to be

illegally and illicitly appointed back in November the 24th by a senior federal judge, Lindsey Halligan is still signing pleadings, appearing in cases, and running the office as the U.S. attorney. And we have a new order we'll go over in detail that sets a trap for Lindsay Halligan. I think she needs to resign rather than comply directly with this order. But we'll talk about that in a moment. And then we've got what else missing Epstein files all over again, the shapeshifting number. First it was, well, we found a million extra documents after Midas touch. And our podcast partner, Ben Misalas, pointed out one of the documents of the 12,000 of that have been produced and said, what about this million that this guy, this Yahoo's talking about? And

the Maxwell case that hasn't been reviewed so we thought oh shit it's a million it's probably 10 million and when we're talking about the numbers just to keep apples to apples here this is documents not pages and it looks like the average document is about 10 pages so if we say they produce 12,000 documents that's about 120 000 pages that's just 0.06 percent of the five million that they admitted have not been reviewed a week later during the holidays todd blanche said five point two million. But then in a new filing, just a couple of days ago, they lowered the number by almost half. Why? How? Who trusts the Department of Justice? Where'd the missing documents go? We'll talk about all of that and a lot more here on the first issue of midweek after the new year. Hi, Karen.

Hi, Michael Popak. How are you? I'm Karen McIffalo. I'm doing fantastic. Let's dive in. So as we came on the air, we have this tragedy that's been unfolding. late in the day in Minnesota. And now you've got the political battle that Donald Trump wanted. You've got Tim Walls, who, because of his own personal decision-making, probably related to some sort of fraud issues going on in Minnesota, has said he's not going to run for a third term in Minnesota, which is not that unusual. No, like very few governors get a third-term period, let alone a third term in Minnesota. But I, thought that was going to be the story coming on the air, coming on the air. But then it became

ICE in operations in Minnesota. We know that's one of Donald Trump's favorite targets. You know, there's a congresswoman who's from Minnesota, that's Muslim. And a tragedy occurred. And instantly, Donald Trump, Christy Noem, and others took sides and sided with ICE and said it was an attack on ice. And the state representatives who have seen the video and have researched what happened on the ground, immediately said ice was at fault and that this was a tragedy that should not have unfolded. What have you picked up about it and where do you think things should go in terms of the investigation about what happened? Now you've got all the social media postings, but there's a person who's dead. There are the state looking into crimes. There's civil

cases related to her loss. Lay it out for our audience. First of all, it's so tragic and so horrific that this poor woman who's a mother of a young child who was at school at the time was killed because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And luckily there's video and I think the video is what is going to be illustrative of what exactly happened. And, you know, Asha Rangappa, who's a former FBI agent, Yale law professor and somebody who's a frequent commentator, she posted something on Blue Sky that says law enforcement officers cannot use deadly force against a fleeing person unless they have a reasonable belief that the individual poses a danger to others, e.g. they know the person is armed. If in a vehicle, the person must be

threatening to use deadly force with the vehicle or other means. So that's from the DOJ policy, But DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, which is what ICE is under, has also, she posted, it says fleeing subjects, deadly force shall not be used solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing subject. So I think that this is going to be a really, really interesting, to say the least, for the Trump administration to justify this. This is a woman in a car. It looks like she was, frankly, from the videos that I've seen, it looks like she was trying to get out of the way, you know, that she was blocking, and they were telling her to get out of the way,

and she was trying. And then they started telling her to get out of the car, and she was just trying to get out of the way, and they shot and killed her. So from what it looks like right now, it looks pretty bad. And I think there's going to be an investigation into what happened here. And, I mean, in normal times, the agents would have, frankly, be worried that they could be prosecuted for something like this. I don't know what this, you know, I think we can all predict what this administration would do.

But this doesn't even seem to be remotely within the bounds of legal justification or what law enforcement is permitted to do while they are, or ICE or Department of Homeland Security or any federal agent is permitted to. to do. You really can't do that. I mean, obviously, if the facts come out that she was trying to run them over with the car, that's different because you're using your vehicle as a deadly weapon or a dangerous instrument. But it doesn't appear that that's at all what happened. And frankly, from what's coming out so far about the victim, again, she's just a mom like anybody else with a kid in school and who happens to be in Minnesota and potentially going to see what going on at the, you know, where ICE is there. And look, this is one of the dangers with having federal law enforcement come in and do these unnecessary, hostile, aggressive actions in cities

and locations that, frankly, don't want them. And Minnesota is one of the places that does not want them enforcing there and does not want this, because this is the kind of thing that can happen. Absolutely. Her mother, her mother is quoted as saying, that Renee was one of the kindest people I've ever known. She was extremely compassionate. She's taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving, and affectionate. She was an amazing human being. And it is a tragedy of the Trump administration's amped up ICE officers is what it looks like that has taken the life. And it's just the depravity and the lack of heart and caring by the Trump administration on full display again to immediately.

immediately side with ICE as some sort of attack on ice rather than on the death of this person. It's going to be up to the lawyers, and there are many fine lawyers in Minnesota that handle cases like this, cases of government and police brutality, who are going to have to bring the truth out through their own forensics, through their own testimony, and the like, and get whatever justice is possible. There's no real justice for the killing of this 37-year-old mother. But it's going to be up to the civil law enforcement. I'm sure the state of Minnesota's Bureau of Investigation, the MBI, I guess, or, yeah, the MBI, yeah, we'll have to get involved, you know. And then Donald Trump will do everything he can and make it political because they'll never admit defeat.

