Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF Full Episode 3/22/2025
Episode Date: March 23, 2025Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok head the top rated Legal AF podcast, and tonight discuss: Trump picking a fight he is doomed to lose all the way up to the US Supreme Court with one of the most revered ...judges of our lifetime -- Chief Judge Boesberg of the DC district court, over Trump's phony "wag the dog" declaration of war against Venezuela; Federal judges firing back with public statements and letter filings to shove back against Trump's attempts to abuse the Federal courts; a profile in cowardice, as a major Global law firm based in New York voted to sacrifice its hard earned reputation for ethics, honesty and good lawyering, on the alter of its greed, as it decided not to fight being blacklisted by Trump, but to give him $40 million in extorted legal services to make him go away, and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Support Our Sponsors: Qualia: Head to https://qualialife.com/LEGALAF and use promo code: LEGALAF at checkout for 15% off your purchase! 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. Sundays For Dogs: Get 40% off your first order of Sundays. Go to https://sundaysfordogs.com/LEGALAF or use code LEGALAF at checkout. Mud/Wtr: Start your new morning ritual & get up to 43% OFF your @MUDWTR by going to https://mudwtr.com/LEGALAF #mudwtrpod 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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Perhaps the biggest legal story of this past week has been Donald Trump's invocation of
the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and then the fallout thereafter where a federal judge issued
an injunction for 14 days saying that at least under the alien enemies act until we understand
what it is that you're invoking, what you actually signed, what type of process you're going to be
affording to people to make sure that they're actually terrorist enemy combatant gang members,
hybrid warfare people versus just innocent people until that pause on 14 days.
It seems like the Trump regime violated that order.
And then there was a fight throughout the week where Donald Trump started attacking the federal judge judge Boasberg, one of the most experienced federal judges in this specific area as well.
When it comes to counterterrorism issues, foreign intelligence, he's the chief judge of Washington DC.
There was a showdown hearing that took place on Friday.
All of this evidence started to come out
from the ACLU lawyers,
where the initial group to bring this case,
were learning that women were sent to concentration camps
in El Salvador, which was only used for men,
and they had to be sent back to like Venezuela, where a lot of them are already
political exiles from the Maduro regime. So what's going to actually happen to them?
We've heard stories, for example, of like professional football soccer players,
football international players who had Real Madrid tattoos, political
exiles from Venezuela fleeing the Maduro regime here lawfully as asylum seekers.
People like that were apparently sent to the concentration camps in El Salvador.
And we're at this kind of showdown in federal court.
We're going to talk about that.
One of the strangest things though that happened at the end of the week
was Donald Trump saying that he did not sign
the Alien Enemies Act invocation that led to all of this.
He said other people signed it and he's not even sure really what it is.
Just you can hear him in your own war in his own words. It's player.
It doesn't sound like this judge, I, who the DOJ is
arguing with today about the deportation place. He wants to
know why the proclamation was signed in the dark, his words,
and why people were rushed on to planes. Because we want to get
criminals out of our country, number one, and I don't know
when it was signed, because I didn't sign it. Other people handled it.
But Marco Rubio has done a great job and he wanted them out and we go along with that.
We want to get...
So then the White House responded and said, this is an exact verbatim quote from the White
House, that Donald Trump was clearly referring to the fact that he did not sign the original Alien Enemies Act of 1798,
that he did not use a time machine to go back into 1798,
and he was not talking about the Alien Enemies Act invocation from this past week.
You know, Popak, one of the interesting things from this court hearing before Judge Boesberg
was that the Department of Justice lawyer admitted that he understood the judge's
lawyer to prohibit the flight that was about to take off when they were rushing it from
going to El Salvador in the first place, essentially admitting that they violated the order.
That may be why Trump's trying to throw, I don't know, Secretary of State Marco Rubio
or other people under the bus.
Another notable thing from that court hearing is when Judge Jeb Boesberg, the federal judge,
was questioning the DOJ attorney.
What do you know?
Tell me about this.
And then the DOJ attorney responded that he didn't personally know a lot of the information
and Boesberg said, I often tell my clerks before they go out in the world to practice
law, the most treasured valued item is reputation and credibility. That's one of the things that Boasberg
told the attorney and then Boasberg asked the Justice Department attorney,
you understood that my temporary restraining order against summarily
deporting people doesn't mean that those people get released into the public, it
just means they go through the normal process that has always existed.
And then POPAC, one of the things we're learning, of course, is that ACLU attorney said there
were people who returned from El Salvador after their flights because they were either
not Venezuelan or were women, and the El Salvadoran government declined to take them.
Boasberg vowed to get to the bottom of this again.
Judge Jeb Boesberg is the chief judge in Washington, D.C.
He was someone who was the chief judge of the FISA courts.
And here's someone who was first appointed by George W. Bush to the D.C. district and
then became a federal judge thereafter by Obama
He went to Yale. He was in Justice Kavanaugh's class a
Wiley made it was capital's roommate and a widely respected, you know, you know judge
So Popeach, I think we start there and the Chief Justice John Roberts had something to say
Yeah, it's why they've picked this hill to die on, the Trump administration,
and drawing their line in the sand about exercising this phony war power
and trying to rush this, no pun intended, rush this judge,
call them out,
and say things out loud outside the courtroom
that they would never try to get away with
inside the courtroom.
In fact, the judge even didn't like the things
they've been saying inside the courtroom,
telling Drew Ensign, the meat puppet,
that they wheeled out on purpose
without any real preparation.
So he couldn't answer questions. It's implausible deniability. purpose without any real preparation.
So he couldn't answer questions. It's implausible deniability, the types of lawyers,
that they, this is what I'm noticing then,
they're sending in these very young, very inexperienced,
purposefully not prepared lawyers,
whether it's the lawyer for the Department of Justice,
they send in to Judge Reyes on the transgender block case, who did a lot of stammering and I don't know and I don't know,
or Drew Ensign.
The judge even said during the hearing, there's a lot of different pieces going on.
I'll break it down here quickly in this Alien Enemies Act Phony War Powers Venezuelan Deportation
to an El Salvadorian prison issue that we have
here. And these plates are all spinning on this case at different
paces and different times procedurally. But my fundamental question I started
this off with is why they're picking this judge, this moment, and this particular policy to die on.
Because I do believe that they will not succeed
and they will have completely exhausted
whatever credibility they ever had
as a Department of Justice before judges
in the DC Circuit Court, DC District Court, sorry,
which Jeb Boesberg presides over as the chief judge.
They had very little of it to begin with,
starting with the positions they were taking.
