Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF Full Episode 2/15/2025
Episode Date: February 16, 2025Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok are back on the top rated Legal AF podcast and discuss the Trump DOJ's assault on justice and the mass resignation of career prosecutors to protest; how will the Courts ...respond to any insubordination by Trump and his officials to defy court orders; the Trump Presidency is failing all ready and inconsistent with American Values, and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Support Our Sponsors: Graza: Go to https://graza.com and use code: LEGALAF to get 10% off your Graza Starter Kit and get to cookin' your next chef quality meal! Uplift: Elevate your workspace and energize your year with Uplift Desk. Go to https://upliftdesk.com/legalaf for a special offer exclusive to our audience. Remi: Save your smile and your bank account with Remi! Get up to 50% off your custom-fit mouth guard at https://ShopRemi.com/LEGALAF today! Qulia: Head to https://qualialife.com/LEGALAF and use promo code: LEGALAF at checkout for 15% off your purchase! 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
Transcript
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This is Carry the Fire. I'm your host, Lisa Laflamme.
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I've often said that Trump's corruption is matched by his incompetence and that
is on full display this week as he not only has hired the worst people in
connection with the legal matters, Department of Justice and elsewhere, but also some of the most incompetent
people and we're actually now seeing a mass exodus, a mass resignation of the
competent people, even the competent conservative,
MAGA adjacent federal prosecutors are saying you must think I'm a fool if you want me to do some of the things
That the attorney general and the deputy attorney general are ordering us to do here in the various federal
Prosecutorial division so let's cover first the mass
resignations of some of these federal prosecutors both in the Southern District of New York,
as well as in main justice in the public integrity section. But first I want to just remind everybody as we go through this theme,
incompetence and corruption, who is Donald Trump's attorney general?
Donald Trump's personal lawyer,
Pam Bondi, who represented him in the first Trump administration
during the impeachment proceedings.
Now you may not be a lawyer watching this, but you've seen lawyers, uh,
make oral arguments before.
Let me show you Pam Bondi's in the Senate at the impeachment trial.
Let's play it.
He remained on the board
Let's play it. He remained on the board until April of 2019.
We also know that...
Now I'm a law professor and I teach both law students as well as undergrad students.
Now if that was the very first presentation that my undergrad students gave, I'd probably
still give them a B minus to a C. It'd be a failing score for a law student.
That's for sure.
That's our attorney general who also this week announced that she was
filing charges against the New York governor, as well as the New York
attorney general, Letitia James.
Let me play for you a portion of this so you can see the announcement.
Let's play it.
We're here today because we have filed charges against the state of New York.
We have filed charges against Kathy Hockel.
We have filed charges against Letitia James and Mark Schroeder, who is with DMV.
This is a new DOJ and we are taking steps to protect Americans, American citizens and
angel moms, like the mom standing right behind me, who you're going to hear from in a moment.
New York has chosen to prioritize illegal aliens over American citizens.
It stops, it stops today.
As you know, we sued Illinois, and New York didn't listen.
So now, you're next.
Okay, well there actually were
charges that were filed
when she made the announcement.
Actually, nothing was filed.
It turned out that a
civil lawsuit was
filed based on a
2019 law that existed during the first Trump administration and it does none of the things that she said she was doing as she was using.
Parents who had horrific stories as props on the stage that's a commonality of the trump administration you think about Elon Musk using his you know
Little kid as a prop as the kid taunts Donald Trump. So popok
I want to show you one other clip and we'll break all of this down
It's kind of a one plus one equals two kind of things where you have that level of incompetence
That level of corruption what it leads to what it equals is somebody like New York mayor Eric Adams,
who engaged in a massive, massive bribery scheme with foreign countries,
overwhelming evidence in recent department of justice filings.
They talked about that they got even more evidence about the severity of the
crimes, the even more bribes than they initially expected. But a quid pro quo was entered between Trump and his justice department and
Eric Adams that Eric Adams would just have to do basically whatever MAGA
wanted, whatever Trump wanted.
And they would basically control him.
They would dismiss his criminal case without prejudice, but they would control him.
So then he and Tom Homan, Trump's
border czar, went on Fox and just the brazen criminality as they laugh about
the deal that was entered, which led to the resignations of a lot of conservative
lawyers from the Justice Department and from SDNY. Play this clip.
If he doesn't come through, I'll be back in New York City and we won't be sitting on
the couch. I'll be in his office up his butt saying where the hell is the agreement we
came to? So I want to deliver for the safety of the people of this city.
Michael Popak, welcome to Legal AF. Welcome to my own show.
All right. All right. So let me let me Yeah. So Eric Adams, let's let's start there. And
Pam Bondi. I know both of them reasonably well. I donated to Eric Adams. Met him in person when he was campaigning originally
before all the corruption scandals broke out.
Pam Bondi, I was in Florida
when she was the attorney general, worked under two.
Different governors, she's not qualified to be leading
the Department of Justice.
As you said, if she was in a moot court competition,
she'd come in dead last.
She's not articulate. Her
thought process is often mangled and muddied. But let's be frank with the American people.
You and I like to look them in the eye and not blow smoke or sunshine. The attorney general of
the United States is not Pam Bondi. Secretary of State of the United States is not Marco Rubio.
Treasury Secretary of the United States is not Scott Bessette. It's a
combination of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. And that is who is running. They've said it out loud.
They said the quiet part out loud a while ago. They said that the chief law enforcement officer
for the United States is Donald Trump as the head of the executive branch and everybody is under him.
These are all just meat puppets that are just tasked by a combination of Trump,
I think his mouthpiece for most of this is Stephen Miller, who's the White House counsel,
one of the White House counselors, who gives the marching orders to these people and tells them
what to do and what to say and who to sue and what positions to take and what press release to give out
in order to look like they're tough on something.
And the one that I liked a lot
when you talk about the weapons of mass distraction,
because that's all we're watching.
It is already in the first three weeks,
what I consider to be the beginnings of a failed presidency,
accomplishing nothing for the American people.
The 119th Congress isn't doing a darn thing about kitchen table politics or what's important
to people's purses or pocketbooks.
Not one law has been passed to help them, nor will it be in the first hundred days or
the last hundred days.
