Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF Full Episode 4/13/2025

Episode Date: April 13, 2025

Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok are back with the Top 10 ranked Legal AF podcast, and tonight debate: why the Trump Administration is refusing to abide by a Supreme Court ruling against them on deportation and what the courts can do about it; the Trump DOJ having to admit that they have had to dismiss the indictment against a purported MS-13 drug gang leader creating their own “fake news”; whether Justice Riggs will win her North Carolina Supreme Court seat and whether the military voters will have their votes tossed; and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Support our Sponsors: Delete Me: Get 20% OFF your DeleteMe plan by texting LEGAL to 64000 Miracle Made: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://TryMiracle.com/LEGALAF and use the code LEGALAF to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. Moink: Sign up at https://MoinkBox.com/LEGALAF right now and listeners of this show get FREE hot rolls in your first box. Magic Spoon: Get this exclusive offer when you use promo code LEGALAF at https://MagicSpoon.com/LEGALAF Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast 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

A supreme smackdown by the Supreme Court against Donald Trump, a nine to zero ruling in the Abrego Garcia case ordering Donald Trump to use the language of the Supreme Court, facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia from El Salvador back to the United States after he was kidnapped from Maryland, disappeared to that concentration camp in El Salvador. It also comes on the same week where Naid Boukeli, the authoritarian leader of El Salvador, will be visiting the United States. So it's hard for the Trump regime to make excuses,

though they will try that they're unable to coordinate this right now. They tried to do that after the Supreme Court made that ruling before the district court Judge, Judge Zennis in Maryland, who made the initial order to return Abrego Garcia that was eventually appealed to the Supreme Court. The Department of Justice lawyer showed up with no facts, no knowledge, and a bad attitude,

which did not play well with Judge Zennis, who excoriated the Trump DOJ lawyer in the court. We'll talk about what went down, what's the status of the Supreme Court's order, its directive, how is the Trump regime responding to it? They're kind of pretending that the order is not what the order is, but we'll go through the order

so you can see it for yourself. Insider trading alert, ding, ding, ding. The question becomes who knew what when, when Donald Trump earlier this week announced that he would be pausing a lot of the tariffs against most of the world other than China. Although when you dig a little bit deeper into the announcement, the effective world tariff rate still remains at around 25%. But Trump makes this announcement. Now is a good time to buy at 9.07 a.m. on his social media platform.

A few hours later, he makes an announcement of the so-called tariff pause. Right before he makes that other announcement, you start to see these exchange traded funds like SPY and QQQ and others that are tied to the S&P and NASDAQ start to shoot up pretty quickly as though somebody knew. And then you start to see other unusual trading patterns.

Also, Donald Trump signed off DJT. That also happens to be his stock symbol and his stock went up a little bit that day. And then it went back down. But the volatility of the markets right now, not the way a stable market is supposed to look. It's kind of how a Trump meme coin or some of these quote unquote, shit coin crypto stuff looks like. And that's the United States economy now.

It's why we're seeing people not purchasing American bonds. It's why we're seeing the treasury yields go up to where they are the 10 and 30 years. We're seeing mortgage rates at 7%. We're seeing the dollar crash. We'll talk about that and 30 years. We're seeing mortgage rates at 7%. We're seeing the dollar crash. We'll talk about that and more here. And also Trump's attack on the American Bar Association as more law firms kiss the ring,

but other law firms stand up. There's this interesting dynamic taking place there and we should give everybody an update as well about what's going on in that North Carolina Supreme Court race. The North Carolina Supreme Court made a ruling related to the North Carolina Supreme Court race. Many people call it like a mixed ruling, but it's still, you know, in my view,

problematic. Justice Riggs is going to be appealing it. It's not as bad as many expected. The ruling was going to be. But we'll break it down in the details that you expect on legal. If Michael Popox or how are you doing? I'm doing great. You know what?

One good thing about the Trump administration, it proves the importance of federal courts and lawyers in law firms who are courageous. But we're watching, if you distill it to its essence, are federal courts doing what they are supposed to do to be the firewall of our democracy. Sometimes it's affirmed by the United States Supreme Court, sometimes nine zero affirmed

by the United States Supreme Court. And sometimes the Supreme Court tries to find a way through a technicality to reward or to not have a confrontation directly with the executive branch. But the federal courts have to do their job and they are law firms because every one of these cases that you and I talk about has a, I'll just say it out

loud, has a courageous law firm behind it, whether it's an attorney's general office or it is a private law firm that's doing pro bono, God's work, free work, like Quinn Emanuel, representing the Abrego Garcia family. And that stands in stark contrast. I mean, it really is showing the fissure that's in your and my profession. We've got about, I don't know, it's probably up to a billion dollars worth of tribute that's gonna be paid by about a dozen law firms

who are just bending over for Donald Trump, giving him, first of all, an amazing talking point that supports his weaponization of the judicial system by having these law firms effectively admit guilt when they were not guilty, admit that their pro bono programs, which are done for the public good and are done for free, were somehow weaponized against him and MAGA and conservative causes. It's a terrible talking point to have handed Donald Trump, but these major law firms, many of them based in New York, many of them that you and I know well,

one of which I worked at, but in contrast, you've got a smaller subset of law firms that are taking it to the courts. And so as the Trump administration attacks, and we'll talk about it today, the American Bar Association, and attacks law firms, others are standing up to replace them on the line.

It's almost like the Revolutionary War, when they wiped out the first line with the muskets, there's another line right behind it firing away. And that's what we have to do here in America. We can't allow a fear that we will be the next one bashed to stop us from doing our job. That's judges, that's lawyers and law firms, and that's independent media and commentating like we do here at Legal AF on Midas Touch.

Let's take a look what the Trump regime is saying after that nine to zero ruling by the Supreme Court. You had John Favreau from Crooked Media. He goes, Supreme Court, any unanimous decision, he has a legal right to be here, Abrego Garcia, and you have to bring him back. That's basically what the Supreme Court said, facilitate his return, to which Stephen Miller, one of Donald Trump's top advisors, says, false, SCOTUS rejected the lower court and made clear that a district court judge

cannot exercise Article II foreign affairs powers. The illegal alien terrorist is in the custody and control of a sovereign foreign nation. I mean, that's quite literally the opposite of what the Supreme Court actually ruled. And Popak, as I always say, regardless of what political party that you are from, this is a nine to zero decision by the Supreme Court.

Six of those justices are viewed as quote unquote conservative. Three of those justices on the Supreme Court, six of those justices are viewed as quote unquote conservative. Three of those justices on the Supreme Court are, quote unquote, the liberal appointed justices. Right. You have three Trump appointed justices on that court. You have two George W. Bush appointed judges and one George H.