Positions that are so impertinent and so unprofessional
and borderline abusive that the judge even said to Enshen,
I am seeing a language being used in filings
by the government that I am not familiar with
and is impertinent and impolite and inappropriate.
And when you have a judge say that,
and the bookend for that comment was to tell him
when he wasn't prepared, Drew Anson and the rest,
you have only your reputation and your credibility
and your ethics.
That's all that you have as a lawyer
and you're in danger of losing that.
You need to talk to your fellow colleagues
at the government.
Will you do that for me?
And Enzo was like, yes, your honor.
See outside the courtroom, Trump and the press secretary
and Musk and whoever in MAGA Congress
that they push the button on
or their paid social media influencers and whoever in MAGA Congress that they push the button on
or their paid social media influencers
through their rapid response team in the White House,
they all start, or Pam Bondi,
they all start going after the judge
in a way you would never think to do it
or think it would be effective either.
He's a lunatic.
This is the playbook from Donald Trump when he was criminal defendant, criminal convict Trump. He's a lunatic. This is the playbook from Donald Trump when he was criminal defendant, criminal convict Trump.
He's a lunatic.
He is a criminal.
He's corrupt.
He's a lefty.
And all of this, he, you know, he was appointed
by Barack Hussein Obama.
He's somehow George Soros, I'm sure,
is thrown in there as well.
And while that did, and the calls and the clamor
for impeachment, impeachment, impeachment,
in which in our entire 250 year plus history,
we've only impeached 15 judges,
you gotta have two thirds of the Senate in order to do it,
and it was always when there was bribery,
like payoffs of a judge.
And finally, I've never seen it in my lifetime,
and I went back and looked, it's never really happened,
where the Supreme Court's leader, the Chief Justice, came out earlier in the
week, which was the top story then, and said, knock it off, Trump, as the head of the second
Article II branch, the executive branch, in 200 years of our history, our precedent. You don't like a judge's decisions, you appeal.
You don't impeach.
That was a knock it off, pump the brakes,
and you chose the wrong judge to go after.
Boasberg is widely considered by both sides of the aisle
to be a middle of the road, moderate Democrat.
That's why he was bipartisanly appointed
by two different presidents, Republican and Democrat,
into the various points of his career.
Roberts put him on the FISA court,
Obama put him on the federal court,
W put him on the state court as a feeder program,
and he's been well considered ever since
and he was a natural to become the chief judge
of that district.
He was also Kavanaugh's, not just classmate,
roommate in law school at Yale.
He's friendly with Roberts.
Roberts felt it was necessary to waste
whatever political capital he has
to come to the protection because he had to.
He was being challenged by Trump.
And Trump, rather than seeing that he's in danger
of potentially risking votes
at the United States Supreme Court,
the way he's acting now to federal judges
about his presidential power,
because he learned the wrong lessons
when he was a criminal defendant in state
in federal criminal courts.
He's lost sight of of and the people around him in this hermetically sealed world of his former criminal
defense lawyers, now Department of Justice lawyers and other shining lights like Alina Habba
and Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem who according to reports are the ones who came up
with the great idea to use the Alien Enemies Act
and to port through Venezuela the middle of the night
before a federal judge could get their jurisdiction around it.
So he's got terrible advice givers around him.
And now the rubber is going to meet the road
with the Supreme Court.
Those, the three different things going on that you and I and others are keeping an eye on here and now the rubber's gonna meet the road with the Supreme Court.
The three different things going on that you and I
and others are keeping an eye on here
on Midas Touch and Legal AF
are the temporary restraining order that was entered
and expanded last Saturday at about 6.50 at night
with Ensign, this lawyer, in the room
where the judge made it clear in the room what the scope
and contours of the injunction were, and that was to turn planes around that hadn't been launched yet.
If they hadn't landed, get them back and stop deporting pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act until
I figure out whether the war power has been properly invoked or not and whether there's been
due process violations or not
for the people that have been so deported.
And so they then went off, not Drew Ensign,
but others started writing things in court filings
and taking positions with the judge in other hearings
about, well, judge, you didn't put it in writing yet.
It was an hour later and you only told us orally.
And the judge says, that's pretty much of a stretch.
You're telling me my oral injunction,
my oral orders don't carry any weight with you?
Which is absolutely wrong
from a jurisprudential standpoint.
When you and I, and I still go into court for injunctions,
you know, you gotta take down notes
and you gotta get the transcript and almost immediately
to understand what the contours of the injunction are.
You can't wait around for the,
here's the injunction on the reasons stated in the hearing.
You got to know what they are.
And he said to this guy in the hearing
that what the Friday hearing that we've been covering
was the hearing to vacate
or dissolve the temporary restraining order.
That's different than the hearing and the fact-binding
about whether the TRO was violated or not.
That was all of that that was going on.
So the Friday hearing was about,
okay, I don't like the language you're using,
this is Boasburg, okay?
I don't like, where's the other lawyer that was here?
Okay, and he said, well, he's not here.
Okay, I don't like the fact that somebody
that argued in front of me,
these major issues is not here in front of me, and you are. That's the second thing third thing is did you understand you were in the court for the injunction?
Did you understand the what I was enjoining and did you tell your colleagues in government?
What my order was? Yes, your honor, right and from there on that completely and he's gonna write this up in an order
That's gonna be pretty blistering
against the Trump administration,
because this lawyer, as he had to do,
look a judge in the eye and lie,
that is a ticket to have your bar license pulled,
and you don't wanna do that.
So that kid knew better, that lawyer knew better
than to lie to the judge.
And so he's gonna be writing an entire,
he didn't rule yet, but he's gonna be writing
an entire order to keep the temporary restraining order in place while he works on his contempt papers. He's waiting for
two final pieces of paper on Tuesday, which you and I will cover. One is you're going to exercise
the state secrets privilege from 1953. I don't see how that's even applicable. The state secrets privilege,
which the Trump administration is trying to use to cloak their bullshit of having in the middle of
the night, sign the presidential proclamation, and then put people on planes to get them out from
under a judge's jurisdiction. That's not when that's used. That's when a part generally,
when a party brings a suit against the government in order to prove their case against the government,
they need to refer to things that the government
then intervenes and says,
yeah, you can't use those, those are state secrets.
And the judge goes, well, there are,
all right, I'll defer to the administration on that one.
You can't use those case dismissed.
This is not when a judge is trying to get to the bottom
in fact finding about whether his injunction's been
a violated or not and wants the logistics, the who, what, where, and when of the deportation.