And Donald Trump's not going to accomplish anything other than implementing the Heritage
Foundation, arch conservatives, Christian Right Conservative values, making
good on campaign promises for which he put up his presidency up for sale. And we've seen since
the election, it's hard to believe that was November 5th, we've seen that Donald Trump
considers himself to be a short tracker. He's got a short time horizon here. I mean, literally has
a short time horizon given his age, but he has a short time horizon because he knows that it's likely
that based on what he's trying to do now with the limited time that he has, that he's going
to be run out on a rail or at least the Senate and Congress will be at the midterms. He's
worried about that. He's trying to do maximum damage in the shortest amount of time possible.
The other thing that he cares about, to paraphrase Ty Cobb,
one of his former lawyers, is that there's two sins
that motivate Donald Trump.
You touched on one of them.
One of them is the sin of greed.
The other is the sin of retribution.
And what we're watching time and time again
as the distraction, the distracting moments,
the shiny objects, the let's go, let's buy Greenland
or take it by force, let's buy Greenland or take it by force. Let's buy Panama
Canal or take it by force. Let's turn our back on our allies in trade and in security and in
military operations while we let Elon Musk take a sledgehammer to things that are important to
our way of life, to the things that are important to red states more than even blue states. And then blame Elon Musk down the road if he can.
While he's doing all of that, the Trump family since November 5th has made over $200 million.
Over $200 million have lied in their pockets.
Melania, $40 million deal with Amazon owned by Jeff Bezos. He paid three times more than the next
highest bidder, which was Disney. Okay. Why? The Delta, I suggest, is a bribe. 40 million dollars
to Melania. That Trump meme coin, dollar sign Trump that is now trading at about 17, 18 dollars
from some high. I'll tell you who made money, two people,
two entities. The Trump family made $100 million brokerage fee, just broker, the buy and the sell
of the meme coin since it was launched. Doesn't matter what happened to the price of the stock,
I mean to the meme coin, he's making it on the VIG. That's $100 million. And there's some wallet, there's some Bitcoin or crypto wallet in China
that on day one made $100 million
on a $1 million purchase.
Insider trading, who knows?
But those are the only ones.
Eight out of 10 of the other investors
all have lost a considerable amount of money.
And then you add in the money that Donald Trump is getting
from the social media platforms,
including yesterday, a $10 million payment Then you add in the money that Donald Trump is getting from the social media platforms,
including yesterday, a $10 million payment from Elon Musk, who works for him.
Where is the ethics in government?
When you get rid of the government of ethics head, the government ethics head and all the
watchdogs, there isn't any.
And Donald Trump is taking full advantage of the fact that there is no conflict of interest
that a president is found to have.
He doesn't need an ethics plan, so he's taking full effect. Elon Musk just gave and is about to settle a case
that was dismissed by the trial court, was likely to lose at the appeal court,
just to pay off Donald Trump, which is a pittance to how much Elon Musk has made,
because he's doubled his wealth by $250 billion after buying a presidency for $200 million.
So you add up all of these meta settlements and Amazon settlements or payments and that.
And then I haven't even turned to how much Don Jr. and Eric have made by being placed
on boards of companies and gotten stock in return and watching that stock skyrocket because they're
trying to curry favor with Donald Trump. The Biden crime family, we're watching the Trump
crime family robbing banks in plain daylight. And so is it a shock to me as a native New Yorker
to see that Donald Trump figured out that there was a way transactionally to go after Eric Adams. He had an Achilles heel, a guy that was not only indicted
for bribery related to the Turkish government trying
to get its consulate approved and have the fire department
and the building department look the other way
because the building wasn't ready, the building wasn't safe.
That's the bribery aspect of it,
but there's a bribery inside of the bribery
because now we've got the reporting that you and I have been doing here and on Legal AF
that they decided after a meeting between the lawyer for Eric Adams, who's a lawyer
for Elon Musk, Alex Spiro, and Emil Bove, the former criminal lawyer for Donald Trump,
who's now the number two henchman running around, those two got together, criminal lawyer to criminal lawyer, and figured out
here's what we're going to do.
We're going to dismiss the case, but without prejudice so we can bring it again if he doesn't
get rid of the sanctuary city status for New York and do what Tom Homan tells him to do,
the guy you just saw on Fox and Friends couch next to Eric Adams.
That's called extortion. That is the reason seven prosecutors have all resigned,
including the heads of the Public Integrity Unit
in Washington and the acting US Attorney in Manhattan,
because they're not willing to participate
in the extortion of a public official
by the federal government and Donald Trump.
And so, and the last thing on that point before I turn it back to you is what came out of
the letter, the resignation letter by Diane Sassoon, Diane Sassoon, Denise Sassoon, who
was the acting U.S. attorney for Manhattan, the Southern District of New York, is that
they were about, they asked for permission from Pam Bondi to re-indite Eric
Adams just in the last week because of new evidence that he had destroyed evidence and
lied to the FBI.
Not only were they not interested in dismissing the case for political and commercial reasons,
they wanted to re-indite Eric Adams based on new evidence.
Of course, that got rejected and now we are where we are. So,
I'm fired up today, Ben. Fired up as well. I think it's a Danielle Sassone.
Yeah. And just so people know what her background is, she wrote in her resignation letter,
she clerked for the honorable Harvey Wilkinson III of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
You don't get more right-wing and conservative than Judge Wilkinson, for those who know who he is. And then she also clerked for Justice Scalia, who was on
the United States Supreme Court. And as far right-wing, although who knows what he would look like in
today's right-wing court. She says in her letter that both men instilled in me a sense of duty to
contribute to the public good and uphold the rule of law and a commitment to reasoned and thorough analysis.
I have always considered it my obligation to pursue justice impartially without favor
to the wealthier, those who occupy important public office or harsher treatment for the
less powerful.
And this is a powerful statement made by Daniel Sassone and her
resignation from that position.
I mean, to give some of our legal a Fers background, it's very hard to get those
jobs clerking for the Supreme court is, you know, only the top, top, top, top law
students from the top, top law schools can even compete to even be considered.
It's the, it's like being in the Olympics.
There's a small group of people in terms of being a law student and, you
know, someone who pursues that path.