W. Bush appointed judge on that court. You've got two Obamas and one Biden appointed justice on that court. And so that's the Supreme Court. And I don't agree with a lot of the Supreme Court rulings, but when I don't agree with the rulings or when I outright think the rulings are horrific, I still read you the rulings, right? I tell you what they are.

I don't pretend the ruling didn't say what the ruling said it did. And to me, that's one of the biggest problems with the Trump regime. I mean, let's just take a look at what the ruling actually says. And it says about the dish. This is what the Supreme Court said in a nine to zero ruling regarding the district court order saying send a brego Garcia back the order. I'm reading from the Supreme Court word for word. So people know I'm not paraphrasing.

I'm not giving you commentary. I'm reading it. The order by the district court properly requires the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador. Michael Popock, you don't get much clearer than that. Then there was a concurring opinion by the three liberal justices. Or a statement, really a statement. Yeah, really a statement. And they just said, the Supreme Court should never have even heard this and stayed the return of Abrego Garcia in the first place. Abrego

should have been returned immediately because this is such a ridiculous, he got kidnapped. This is what they said. They said he got kidnapped and he got disappeared to a concentration camp in a foreign country without due process. It wasn't a close call. Yes, we agree with the rest of the court. That's why this is nine. But we shouldn't have been having to rule on this. It's never even got to this level.

Popak breakdown, the ruling by the Supreme Court, but also then what the Trump regime did before judge Zennis who's the district court judge who the case was originally assigned to who made the first order Saying a brego goes back that was appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court Then so our viewers and listeners know it then gets what's called Remanded sent back to that judge because the judge was right and then the judge says see I was right now do it do it What happened? I'll take it from there And then there's a lot of new activity even as we went on the air today in the in the particular case

The judge didn't waste any time as I as I only half joked on a hot take about it Hell hath no fury like a federal district court judge who was recently affirmed by the United States Supreme Court. She's emboldened as she should be. This is a judge, Judge Zinnis in Maryland, who was attacked by that same Stephen Miller that you mentioned and Donald Trump himself as being a leftist, a Marxist, an activist, you know, all the ists. She's not. You know what she is? She's an affirmed trial district court judge by the United States Supreme Court, 9-0, all agreed that the government had confessed, confessed, conceded that he had been illegally removed and sent to El Salvador in violation of an immigration court order from 2019, giving him protection. That was the driver for Judge

Zinnis. That's the driver for the United States Supreme Court. It's in the first three lines of the order that you read. That then led, so what we have is, this is like the Count of Monte Cristo. We've got an innocent man who is sitting, rotting in a jail on day 28 now, maybe even 29, who should never have been there and violated an order that the government admitted to.

Got another problem we're talking about when I get a little bit further into this. The guy that admitted that it was an illegal act, this guy, this lawyer is no longer with the Department of Justice, been put on leave, Mr. Rovini, it looks like his boss may have the same problem in a hearing that he held on Friday based

on a new order that just came out. But I digress for a moment. The order comes out, you and I read it, we report on it. It is what it is. It is that everything about what Judge Zinnis wrote, including that she needed to issue the preliminary injunction in order to protect the due process rights of Braco Garcia and to ensure that the constitution and immigration law were being complied with, which is one of her major jobs as a federal judge, is to administer justice in her courtroom.

They agreed with that finding. They agreed with everything about her order, about having the government be ordered to immediately facilitate his return. She just used another word that she used, effectuate. And they suggested, the Supreme Court, we're not quite sure what you meant by effectuate. Facilitate means you do everything in your power to encourage a third party or a counterparty or the event to happen. Effectuate means you put it into action.

And they were, I think, a little afraid, at least some of the majority, was a little bit afraid that that may meant that if the government wasn't able through facilitation, letter writing, emails, diplomacy, you know, Trump leaning over to Kelly while he's in the White House and telling him to get the guy out, you know, things like that. If that didn't work, they were not okay with the judge

ordering SEAL Team Six to knock down a wall and take the guy out of an El Salvador in prison. OK, so the judge fixed it. An hour after the ruling came out on Thursday night, came out at 7 p.m. By 8 p.m., Judge Zinish issued a new order. She said, because the judge, the instructions to her from her bosses at the Supreme Court was,

can you fix that word, effectuate, and just kind of figure it out? And she says, yeah, I'm gonna make it easy. I'm gonna get rid of it. And I'm gonna get rid of a deadline because that seemed to drive everybody crazy too. So she issued an order on Thursday night and said the following, take out the word effectuate.

I'm amending my order as follows. You are to use all necessary steps to facilitate his return and you are to tell me what those are. You are to report to me tomorrow morning at 930 a.m. about what you've done already, because you've been sitting on this for two weeks while the guy rots in jail, tell me already what you've done, which is the Supreme Court has said, you have the right to know, Judge, and you need to know what steps have been taken, what steps will be taken, and to administer justice. Tell me by 9.30 in the morning what steps you've taken.

Instead, at 9.30 in the morning, there's a filing. And it says, we're not going to tell you. We're still figuring things out. The deadline is you can't set a deadline, because didn't you see that part in the order, Judge, where it said that if there's foreign affairs you have to defer to for the executive branch, which is what Stephen Miller crowed about, which is not the heart of the matter. It was just a throwaway line about one word and about deadlines.

She said, that's not what the order says. So the order doesn't say that I can't set a deadline. I can't administer this case and justice. It just said that the deadline had already passed that I set last week, two weeks ago for his return because of the legal process and the stay with that was entered and I'm not gonna deal with, touch on their problems with foreign affairs

because I'm removing the word. So, and it was, she was kind to them in the beginning. She said it was a four page Supreme Court decision. How long is it taking you to evaluate? It wasn't, it was a page and a half. The rest was the statement by Sotomayor and the others. The main heart of it is less than, I think it's three and a half paragraphs.

So she said, I'll give you, no, I'll give you till 1130. There is a man rotting in a jail who the government has admitted has illegally been deported and removed over violation of another federal court order. So that is not something, you don't get to come into court then and say, oh, I got personal time off, your honor. You know, it's the weekend,

I got tickets for a wine festival or whatever it is. No. So she said, you got till 1130 and I'll see you at one o'clock at my hearing. 1130 came and went yesterday. And they also, they had time to file the papers saying they weren't gonna comply, but they didn't comply. Oh, judge, you're totally unreasonable.

You can't set deadlines. That's what the Supreme Court ruling says. That's not what the Supreme Court ruling says at all. So she got him in a court on one o'clock, and now we got a change in jockeys. Same horse, same dying dead horse for Trump, but a new jockey. Exit Mr. Rouveni, who's been fired for telling the truth, enter Drew Ensign. Drew Ensign, you may remember, was just busy last week getting excoriated by Judge Boesberg

about him lying or the Trump administration not telling the truth about the Alien Enemies Act. He's now, he was the boss for Rovetti, he comes in. And he starts off because he's been instructed to do it by the Department of Justice effectively not to tell the truth. He comes in not prepared, not being able to answer any questions. She asked a very simple question.