So they're going to have to now file on Tuesday whether they're invoking it and the grounds for
it and the judge will then assess it. And they also have to file finally on Tuesday. There's
another, I forget the other piece of paper the following Tuesday, but after that,
the judge is gonna decide on contempt,
we're gonna get the ruling on the temporary restraining
order, but if they thought that this pressure campaign
outside the courtroom extrajudicial was gonna have an impact
on Boasberg, it has backfired, and I think it sets up
for potential loss of votes at the Supreme Court level for Donald Trump
and his policies based on how he's behaving
and the DOJ is behaving.
Look, this is where Donald Trump is most comfortable,
attacking the judges, playing the victim.
This is so unfair.
Activist judges, Obama appointed judges.
He goes into his Maga cocoon and he starts to whine and whine.
We saw this when he was citizen Donald Trump,
it goes right into his playbook right there.
And with a judge like Jeb Boesberg,
not that it's right to do this to any judge,
but he picked on paper a judge who is the most qualified and bipartisan on these
specific issues. As you look at again, Judge Boesberg's background, he first was appointed
to become a judge in 2002 to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. It's a
district. So it'd be like that'd be the equivalent of like a state court judge. But George W.
Bush appointed him there.
He served nine years there and then bipartisan former president Barack Obama
then appoints him in 2011.
Chief Justice John Roberts appoints him to the United States Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court in 2014.
He becomes the presiding judge of the top dog, the top judge of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2020 and 2021.
And then also in 2020, he was appointed to the United States Alien Terrorist Removal
Court and designated as the chief judge dealing with the issue of alien terrorists.
So you couldn't find someone who knows more about the alien enemies act and how it is applied.
And yes, Judge Boesberg recognizes that under the executive branch under Article 2,
there are a lot broad powers if you're going to assert war powers,
but there are still standards
and we still have a system of judicial review.
Why don't I share this with you?
Back from 2005, Chief Justice John Roberts
at his confirmation hearing said the following, let's play it.
No man is above the law
Not the president and not the Congress and that's why the courts have the obligation and have had since Marbury versus Madison to say what?
since Marbury versus Madison a case that established the idea of judicial review being entrenched in our
Constitution which was a
response to not just an oligarchy, but a
monarchy, and our Constitution was saying no kings, and there is a place for judges
to review the legality of things.
If Trump's saying that there's a war, a judge can say, hey, what's the war?
If there is a war and you're invoking war powers and calling individuals enemy combatants of that war,
okay, well, what criteria are you using?
What's the process to make sure
that you're not labeling a Venezuelan woman
who's not anything to do with a gang
and sending this individual to El Salvador
to an all
male concentration camp or the story we heard from the ACLU lawyers and other
lawyers at the Friday hearing a soccer coach, professional soccer player back
in Venezuela, political exile had the Real Madrid tattoo on his shoulder.
Um, it did a peace sign, uh, a love sign that was interpreted by, not interpreted, it should
have been interpreted as peace and love, that the Trump regime then said was a train day
aragua sign, and then this individual is labeled an enemy combatant in a war, and then he was
thrown onto a plane, thought if anything maybe go back to Venezuela, where by the way he'd probably get killed or locked up from the Maduro regime because it's he's
an exile from the Maduro regime.
But at least he was thinking, oh shit, I'm going back to Venezuela.
But then goes to El Salvador and then gets put in an ISIS style torture video produced
by the American government where you see the people's faces and they're being shaved and kicked on the floor you can see their faces so when
they're saying oh state secret state secrets they made a video where they
showed these people so okay well who are these people what did they do and then
what is Caroline Levitt out there saying and it what here when she says
Donald Trump clearly signed it this is the rhetoric though that they use this is the pink dress lady from North Korea
This is the bag that the bag dad Bob that is here now in a
Cacostocracy Trump regime here play this clip of Caroline Leavitt any of them President Trump signed a proclamation
invoking the alien enemiesemies Act regarding the invasion
of the United States by the foreign terrorist organization, Tren de Aragua.
At the president's direction, the Department of Homeland Security carried out a counterterrorism
operation deporting nearly 200 violent Tren de Aragua terrorists, which will save countless
Americans.
Now, we know that to be false.
Popak, I want to talk to you about that video. Before we do that I want to take
our first break of the show. I want to remind everybody about the Legal AF
YouTube channel. It recently passed half a million subscribers. It's absolutely
soaring and I know you are building more collaborations there. David Aarrenberg,
you all know him from Court Authority
on the Midas Touch Network.
He's gonna be bringing his team over
to the Legal AF channel.
So Arenberg and his crew will now be
on the Legal AF channel.
You have your court accountability crew
that's on there as well,
and you're leading something incredible there.
Also, Michael Popak, I'm so proud that you started your own law firm now. It's about a month old
We've you know, I've seen you sign up a lot of major
cases their wrongful death cases
catastrophic injury cases sexual harassment cases if you have a case that fits that type of
criteria sexual harassment cases. If you have a case that fits that type of criteria, big car accidents,
trucking accidents, Michael Popak's representing the family who tragically lost a loved one
in the plane crash over Washington, D.C. Michael Popak's representing somebody who's lost a
loved one in a trucking accident that tragically killed the person. POPAC's handling those cases.
POPAC, where do they call and go
if they want to bring in the POPAC law firm?
Yeah, thanks, Ben.
I made it as simple as, for me also, as possible.
The website is www.thepopacfirm.com, P-O-P-O-K, of course,
and the 1-800 number, what else?
1-877-POOPOC-A-F.
Make sure you all call, make sure you all check it out.
If you have a loved one or you have a friend,
you could pass that on.
We know that a lot of people have been asking about that
in the past, so Popoc created his own practice.
Big risk, proud of you.
I know it's already off to a successful launch.
All right, everybody, we'll take our first quick break
of the show.
We'll be right back.
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Michael Popok, before we took the break,
I showed Caroline Levitt.
Tokyo Rose. Exactly. And then she then she
goes on state regime media known as Fox, which platforms this also and the message that goes
out to people. The bad guys got taken away. The terrorists are gone. Look, Trump saved the day. That's how propaganda works. And Fox calls itself
news. So the people believe that. And then if you have lawyers or people say, Whoa, whoa,
whoa, you got to give process. Why are you sending these people there? What do you frequently
hear? All you support the terrorists. Are you with the bad guys? You support the terrorists
now. You trying to help them out? Because no, we're a nation of laws though. And I don't want the innocent
woman or the innocent person because it starts with the Venezuelans and then they say you're
the Venezuelans. Then they say your trend day, a rock wall. Then they come for you and
they come from your pit. That's why we have a constitution here. Here's Caroline Leavitt
Morning Maria the president signed a proclamation
Invoking the alien enemies act against trend a Aragwa members who have invaded our country These are the most violent heinous criminal monsters you could ever imagine
They have taken the lives of innocent American women like Jocelyn Nungre and Lakin Riley, and the president invoked this authority
to deport nearly 300 of them who are now in El Salvador
where they will be behind bars where they belong
rather than roaming freely in American.