You know, they usually clerk at a circuit court of appeals first, get a
recommendation, then try to clerk at the Supreme Court.
And that puts them on a track usually to be top lawyers within the
department of justice and private practice, which they may go back and
forth, then take more senior roles in those various areas.
Ultimately, that's where our judges and circuit court judges and
Supreme court justices once upon a time came from.
I say once upon a time because, you know, certainly Trump's probably
going to pick highly unqualified people who don't have any credentials, because if you have
credentials, even working for old school right wing judges or justices, you're still instilled
with some of these concepts with which Trump just wants to absolutely destroy. And so, you know,
she was on a career path and her resignation when she was
forced to do this, even if you look at it from a selfish perspective about her career advancement
and some of the other top lawyers who have been resigning from the Justice Department,
you can say on the one hand, yes, they pursued this selflessly and they put the law above the
orders.
Yeah, I think that's one way to view it.
Even if you viewed it selfishly though, I think it gives you some sense of hope
that these top lawyers are seeing a world in the future where doing these things
will be a scarlet letter on their career advancement and they see a future where
anybody who follows these types of orders will be deemed a fool
or a crook and be banished from polite society or the legal community.
I mean, Her Underling, who's a top lawyer as well, though, a guy named Hagen Scotton,
I think he got two bronze medals.
He served admirably in combat.
He clerked for Justice John Roberts.
He's an assistant at that same office,
the Southern District of New York.
He resigned and his resignation, he says,
look, if no lawyer within the earshot of the president
is willing to give him that advice
that what he's doing is illegal,
then I expect you will eventually find someone
who is enough of a fool or enough of a coward
to file your motion.
But it was never going to be me.
And in this Hagen-Scotton letter,
it's interesting because he goes,
look, he goes, look, I can understand
how a chief executive, how Donald Trump,
whose background is in business and politics,
might see dismissing a case could give you leverage.
I can see why they would think that this could be a good deal, but that's not
what we as lawyers do.
So any assistant U S attorney who would carry that out, who knows what the law
is and who would not tell him, no, you can do that, you're almost worse
is what he's saying.
And so he's sending a message to who we saw at the beginning of this episode.
Pam Bondi, the attorney general, as well as Emil Bové, who was also Donald
Trump's lawyer in the criminal case where Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts.
In New York, Emil Bové is the deputy attorney general. And he brought in all of these lawyers
into the public integrity section of Washington, D.C.
and basically said, I'm firing everybody
unless somebody, I need somebody to dismiss this action.
So just the kind of events that transpired was
they asked SDNY, there's different, just so you all know,
there's the main justice department
in Washington, D.C., right?
And then there are federal across,
federal courts throughout the country.
So for example, there's a central district of California,
northern district of California,
southern district of California.
In New York, there is a southern district of New York,
an eastern district of New York,
a northern district of New York.
There are different districts in different states.
Some states that are smaller only have one district.
And then for each district court,
you have a Department of Justice Department
or division in that state,
and they're responsible and have a great deal of autonomy
over that state.
And then they report to main justice,
which is in Washington, DC, but ultimately, what main justice is supposed to give those individual
departments in the different states their autonomy to prosecute.
And they're not supposed to interfere with it at all.
There are some protocols where maybe main justice gets involved,
but they're not supposed to interfere at all.
So here, main justice in DC was ordering the Southern district of New York
prosecutors, the acting head was a right wing lawyer, Danielle Sassone, who's
like, uh, you know, a MAGA Jason, she's a right wing person, you know, Hey, you
got to dismiss this case against Eric Adams.
She said, no, they said, you better do it.
She resigned.
Then a bunch of other lawyers there resigned.
And then the Department of Justice in DC, because no one in New York would file it,
they said, okay, transfer it over, transfer it over to Washington DC, and we're going to have
our public integrity division, we're taking over the case, which is that that in and of itself is unprecedented. And SDNY is one of the most exalted offices too.
So like the fact that Maine justice would punch at SDNY like that's crazy,
yet alone for this type of thing.
Maine justice takes it says public integrity, you dismiss it.
And then when they're informed, John Keller, who was the acting
head of public integrity,
he resigns. Kevin Driscoll, the next highest person, he resigns. And then finally, they put
everybody in a room and some guy named Ed Sullivan basically is like, look, I'll file it because he
didn't want everybody else to have to resign and get fired. And they wanted to keep some people in the department who would still be able
to be guard rails for the law in a Trump administration.
So they're going to get it filed.
When we come back from our first quick break, what I want to talk about though,
is now what's the process because it isn't automatically dismissed.
It goes before the federal judge.
The federal judge is going to now question this lawyer and Sullivan about what's this process, what went into this deal. A grand jury indicted,
a grand jury saw all of this evidence and there was probable cause and I've been hearing that
there's more and more evidence. You'll see a scathing order that's going to come from the
judge even if the judge ultimately dismisses. We'll talk about that very briefly, though. I want to mention Popak. Since you've started
the Popak law firm, I know it was a big risk to start your own firm. I know you were getting
inundated with lots of before starting the firm. People wanted you people who had like,
you know, massive catastrophic injury cases and everything from like car accident cases and trucking cases and, um, and, you know,
sexual assault cases from bosses and you'd get, you had no vehicle to do it.
So you started your own firm, which you never had before.
You wanted to start your own firm. What's the phone number for it?
And just very briefly, how's that going?
Thanks, Ben. It's 1-877-POPOC-AF. What else? 1-877-POPOC-AF. The website is
www.thepopocfirm.com. I'm keeping it easy. Yeah, it's more... The response from our audience
It's more, the response from our audience has been more overwhelming than even I had thought when I decided to do it, sort of standing on the shoulders of what you and I made here on Legal AF.
I mean, right now, we're representing two families out of hundreds and hundreds that have contacted
us that we're kind of sifting through the cases now, but two, that we are representing. One is one of the families in the American Airlines disaster
that ended up in the Potomac, and we are proudly representing one of the families there,
and another case out in Oklahoma. So, it is allowing me to sort of get involved throughout
the country in cases and help people the way that I had always dreamed and searched for justice.
So thank you.
Absolutely.
And everybody make sure you check that out.
I know you got a case involving a death.