Where is Abrego Garcia now? In my court, where? Where is he? What have you done? I don't know. I can't answer it. She didn't like those answers as you would imagine She said to him and then in just when I'll get to a new order that she just issued Late yesterday. She said it appears that the lawyer. This is this true ensign guy That the administration purposely did not provide him with information so that he couldn't answer my questions in the courtroom. That's a

problem and she's invited the law firm representing Abrego Garcia today to file a motion for contempt. I'll read to you from the order in a minute and said if you have any other remedies you'd like from me gentlemen looking at the plaintiff's lawyers file them by five o'clock or whatever it is later, and then gave the Trump administration until Sunday to respond. She's fired up. She basically told them, you are now going based on these non-answer answers. And it looks like the Trump administration is sending the Department of Justice lawyer here who's voluntarily doing it to lie to me in the courtroom. You are gonna give me daily updates at five o'clock each day

about where he is and what you've done to get him out every day until I tell you to stop. And on Tuesday, we're gonna have another hearing about and to collect it all. And now I'm looking at the plaintiff's lawyers, file whatever you want for a new remedy. That is a judicial signal, which I've received before, I'm sure you have too, Ben, to file a motion for contempt.

And she is going to find them in contempt. Now I looked before we got on the air recording of whether the Trump administration was gonna run to the United States Supreme Court and try to get a reconsideration, further instruction, clarifying instructions to the judge. But they're not going to be able to do that because all the things that they're lying

to the American voters about as talking points, we won. You didn't win. Everybody knows you didn't win, including the judge that matters, Judge Sinis. So and if you read her order, which is what's which is now what what's, listen to these observations, Ben, and then I wanna hear your opinion about how much trouble Encin is in. Defendants made no meaningful effort to comply with my order.

Instead, they complained that the order is unreasonable. I asked very straightforward questions. Where is Ibrago Garcia right now? What steps had Def had defendant taken to facilitate his return while the court's initial order on adjunctive relief was in effect? Defendants counsel responded that he could not answer these questions. Listen to this Ben, and at times suggested that defendants, the Trump administration, had withheld such information from him. That's a bad place to be for the government.

So she's now ordered the following. Beginning April 12th and continuing each day until I tell you to stop until further order, defendants shall file daily at 5 p.m. a declaration by an individual with personal knowledge regarding the current physical location and custodial status of Abrego Garcia, what steps they've taken to facilitate his immediate return,

and what additional steps defendants will take, and when to facilitate his return with a follow-up in-person hearing scheduled for Tuesday. And then she ends it with this. To the extent the plaintiffs seek additional relief, attention, Quinn Emanuel, law firm, their motion shall be filed on Saturday with a response on Sunday What do you think happens next Ben?

You know what I would like to see happen is actually a contempt order that has teeth in it and I think what needs to be figured out though is when the Department of Justice is the bad guy and Because when the Department of Justice is the bad guy and they don't enforce the rules, and as we'll talk about later in the show, they're even attacking the nonpartisan American Bar Association, which puts forward the model rules of civility, of procedure, of ethics. They're attacking the American Bar Association as a leftist radical regime, when we all know that the ABA has right-wing people, left-wing people, just, you know, it's the ABA. It's just an association that puts forward ethics rules. The question becomes

what happens after the contempt order with teeth? And can you start to hold some of these lawyers accountable who show up there and lie to the court? What are the levers of accountability? Where, look, in a normal case, monetary sanctions for hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars could be a deterrent. The problem is it's our taxpayer dollars, and guess what? The dollar's crashing, the bond market's crashing.

Okay, you pay the money into the federal courts and then it just goes right back into the federal government. So monetary sanctions, which is a normal remedy for something like this, that won't necessarily suffice. If you throw somebody in jail or you start saying, okay, the contempt procedure is jail, what's preventing the Department of you start saying, okay, the contempt procedure is jail, what's preventing the Department of Justice

from saying, well, no, or pardoning the person right away? Is the federal court gonna literally have to use its bailiffs to house somebody in a jail in the courthouse, which doesn't seem realistic or- What about a bar license referral? Yeah, but that's exactly where I'm going. So the question is, is bar license referral? Yeah, but that's exactly where I'm going. So the question is, is, you know, bar license referrals, but then also does that basically mean anyone

who's remaining at the DOJ, who could potentially be somewhat competent? Does that just force everybody to leave because you're gonna go, I'm just gonna lose my bar license? So it's a tricky remedy. But what I wanna talk about, Popak, when we get back from our first break, though, also, as we talk about another announcement

by the Trump regime, by Pambandi, that they're dismissing criminal charges against the MS third against the person they alleged to be an MS 13 leader from Virginia, the biggest MS-13 leader they said, he was just living there, just living his life and everybody. It was a very suspicious and fishy tale to begin with, the way they framed it. And they rolled it out with this propagandist,

press event stunt. Now they're dismissing these charges against this so-called MS-13 leader, who maybe they don't want to give him due process because maybe he isn't who they say he is. But ultimately, Popak, what's interesting about this case, this Abrego Garcia case and why it's so important is it ties everything together in the fundamental principle of due process.

And someone like Abrego Garcia, who was never charged with any type of crimes before Not giving him process disappearing him to El Salvador Everybody would be net they start with a brego and then they would move on to everybody We see Donald Trump's executive orders this past week where he went after Chris Krebs in the Oval Office and Miles Taylor who worked in his first administration Krebs and cyber security and intelligence Miles Taylor who worked with the VP and in Homeland Security and he ordered and instructed the DOJ to go after them That's step one. Then they go after everybody and everybody so this is the fundamental case after everybody and everybody. So this is the fundamental case of Rego Garcia is undue process. Can anybody be disappeared to

foreign concentration camps? And then you just say, oopsies, we don't have jurisdiction. That's why this is such an important case to talk about. We'll talk about this. I want to talk about the MS 13 case. I want to talk about a lot more. We got to take our first quick break of the show. I want to remind everybody Michael Popak, man, your Legal AF YouTube channel is just absolutely crushing right now. It's really doing incredible.