Michael Popak.
Yeah, a couple of things.
First of all, what's at stake?
And I think Jeb Boesberg, back to the judge
that we started this segment with,
framed it right. Can a president, by simply declaring somebody to be an enemy combatant
and claim that he's exercising war powers, then have an unreviewable, meaning no role
for a federal judge or a federal court to determine whether
that is consistent with our constitution.
You can see the scary alternative world that Donald Trump wants us to reside in, which
is he can just use a phony branding of political enemies or something that's on the top of
his policy list and then make the argument that it's unreviewable.
None of the things that any prior commander-in-chief
has ever done dating back to George Washington,
well, at least 1818, at least the Barbary versus Madison.
Has there ever been a declaration that ultimately
it is unreviewable by a federal judge,
a single federal judge, they keep repeating this mantra of a single federal judge, a single federal judge.
They keep repeating this mantra of a single federal judge
in a single district can't, yes, that's how this works.
It's a single federal judge in a single district
who makes a ruling on the constitutionality
or whether something complies with the law,
then goes to a three judge panel of a circuit court,
of one of our circuit courts federally,
and then may or may not go up
to the United States Supreme Court.
That's it.
That's been going on for over 200 years.
And every, whether it was every time the war power
has been invoked, the Alien Enemies Act has been invoked.
The War of 1812, World War I, and World War II, that's it.
What do they have in common?
Wars.
What are we not at right now?
War.
And that's where a federal judge steps in and says,
are you properly exercising it?
Sure, there are bumpers, again, under separation of powers
and checks and balance that our Supreme Court
in precedent has imposed.
Is it a political question?
That's a doctrine that's been developed under the law.
No, the exercise of war power is not generally
a political question that keeps federal courts
out of doing review.
But you'll hear the Trump side make that allegation.
Is it something that is a war power that a federal judge ultimately can make a ruling on?
Yes. Is the war power and the commander-in-chief power broadly interpreted? Sure,
but that doesn't mean a federal judge is sidelined from their constitutional
obligation to provide a check and a balance to a potentially out of control, actually out of control
and rogue presidency. That's one. So, Boasberg said that. The other, what we're watching, as you just,
as so artfully outlined, is this ecosystem that Donald Trump has created,
that's an echo chamber that he then uses to justify the bad thing that he's just done.
And the parts of it that we've outlined for the last five years, four years on Legal AF
on the Midas Touch Network are, for Trump anyway, are a rapid response team within the communications department
of the White House, of which Carolyn Leavitt is a part, but not the only part.
The messaging of the day, which is developed by Stephen Chung and Stephen Miller and other
people like that within the White House in consultation with
people outside the White House like Steve Bannon and people at Fox.
Then there's paid influencers, social media influencers, and others in that orbit that
echo whatever the message of the day is and use that vocabulary.
Then there's a group of MAGA Congress people and senators
that are then told to run with it.
So if we're talking, let's use impeachment as an example.
If we're talking impeachment of federal judges,
Musk will say it, Levitt will say it, Fox will say it.
Somebody will file an articles of impeachment
against the judge and then Trump will say,
well, it's not me.
You see, it's this other thing.
And then Fox has actually used a huge amplifier
and trampoline for all of that.
That is the method, the MO for Donald Trump.
And then he squeezes and extorts,
MAGA in Congress and others,
and we're gonna talk a lot about Trump extortion
as we get into some other stories today,
in order to, because they have determined,
and they're not wrong so far,
that this ecosystem of biofeedback loop that they create,
they've figured out that they think that's effective for them
and helps them in courts or at least in the court of public opinion.
And so we've got all of that going on.
The problem is that Trump, for some reason,
sometimes doesn't get the memo.
And when he's caught off guard,
like when he's coming off a Marine One or a plane or something,
and somebody asks a pointed question
that he wasn't prepared to answer without his teleprompter,
the judge said he wants to know why proclamation invoking
the Alien Enemies Act was signed on Friday
but wasn't released till Saturday.
Why was it in the dark when the planes were already flying?
Well, now, that should have been the softball for him to say, on Friday but wasn't released till Saturday. Why was it in the dark when the planes were already flying?
Well, now that should have been the softball for him to say,
yeah, I signed it.
We signed it on Friday.
We had some logistics to do.
We weren't ready to publish it.
You know, ICE wasn't ready until we published it.
We published it on, that's not what he said.
What he said is, well, I don't know.
I didn't really sign that.
Other people did that.
And nobody in their right mind believes
that he was talking about 1798.
Everybody in their right mind believes.
At best, I thought they were going to argue that he didn't sign the papers
that were filed in court.
I was like, all right, I can see that.
But no. And so for a guy that spent a considerable amount
of political capital bashing Joe Biden and the use of the auto pen for his pardons.
And there's 30 different times when Donald Trump
used the auto pen, by the way,
for him to say, I did not sign.
The only exercise of a war power in peacetime
we've ever had is an extraordinary admission
that he's either not listening, not present, is, you know, is totally deranged.
Who is running the show over there?
Carolyn Levitt?
It was a declaration that a war...
Right.
-...exists. That's a pretty big...
It's a pretty big document.
And on that basis, you've authorized the kidnapping of individuals to be sent to
concentration camps in countries where they never ever resided for from the outset.
And you don't remember it. You remember it. You didn't sign it. That's the level of gaslighting
or lying that's there. But here's the thing, Popak, you look at Russia,
what did they say was the pretext
for their unlawful invasion of Ukraine?
Denazification, they said the Ukrainians are Nazis.
It's the craziest allegation in the world.
But-
Led by a Jewish president.
Ukraine's led by someone who's, Juzelinsky's a Jew.
And you have Russia basically say, you know, that's no, we're
going, we're going with that.
That's it.
And they say it over and over again.
And the Russian people, you know, at least are going along with that.
That's human psychology, which is a strange thing.
You can have a whole other talk and bring on, you know, people who study
the way the brain works, but this this structure
gets people to in America to vote against their own interests and it launders in the
Fascism and the oligarchy and it gives a nice little snackable easy talking point for these magas, right?
It's it's oh you you you you must support the terrorists
Trump was trying to get rid of the terrorists
Yeah, you just reminded me of something. I wanted to Boasberg said
Just to make clear to the American people he was talking to drew ensign the lawyer
But he was talking to the American people he said to ensign you realize my injunction was not to stop
The deportations that you could still do the deportations through due process and through immigration.