Those are the types of cases you take
that are the more kind of catastrophic.
You wanna take them all,
but the cases involving the serious injuries,
the catastrophic, all injuries are serious,
but those serious catastrophic injuries are really the ones that your firm is taking. So, you know, please that you're handling that type
of work, sexual assault cases, harassment cases, things like that. Okay. When we come back, I want
to talk about more fallout from what's going on at the DOJ. Then let's talk about these charges
that were filed by Pam Bondi. Let's talk about the various cases that are out there as well.
Let's take a quick break.
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Popak, earlier in the morning,
Donald Trump posted the following,
he who saves his country does not violate any law.
Let me repeat that, this was his post.
He who saves his country does not violate any law.
We know that Donald Trump is a psychopath
and he has a malignant narcissistic savior complex.
So what he's basically saying there is,
in my view, I'm going to start, well, he's already has,
but I'm going to make it very flagrant
that I'm not following any of the judge's orders.
I think that's where,
I think that's one of the things that is indicating.
And I think he is upset at the pace within which the authoritarian takeover was expected to go.
I think in his mind, he thought by now he would have quashed all resistance in totality.
The fact that as we talked about in the first segment, you've got a lot of prosecutors who are standing up to him. Attorney, you know, United States attorneys and assistant United States
attorney standing up to him.
The fact that you have Republican judges across the country, you know,
judges he appointed, judges Reagan appointed, judges who Democrats appointed,
all kind of together.
By and large, look, Trump and Doge got a few wins on procedural
grounds this past week, so I'm not going to say Trump lost every case, but the federal judiciary
slowed down a lot of the most egregious acts, whether it was the funding freeze, whether it
was taking down websites, whether it was birthright citizenship, the ghoulishness of bringing
transgender women in prisons with female genitalia into the male populations and having them take off their clothes to shower with the men
injunctions stopping that
Talk maybe more broadly popak about the so many cases and why you think Trump
may be posting that now because I think he's been flooded with cases and he's
getting frustrated and Musk is getting frustrated and they're basically
signaling we're ratcheting it up to more dictatorship stuff.
I don't think this is going the way that Donald Trump wanted to go.
Um, we're averaging three cases being filed on a daily, on a daily basis.
We're at 69 cases.
It'll be 72 or three by the time Monday rolls around.
We already have 19 different types of injunction, whether restraining order or preliminary injunctions
from judges all around the country against eight or nine major aspects of Donald Trump's
agenda.
Because he has to operate through executive order because he has a useless Congress. Thank God. The best thing we got going for us is that the 119th
Congress is useless and doesn't seem to be able to pass a darn thing. And so Donald Trump has to do
it all by executive order. But that is the weakest way for a president to control. It looks great on
paper, a fiat, people standing around them, a big Sharpie pen,
some sort of binder and an executive order. It is the weakest of ways for a president to operate.
Strongest would be to convince using his bully pulpit Congress and the American people to pass
a law, actual law or God forbid constitutional amendments. But on the food chain, executive orders, that's the
one the Supreme Court dislikes the most because it's usually somebody like Trump trying to color
outside the lines and violating separations of power by doing things that are only reserved for
the judicial branch or only reserved for the legislative branch and that he's not allowed to do.
That's why these executive orders are so easily dispatched
in temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions.
Of those 19, there's only two wins so far.
Maybe it'll be three with Chutkin.
They're 19 and three.
That's Hall of Fame numbers for democracy and for judges.
The three are on procedural grounds.
Like, well, if you wanted an injunction, where you been?
It's 22 days since the firings of these attorneys general.
Shouldn't you have been here a long time ago?
Because if you're gonna move for an injunction
and ask the court to use that power,
you have to show that you're being irreparably harmed,
which means you have to show velocity
at which you enter the courthouse in the courtroom.
I've been involved with cases in Delaware,
just to give you a little bit of, you know,
sort of inside baseball for my own practice,
where we filed, or no, against us,
a motion was filed on day four after an event,
and the judge says, where were you on day one?
This is four days in.
So maybe they win on that, but that doesn't dismiss the case.
That just means you're not going to get injunction.
You'll get damages of some sort.
And then you get, well, do you have standing labor union
to argue this?
Well, if you don't, then somebody else does.
And these are a lot of overlapping cases,
because as we've said, the lawyers for justice
that we cover and that we honor with Legal AF, they're using a portfolio approach. They're
representing different interests and they're filing in different courts on similar interests,
on similar issues. And they see where the ruling is, where the great rulings are. Right now,
they're getting great rulings everywhere,
and it is frustrating the hell out of Donald Trump.
Now, Donald Trump to me, when he has the moment to speak directly to the American people,
this is my impression, whether it's at a press conference where he looks gassed
and already three weeks into his administration, beyond fatigued,
and has this, either there or in social media posts, at any hour of the day, ready three weeks into his administration, beyond fatigued.
And has this either there or in social media posts at any hour of the day, he looks to me like he's not only unhinged, but
he's not kind of tethered to reality. And then he's not
getting all the info. And he has this nasty habit, which we have
to then look at look the American people in the eye
during our show and say they're right there. He lied. He'll say something like, well, like the US attorney in the Eric Adams
case, he or she like you don't even know which he or she we fired her him. No, you didn't.
No, you did. Then you missed the nine page single spaced resignation letter. Nobody,
nobody told nobody told him about that apparently.
So he's always gotta be the tough guy.
And it's up to the independent media here
to hold him accountable and look the American people
in the eye after it happens and say, that's not true.
That is a lie.
The one thing I'm seeing is we do have
the rapid response capabilities here
on the Midas Touch Network and illegal AF to hold him accountable in a way that we probably didn't have before.
Now Donald Trump is moving into dangerous territory as far as I'm concerned and the
rest of the free thinking world where he's suggesting or at least running up the flag
pole to see trial balloon if anybody's interested in this concept of I'll just ignore the orders.
Now so far they have not ignored the preliminary injun, I'll just ignore the orders. Now, so far, they have not ignored
the preliminary injunctions
of the temporary restraining orders.
Sure, do we know exactly what's going on
when some conduct gets restrained?
Whether Elon Musk is really not peering in
to our private and sensitive data?