They'll never admit they did anything wrong. You know, they're constantly going after Tim Walls. They're constantly going after the Attorney General there. going to try to get Keith Ellison on, who we've interviewed before to talk about these issues soon. But you're exactly right. The perfect storm to have a terrible event like this happen is when you put ill-trained ICE and other personnel who are not used to working with the public. Don't do crowd control. Don't know how to de-escalate, you know, whether it's law. enforcement, ICE, National Guard, Army, or whatever, and you put them with the public, then you add to it, amped up emotions over certain things. And in this case, perhaps somebody

driving the wrong way, you could easily drive into one of these stops the way that they're set up in these states. And then, you know, your adrenaline takes over, your heart is racing. You can hear the blood rushing in your brain and your head. You're not thinking clearly. You're being barked out by people who have weapons pointed at you, and bad things happen, as they just did. And so we're going to have to make sure that justice is done for Renee Nicole Good, and that this administration is brought to heal as well. They're out of control around the world, and they're certainly taking it out on Americans. May I remind them that she is an American citizen. She's not a migrant.

She's not Trenda, Ragua. she's just a nice lady that lived in Minnesota, okay? And you owe her and you owe the rest of America something for her. I mean, she didn't intend her death to be a cause celeb, but it is now. And so we have to get behind it, and great things have to come in her name. And we'll do our part here on Legal A.F. as well. And then you got the depravity of it all. I want to talk about the Jan 6th hearing, too.

We ran it on Legal A.F. There actually is Kwambi Raul from Illinois, and he, along with dozens of other people, testified at the Jan 6 Oversight Committee hearing yesterday. It was really getting the old gang back together again of the Jan 6 committee. You got Betty Thompson. You got Jamie Raskin, Kinsinger, all together. But then a lot of witnesses who testified as well. And some people might be thinking, well, what's the purpose? The purpose is we can't just let Donald Trump kind of get away with insurrection and rewrite the history books and try to distract America from his scandalous administration and criminal administration because, you know, he's busy trying to, you know, take over Venezuela for its oil fields or Greenland for its strategic purposes.

and he just gets to put Jan 6 in his rearview mirror. No, no. And if he's going to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Army or of the Declaration of Independence, we get to commemorate things that are demonstrative of how rogue and illegal and immoral Donald Trump is. So Jan 6th committee hearings, we'll talk about now, Jack Smith last week, eight hours, nine hours of testimony, this all matters.

What was your takeaway from the Jan 6th hearing? What did you find to be moving? And again, we had that split screen, proud boys marching at the exact same time, mobilized by Donald Trump and MAGA, the Trump administration changing the website as the hearings were going on to kind of rewrite history. We know he's already been erasing his. history at the Smithsonian, as it relates to the Jan 6th, the insurrection. What was your takeaway from the power of the hearings?

I think, first of all, it was so important that on January 6th, this moment is commemorated, that it's not forgotten, that we do not allow Trump to whitewash and gloss over the events of that day. You know, what I did to commemorate the day was I actually watched, there's like an amazing, I think it's like 40-minute video that Midas posted that's never been seen video before of an individual who had a camera and somehow for more than 30 minutes filmed this moment of the mob trying to get into Capitol. And it was so chilling, bone chilling.

And in a way that the hearings can never quite do because it's a hearing, but you watch that video and you realize how violent, how lawless, how terrifying that must have been, you see people in full riot gear, law enforcement, capital law enforcement, screaming, bloody, crying. It was terrifying and you see the crowd in unison just using the full force of this crowd moving together backward and forward, backward and forward to try and push, use the momentum of the giant crowd to push their way into the Capitol and what these true heroes from the Capitol police and law enforcement were doing to protect the Capitol. And just seeing those videos, watching the hearing, hearing the stories, Trump can do whatever he wants, he can call this a beautiful day. I don't even know the terms he uses to, you know, calls these people patriots, peaceful protests.

You watch these videos and it will remind people and remind you exactly what it was. And it's literally the embodiment of what Trump is doing to the world right now. He's using brute force to basically take over countries, depose countries' leaders, steal oil from Venezuela. He's going to try to steal Greenland. He's going to basically alienate us from all of NATO. And he just, you know, the people when they say, say, when they protest and say no kings and there are people who say, oh, that's an exaggeration. We don't have kings. He is certainly acting as if he's a king and a dictator all at once.