You understood that, right?
Yes.
And you understand that I wasn't ordering
for those bad people that you allege are bad people
to be released into the general population
into America, right?
You understood that, right?
Yes, I understood that right also.
So he's not talking to ensign.
He's talking to the American people.
This is all about, not about getting criminals
off the street.
This is about due process and us not using star chambers
or no process at all, right?
As you said, to kidnap people and put, now look,
I am all for, if it turns out that these people
are actual murderers, rapists and drug dealers,
and they've got the goods, they've got the evidence, then show it in court, give them representation, and get them out of the country and deport them. I'm all in favor of that, and so are you.
Of course. point you pivot to the next related topic is now the Trump regime is
attacking this federal judge in Maryland another very well respected senior
status judge Judge Ellen Hollander and she issued an injunction that blocked
Elon Musk and Doge from getting access to the private information within the Social
Security Administration, namely our medical records, other personal identifying information,
real kind of sensitive stuff about us that we did not consent to give Elon Musk and his
team of 19 to 25 year old guys who refer to themselves as
big balls. You know, there's something called privacy here. We all like, I think some level
of privacy here. And the idea that they're going through personal files of us, Elon Musk is and his
team, to what end, you know, is problematic. And so the judge issued an injunction
that said, look, Social Security Administration should exist like it always has. They can
have access to all of these things just for now until we understand who's running Doge.
What is this? Elon Musk can't get your private medical records and your private Social Security
information. It's as simple as that. So what did the Trump regime use it to say?
The judge is forcing us to shut down social security.
We're gonna have to shut it all down.
We can't keep it open anymore because this prevents us
from even allowing the social security office to function.
Leland Dudek, who's the acting commissioner
of the social security administration, is, you know, put out all these statements. The judge is
forcing us, we have to shut down Social Security. Now, we know they want to shut
down Social Security. How do we know that? Well, they're already gutting it. They're
firing thousands of employees who work there. They're shutting down at least 47
Social Security field offices in both blue, red, and purplish
districts.
It doesn't really matter.
They're shutting it down.
Why?
Because by making it more difficult to access, they can break it down from within the same
thing they're doing with the Department of Education, fire everybody basically, and then
it gets destroyed and you can't use it anymore.
So that's what we see them doing there.
And they've come out with statements.
I mean, here's Elon Musk on the Joe Rogan show saying that social security is the biggest
Ponzi scheme he's ever seen.
Here, play this clip.
Well, I mean, the government's one big permit scheme, if you ask me.
Yeah, well, you could tell me better than anybody.
Social security is the biggest Pon policy scheme of all time.
Right, explain that.
So, well people pay into social security and the money goes out of social security immediately,
but the obligation for social security is your entire retirement career. So you're paying, like if you don't receive your Social Security
check for a month or so, and you are complaining about it, you
probably are committing fraud. You are a fraudster here play
this clip. Let's say Social Security didn't send out their
checks. This month, my mother in law, who's 94 Social Security didn't send out their checks This month
my mother-in-law who's 94
She wouldn't call and complain. Mm-hmm. She just wouldn't she thinks something got messed up and she'll get it next. Yeah a
fraudster
always
Makes the loudest noise screaming yelling and complaining. Hmm
these are like cartoonishly villainous people
from like the bad guy cartoons I grew up watching.
And, you know, Howard Lutnick's a billionaire.
Elon Musk is the richest person in the world,
although we'll see how long that lasts.
But by the way, he couldn't describe what a Ponzi scheme is.
He showed he doesn't understand how social security works.
And clearly socials.
I mean, I go after fact checking.
It's not an entitlement.
It's not a Ponzi scheme.
We the people have paid into a system and have a certain set of expectations.
It's our money. So the fact that the billionaires are not satisfied
with their yachts and their mansions
and whatever the weird stuff they do,
and they wanna go and grab this.
But then for the purposes of our legal analysis,
they use an injunction that says Elon Musk's team
cannot get access to your personal data and then they use that
protectually. That's something that is the height of nefariousness. And then what do
they go? Oh, well, I, they put, they run it through their propaganda machine that we just
talked about. And then they go, look, the judge did it, not us. I want to talk about
this. I want to take our last quick break of the show I want to remind everybody about Michael Pope box YouTube channel legal AF which is soaring on the charts over
500,000 subscribers already make sure you subscribe to the legal AF
YouTube channel and joining the legal AF channel soon will be David Arenberg and his team at court authorities
Are joining what you've built at Legal AF.
And also, Michael Popok, we talked about this before,
you started your own law firm handling catastrophic injuries,
big trucking accidents, car accidents,
tragic wrongful death cases, serious personal injury cases.
The consultation with you is free if someone has a case,
medical malpractice cases
Where do they go to contact you? Yeah. Yeah
Let me just one one line on that the reason for these types of cases is because this is what really in this is the intersection
Of law and life are these types of cases especially the catastrophic ones and the ones where somebody has been
terribly terribly injured or or or
especially the catastrophic ones and the ones where somebody has been terribly, terribly injured or has died as a result or family members.
I want to step in for that.
It's thethepopacfirm.com for the website and 1-877-POPOC-AF, free consultation.
I've got a great group of people along with me who are renowned trial lawyers in all the local districts that we need,
and we're looking forward to your call.
We'll be right back after our last quick break of the show.
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So Michael Popak, where we left off,
we talked about this judge in Maryland.
She issued the order.
Just simply saying injunction for a temporary period,
stop getting access to people's private social security data.
Elon Musk, the Trump regime, turned that access to people's private social security data. Elon Musk, the Trump regime turned that around to say, well, we need to shut
down social security now because of this order, which is what they always wanted
to do.
The judge sent not one, but two letters on the public docket, which is unheard
of, like just sending letters to combat the lies and disinformation.
And she says, to be clear, I never said shut it down.
It's a very narrow ruling.
You're lying about my order.
If you have any issues, come see me in chambers,
but you are lying and I'm filing this order publicly
to stop lying.
Like we had that, we had Justice Roberts
issue a public statement.
You have federal judges now having to issue
public PR statements to deal with the attack
on the judiciary.
What do you make of it?
Yeah.
We also saw Judge Alsop use a device I'd never seen before in federal court, a request for
information.
An RFI.
He's on his third RFI about whether the government is properly implementing his injunction to
rehire probationary employees for Doge. I talk to people that do what I do for a living in federal court,
like, you ever got an RFI from a judge? They're like, no, I got an order to show cause.