No, but as of right now,
people have not risked in the law side, on the Department of
Justice side, have not risked in contempt orders by judges. Judges are calling people in for
hearings immediately, and they want to know about evidence. And it's up in this adversarial process
that you and I cover regularly, it's up to the lawyers on the other side to bring to the judges' attention wherever they are
not complying with an order, and then we have the contempt motion.
Now here, in a contempt hearing, here's what I've said in a recent hot take.
We've never had a president on the executive branch who controls the Bureau of Prisons,
the Federal Martial Service, and other things that are the muscle behind our justice system
is really in the hands of the executive branch.
We've never had an executive branch that is so willingly indicated that they're willing
to flout their responsibilities.
So I posited, what if the judges, after they go through a contempt hearing, order somebody
to prison or order somebody into federal detention center?
Who is going to pick them up?
If Donald Trump fires all of the federal marshals
and all the bailiffs and anybody that's on the
that's on the Department of Justice budget,
you know, and Congress doesn't do anything about it,
what are they going to do?
What is John Roberts,
who's the head of the federal judiciary, going to do?
Are we going to have to have constables?
Are we going to have to have deputized local sheriffs
serve in the capacity of the police for the law, for the court system, and have jails available to
them like the DC jail in DC and deputize their way through this? Because if Donald Trump tries
to deny the court system the ability to enforce their orders, then where are we? And what's John
Roberts and the other nine
or the six of the nine, what are they gonna do?
Ring their hands and say, well, I don't know,
or are they gonna get all upset
because the court's orders are being flouted?
See, even John Roberts, even Kavanaugh and Gorsuch,
I think believe that at the end of the day,
their orders need to be respected.
But what if, and we're dangerously moving into that world
as you just posted, as Donald Trump floats
these trial balloons.
Now, at a call to action section of our podcast,
because I don't ever want to make it all doom and gloom
because there are things that we can do
and they don't just have to wait until the midterms.
When the public and the public reception and the public rebuke of Donald Trump remains
very, very important.
We just saw an example of it when they tried to announce that the government was going
to give Elon Musk, I don't know, $40 billion, whatever it was, for armored cyber trucks. And then the press, we, the public came out and said,
are you effing kidding me?
And then suddenly, oh no, it's not,
we're not gonna give him that money.
We have to continue to speak truth to power
and call these things out if we have any chance
of controlling Donald Trump with the two years
until we get to the midterms.
So I guess my takeaway is the following. I'll summarize it this way. The federal court systems
and the federal judges that we are handpicking to handle these cases are doing the Lord's work,
right? Are doing a yeoman work to preserve our democracy. It is working so far. The process
is working.
Appeals, there's now two or three appeals.
We're gonna see how these moderate appellate courts do.
And then we're on a fast track
to the United States Supreme Court.
Their term, their last oral argument is usually in April.
But I think they're gonna be called back quite frequently
this summer for emergency applications
related to Donald Trump's attempts here. What do you attempts here. Uh, what do you think then?
This is all heading to the Supreme court. That's where all of these cases,
as you say, it's about a 19 losses for Donald Trump,
about three procedural wins,
which basically means Trump delaying emergency relief
against him. Not that the cases are actually dismissed these cases will work their way up the various court of appeals remember there's district courts court of appeals and then the united states supreme court and cases of this magnitude and profile
expedited basis, I predict.
Trump's been losing so far in the court of appeals as well, where he has tried to overturn some of the district court orders that I referenced a bit earlier.
The question with the United States Supreme Court, which gave Donald
Trump absolute immunity, but the Supreme Court rather naively with Chief
Justice John Roberts saying, hey, why we need absolute
immunity is because I'm worried about chilling what the executive functions can be.
We don't think that the parade of horribles that are being referenced about why there
shouldn't be immunity, that those things are ever going to be used.
The bigger concern is stopping and inhibiting the president from exercising judgment.
Not that somebody will actually want to be a dictator to which special counsel
Jack Smith's team and others were saying, no, no, he's actually saying he wants to be a dictator.
So as we've always said, if you give Trump an inch in court, he takes your life.
Trump is a very weak and pathetic individual.
I won't even call him a man.
He's a very weak and pathetic individual.
When you ultimately confront him and you stand up to him, he backs down,
he loses, he runs away.
I'll give you a court reference.
E.
Jean Carroll, um, continued to just persist and push her case forward.
And when Donald Trump was called to testify, rather than defend himself, he
fled to Scotland and Ireland and pretended he was building something.
Didn't even show his face in the court.
He wasn't obligated to be there because the parties took his deposition and it
was an awful deposition against Donald Trump.
So from the plaintiff's perspective, from E.
Jean Carroll's lawyer's perspective, it was more powerful to have Trump not
there and the message that sent to the jury that he doesn't even value your
time than having him there just plays deposition where he said in the
deposition how fortunately or unfortunately wealthy people can sexually
assault women. That's historically things that happen where he confused
E. Jean Carroll for Marla Maples and he thought that E. Jean Carroll was his other wife
and one of his wives and then he said that she's not his type
and Donald Trump made a bunch of other horrific statements
that made that very, very, you know, that made that deposition awful.
So they were pleased to just be able to play it on the plaintiff side,
but he fled.
He ran away.
I mean, just think about over the past.
What the three weeks, four weeks, how many things he's threatened Canada.
We want to annex you.
We want to conquer you.
Canada goes, okay, well just, why don't we just do what we already did, which
is invest the same amount of money, $1.2 billion, and we'll do a fentanyl czar.
And Donald Trump's like, okay, great.
I did it.
Look, I won.
Look what I won.
Could you imagine if Vladimir Putin said to Zelensky, Hey, we're going to conquer
you, we're going to take you over.
And Zelensky's responses, Hey, we need to be sovereign, but we'll give you a fentanyl czar.
And, and, and Putin was like, great, let's, let's do that.
I'm, I'm, that's, I'm a win.
That's a win.
And then Putin posted, Hey, look at this big win that I did.
Um, Donald Trump is using the rhetoric of Putin.
And then he's showing the, the weakness of like a blowhard
schoolyard bully who talks trash, but then doesn't back it up.