It's on its way to 1 million subscribers. Everybody make sure you subscribe to the Legal AF YouTube channel as soon as you can. Also, Michael Popok, the Popok law firm that you started, after our last episode got so many phone calls and emails and Inquiries so just so everybody knows if someone that you know was involved in a catastrophic injury It's horrible situations, but this is where Michael Popak's firm and Michael Popak's been on the front line so if someone's been in a catastrophic injury like a trucking accident a

wrongful death case an in a catastrophic injury, like a trucking accident, a wrongful death case, an injury, a serious injury where, you know, there are surgeries that are needed, medical malpractice, negligence, sexual assault, sexual harassment type cases, you reach out to Popak's law firm, they have people who are on the phones right now, the consultation is free,

and we got so many requests that people said, hey, I've got this issue or I got that issue. Well, Popak has the law firm now. He's only handing those real catastrophic injury cases. So, you know, if it's that type of case, go reach out to Popak's firm. Where can they reach out, Popak? Yeah, thanks, Ben.

I appreciate you standing on the shoulders of Legal AF and the work we do. 1-877-POPOC-AF. And the website's easy too. www.thepopocfirm.com. Let's take our first quick break of the, you can see almost right away, Popoc, as soon as you make the announcements.

You can almost see in real time, when you monitor the website people, people showing up, you can see where they're popping up. Cool. All right. We'll be right back after our, it's quick. We'll be right back after our first quick break of the show. We've got a lot more to discuss. Four companies control over 80% of the US meat industry and China now controls the largest portion of US pork. And wait till you hear this. Over 80% of the antibiotics in the US are fed to animals. So what can we do about this? Let me tell you about a company that's coming up swinging on behalf of American Family Farms and your family's food security. Moink. The business is simple. Moink's meat comes from

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Welcome back to legal AF. Thank you to those pro democracy sponsors right there. This show is not possible without all of those pro democracy sponsors. Jordy spends a long time negotiating the discounts for those pro democracy sponsors. So the discount codes are in the description below. Two clips I want to share with you.

Actually three clips, Popak, and then I'll set the stage right here for a few things. First, Caroline Levitt, earlier this week, being asked by a reporter about whether these deportees who are being kidnapped and disappeared to El Salvador should be entitled to due process. Trump's chief propagandist is press secretary. Caroline Levitt says,

that's not what the Supreme Court actually said. They never said that they were entitled to due process. She goes, but they were entitled to a habeas, which is a form of the due process. That they had the right to have a habeas petition here. Play this clip. Caroline, with regards to the Supreme Court ruling on the Alien and the Enemies Act, you're

right. It was a win for the administration, but the justices also said that deportees are entitled to due process. Does the administration agree with that? That's not quite true, Game. They said they are entitled to a petition, habeas petition. And we are going to continue to comply with the law. And we are wholly confident that every single person that has been deported under the Alien Enemies Act, every person

that will continue to be deported under the Alien Enemies Act qualifies for that deportation. Well, federal courts have been asserting their jurisdiction and been requiring due process after the Judge Boasberg ruling in the district court, what the Supreme Court ruled in the Boasberg case. And the Trump administration tried to frame, and this is where I think Legal AF is so important, Popeye, because they try to act like, not just not in the most recent Supreme Court 9-0 ruling, but in the case involving Boasberg, they tried to act like that was a big win. The judge said we could use these war powers.

But as you and I were analyzing it, yeah, it did say that they weren't going to really get to saying that you couldn't invoke the war powers, even if there was no real war. The Supreme Court didn't say we have real jurisdiction over that, but they did require these habeas petitions to be filed. And now even Trump appointed judges, like in Texas, when you take together the Ibrego Garcia ruling, the Supreme Court's other ruling, even Trump appointed judges are like, you're not going to disappear people in my jurisdiction without at least giving them a hearing.

There's going to be a hearing. And to respond to Professor Levitt, our press secretary, on due process. Habeas corpus is a level of due process. It's just an individual right of a person who's been incarcerated or removed or whatever. And the Supreme Court did say that at the habeas corpus level, you can raise challenges to the exercise of the Alien Enemies Act by the president. It just needs to be decided by thousands of federal judges until it reaches levels of appellate court

and then the Supreme Court. So one day, that's why there's been a lot of analysis that what the Supreme Court has been doing is trying to avoid the direct confrontation with the executive branch by making rulings like, well, due process, but habeas, we'll see you in two years. Well, interesting case, but you don't seem to have standing.

I'm sure we'll get a party with standing to bring the case, but for right now, dismissed. You know, just finding ways, technicalities, which don't go to the heart of the matter or the substance of the matter in order to give Donald Trump a cheap win. The problem with that is the Trump administration, as you see, then distorts reality through

their rapid response team or Stephen Miller or Alina Habbo or this one, the press secretary, and says it's a win, we got a win. It's not a win. And it won't ultimately maybe be a win. We'll have to see next term in the Supreme Court when these things come back around after properly being now in the habeas corpus arena litigated, but that's where you can challenge the fake use of the Alien Enemies Act,

but it's gotta be prisoner by prisoner, one by one, not this class action thing or national injunction thing. And they're not even consistent with due process. I mean, you did a great interview of my home state governor, Murphy. I happen to live right across the, when I lived in Jersey, I lived right across the water from him. I used to see his helicopters when he had a party in his house in Monmouth County.

I used to see the helicopters come across the water to his house. And, and Alina Habbo, you know, of course, went on television and attacked him. And, and her eyes lit up when she got to the words in her script, whatever, whoever wrote it for her about due process. Like they're standing in the way as a sanctuary state and we're gonna prosecute potentially Governor Murphy because we gave these people due process. I'm like, oh, here we go.

Now they finally figured out what due process is. So now they're gonna be claiming they used it all the time. Was it due process when Pam Bondi stood before a bank of cameras and microphones and went after this poor guy and said he was MS-13 in order to make a cheap political point. And then two weeks later, how to dismiss the case against them.

Was that due process? There's many, many ways to violate due process. You and I are eventually gonna touch on the raids of the LA schools that happened and where they sent in ICE and Department of Homeland Security, gun toting, badge wearing people where they sent in ICE and Department of Homeland Security gun toting, badge wearing people to go and do a quote unquote

fake welfare check on a couple of fifth and sixth graders without their parents present in order to find out if they were illegal or not. And so this is the world that we live in now. I don't know if you caught it, Ben, on some reporting. There's a lawyer representing a document and other people in immigration matters, and the Department of Homeland Security

tried to pick up his cell phone, a lawyer, pick up his device to take a look at it. There's no respect for the rule of law. Yeah, that's why these federal courts are so important. So here's what I wanna show you. I wanna show you Shot Chaser right now. The shot I wanna show you is Pam Bondi's press conference from a few weeks back where she said,

"'We got a mission accomplished. "'The biggest MS-13 leader, Henry Santos from Virginia. "'This guy was was residing there. I didn't miss them. We got him and he was just living in his home and going to work, but he's actually MS-13 here. Play this clip. You have federal officials, state officials and local officials all said to bring us the

latest details. Let's listen in. Thank you for being here. We have been out since about 430 this morning. The great men and women of law enforcement have been working on this operation for days and days and probably weeks. This morning, early this morning, one of the top leaders of MS-13 was apprehended. He was the leader for the East Coast, one of the top three in the entire country, right here in Virginia, living half an hour outside of

Washington DC. He is an illegal alien from El Salvador and he will not be living in our country much longer. He's in custody this morning. One of the top leaders right here near our nation's capital. I just cannot thank Governor Youngkin enough for his leadership in this effort. This has been a joint effort with state and local agencies. Well, if this individual was who they say he is, and he was in Virginia and he was right there, one of the things you have to ask yourself is Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia, there would be normally joint task force all the time between state and federal officials working very closely together because local law enforcement would be involved.