And so it's just, it's just a, Jan 6 was a window into what we're living in on a bigger global scale today that people just want to, by brute force, take what they want, whether, you know, whether it belongs to them or not. And it is just disgusting and disgraceful. And I think we can't forget about it. We have to remember it, and we have to have it color exactly how we view everything that is happening right now in the world, because this is literally a fight for our democracy is what we're in right now.

I am just appalled every single day when I see what Trump is doing as a continuation, trying to steal that election through force and brute force and then through lies and trying to completely gaslight the American people who can see the videos for themselves of what was happening. And that's what he's doing with every other move that he's doing right now all across the world, whether it's, you can, you can dislike Maduro, you can think he's a terrible person, and at the same time also see that basically saying this is part of a a war on drugs, that this is a complete lie. This is nothing more than a grab for oil.

And I am worried about Cuba. I'm worried about Greenland. And I'm worried about all the other places that Trump is essentially saying the quiet part out loud. And, you know, we are just, we are in a precarious place. And as bad as Jan 6 was, frankly, that was nothing compared to what's happening at the moment. Yeah, I agree. I mean, the whole, you have to continue to speak to history and to speak to today's voter about what happened on Jan 6th. It's important, especially when you have, I mean, would there be a Jan 6th commemorative oversight hearing if Donald Trump had not been reelected? Maybe, probably not. It really is a counterweight to Donald Trump. I mean, many things right now.

exist because they are a counterweight to Donald Trump. I have a working theory that Pope Leo, the first American Pope from Chicago, who was a leftist, a Marxist, a man of the cloth, was chosen by the conclave on purpose because of the existence of Donald Trump. Yeah, there are many things that are that exist, that would not exist, but for Donald Trump.

So it's important that while he's in the White House and continues to be as lawless and rogue and out of control as he is with nothing really other than the public, the crowds, and the courts, except for the Supreme Court at this juncture, to hold him back, that we hold events like that, that people come and testify again, like day nine, effectively, of the Jan Sixth Committee. They did eight full days. This was like the ninth day. But very, very important. And then, you know, of course, you know, I didn't want to, I didn't want to undersell, you know, the Venezuela attack. We all see it for what it is. It is, has nothing to do with freedom being on the march has nothing to do with installing a democracy where there once was a dictatorship

and has everything to do with kicking a dictatorship in the nuts, decapitating its immediate leader, and then having the remnants of that dictatorship, which is illegal and illicit and not for the will of the people, play ball with big oil, which is controlling Donald Trump and Marco Rubio about their interest. You see big oil popping up today with We're owed billions of dollars from Venezuela from having our assets nationalized 20 years ago. So now we're using the weight of the U.S. military, putting military people in harm's way in order to do the bidding of big oil. Now, I know some people are going to write, Popak, you're naive. We've always had business and the industrial military complex dominating our foreign and military policy.

And that is true. But this is so transparently on display right now. And Marco Rubio took a lot of umbrage with that there is no plan to control or run while they're busy trying to chase after two of 14 tankers. They made a big deal out. We caught the two, one with a Russian escort with a sub. What about the other 14 that made it out? But again, we are just trying to take a straw and suck the oil out.

of Venezuela and then turn our sights while he's got momentum, which is what he did in the first two days of his original term with his executive orders to now turn his sites to Greenland. He's an idiot when it comes to Greenland. There's plenty of reporting out there now that since a 1952 agreement that was signed by Truman or Eisenhower, we have a lot of say militarily over Greenland, even though it's independent and a protectorate of our NATO ally Denmark. So we didn't have to do all of this. We could have gotten effectively what we wanted by way of this agreement, which Donald Trump probably doesn't even know about, and learned about it like we did today, but it's been on

the books for, you know, since 1952. No, he's got to do the, let's attack, let's put NATO over my knee and break it in half. Let's attack an ally. Let's threaten them. Let's spend taxpayer dollars to buy them. You don't have to do any of that. Just go read the 1952 agreement, figure out what you want strategically, and that's it. You're done. We don't want to own Greenland and the people there and pay them. They're getting paid from Denmark. We don't want that to happen. But this is what when a dictator is on the march and his own Congress is unwilling to stop. stop him for their own political gain, this is what you got. And now we've got to see what the United States Supreme Court's going to do about it. And just a little bit of a headline or a heads up before the break here, Friday, one or two major Supreme Court decisions are about to be dropped. We've been waiting on the tariff decision. It's about ready. You know, my timer, my oven timer has gone off. It's about ready. I think it could be on Friday. And we've been waiting on the voting rights

Act, the Calais case out of Louisiana, which is also due, which is also overdue. They've announced their drop in their opinions on Friday. Could be both. Could be one. What about right citizenship? Could, uh, well, they haven't, they haven't, um, that's, that has to be briefed and argued. That hasn't been, that hasn't been briefed and argued. In other words, they've said they're going to take it, but it's not done yet. It's not out of the can yet. So, no, that we would have covered it on legal, legal a. F had we had an oral. argument on birthright citizenship. But there are major hearings this month. Lisa Cook fighting for her

life and for hours on the Federal Reserve to stop Donald Trump's takeover of the Federal Reserve and the Open Markets Committee that sets interest rates. That's this month. Transgender athletes in schools is this month starting next week. So we have a lot to cover. And so Legal AF is the place to do it. We have a great announcement for Legal AF. As people may know, the American Civil Liberties Union is joining to give regular commentary and videos by their lawyers about the cases that they're fighting the 130, 140 cases at the American Civil Liberties Union is fighting every day for democracy. They're joining, I think, next week with their first video.