And so he's destroying our relations abroad and he's also weak as can be. And it's shining
through. I mean, just think about what he said, you know, for today. Trump said that if Hamas
didn't return all of the hostages to Israel, all hell would break loose. Trump set a deadline for noon East coast time on Saturday, a holy day, but he
said it for Saturday and what did Hamas do?
Hamas did nothing different.
They released the hostages that were going to be released anyway, under
the deal that Biden negotiated.
And then Trump then claimed credit that his threat did that, but they didn't listen to his threat.
And then there wasn't anything that happened.
And, you know, he said this about Greenland.
He said this, he said this about Mexico, you know, he said this about all of these countries and then
he doesn't back it up. He doesn't, he doesn't do anything.
And so they all know that you just stand up to him and he backs down.
And so there's a,
let me interrupt for, let me interrupt for one second for you move on from that. anything. And so they all know that you just stand up to him and he backs down. And so
there's a
Let me interrupt for one second before you move on from that. And then he sends somebody
like JD Vance to Munich to address our allies and tells them that they're supporting the
wrong brand of democracy. And then if they don't get with the Trump program in his brand
of democracy, which looks an awful lot like fascism, then they're not going to, then we're not going to support them.
Another example of us withdrawing from our ally relationships, making us less safe.
It was such a successful speech for Russia and for the alt-right German party that Russia
TV celebrated, think about it, it's hard for me as a person about my age to think about
a presidency where the Russians on Russian television are celebrating a speech by our
American vice president who said it was a public caning of democracy.
This is Russia's wet dream to have Donald Trump and JD Vance attacking democracies
around the country.
We're doing what Russia could never hope to have done
every day, which is to destroy the brand of democracy
in order to substitute it in for Donald Trump's brand
of greed and oligarchy.
Absolutely.
Look, let's take a quick break.
I want to remind Popeye, what's the number again
for that law firm, for your law firm that you started? I know it's, you know, if
there's, you know, real catastrophic injuries, there's a trucking case where somebody passed
away after a truck hit them and that family called you. I know you're doing, you know,
sexual assault cases like that. Those are the ones that I would bring, you know, I would
bring to Popak's attention. Popak, where do they call? Yeah, I made it very easy for people because that's how my mind ones that I would bring to PO-POK's attention. PO-POK, where do they call?
Yeah, I made it very easy for people because that's how my mind works.
I got an 800 number that had PO-POK AF in it.
So 1-877-PO-POK-AF, and the law firm is also simple because it stands for what it says.
It's the thepoepokfirm.com.
Has all the information you need for the types of cases that we cover.
Automatic free case review.
We do all this on a no fee unless you're paid basis,
meaning contingency fee.
As your cohost, I'm so proud that you started.
I know that was always a life goal of yours
and I'm glad it's off to a success.
Thank you, my friend.
Let's take a quick break.
I'll remind everybody, subscribe also
to PoPoC's YouTube channel, the Legal AF YouTube channel.
It's crushing it.
It's doing great.
I want to see that Legal AF hit one million subscribers.
I got a goal, nine months to a million.
Let's do it.
Let's take a quick break.
We'll be right back.
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It should be mentioned also, Popak, that one of the things that the Trump
DOJ also did connecting this now to what I showed you at the beginning is they
have halted or just completely dismantled the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and
the kleptocracy division that goes after specifically the attempt of Russians to
try to bribe off American politicians.
The Trump DOJ killed its elite anti-corruption unit.
The Kleptocracy Initiative, famous for seizing Russian oligarchs yachts,
prosecuting the four point five billion dollar one MDB fraud.
That was the Malaysian Sovereign Wealth fund that was being used by, uh,
what was that guy's name?
Jolo?
I think the guy's name was Jolo and he would come here and, you know, spend
hundreds of millions of dollars at night and goes to tell you some of the problems
that exist with these sovereign wealth funds.
And it's one of the things that Trump said he wants to create with Musk is his
own piggy bank, his own sovereign wealth fund.
So you have the dismantling of the kleptocracy unit, also an executive order saying that
the DOJ is not going to be prosecuting foreign corrupt practices at case, bribery cases.
So American businesses are open for bribes.
I mean, maybe that's one of the reasons that American businesses were supportive of this
regime because they saw themselves as the oligarchs.
But let me just describe to you the game though.
Let me show you this clip first though, and then I'll describe to you what's really going
on here with Trump doing all of these things.
And you always just got to follow the money, right? So, let me just show you. This is in the Oval Office. This is Trump being asked a question.
And the question is just like the worst framing of a question ever because this is how you have
to ask Trump questions as he's banned the Associated Press because they refuse to call
the Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of America. So now reporters are taught the way
I'm gonna show you this question right here.
And so Trump then says that he thinks USAID
interfered with the 2020 American election
and the 2024 Indian election.
Here, play this clip.
President Trump, President Trump.
May I?
President Trump, first of all, congratulations for the fantastic 24 days of your presidency,
historic and unprecedented decisions that you made, transformational reforms.
I'm particularly impressed by the expose on USAID. And I would like you to share with us
if you think USAID had a role in election interference
in the U.S. in 2020 and Indian elections in 2024.
So, it could have had a role.
There were a lot of bad things that happened in 2020.
I think bad things happened in 2024, but it was too big to rig.
We won by a tremendous margin.
We won every swing state.
We won the popular vote by millions of votes.
So it was too big to rig.
But yeah, I think they probably tried.
We're looking to go to a system now much different where one day voting voter ID
and, uh, you just, we have to do that and paper ballots.
We want paper ballots.
And when they do that, we're going to clean it up very, very well.
So they use USAID as the sword and the shield or the wand that distracts.
And for the MAGA base, remember the MAGA base,
what do they love?
The Q-anon, Q drops.
They take these little parcels,
these nuggets of information that, ooh, this means that.
So by going through and just dropping data from USAID,
a lot of it either just outright misleading and
false stuff, like just complete lies like, oh, there was $50 million that was sent to Hamas
with condoms, which is like false. In 2019, the Trump administration as part of USAID was sending
contraception to a place called Gaza and Mozambique
because United States as the leader of the free world was promoting health
across the world and prosperity across the world because American soft power
led to our growth.