So it's a bit of a self-own on Glenn Youngkin. If he's new about that, then just let that take place. And so what, just if you accept that premise as true, Glenn Youngkin then would have known that the top leader of MS-13 was there. He would have asked Biden, hey, can we go get this guy? And Biden, if you believe their fictional, their story, then they would know we're not gonna go after this MS-13.

And then Glenn Youngkin was part of a massive coverup, the MAGA Republican governor to hide the MS-13 person in his state. So even the- Or Glenn Youngkin is running as a governor of sanctuary state. So even if you accept the premise of it, but then here's the New York Post headline

from this end of last week, DOJ moves to drop the charges against the top MS-13 leader who was busted in major Virginia operation. They don't even go purported. They go that he is the leader. And then as Matthew Torres writes, despite being called one of the top three MS-13 leaders by top Trump administration officials,

federal prosecutors dismissed the charges against this individual, and Fox played a major part in promoting the arrest and the press conference. So then on Fox, they asked Trump's propagandist, Caroline Levitt, here's the chaser for the shot chaser. So why are you doing that? Like if he's the top MS-13 leader,

why would you dismiss it? Don't you wanna go through our law enforcement and find out like who else this individual has been talking to and go through the investigative process? Here, play this clip. Try to get and go through the investigative process, here play this clip. Try to get some clarity on it Caroline, because if indeed he is what we were told he is, the East Coast leader of MS-13,

wouldn't it make sense to prosecute him for crimes related to that? I know he was held on a gun charge, but to make sure that any victims of MS-13 through his leadership get their day in court here in the United States and then send him to an El Salvadoran prison if he is deported and found guilty on those crimes. Well again, this administration is doing things differently Martha and this president has made a directive to his agencies but particularly the Department of Homeland Security to remove foreign terrorists from America's homeland

to protect American citizens. And we have an incredible diplomatic relationship with the president of El Salvador and his government who have been detaining these MS-13 ring leaders and violent gang members in their prisons. And American taxpayers don't have to foot the bill for that cost. And so again, the bottom line here-

The Supreme Court said that the Alien Act could be used to remove people, but they had to reach to due process first. I'm only pressing on this because it was a huge story and we covered it. Obviously it would feel like that person could lead to a lot of other evidence. The DOJ would be pressing to see this in court

so that other people could be exposed. And suddenly none of that's happening. So... Now here's the thing, Popak. I don't know if this guy is or isn't MS-13, is or isn't a leader. I don't know. What I do know is they've lied about Abrego Garcia,

who's not that individual. They've lied about 75% of the people who are in that El Salvador concentration camp, we saw the 60 Minutes report people who don't have criminal backgrounds. And what I do know though, is that if he was the MS 13 gang leader, I'd want to see him brought to justice in the full force of the law. We need evidence though, right? We need do we need process. That's the way we need our our system deals with these issues through something called due process, Popak.

Yeah, that is what, just to be clear to everybody, that we're not here advocating for the guilt or innocence of any one particular person. We're here advocating for the protection of our rule of law and our due process, because we here on Midas Touch and on Legal AF want to live in an America, one we can't recognize as it's being run by Donald Trump and his bootlickers. We want to live in an America where we can be proud

of the American flag because of the things that it stands for. And we have always, except when Trump was in the driver's seat, we have always made sure that First Amendment rights are protected, even if we don't like what's coming out and being spewed by the person speaking it. And that due process rights are protected, that you get your day in court.

We have an adversarial system with a person in a black robe. Evidence is presented, and if the person is guilty and the government is held to their proof, then that person can be deported or jailed or receive some other sanction. And I sleep better at night, I add, knowing at least that the First Amendment and rule of law were being protected by all presidents regardless of their political stripe until we reach our first felon in chief. And when you watch that clip,

and I love your, the back and forth between the two of them, I mean, look, let's be frank. This is, when you put up Carolyn LeVette, our press secretary, next to the Fox News host, I don't even know who's who. I had to double check the names underneath to see who was the Fox News host, and who was the press secretary.

And I mean that not just visually, I just mean in term, when you have Fox interrogating the press secretary who's not getting, she's got her talking point, so she doesn't want to respond. So it's not a softball that she's missing, she doesn't want to see the softball. So she's just, well, we got to go back to the Alien Enemies Act.

We got, yes, yes, but Fox News has to be the one to say, what about due process? I thought we needed due process in order to do that. If you had the proof, wouldn't it be better for the Department of Justice to do that in a public way than to do what you've done? And you and I only have Jug coming out of the air today. Like, where's the press conference

where Pam Bondi apologized to this guy or apologized to America for having her phony political rally two weeks ago. We did it, like you said, mission accomplished. We got them living right in the shadow of Joe Biden. Sleepy Joe, we got them. The MS-13 leader right here in Virginia. And we were all like, really? Guy was just living there in Virginia?

That seems odd. It seems staged. And it turns out that it was completely. But it goes to a deeper point that you and I have been making for the last five years, which is that we're not here bashing the Trump administration, the end of one and the beginning of another,

has overlapped our five years because we are supporting criminality in our society or are defunding the police or defunding the courts or... That's not where Legal AF lives. Where we live is where our audience lives, which is that we're for justice, and we're for due process. And if you prove to me and to a jury or a judge that this person is as bad as you say,

I'll be there at the airport to send them off, or at the jail. But give me process or give me death. And that's what we're worried about, about the rule of law. As you mentioned about our Legal AF YouTube channel, we just had the great fortune to have Jamie Raskin come on with Alex Aronson from Court Accountability and me, Court Accountability Action and me.