And between the ACLU and Democracy Forward, led by Sky Perryman, who I had the pleasure of interviewing, it's going up now or went up a little bit earlier on LegalAF YouTube channel, and the Democratic Attorneys General. Hopefully, we'll one day include your buddy, Michael. What's his name? Dougherty. That whole group represents three quarters of the major lawsuits against the Trump administration, and they're all going to be on Legal AF continuing to brief our audience.

So now is the time, become a member of the Legal AF community. You can become a paid member of the YouTube channel. We have a new group. of work related to that and things that are paid members will be entitled to like bonus interviews and bonus videos that are up now. We've got the legal AF substack. Almost 3,000 people became paid members from the holiday times till now. We're running a sale, 20% off in honor of Jan 6th and the people that tried to hold

the line and trying to rein in Donald Trump. So 20% off annual membership on legal AF substack as well. and then of course we've got our pro-democracy sponsors some of which have been with us oh i don't know five six years and some that are new but the great thing about them is they know what our audience is all about we vibrate on the same frequency and they want to be here they know what we're saying and generally and they want to be here with it so let's take our first break new year new chew for your dog or the dog you love like family if you're upgrading what goes into your body in 2026 why are so many dogs still eating mystery gibble meet sundays

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Most people cover grays, but you can actually slow their progression. For a limited time, our listeners get 15% off by using code legal AF at Array. Just head to A-R-E-Y.com and use code LegalA-F, and you're all set. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. Welcome back, and thank you for being such fervent and supporters of independent media and independent commentary by your support of Legal A-F and this podcast and the Legal A-F ecosystem that we've described. So, Georgia, to help Donald Trump several months ago, passed the statute that allows people who were, I don't know, prosecuted unfairly to try to get attorney's fees.

It was made for Donald Trump, obviously, by, you know, it's a red state, you know, even though we try to make it purple and blue, it's a red state, the legislature's red, the governor's red, and so they passed it, and it kind of slipped under the radar. We were like, well, that's interesting, but now we know why. right on time, Steve Sadeau, the local lawyer in Georgia for Donald Trump, filed an application or a motion to be supported, I guess, by an affidavit showing that the lawyers there, and I find this to be hard to believe, the lawyers in Steve Sado and a couple of other lawyers spent $6.2 million to defend that case that never went to trial. Seems a little high. And again, if they're entitled to fees, it's generally reasonable. Fees, if they're entitled to fees at all.

But, you know, leave it to Donald Trump, doesn't care about the optics. Basically, the day of Jan 6th, he wants to remind everybody and step on the news cycle by filing a fee application on purpose for $6.2 million in fee recovery. He's also doing the same thing in the United States government, where he's suing his own government and us as taxpayers for many multiples of that for the Jack Smith prosecutions. That is wending its way through the Federal Tort Claims Act process, and then we'll eventually become a lawsuit where it'll be Donald Trump versus the United States of America while he's

the president of the United States of America. What you make about all that? You may want to remind people, Karen, because you were very, very passionate, as we all should be, about the Fawney Willis take down by the Supreme Court in Georgia and by even the trial judge there for her doing nothing more than maybe a human resource violation of dating in the workplace certainly didn't impact the evidence against Donald Trump, the RICO conspiracy, or the facts. And just to remind our audience, many people pled guilty to that same indictment.

Ken Chess, lawyers were representing Donald Trump. Ken Chesboro pled guilty. Jenna Ellis, guilty. Sidney Powell, guilty. Why don't you take it from there? It's disgusting. It's one more example of Donald Trump trying to steal money from taxpayers or from average people, because that's where it's coming from, whether it's in his DOJ case where he's suing the federal government, who will, of course, settle with him, right? Because he controls the federal government. He controls the DOJ. So they're going to settle with them. And as you said, this statute in Georgia, I'm sure, was passed specifically for him, because normally you can't do that in criminal cases.