It allowed corporations to, for all those corporations out there to have
reciprocity and be viewed favorably in other countries to
even do business.
It allowed America to be viewed favorably in many places in the world,
but USAID they go, oh, we found 8 million here, 12 million here, 20 million here,
6 million here.
Look, it's all of these Hollywood actors getting paid to go to Ukraine.
A hundred, a hundred percent false.
Not none of it. None of it is true.
So it's a form of McCarthyism on steroids
with those steroids on steroids
and those steroids on steroids on steroids.
It's something we've never seen before,
but it's a tool of a fascist regime.
But what are they doing?
I mean, to all the people out there,
Popak, what about no tax on tips?
What about no tax on overtime?
What about the no tax on social security?
Is that in the Republicans' budget?
Eh, answer no.
What's in the budget?
Oh, $4.5 trillion in tax cuts for the billionaires,
$880 million in cuts of
Medicaid. See you later, Medicaid and Magizard, Medicaid too. $300 billion in
cuts or so on agricultural stuff, $350 billion on education cuts that
red states also rely upon.
Gutting FEMA.
I mean, just think about it.
Donald Trump sent a letter to governor Kemp in Georgia, rejecting
governor Kemp's request for FEMA debris assistance that Biden was
providing based on hurricane Helene.
And Trump's FEMA said, nope, we're not giving you debris assistance
and extension of what you were getting in September.
And then someone like Brian Kemp goes and says
he's voting for Trump in 2024 and does.
So we're seeing this writ large.
I just think that what all of this ultimately is about,
the legal challenges, the legal distractions,
a lot of this stuff, we always have to bring it back, which is why I think we
have to talk about it on our last segment, because we could get lost in the weeds a
little bit.
And I don't want to get lost in the weeds of ultimately, what are we talking about
here, Pope Buck?
We are talking about Trump delivering for the billionaires and Elon Musk
and them distracting the masses and actually distributing wealth from the poor to the rich, Popak.
So how do I unpack all that? So the things that he is destroying are things that generally benefit the red states. The Inflation Reduction Act funding
that the poorly named Inflation Reduction Act funding that Biden did with billions of dollars
went 85% or more to red states. So all that clawback and all that no more funding and cut
off the funding is just harming his own voters who are waking up now
to realize that when he takes a position about the water crisis in California, your home state,
and he orders, he has ordered that they open up reservoirs to show off the water supply in California during the worst time possible,
which undermines proper water management
and harms those places in California that are red,
the farm districts.
It just shows you that it's hard to believe
this guy was once president, the way he's operating.
I just did a hot take then for Midas
about the fact that we, Donald Trump and Elon Musk,
just let go all of our nuclear bomb experts from the Department of Energy, the ones that are
responsible for our nuclear bomb making capacity, dismantling and creating bombs and weapons,
making capacity, dismantling and creating bombs and weapons,
powering our nuclear submarines, the counterterrorism around
nuclear weapons. We just got rid of them after we've invested.
Each one of them took almost two years to properly train and get top level security clearance. And through just an email from
Elon Musk.
And then they realized what had happened, that wait, those guys are people that we just
let go, they're responsible for our nuclear arsenal?
They didn't even know that.
That's because Elon Musk doesn't belong anywhere near the government and he's letting people
who are unqualified and have their own personal agendas pull levers of power in America.
And only bad things can happen.
We have a warped administration whose policies are warped by the ethical and financial conflicts
of Donald Trump and the oligarchs around him led by Elon Musk. So they're never, they don't have
the right poll star guiding them to proper policy that helps mom and pop America because
that's not in their interest. Racking up trillions of dollars of more debt and deficit to make my great-grandchildren pay for their
profligate spending now is their goal. Donald Trump, if Donald Trump doesn't
leave office, I'm not making this number up, if Donald Trump doesn't
leave office a billion dollars wealthier than when he entered in one
of the greatest criminal transfers of wealth
that we've ever seen, I'd be shocked.
So you know my predictions in the Popak time capsule.
3000 or more lawsuits being filed against his administration,
80 to 90% of which will be successful.
He's going to accumulate a billion dollars
between himself and his family,
and the others like like Elon Musk,
are going to triple, if not quadruple,
their net worth before this whole show is over.
I've said nothing about how it impacts
the American people and their economy,
their personal economy,
because it's not going to be favorable for them.
Because none of the policies that are being generated
by this warped mind and administration are going to benefit the American people except for the
little bread and circus as you mentioned it no tapas no tax on tips oh here throw
this little crumb over here a little crumb over there forget the crumb where's
the bread where's the well take a half a loaf at this point and so we have to
continue to open the Americans' eyes and get the
scales to fall from their eyes and see what you and I so clearly see and those on the Midas Touch
Network and illegal AF, which is another kleptocracy. When I hear the Department of Justice
has decided to get out of the policing bribery business, that they think it's better for American, we're supposed to have American business
that reflects the values of our country.
I'm riding around where I'm at now,
I see all these like Trump signs, take America back.
Take America back from whom?
From other Americans?
We are supposed to have American ideals.
That's supposed to mean something.
And we want businesses to reflect those ideals.
If we left businesses to their own devices, all they care about is shareholder value and
a return on investment at the bottom line.
They don't care about where you sleep tonight, how you eat tonight, how your kids go to school
tomorrow,
and what's in your refrigerator.
They don't care about that
because it doesn't make them money.
Donald Trump says,
let's get rid of not only the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,
let's get rid of the Foreign Extortion Act
because businesses in America should be able
to freely bribe their way to the top.
That's what America are we living in.
As I've said, he is taking the beating heart of the
American democracy and he has shrink wrapped it in some sort of, like a wrap around a car of this
MAGA thing. And we got to bust it out, right? Because you and I are just going to spend the
next four years or two years of the midterm election,
not only talking about the 2000 or 3000 cases, but all of these value and policy propositions.
This is the difference between the parties and between fair-minded and fair-thinking
people and the other thing on the other side.
We would never, we would never as a party
be able to do the things that Donald Trump is doing
because we have morals and we have values
and those are supposed to reflect America.
And so that is the struggle.
It's good and evil.
It is that you and I are on the forefront of
and by extension, our committed engaged audience.
You know, and for me, it's just about
what is the objective reality?