And we did a great interview, it's up there right now. And that's all Jamie talks about. I mean, I have joked that, you know, he's the Superman for the Democratic Party. They call him to the rescue because he alone, among a lot of different lawyers that serve in Congress, he alone has this intellectual gravitas and heft about the Constitution and about the rule of law. And plus he helps us with the appropriate pugilistic vocabulary. And we do that here as well. You call it elbows up for

the Gordie Howe line from Canada, different things with your Midas Maple and all that. But that's what we need to do. We need to change the vocabulary. He says, I'll leave my comment on this, Jamie Raskin says, it's not a constitutional crisis. It's a MAGA full frontal assault on the constitution. Let's call it what it is. Then we know what the enemy is

so that we can fight back. You all remember on that, or you can go back and hit rewind on that first Caroline Leavitt press conference. You will see that the market was rising at that time on a day where, based on a lot of the factors, you would not think that the market would be rising. A few after that press conference then there was the announcement that hit i believe that trump was pausing the tariffs on the rest of the world and then the markets exploded that day only to decrease the next day. So one of the main questions that we're asking and Popak who's been a Wall Street lawyer before becoming a legal a effort and a lawyer in different fields and he's got background on looking at these issues. I mean the behavior here seems to at least have the indicia of market manipulation and inside trading. I wanna talk about that. And even today as we're recording right now, and it was announced today that there was going to be

exemptions on iPhones and other electronics and semiconductors from the 145% tariffs against China, which Trump said at the end of last week was not the case. And all of the Trump propaganda said, nope, the tariffs apply to all of those things. And then over the weekend, after the markets closed, we now are getting different. You won't even want to call it guidance. What you're also seeing is all of these options that were purchased on Friday for these semiconductor companies and Apple and others that seem to again have all of these options that were purchased on Friday for these semiconductor companies and Apple and others

that seem to again have all of the indicia that there's an inside group of oligarchs and people who know when these moves are happening and when the markets are tanking and it's impacting regular folk, people with 529 accounts, pensions, 401ks, people whose life savings is tied in some ways to the market. People don't have the luxury, they're not day traders, they're not going, you know, they're not dealing with this stuff. And they're getting screwed over by these and traumatized. And it seems that yes, there's incompetence by Trump. Yes, he's an idiot.

Yes, there's all of this. But there also seems to be an aspect of this that's focused on market manipulation. It appears, so it's my opinion. It's an appearance. And we'll go through the data when we come back from our next break. We'll talk about the attack on the ABA.

And quickly, we'll talk about the update in the North Carolina Supreme Court. But let's take our last quick break of the show before doing that. Let me just remind everybody about Michael Popak's YouTube channel, the Legal AF YouTube channel. It's doing incredible right now. It's on its way to 1 million subscribers. I'd love to see it hit 1 million soon, over 100 million views in a very short period of time. Subscribe to the Legal Aid YouTube channel, tell your friends, family, coworkers, everybody about that is more important now than ever. Also, as I mentioned before and already,

you've gotten a lot of inquiries today. If you or someone you know have been in a catastrophic injury and you want a free consultation, whether you have a lawsuit, a case against an entity or someone based on your situation. It could be a medical malpractice case, a negligence case, car accident case, trucking case, case like that, requires surgeries,

wrongful death cases, reach out to PO-POC's law firm. PO-POC, where do they go? Yeah, and by the way, on that, you know, I had a national practice before I formed this new firm to focus on catastrophic injuries where I could be of help, but we're already getting clients and contacts from 40 out of the 50 states.

It's been very rewarding for me to be involved with this and people can reach out to me and my firm for that type of injury type case at two places. It's the 800 number one eight seven seven Pope Park AF. What else? And then the and then the website is the Pope Park firm. P like the P.O.P.O.K. firm F.I.R.M. Dot com and both they'll they'll all lead you to the right place

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Again, that's trymiracle.com slash LegalAF to treat yourself. Thank you MiracleMade for sponsoring this episode. Welcome back to LegalAF. Michael Popok, who knew what, when, where, why? Let's break down what that insider trading case or market manipulation case could look like. We know that at 9.07 a.m. in the morning

where Donald Trump said that he was pausing those tariffs against some of the world, Donald Trump posted now is a good, first he posted be cool, and then he said now is a good time to buy. It's a very strange thing for a president to say at all. The president should not put his finger on the thumb of the markets ever, just as a general principle.

Regardless of the scenario at all. Ups and downs, the market should be the market. It should be left alone and it should be focused on what the, in theory, a rational market views, not what an irrational psychopath is doing on the market. While, you know, then about what, three hours later, Donald Trump announces that he is pausing tariffs. That causes the markets to shoot up rather quickly. One of the things that we saw right before this announcement

was made at about 1 p.m. is a lot of strange activity took place in the markets on these exchange traded funds that are tied to different indexes, Dow and the S&P and the NASDAQ, they start seeing unusual activity. And you could almost even see on the graph of the market going up like a odd blip right before the announcement is made,

like a surge that would not be tied to any kind of rational market data. So the question is, who knew what when there? And then you had the Jameson Greer, the United States trade representative, who was literally in a in a back to back hearings in the Senate and the House. And he was being asked and he was being grilled and being asked questions by like Steve Horsford and other and other Democrats. And the Republicans weren't anywhere in the room.

They were just basically saying to him, you know, this was the plan. So are you saying that this is what the plan was to crash the markets only to then tell people that, you know, that was part of the plan and now this was our trade strategy when you said that tariffs are great and tariffs are going to make us rich, then you paused it. That was what your plan was. So, Popak, you know this area of law, you've seen it, investigated it. I want to be clear that it's in an investigative stage. We're not saying that it definitely is. Just saying that as people with experience in this area, it has the indicia of it. Cause all the badges of fraud and insider insider trading, you've got the president, um, it was nine 37 AM.

He posts a weird thing only to his truth social paid subscriber base using for the first time really to go back and look first time he's ever signed off with his stock trading symbol, DJT. He doesn't write that. So it was already like a wink nod, you know, sting. The sting was on. And we were like, Oh, here we go. Now three days before that, either because it leaked out that he was going to do this. I don't think that's the case or because Donald Trump watched fake news and

decided to make it real news three days earlier, the day after liberation day on the Thursday, there was a fake rumor that went around that Donald Trump was going to do exactly this, the 90 day pause. Where did the 90 day pause come from? Came from the fevered mind of Bill Ackman, who runs a company called Pershing Square, who had supported, who jumped off the democratic train and jumped over to Trump after the, I don't know, Butler, Pennsylvania, bullet whizzed by and he decided there's 33 reasons

he's not voting for Kamala Harris. And then the market crashed with the Liberation Day and Bill Ackman at Pershing Square, controlling billions and billions of dollars, said this is gonna be nuclear winter. And then he and Jamie Dimon got on a phone call, apparently with Donald Trump in the mill. Thank God this guy watched, I'm talking about Trump, watches television, because that's how he forms policy off the backside of his pants. Off the seat of his pants, apparently after Liberation Day, went terribly awry and $7 trillion worth of

stock value was shed. And the economy, what's the word I'm grasping for? Shit the bed. He was watching Maria Bartiromo and she happened to have Jamie Dimondon who had already told his investors and clients, get ready for the recession caused by Donald Trump who took a bull market and converted it to a bear market at a White House press conference.