You know, like, why should I not find you in contempt, which is where Boasberg is
in the other cases that we talked about. But no, this is extraordinary. First of all,
I love that the fact that Judge Hollander in the social security case that we're talking about,
that she sits in Maryland,
that she hoisted the Trump administration
up on their own petard.
You did a whole great hot take about the phony JFK files
on the heels of the phony Epstein files.
Every time Donald Trump wants to capture a news cycle
and distract from his failing administration,
his policies that are killing America
and the American economy,
and the fact that the Republicans are cowards
and won't attend their own town halls, what does he do?
Hey, everybody.
I feel like he just pulled into,
it's like a circus, like a circus car
that just pulled into town.
Hey, everybody, you want to see the JFK files? He just pulled into, it's like a circus, like a circus car that just pulled into town.
Hey everybody, you wanna see the JFK files?
Who wanted to see the JFK files unredacted?
RFK Jr., that was about it.
Okay, I've seen the Zapruder film.
I've seen all the documentaries in the 80s about it.
But the judge said, all right,
you know, you know, what was in the release
by the Trump administration?
Because don't ever trust the Trump administration
with your private sensitive data,
because they released the social security numbers
for staffers and Congress people in the data dump
in order to grab the news cycle.
And the judge cited to it in her briefing, she said,
people are upset that 60 year old social security numbers
for people long dead were released.
And so now you understand why I don't want you rummaging
around and I want you to destroy until I get my hands around
the fact that you've and Doge and Musk have gotten their hands on people's
personal financial and health data
you're right and you you have not been able to tell me why this isn't a fishing expedition and why
You know, you can't just use
anonymized
Anonymous it like what I could see why you, maybe you'd want the data from quote unquote,
government efficiency.
That's the slogan, that's the mantra
every time they get caught doing something.
We're just doing government efficiency.
We're just changing the architecture
of how the servers work.
Really?
Then why do you need Mrs. Applebaum's
social security number and what pills she's getting
under social Security?
No one gives an answer. Again, lawyers are trotted out who are purposely kept in the dark by the administration, young lawyers who are being sent into the lions, the lion den of a federal judge.
of a federal judge. And it's one thing when you and I used to comment
on the evil genius of Donald Trump's criminal defense lawyers,
slowing things down so that he could possibly get elected.
But this is not working.
None of what you and I have been commenting on
or our hot takes, none of it is working.
115 lawsuits, 70 injunctions,
at least six or seven of them having been upheld
by various appellate courts,
the Supreme Court not stepping in,
appellate courts not even step, help,
you know how many times they've run, Ben,
to talk about letter writing?
You know how many letters they've written
from the Trump administration, the Department of Justice,
begging federal courts, supreme court,
appellate courts to step in and do something
at how they've just gotten crickets?
They don't even respond.
By not responding, they're responding.
Replace Boasberg!
He's a terrible judge.
Look at the process he set up.
He must be replaced.
Federal Circuit or DC Circuit Court of Appeals,
no response.
Supreme Court, bail us out.
You know, look what's happening with these lefty judges,
somebody.
And all you get is Robert saying,
you stop talking about impeachment,
pump the brakes on impeachment enough already.
So this is, if it was working, you and I would be going, well, this is an
interesting strategy. Let's see if this works. I mean, I once just to show my own real life
comparison. I was in a arbitration once in a financial services case, where a well known
plaintiff's lawyer, I won't name who sues a lot of financial services companies on behalf
of former employees,
decided that the arbitrator,
who's the judge in this story, in this context,
was gonna be against him,
that he came out of a major Wall Street firm,
law firm, we'll talk about a similar law firm.
I'm trying to think if he was a partner at that law firm.
He wasn't, but a similar law firm.
And always, he looked at his awards,
and he always sided with, awards and he always sided with,
he thought he always sided with the financial services firms
against the employees.
So in the opening statement,
he just blasted the effectively the judge,
didn't call him corrupt, but everything else.
You've never sided with this and that and do that.
And he's just, I mean, he's just going after
in his opening statement.
And I like put my hand over my mouth
and I said to my colleague next to me,
this is interesting, I wonder, is this gonna work?
And I was almost like, for a moment,
I had an out of body experience like,
hmm, I wonder if this will work.
By the way, it did not work, okay?
He lost the case and lost it badly.
And he lost that arbitrator from the moment he opened his mouth. So this is not work. Okay, he lost the case and lost it badly. And he lost that arbitrator from
the moment he opened his mouth. So this is not working. If it were working, I would say,
well, it's not the way I would practice, but it is seem to have having an effect. They
took some solace from when they were criminal defendants Trump, when they bash judges like
Mershon. And at the end, Mershon was
like, well, I don't really feel like sentencing you to jail. And they probably interpreted
that as, as he had worked. We bashed his wife and his daughter and him, and at the end he
lost confidence and he lost his brass ones to sentence him. Yeah, that was a win. Ain't
going to work in civil presidential power exercise with federal judges.
It hasn't worked, it's not going to work.
Now it's gonna be laid on the doorstep of the Supreme Court.
You and I are gonna be talking a lot
about the United States Supreme Court
in a way we never did over a summer and a spring
when they usually go dark.
They ain't going dark,
because these are coming up on emergency applications
through John Roberts. And you and I are gonna be doing a lot of talking between now and the end of the summer about these
these attempts by Donald Trump to
Reshape our
Constitutional Republic in our democracy
another reason why people should subscribe right now to the legal AF YouTube channel because there's going to be an overflow of
Information and you're going to cover
every nook and cranny of that. It seems like though, if there is a strategy, it's put these DOJ lawyers
who Trump hates anyway, put them in the meat grinder basically, let them sacrifice and lose
their bar licenses. And these DOJ lawyers have to decide, is that what they want to do? As we started this episode with Judge Jeb Boesberg,
telling the DOJ lawyer, I tell my clerks,
your reputation will follow you for the rest of your career.
And that was a message, not just to the lawyer in front of him,
but to all of the DOJ lawyers.
And again, coming from, again, Judge Boesberg,
Yale Law, Justice Kavanaugh's roommate, top judge out there,
basically, saying this to a DOJ lawyer
who is ruining his reputation right before Boasberg.
Like Boasberg, like you think I'm scared of you?
Like, do you know who I am?
It was one of those, but then it allows the Trump regime
to kind of play the victim and then
go out there and blame the judges, the judge, this judge, you know, and, and Trump feels
very comfortable in that space when he doesn't have to talk about things because he's an
idiot and he's, and he's a dangerous idiot. And, you know, the tariffs up, tariffs down,
tariffs in tariffs out, you know, let me conquer Canada He wants to take over Canada annex Canada
And they should be the 51st state Trump has no, you know in addition to be Greenland Panama this that
No, certainly no peace in Ukraine in 24 hours
In fact Trump's made things worse Trump's an idiot a dangerous idiot
but he knows how to put himself in that maga cocoon, play the victim,
and how to manipulate victimhood for power.