Normally, prosecutors enjoy prosecutorial immunity, and you can't sue them, and you can't sue them civilly for just doing their job. And so this is very much another way that Donald Trump is gonna get rich off the backs of average Americans and the people of Georgia, the people of the United States of America. And when he goes in with his chainsaw and Doge,

whatever happened to Doge, I don't even know exist anymore, trying to save all this money. That is just all fake and just not true. He is going to steal money from your and my pockets every way that he can, just like he's going to steal oil from Venezuela, and he's going to steal minerals from Greenland, which is why, for example, I think is why he wants to take Greenland in addition to, it's not about the military, because as you said Popok, he could just, because of that 1951 agreement, he could put, put more military there just by asking, I think he wants to steal the natural resources

of Greenland as well. And I think you're gonna see not just his friends and family getting rich, but himself getting rich off of that, just like he's doing, and he shows you every single day as what he's doing, and by getting these attorney's fees. So, I mean, it's just, it's appalling, and it's disgraceful. And, you know, the Georgia prosecution was a legitimate prosecution. I think there was something like, what was it, 20,

20-something defendants that she brought the sweeping RICO indictment. If you remember, it was the phone call to the Secretary of State for Georgia, Brad Raffensberger, that Trump called and said, find me 11,780 votes. And, you know, that was, there was no doubt with the fake elector scheme and everything else that went on there, that was a sweeping RICO indictment. And I think if that case ever went to trial, it would have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt beyond any doubt. As you said, several people already pled guilty. And frankly, that was not dismissed on the merits. That was not dismissed because he was not guilty. And frankly, there was never

even an opportunity to do a presidential immunity analysis because some of that was clearly a campaign, Donald Trump as a candidate, not him as acting in any way as president. And there was no way that that they could even get to that point because of this complete distraction over a workplace relationship, which is all this was. This was not a relationship. There's not a conflict of interest with Fannie Willis having a relationship with, say, defense attorney or a witness or a judge. So those things could be conflicts of interest. This was two very senior people, not a subordinate type of relationship. These were two very senior people having a consensual adult relationship. And somehow that became, you know, unmarried. This was not an affair. This was not in any way scandalous and certainly nothing compared to what Donald Trump has been found liable for doing and has been accused of doing by many, many, many, many women. So the double and triple standard here for a woman prosecutor, a woman of color prosecutor, it's just, it was a whole disgrace on that watching that, watching that, you know, pearl clutching takedown that everyone did of her, oh, my God, you know, she had an affair.

She didn't have an affair. She had a relationship with a colleague, which is, frankly, that's where I met my husband at work. It happens. Nothing wrong with it. And we've been married almost 30 years. So I think it's just disgraceful what happened to her. And the fact that now he's going to get attorney's fees or try to get attorney's fees, which is literally taking money from the people of Georgia, is just really appalling to me. And I hope somebody fights that.

and I hope he doesn't get a dime. Yeah, I mean, I think we'll have to fight it in the streets in Georgia. And hopefully these are things that are wake-up calls. Yeah, the midterms can't come soon enough. No, I mean, as people, as people, these are all badges. In our business, we call it badges of fraud. These are like all badges of dishonesty, the stink of dishonesty, lawlessness, immorality. that is, I mean, he's just, if he was a military general, and these were just metals and badges and ribbons related to his campaigns, that he would just be, he'd be a 12-star general for how corrupt he is. But people have to remember this, which the polls say they are. I mean, I'm fascinated. I can't wait to see the polls following Venezuela and Greenland, which I don't think, first of all, MAG is like, what the F? We voted you in for America first to cut back on spending.

and to put the money into America. Spending is up 8% over Biden's last year, not down. That's a problem. He might have, he hasn't wrapped up wars. He's started them bombing Iran, right? What he's doing to foment the war and keep it prolonged in Russia, Ukraine. Same thing, Gaza, Israel, now attacking Venezuela, which is now a night. You know, there's that weird split screen, unfortunately, about what happened in Venezuela.

You know, I live in Miami where there's a large Venezuelan population and a Venezuelan American population, and there was immediate celebration, you know, Viva Trump and hooray and down with Maduro. I get it. But then they woke up the next morning, literally, to realize that freedom was not being on the march, that their chosen leaders in Edmundo Gonzalez and Maria Carina Machado were being sidelined intentionally by the Trump administration because they obviously wouldn't play ball on the oil deal and the oil play here for Donald Trump. And then it was like this deflation when they got, when they talked to people in Venezuela who

were in country and they're like, we sleep with one eye open. You know, we have a suppression in the streets by the existing regime against protests and First Amendment expression. And all you have is little Marco Rubio saying, we're in control, we have a plan. I don't know why people think we don't have a plan. Yeah, I get the plan. The plan is destabilize Venezuela, cut off its oil supply to Cuba so that Marco Rubio can be a hero because he's always wanted to solve the Cuban problem, which is his ancestral home of his family, and then use that as a Springboard. At the same time, apparently the Dunrow Doctrine just consists of, we control everything in the Western Hemisphere. And whatever happens out there, Europe, Europe, Asia, you're on your own. We'll fight

here. We'll go after our allies here. We'll do things that are illegal and against international law and conventions. And you do you, Putin. You do you, China. in your spheres of influence. So now we've established fears of influence rather than being the policemen of the world and the leader of the free world. We are no longer, that's not even a phrase you hear people use about Donald Trump.