Well, he didn't like that, Trump. And that, in a phone call, he decides to do it. Now, three days earlier, he watched as the market ran up on a fake rumor that his rapid response team killed, by the way, and said, fake news, no 90-day tariff pause. Oh, really? By the closing bell, I went back down, but he saw he could manipulate the market with an announcement about tariffs and a pause. So five days later,

9 37, by one o'clock while Jameson Greer is giving testimony to an oversight committee on Congress, is giving testimony to an oversight committee on Congress, they announce, and it's a phony announcement. You put up this whole, I read most of it, this whole social media posting, it goes of China and China, and it had nothing to do with China, the boss. It had to do with him getting his ass kicked by the market and the economy, which has not recovered,

no, has not recovered, note, has not recovered any way, shape or form because of the momentary one day surge that everybody made money on around the Trump administration apparently, did not recover, nor has trade recovered globally at all. But he got his ass kicked, took a phone call or two from Jamie Dimon and Bill Ackman, and then announced his new policy. That's how erratic our president is, who's basically criminally insane

when it comes to financial markets. And now it's exposed to the entire world that Donald Trump's just, as we knew before, just completely erratic, has no economic foundational principles supporting his economic policies at all. It's all done on a whim. It's all done on whoever talks to him last. And so now people, having seen that the emperor has no clothes, have to account for that. So they're not thinking, oh, we're out of the woods, 90-day delay. They're thinking, we got 90 days to kind of get out from under the United States, and they are adjusting worldwide global trade to avoid the United States and to suppress

global trade overall. And that is the little sticky little thing called a fact that the Trump administration never wants to acknowledge, which is we're gonna get $4 trillion over 10 years, Peter Navarro says, because we're just, see the current amount of trade coming, and then times it by this, and then divide it by 10, and that'll match our tax cuts.

No, because you've left out that trade will diminish to avoid the tariff lowering the recovery because of people planning around it, that's one. Two, the numbers they're using are all for Cocta because they bake in the tariff that's in it. So they're like, we have this X amount of trade. Yeah, but that includes the tariffs that are already there. So you have to back them out.

And when you're done, you don't get anywhere near, even on a, you hit a three Grand Slam home runs in a row, which they're not gonna do. You're not gonna get anywhere near the revenue collection that they claim in order to offset this tax cut for the wealthy while we have trillions of dollars of debt the only silver lining here is For the Democrats is that Trump's policies will hasten his demise at the polls at

at midterms because Regardless of what the Trump administration tells itself, that he got elected because of transgender athletes or he got, or what bathroom they use, or he got elected because of immigration at the border. That's not why he got elected. While he got elected is the same reason people get elected for the last hundred years and even before that. It's the economy, stupid.

And he's wrecked. The only thing he had going for him is that people thought he would take the platform of a growing Biden economy and make it better and make inflation lower. And he's killed both of those principles. We just have to make sure that the voters don't have amnesia a year and three quarters from now.

And they vote with their purses and pocketbooks to punish Donald Trump for what he's done. You know, under former President Biden, GDP was growing faster than anywhere in the world. Just an objective fact. We were energy independent, producing the most oil in the world. That was an objective fact. While caring about climate change, that was an objective fact while caring about climate change. That's an objective fact. 16.2 million jobs were created. That's an objective fact. Record low unemployment, 40,000 infrastructure projects, and the markets were growing somewhere

between 40 to 55% over the course of the Biden term. All objective facts. And you would have thought that he ushered in what we're seeing now based on the headlines and everybody was saying there's still a hundred percent chance of recession when Biden was doing his thing and actually fixing things and doing things right. I'll just, I'll say this and it's so obvious. If Biden did any of this, that was happening right now. He would not only be impeached, he would be imprisoned right now.

He would no longer be the president. The fact that we baby Donald Trump and act like, oh, but then he did this, then he did this, then he goes back to golf. Oh, did he make poopy in his diaper today? Do, do, do, do, do, do, do. You know, this is an adult. What are we talking?

This is supposed to be the leader of a country. Like, what the hell are we talking about? You've got Prime Minister Carney, a brilliant freaking banker, playing four dimensional chess of the bond markets with Europe and Asia. And you've got Donald Trump going on Air Force One yesterday going, oh, I took a cognitive test, a cognitive test everybody. And then we're like, what are we talking about? This guy is an idiot. He's dangerous. And the things that he's done already with his liberation day are impeachable.

They're dumb. He's an idiot. It's dangerous. And then he goes in the Oval Office with these billionaires, and then he's like, I made you rich today, and you got the $2.5 billion today on the day where Trump said, buy, buy, buy. All of this is ridiculous stuff.

You know, I spoke with a journalist who's writing a story about the Midas Touch Network, a very prominent international journalist. He's like, you call it the regime. You know, no other media refers to it as a regime. The network and Midas Touch. I go, what else? I goes, if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's a duck. This is a North Korea style.

It's stupider than North Korea style, authoritarian regime here that has the corruption and the kleptocracy all combined. I'll just say this quickly, shame on, I think we have a shameless, the coward firms. Let me just do a quick shame on these firms. Kirkland Ellis, Latham Watkins, Skadden Arps, Simpson Thatcher, Paul Weiss, Milbank, Wilkie Farr,

Sherman, Calderwalder. These are big law firms that submitted to Donald Trump agreeing to do pro bono legal services for him in the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, close to a billion dollars in the aggregate. These are law firms. I don't know how you go to law school and then make this how you practice law.

Shame on these firms, shame on the associates who work for them, shame on the partners who work for them. They will have a real shitty place in history in the opposite of a pantheon of legal. I truly hope when we get past this error, we don't forget about these freaking cowards. It royals my blood if that's even a term,

riles my blood. These law firms, this crew right here, the hero law firms, Wilmer, Hale, Perkins, Coy, Sussman, Godfrey, Jenner and Block, shout out to them who have filed the lawsuits against the truckers. The big difference there, just leave that up for a minute, the big, and the numbers next to it are the American lawyer rankings. American law does the 200, top 200 rankings there. I worked at number five, it was number one when I was there, number five, Scad and Orps.