And so this plays into that kind of narrative.
If he judged this, judged that, unfair judge,
unfair judge, and then avoid talking about,
hey, by the way, prices are going up
and the economy's crashing
and we're looking at stagflation.
Anyway, we'll save some of that.
Before you leave that, I wanna just say one last thing.
There is something that Trump is trying to stick his,
there's a wound that he's trying to stick his finger in
and he thinks it's successful from a populist standpoint
with his base and those who voted for him.
There is a belief, and you can see it in the polling,
and you can see it in the interviews that media does,
among MAGA voters and people who are disaffected
that went and gravitated to Trump.
They don't trust the federal government.
They don't like what they think the federal government is.
They don't understand the federal government.
They think state and local is better,
except they all want the things that only
a federal government the size of America,
with the economy and the tax base to support it can provide.
So, they 70 million people in America
rely on Social Security and Medicare
And Social Security particularly as their only paycheck as their only source of income
70 million people that there is no state equivalent nor would there ever be of that social safety net
There's no local municipal equivalent of that nor with a nor will there ever be there's no private sector stepping forward to provide you for what you've paid in in your life,
health care and social security payments at all.
There are just things that only, whether it's national defense, FEMA, helping to create a social safety net, public education and protection of people
who are disabled, disadvantaged in public education, the protection of the disadvantaged
in society, that can only be done, and our framers and founders knew this, by the federal
government and the Democrats,
and this is the messaging that we need to do
as a media and also at the political side,
is that we are so closely associated
with the federal government,
and the federal government has such a bad rap,
is that we have to teach people why the federal government,
when it's properly operated by the right people,
can actually be a tremendous benefit
to people's lives and be life changing
and life altering in the right way.
I wanna talk about the capitulation of some big law firms
and the biggest capitulation we've seen
was from the Paul Weiss Rifkin law firm.
To give people the scale of these law firms, they have thousands of lawyers, big staffs across, not just the United
States, but across numerous countries. They have litigation teams and then different litigation practices. There can just be
whole teams devoted to entertainment, political, real estate, bankruptcy, corporate litigation,
just all the, with hundreds of lawyers
who work in different areas.
And then international law, then transactional.
They do the deals and they do mergers and acquisition deals
and they advise the banks and do all of these things.
And so there are, you probably sometimes
when you're driving in a city, you see on the buildings, the name of law firms like Paul Weiss and other to name
law firms, Covington and Burling, you know, is another one who Trump did this
executive order about. But one of the things that Trump and Trump hates these big
firms, because these big firms used to never give Donald Trump the time of day.
firms because these big firms used to never give Donald Trump the time of day.
They always viewed him as kind of phony.
And Trump always viewed these law firms as kind of representing the gilded kind of corporate club that Trump was never a part of.
And also they hire a lot of the lawyers who used to work at the Department of
Justice, who Donald Trump hates because they were law and order prosecutors.
And so Trump is now kind of using his retribution tour to go after the law firms themselves.
And by the way, these law firms are often like stepping stones from going in and out of working in the public sector to private sector.
A lot of judges get their starts, federal judges, Supreme Court judges,
get their starts working at these big law firms. They recruit heavily at the top law schools.
If you're in a big law school, there's a whole process where you go around, you meet the law
firms. And they represent a lot of corporate interests. They say they do pro bono work, I think, to try to soften some of the other stuff that
they do in their defense of kind of corporations and their litigation in favor of corporations.
But Trump's going after them by name.
He's name checking them in executive orders.
And so he's done this with a firm called Covington, which by and large has just like ignored it,
was their approach
More than anything the Perkins Cooey and they're fighting it. They filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump. They're standing up
and then you have Paul Weiss and Paul Weiss
capitulated boom quickly and
Their chairman this guy Brad Karp rushed to be with Donald Trump and Donald Trump's advisors.
Please, Donald, what can we do?
We we we we're sorry.
We're going to do anything we want to do.
You tell us.
So, oh, my God, Donald Trump put this Paul Weiss firm, Brad Karp.
We have the photo of Brad Karp salty.
You know, there he is right there.
I took away his identifying information from the Paul Weiss website, but that's what the guy looks like right there. He's the chairman of this sprawling law firm
and he rushed to, you know, Donald, please take this executive order. We'll throw any
of our lawyers under the bus. You just tell me Donald, what can we do to get on your good
side? So Donald Trump put them through a total walk of shame.
He issued this statement that just shamed them and they had to agree to the statement. They agreed to provide $40 million worth of what they call pro
bono legal services to Donald Trump's agenda. Whatever, you know, whatever
that's going to be. They attacked their former partner who Donald Trump absolutely hates and they said he engaged
in wrongdoing, which in my opinion is basically defaming him.
He worked as a special counsel to the district attorney's office, Mark Pomerantz, and they bragged about it to their associates
after they got this deal.
We are pleased to,
dear members of the Paul Weiss community,
we're pleased to announce Trump's executive order
relating to our firm was withdrawn a short while ago.
We wanna share with you the final agreement.
The commitments reaffirmed today are consistent
with Judge Simon Rifkin's 1963
statement of firm principles, which states, among other things that we believe in maintaining
by affirmative efforts, a membership of partners, associates reflecting a wide variety of religious,
political, ethnic, and social background. What the hell are you even talking about, Brad Karp?
And I guess, you know, if you're in trying to appease
the Trump regime, I don't know if you're a client of Rifkin,
Paul Weiss Rifkin, if you see how easily they fold,
how are these people supposed to represent you?
They're the biggest cowards ever.
So my biggest wag the finger, shame on you,
Brad Karp, you've disgraced yourself.
You've disgraced your family.
You've disgraced the Karp name.
You've disgraced the legal profession.
You are an embarrassment to anybody who has a law degree.
And frankly, all of the associates who work there, I think have some reflecting to do to work for a brutal coward like you,
who not only bends the knee, but does it with glee. Shame on you, you disgusting person.
You brought shame to our legal practice. Michael Popock.
Thanks for that, Leden. I'm one of the people that worked at a major New York law firm like
Paul Weiss. And I know people that work at Paul Weiss. I know people that had departments
at Paul Weiss. I worked at that had departments at Paul Weiss.
I worked at another one called Skad and Arps
when I started my career.
I was shocked that Paul Weiss decided not to fight this out.