It doesn't even use it about himself. It was until Trump became president a common sobriquet or title for the president of the United States, the leader of the free world. But he doesn't want that. He's not making, Venezuela free. He's making the corrupt regime be more responsive to his corrupt instincts

and let big oil have their way on taxpayer dollars to benefit Donald Trump and his family, ultimately, as we always know. What's ironic, Popak, is that by what you just said about how he arrested Maduro and his wife, but then left the vice president in place to take over. Everybody. That, right, let the whole administration to take over. What that's going to do is that's going to undermine the prosecution here in New York, because if he was a legitimate ruler, he will have sovereign immunity. And by not putting in, if he had put in the democratically elected team and basically said this was never a legitimate administration,

and, you know, but he's basically anointing them and anointing the Maduro regime. And by doing it that way, he is, well, Trump doesn't realize he, I think he's hurting the prosecution of Maduro who could go free under sovereign immunity. I agree. I mean, I did a hot take about the head of state immunity, which is similar to the immunity that Trump enjoys. And the more they talk about oil, oil, and oil, and less about drug trafficking and machine guns, the more Maduro's team can, and I'm not trying to get Maduro out. I'm just laying out what could happen, different than Manuel, Noriega, and Panama, 36 years ago. Here, it's not regime change. And the more you don't talk about the indictment, which they almost never do now, that's Pambon. He's not there.

FBI's not there. This is a CIA Department of Defense operation along with big oil. And so Maduro can say, this isn't about my criminality. I didn't, this is about they wanted to align Venezuela's political interests with the United States. And then they just play clip, clip, clip, clip, rubio, rubio, rubio, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. That's all they do. And they go, this is about. This is about me being the head of the state.

This is not about me. Now, if the government is then going to have to come forward with its proof and it's evidence that he lined his pockets and used narco-terrorism to put money in his pockets, and maybe they have the goods on Maduro in terms of the money trail of the sale of cocaine and ending up in the pockets of Maduro and all of that. But, you know, Trump should be careful about what he says. They can't stop talking.

I mean, they just have loggeria of the mouth, right? They can't stop talking about the mission, the accomplishment, but then it always slips out on Sunday morning talk shows or in press conferences when it's not about freedom. It's not about that. It's about oil. And as you said, I think that helps Maduro in his defense. When we come back, I want to talk to you, Karen, about something that's near and dear to your heart, somebody who's a prosecutor or is acting like they're one. We have the continued impersonation of a U.S. attorney by Lindsay Halligan, and judges in the Eastern District of Virginia are tired of it, and they are pissed off.

And now we've got a Trump judge, Judge Novak, who's done something about it. So we'll tell people how we got in this mess and what judges are doing to try to get us out of it. And then I want to touch on the Epstein files and the fact that, see, leave that headline up for a minute. See, even that headline's wrong. If the denominator is 2 million, then it's 1%. If the denominator is 5.2 million documents is what they said a week ago, that it's 0.05% or less. And that's our issue here.

Where are the missing documents? Because last week, during the holidays, Todd Blanche posted on social media and let it be known that they found not 1 million, they found 5.2 million documents, which represents about 50 million pages that they needed to review with 400 lawyers around the clock, right? But then when they made a filing in front of Judge Engelmeyer in New York, the number shrank in a week. Why? How? Where did they go? We're going to talk about all that when we come back from our break. In the meantime, if you like what's happening on legal AF, you want to be here for, you know, you see these developing stories.

It's it's at, we can't, you can barely keep up. We got 12 hours. hours of programming a day on Legal A.F. Another half a dozen on Midas Touch on the lost side. And I do two substacks lives a day at 12 p.m. and 745 p.m. And there we're barely able to keep up. But we want to bring this to you. We need you in our audience. Come over to Legal A.F, the YouTube channel. Think about becoming a paid member there or a member or a subscriber there. Legal A.F, the substack where I'm doing two lives a day. We get a couple of thousand people just joining at 12 and 745 p.m. Eastern Time for updates in the law on Substack Live. And I'm running that 20% sale on annual membership Substack Live. This is,

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See terms for details. Welcome back to legal AF at the midweek with Karen Freeman McNifalo and Michael Popak. So, Karen, you've dealt with large productions of documents in your career at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, having to diligently turn over files and documents and other things as part of your responsibility to give the defense what they need or what they don't need for their case. So what do you make of this constantly shape-shifting number of Epstein files yet to be reviewed? One million two weeks ago, five point two million documents during the holidays. And now they tell Judge Engelmeyer in a new filing that it's down to two million.

What are you, what do you make of this? Well, first of all, anything I say about this would be pure speculation because they aren't explaining. And they really should be the ones to be explaining to the court exactly how many documents there are, what their process is, what they're going through, and how they're going through this, and why the numbers keep changing, and why they are finding more and more documents. I think part of it is because the prosecutors who worked on the case, in particular Maureen Comey, who worked on the Geline Maxwell case. They fired her because of her last name, certainly not because of her talent and her abilities.

She's widely regarded as a phenomenal prosecutor who everybody respects except Donald Trump. And again, it's because of who her father is. So I'm sure if she were there and she could be a part of this, I'm sure we would have a much clearer, better idea of what's happening. But now they're trying to recreate and figure out what exactly they have. And look, these materials are everything from the FBI, and other investigative reports, including local law enforcement who would have investigated crimes, say, in Florida or other places that were reported where these victims reported crimes, things like grand jury materials, interview transcripts.