What is all of the data truly state?
And I saw somebody, I think on TikTok,
make this observation, I thought it was funny.
Someone was like, you know,
I really never liked group projects in high school
because I'd often get stuck with people in my group
and they wouldn't work hard or
they would lie or slouch or whatever it would be.
Then they said, America is one of these group projects that I just can't stand this group
project.
It was a funny analysis because what pains me throughout all of this is the manipulation
seems fairly obvious, right?
It seems pretty basic what the billionaires are doing.
And it's not even a matter and it shouldn't be a matter of, oh, Democrat,
Republican, Independent, Green Party, whatever.
It should just literally be like, y'all realize that the rich people keep on
fooling you and they're treating you like you're stupid and you're
kind of proving them right that you are by keep on falling for the, you know, the, the
same thing over and over again, isn't that's like the, the, the definition of, of insanity.
It's like obvious they're lying to you about no tax on tips because they're trying to get
Vegas voters.
They're lying to you about no tax on social security because they're
gutting social security.
They're lying to you about all of these things and you keep on falling for it
every single time and all they have to do is use the word transgender or this.
And it works you up and then you vote against your interest.
I mean, I teach sports law at a university in Southern California.
So I'm familiar with title nine, which says, for example, that male and
female sports are supposed to be treated equally.
That's a law it's called title nine.
Well, Donald Trump said, look, I'm supporting women and that's why we're
not going to allow the nine transgender
athletes to play in the NCA. He didn't say nine. He acted like you would think they were transgender
athletes everywhere because he wanted to use this to bully. He signed an executive order to make a
whole big show of this. And how was this framed? Oh, Donald Trump is helping women's sports.
How is this framed? Oh, Donald Trump is helping women's sports.
The Trump Title IX guidance that just came out said that male sports don't have to share
their name, image, and likeness endorsement revenue now that they can make money with
women's sports.
So they just gutted the ability of women's sports and women athletes to get paid equally
as male athletes.
That's actually going to affect mostly all women athletes.
There was going to be a rev share, which is what Biden proposed.
Now there's not a rev share.
What Donald Trump proposed and people got so angry at the one volleyball
player in San Jose state, who was just trying to live and exist that they literally just hurt their own pocketbooks and their own income.
And they used it under the banner of championing women's sports while women's sports was just
gutted.
What Donald Trump do?
He walked around, you know, and said, FEMA is not doing this for the people of North
Carolina.
I'm going to help you.
FEMA is not doing this for Georgia. Biden's
FEMA's not doing this. What's Donald Trump saying about California? Oh, you know, you're not raking
the land the right way. You got to rake it better. We're gonna make sure we rake your land better.
It's literally, it's just all lies and it's verifiable and they've got you so focused on
Hamas condoms in Gaza
that you're not actually following the facts.
That's how the billionaires are screwing you,
and they're dangling these things in front of you,
and they're giving themselves $4.5 trillion in tax cuts
and taking away your medicine and your healthcare
and your life.
So with FEMA, Donald Trump says Biden's FEMA
is not doing things when Biden's FEMA was.
So what does Trump do?
He says he's abolishing FEMA and he denies what FEMA was giving to these red states or states that voted for Trump.
The Trump FEMA rejects it because Trump's trying to gut it that Biden was giving the states all of this emergency relief.
That's so wild to me. And y'all keep on falling for this crap. Look at this headline that's not
getting enough attention in San Francisco Chronicle. Trump's spending freeze halts the
key wildfire work. We can't even buy the rakes. Most of the land in California that Trump says
needs to be raked is not state-owned
land, it's federal land.
And the federal agency overseeing 15 million acres of public lands in California has halted
its critical fire prevention work because of the massive freeze in government funding
directed by Trump.
The Bureau of Land Management confirmed it stopped all plans to clear hazardous overgrowth
on public lands across the country if the projects were to be paid through the Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law.
The law was slated to fund $113 million worth of fuels reduction work on 770,000 acres nationwide
this year.
Quote, we can't even buy the rakes if we wanted to rake the forest.
Sean, Steven Gutierrez with the National Federation of Federal Employees,
the union representing the workers.
The cuts also are gutting the firefighters positions.
Remember all those firefighters for Trump and police officers?
He's screw, he's just literally screwing you.
The veterans for him, he's taking away your benefits.
So like what, like what, what is how did your mind go to mush?
I mean, how did how do you keep getting you?
You're watching this, but like, you know, maybe you're undecided.
I don't know.
How did their minds go to mush and just become so easily manipulated?
And that's why we do this show.
I mean, that's why we've created this network to just get out the facts.
And I can show you the data and do my best because corporate media wants to have six
people on this side of the, of the office and six people on this side of the, of the
table, Oh, Gulf of America, Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of America, go, yell, yell, yell.
That's stupid. Okay, okay, who cares?
Okay, at the end of the day,
your life is being harmed by these policies,
but you are stuck in rage algorithms
that you're literally voting against you
and your kids and your grandkids.
And so we'll use this platform to continue to grow.
That's the end of Legal AF for today.
We'll keep growing together.
The Midas Touch YouTube channel hit 4 million subscribers.
Thank you everybody for getting us there.
The Legal AF YouTube channel's on its path
to 1 million subscribers.
So if our 4 million all subscribe to Legal AF, there would
be 4 million there as well. So I'm looking at all 4 million of you. Please subscribe today.
And again, as we said before on the show, Popak just started his new Popak law firm,
off to a great start. He's already signed up some wrongful death cases, some catastrophic injury cases, some real sad cases,
the case involving the plane crash over Washington, D.C.
I'm so proud of Michael Popak for taking the risk
of starting his own firm.
I know it was something he always wanted to do,
and I'm glad to see that it's taking off so quickly.
And he's been inundated with so many of your requests of the
injuries that you or family or loved ones or people you know have that now he has a vehicle to
actually be able to to help you so it's great to see. Let me give you that number quickly you call
1-877-POPOC-AF that's 1-877-POPOC-AF. Thank you everybody for watching.
We're so grateful for all of your support.
And again, thank you to our mods.
Thank you to the Legal AFers.
Thank you to the Midas Mighty.
We're in this together and have a great day.
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