And what's coming out in the reporting
is that there was a battle internal, as you would expect,
between the corporate transactional lawyers,
the ones that you described as being the deal makers,
and the litigators who tried cases.
The litigators wanted to go to the mattresses and war against the Trump administration.
Because Paul Weiss is, if it was known as anything before today, before you're
castigating them appropriately, if they were known as anything, it was like the first law firm where
Gentiles and Jews work next to each other, Paul and Weiss. In New York, that was something. It was a place that hired people not only from
the Ivy League schools, which at the time around its founding were anti-Semitic and weren't hiring
certain types of people, they were hiring from other law firms, other law schools that took Jews and took other people
and Skadden did the same thing.
And it was always a very, very highly sought after law firm.
It's top 20 in the world.
It had, it has, or had a revenue of about $3 billion
just to put the scale on this.
And so that fight between the litigators and the
transactional people broke into public. Apparently, CARP went to another major firm that's well
known for its pugilism, its fighting. It went to another major firm in New York and tried
to enlist them to file a lawsuit.
And a lawyer at that other major firm, who happens to be close to Trump and has
represented Trump in various matters, was actually willing to take the case
against the Trump administration.
That's a profile in courage.
He was willing to take the case and sign the pleadings.
But at the last minute, he also has a relationship with Robert Kraft, who owns the New England Patriots,
whose buddies with Trump, and they brokered a deal through this firm to bring in Karp
on bended knee into the White House and broker a deal. The other egg on the face that Karp
has is that the deal that Trump trumpeted and touted is not
the deal that he told his partners had been signed.
And there's language differences that don't line up where Karp told his partners in order
to get them to endorse it, because there was a vast majority that said, yes, we'll take
the deal because we want to stay in business.
He said, well, we're just going to have to give him $40 million.
By the way, that's just at $1,000 an hour
for an average young associate.
You do the math.
That's a lot of lawyers.
That's 20 lawyers doing work over the next couple of years,
full time.
And it was supposed to be on things that they
could get behind, like fighting-semitism on campus and but by the time Trump
announced it it was my entire policy agenda will be supported with free
legal service by Paul Weiss and the rest of the major law firms thinking that
Paul Weiss would have a backbone because you you didn't mention the timeline, a judge,
Beryl Howell, who used to be the chief judge of the same court that Jeb Boasberg is now
the chief judge of the district court in DC, she had already ruled in favor of the Perkins
firm in Washington and enjoined that very same proclamation, almost identical against them, to remove their security clearance,
to not let clients of the firm do business
with the government, she said,
this is, you're not, Judge Barrow Howell
told the Trump administration,
you're not the queen of hearts in Alice of Wonderland.
You can't look at somebody that you are displeased by
and say, off with your head.
There's due process considerations,
there's constitutional considerations,
there's first amendment considerations, you're enjoined.
So everybody thought, all right,
that'll be the signal to firms like Covington and Paul Weiss
that the courts will be able to protect you.
Don't cut the deal.
Because if you show that you're gonna bend over,
you see what's happening.
I just did a hot take comparing Paul Weiss
within 24 hours of Columbia bending the knee going to bend over. You see what's happening. I just did a hot take comparing Paul Weiss within
24 hours of Columbia bending the knee and agreeing in return for having the $400 million grant
given back to them. They're willing to put their Middle East and African Studies department
under a vice provost who's obviously going to censure them and make sure that it's in keeping with
Donald Trump's anti-DEI background.
So Karp may not survive, he shouldn't survive after you just excoriated him, but I don't
think he survives potentially his own partners now that there's this mismatch, intentional
mismatch between what he told the partners and what Donald Trump is crowing about.
But it's even worse than that
because it sends the signal to this,
Trump allegedly has 14 law firms.
These are only the three that we know about.
There's supposedly a secret list of at least 14
that he's gonna issue proclamations against.
And now you're gonna have to decide,
are you gonna be Perkins and you're gonna law firm
and go get a judgment, a judge in your camp and protect you?
Or are you gonna like give out money like Facebook
and Amazon to Donald Trump to make him not hurt you anymore?
Don't let daddy hurt you anymore.
And you're gonna have to make that decision.
And if you're a client of the firm,
I would pull my, if I had major business with Paul Weiser,
I'd pull it tomorrow, today, in response to that.
I'm not sure Karp survives.
It was a, people like, George Conway posted like,
you know, like, because he knows the firms
like I do in New York.
He was like, I had to rub my eyes.
Paul Weiss just cut that deal?
Are you, Judge Rifkin's law firm?
Are you kidding me?
And so now this is exactly what you're seeing.
Columbia capitulates, right?
Now he's turning Pam Bondi on and authorizing
all of his other departments to go look at major law firms
and their hiring practices to make sure
they're not helping black and brown people get a leg up
in their hiring practice.
I mean, this, I know from our audience,
this administration can't end soon enough.
Get back to where we were as in America,
but it's not just law firm capitulates.
It's the fact that Donald Trump now has a taste for this.
This blood is in the water and he has a taste for it.
And now it's going to be reinforced.
He's going to be going after these other 14.
And now they're going to have to make that choice, though.
That fork's in the road. You either go sue
or you're going to stroke big checks.
And that's it. And we've never had a president
that made good on retribution promises
the way Donald Trump has. This is all we're watching.
It's not helping America. It's not helping
your kitchen table politics or your economy it or any or helping an American It's just I got back into office and now I made a naughty list and I'm going to execute on it
The idea that a litigation firm that
Supposed to fight for its clients
litigation firm that is supposed to fight for its clients, tapped out over the most bogus and phony crap is some of the most, it's some of the most pathetic things, you know, I think about our
foundation of this show, I think about the arc of our careers, and how the purpose of, you know, to me to be a lawyer means to fight for our democracy
and to fight for our rule of law, not to be an agent of the destruction of it.
And now I've said this before and I'll say it again, you know, there are going to be
so many people and companies along this journey that are going to let us down, that are going
to let us down, that are going to let you down.
But there are also gonna be people who step up
who maybe you didn't expect, right?
The same way there are people who are betraying you,
who you didn't expect to.
You're seeing people step up who you didn't expect
to as well.
And I think in moments like this,
there are gonna be those who meet the moment.
There are going to be those who are silent, which to me is complicity. And then there
are going to be people who utterly aid and abet fascism. And I think we'll always remember
who those people were in this time. The arc of history is long and we're going to make
sure we fight for it to make sure it continues to go in the right direction, even and we're gonna make sure we fight for it to make sure it continues
to go in the right direction even if we're currently living through a hostile
government takeover that is pulling it back with agents of fascism who are
causing a lot of problems here. We'll keep fighting for you every day here on
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