There's going to be lots of photographs and other types of video and photo evidence that would have been gathered and collected. electronic records and communications like emails. There's probably thousands and thousands of emails or text messages, flight information and logs, people being flown not just on Epstein's private plane, but people who took commercial jets, whether they be the victims or people traveling to be with Epstein. And of course, there's financial record that people are going to be looking at, whether it's receipts or credit cards or bank statements, because you want to corroborate everything someone is saying. And so there's going to be lots of that kind of material, and it's going to be all over the place. If they're investigating other people who were protecting Donald Trump,

then there could be accountants records and tax records and that kind of financial records that you're going to look for to see who profited off of this, whether there's. there was any sort of profit motive or, again, financial transactions that took place. So whatever is not classified material, and I can't really imagine why anything would be classified in this investigation, and things that don't reveal who the victims are unless, of course, they consent to that. That's really the thing that has to be, that they have to do, is they have to protect the victim's identities, whether it's their faces or other, you know, addresses, phone numbers, other personal

identifying information, that has to be redacted. But they know who the victims are. You could do a quick word search through these documents and it'll pull up every single instance where that particular name is located and then you redact it. And then you look there and see, is there a phone number, is there an address? Is there an email address? Is there a social media account? You know, all the other things that you would write down when you're talking to somebody. So this isn't, it's not like they're going to go through 10 million documents page by page and, you know, turn the page. They can do this through a lot of it through word searches, and that's one way that you do it. You can do it through all sorts of ways.

You could put in people's phone numbers, email addresses, you can search any way you want and then redact that information out. But I think part of it is, I don't know, that they know what they have. And I think part of its incompetence, part of it's because, like I said, they fired the people who know what it is, and I think part of it, because it's Donald Trump, and frankly, I think I wouldn't put anything past, and part of it's going to be to try to protect people that he wants to protect. And maybe they're trying to figure out ways to do that. So, you know, look, one of the big exceptions to the Epstein Transparency Act, which is, you could drive a truck through this exception, is that anything that they identify as part of an ongoing investigation, they don't have to turn over. Well, of course, you're going to see that with any Republicans, potentially, right? And only turn over the Democrats, which is what they've already done so far.

So let's see if they do the right thing. They asked for, I think it was seven more days to get back to the court. But they better start explaining. and start explaining in detail what their process is and why there is these conflicting numbers and why it is that sometimes they think they have 5.2 million records and then somewhere else they have 1 million and somewhere else they have 2 million they better start if i was if i was the judge here i'd want somebody with information and knowledge to come in and talk about exactly what their process is what they're doing what they have and what they're determining is going to be kept out because they

either don't think they have to turn it over or they're choosing not to turn it over or are they redacting things. I'd like to know in detail if I was the judge what their process is and really hold their feet to the fire because this just seems a little a little disorganized and frankly clown carish for even the Trump administration. I don't know why it's, you know, they just feel like they can just insult the intelligence of federal judges and the American people. We can read. We know the difference between a $5.2 million, a $5.2 million document number by Todd Blanche and then $2 million ending up in a federal court filing without a footnote that even explains

the Delta. And if I'm the judge, I certainly, as you laid out, I'd want to get to the bottom of what appears to be $3.2 million missing Epstein files. No one trusts the Trump administration. We know they didn't review 3.2 million in a week and decide they were redundant or copies or weren't relevant, you know, at all. So that didn't happen. So either they had their number wrong before, based on what,

that would be the questioning that I would do if I were the judge, had you come up with your original 5.2 million? What was that based on? You know, they just blithely list in their filing with judge, Engelmeier, well, we've looked in these various places, we won't tell you where, and there's mismatch and record-keeping systems, so it's been difficult, it's going to take us a little bit longer. But this glaring, you know, 2 million number just sitting on the page,

and we're all, it's close to the issues like us on LegalAF and Midas Touch, we look at it and we're like, where's the 3.2 million more documents? And, you know, you just can't, you just can't take them, Even a Department of Justice that wasn't, didn't have its reputation and credibility in treads, you would still be like, you just said 5.2. How is it, how is it too? And, you know, we had a funny, I'll play the clip here at a minute. We had a funny moment when James Carville joined Legal A.F. in the Court of History yesterday to talk about Venezuela and other things. and he, I think, tongue slightly in cheek,

but he gave credit to Legal A.F. and Court of History for keeping the reporting so trained on Donald Trump about Epstein and the scandal and not letting it die. He thinks that's one of the reasons that Donald Trump, in a wag-the-dog moment, went into Venezuela, was to change the conversation because you see nobody's talking about Epstein this week. In fact, let me play that.

clip and which I thought was a sort of a backhanded compliment for the work that we're doing on Legal AF and Court of History. Let's play that clip. Thank you, Sidney. Thank you, Sean. Love to show. I just before we get started, I think this show bears some responsibility for the Venezuelan encourage, encouragement, because I think that this is done in response to Epstein. And no show has bought more Epstein facts alike in a court of history. And if you just do a word search for the five days before this, how many F-seen references they were, and then five days after that, how many F-seen references they were. This is pretty clear. And in his mind, this worked brilliantly.

Yeah, I have a... It's worked as mission accomplished, as he might say. He's completely rung the story away from Epstein, you have the usual 15% of Democrats saying, well, this is actually a good move. This is really going to help the United States. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. Maduro's a bad guy. Sure, he's a bad guy. What about the other 15 bad guys around the world?

I have a friend in Hollywood who's a famous screenwriter, won an Oscar, and his view is this is going to go so bad that Trump is going to switch to promote. promoting the Epstein files. I'm going to steal that. And I got good news for those that follow the Court of History and all the hard work that's in the Blumenthal and Professor Sean Willens do. Every week, we are making them into officially today

a audio podcast. So they will be on, you can now find them on Apple and Spotify under Court of History, another legal AF podcast. and unprecedented, a podcast that I do every week with Dean Adal about the United States Supreme Court, also now, as of today, a legal AF podcast up on wherever you get your podcast from, on audio, for those that, you know, listen to us in the car or on their phones or whatever. So, unprecedented and Court of History, both now up on the audio podcast. And that's the way for you to support what we do and our contributors and people that spend a lot of time briefing our audience.

And it's supporting the podcast like this one, Legal AF, the grandpappy, grandmammy of them all when it comes to law and politics. I've been sitting here for almost six years doing this work with Karen and Bedmide-Selis. And that's why we're at the top of the charts because of the fervent, the fervent support of our audience and the community that we've been. built. So audio podcast, plug in LegalAF. We have a five-star review and comments. We do read the comments as we do on a night like tonight. And come over to LegalAF, the YouTube channel, support us there. We now have a new paid membership level for people that want to, quote, unquote, invest in Legal AF. You know, we don't have outside investors. We really are crowdfunded, people funded, if you will, people supported. And the size that we got, a million subscribers

already has helped us on board the American Civil Liberties Union, democracy forward, get the interviews with senators and congresspeople and bring in the contributors that we have because we're legit. And we're legit because you made us legit at the intersection of law and politics. And then, of course, we've got the legal AF substack. That's only been around 10 months. We're already, we're bopping around between number one and number seven in rising U.S. politics, number 40 or so overall on all substacks and there are tens of thousands of them and we're doing

some really creative and interesting things there like i'm doing a live twice a day sometimes with guests sometimes they bring in guests like i'll give you an example adam costfeld all rise news was in the in the arraignment for maduro and as soon as he popped out literally within moments of him listening to the proceedings watching things and giving us color about it he came out join me on a substack live and we had 2100 people kind of at that moment we then used it as a video but 2100 people asking questions and that's the kind of stuff you can do on substack you can't do in youtube we love youtube and it's great for kind of magazine style deeper thought deeper analysis with assets and things but like in the in the real in real life you know something just happened and we got one of our

people out in the field who can talk to us or get sky perimen on or get the ACLU on or get a rob Banta or the Attorney General on, that's where we live. And so we've got paid membership there that's now on sale for 20% off for annual membership and becoming a regular member is great as well. So Karen, first show of the new year. We always love giving you the last words. What are you going to pull together for our audience today? I'm going to say two things.

Number one, I have a new second favorite podcast that I want to make a plug for. It's called The Intersection with Michael Popock. And it's phenomenal. and I really think... I forgot that one. But really, really, it's worth... I think for... I want everyone who watches Legal A.F.,

it's something that you should really watch the intersection or listen to it. It's a phenomenal podcast. As I said, it's my second favorite with Legal AF being my first. But I want to end tonight with really thinking about just, again, that video that I watched that Ben Post.

on Jan 6 about just what those officers went through. I just can't get that image out of my head and how terrible. Yeah, exactly. There it is. It is so unbelievable and what they were going through, through that whole insurrection. I just think is something I just really want to think about and send my thoughts out to all the law enforcement and others, members of Congress, et cetera, who were traumatized, frankly,

and who were heroes and who stood up for democracy. And we're there that day. And I also can't stop thinking about that little six-year-old girl in Minnesota who came home from school today, only to be told that she no longer has a mother. And I'm just brokenhearted over that. So, you know, I don't mean to end. And not on a positive note, but I just, that's where my heart is right now.

And I'm sending thoughts and prayers to all of those people. Happy New Year. And we're in this all together because we are a community and we're going to keep fighting together. Happy New Year. Thank you for doing that. Yeah, sometimes we have to end a little bit on a tower note. But we are together as a community and we appreciate you. Thanks for being here Saturday with Ben Myceles and me.

And thanks for all you do to support what we do without it. that we would be literally nothing just people mumbling to ourselves on the subway or on the street over a cup of coffee but you you give us purpose and we really do appreciate you shout out to the mightest mighty in the legal a efforts