The difference is the transactional law firms that have a heavy corporate practice and rely on hedge fund representation, private equity representation, and other transactional and regulatory type practice and make a shitload of money, a shedload of money doing that, they bent the knee and cut the deal, art of the deal. The ones that are led by litigators,

I mean, I was a litigator at Skadden, but frankly the litigators were not as respected as the transactional lawyers because it's whoever brings in the most money type of firm and the transactional lawyers, some of those transactional lawyers have books of business of 30, 40, 50 million dollars alone for one lawyer. So they held sway and they were like, cut the deal. We can't go out of business. And frankly, transactional people aren't gonna care. Deal people are not gonna care

whether Skatt and cut the deal or not. If you're looking for a law firm to litigate, I would not go to one of those firms. Right? Because, you know, they're, look how they handled their own matters. But the big dividing line is, is the same dividing line you and I had coming

out of law school. You're either a transactional lawyer or you're a litigator. You and I are litigators and the firms that are fighting are litigators. And by the way, they're winning. They're getting their injunctions and first amendment protections from federal courts. It's not that the Paul Weisses of the world

didn't think they were gonna win. It's just that they wanted to move on with their business, not wreck their profits per partner and sign the deal. That's it. And look, Ben, how the numbers, Paul Weiss looks like a genius in the coward category because they got away with only 40 million as the first one in, they got the benefit.

Now the going rate is $125 million worth of free legal service. But as you joke, before we came out, tell your observation about how Trump's going to use these lawyers for his policy because he's lacking lawyers. Because the Justice Department is now gutted and Trump hired all these people or people have left, he doesn't even have the resources or the wherewithal of lawyers with an intellectual capacity who can actually do the law. So he now needs to use these law firms and it's part of his plan because the brain drain of people away from his regime,

now he's trying to capture law firms that hire people from the top law schools and pay him a lot of money to do free legal work because we all saw that Pam Bondi press conference right there, right? Like, you know. I mean. She didn't go to the top law school.

Let's go to that. We all watch that, right? I mean, you know, that she's a, like she's a Fox host more than anything, you know, and, and, and it's a regime of Fox hosts and, you know, and that's why I call the Fox state regime media. It's an art, it's all inextricably intertwined. It's very authoritarian, you know, and, and just look at this.

I mean, justice department expands retribution campaign to the American Bar Association. And they're saying that no Department of Justice lawyer shall ever talk at the ABA. They're never going to support ABA events. They view the ABA as activists and leftists. And they're going at the American Bar Association. You're saying it's a uniquely Trumpian period where the American Bar Association is being viewed as a radical leftist organization. They write the ethical rules, the model bar rules.

How about the Associated Press is a weaponized style book because they won't call it the Gulf of America. They won't. The Gulf of America, ABA this, Liberation Day. You know, it's my rant before when I was saying, come on, come on. Yeah, so I was telling the foreign reporter who I spoke to, I said, guys, look at this, look at this regime. Like they are North Korea style corruption.

It's bizz, it's weirder. I guess honestly, it's weirder than Kim Jong Un and it's the United States and it's why the dollar's crashing, by the way, you know, sure, Popeye, will Donald Trump say, well, I'm doing exemptions here. Will the markets go up? Yeah, will the markets go down? Yeah, up, down, up, down.

Overall, the damage has been done, it's done. So what it is now is there's already been a tsunami that's prematurely hit, like a premature tsunami that people weren't expecting. Because normally when the tsunami hits, the shore- It rolls out. Pulls out, yeah. Right, right. It recedes, it pulls out. And then you're like,

okay, it's well, one already hit. And it's pulling out. And you see that in the 10 year and 30 year yield. Who's buying an American treasury bond right now in this craziness when you don't know what Trump's going to do? How are you going ask you a question. I have a question for you. As a network owner, an independent network owner. Everything we're talking about now on April the 12th is well in advance of the midterms. It's not going to get any better for Donald Trump because he's not going to grow a brain over nor

is he going to surround himself with the best and the brightest. This is it, man. This, you know, this you got to dance with the girl you bring to the dance. This is the girl you bring to the dance if you're somebody who voted for him. So it'll go about this way from now until, but how do we sear into the collective consciousness and get voters who stayed home in for Kamala Harris, millions of them that were not motivated enough. And so what I, what I say sat out democracy, how do we, how do the Democrats, how do those fair minded people use what's

happening now in order to ensure a certain defeat for Trump and the Republicans in less than two years. You know, look, my view of it is, is the guy who was brought to the dance, Trump, it's a big problem. And Americans are seeing it now, but I think you can't get complacent. I was asked by the reporter to a similar question.

Now, what do you think, if you had to predict, I said, I'm not in the prediction game. I said, I'm in the bold action currently game of every day the resistance and opposition has to grow. You know, it's why when people tuned off, that's when we turned on more at the Midas Touch Network. We worked harder during those days because we knew that the movement wasn't going to, it has to start somewhere and you can't just look over and hope it's going to be somebody else. And so

my bigger thought of building this network as a network owner is I got to make sure that we're uniting the pro-democracy community internationally here. And we've got to educate people. PO-PAC, 60% of Americans have below a sixth grade education. That's really part of the problem too, is that it's susceptible to manipulation and propaganda that you see from Fox. And then other corporate news either over intellectualizes

the issues or they both sides the issues and normalize the behavior and then you have a straight up propaganda network. So the information that's being consumed by Americans and 60% of who have below a sixth grade education is bad data. They're not getting data. They're not getting info. They're not getting the truth. And even through the chaos that we see now for them,

because they went four years in a Biden cycle where everything was a controversy that really wasn't, right, because that's what the media was doing. And even now, the media wants to talk about Biden, you know, you look at a lot of these things, but Biden was all they covered up his cognitive decline. I interviewed the guy, he was an older guy, but things were working. Okay. It's not a shocker that he was in his 80s. He's in his 80s. Okay. We expected someone in their 80s to be like in their 50s. And I'm going to

be in these are going to be like someone who's in their eighties newsflash. But wait till I'm doing the show in my eighties. I'm doing the show in my eighties. Okay. But but but we didn't have liberation day and we didn't have any of our alliances were stronger and things were better and things were normal. And we had real experts around him and he did everything the way you expect him to do. So Pope, that's to me the challenge, and that's the challenge that we're going to meet. We gotta give people accurate data and accurate info every single day. I wanna just close with this

because we gotta give people a quick update on North Carolina and the North Carolina Supreme Court race, a Supreme Court decision in the Supreme Court race. So you all know the situation there. There's a, we've been talking about it. I interviewed Justice Allison Riggs before. There's a we've been talking about it. I interviewed Justice Allison Riggs before There's a race from November where Justice Allison Riggs beat Jefferson Griffin the MAGA candidate Riggs the Democratic candidate She won there was a recount she won another recount

She won by 734 votes even after winning two recounts then Jefferson Griffin Said nope the way they're being counted was incorrect. And he targeted democratic areas too. He goes, there are 61,000 voters who filled out faulty voter registrations, and there's 5,500 overseas and military absentee voters from, and he picked four democratic leaning counties who didn't provide photo identification with their ballots. So we need to get rid of all of those votes, even though the recounts

showed that Alison Riggs, the current Supreme Court justice who was running for the seat, won. So the court of appeals in North Carolina cited all with just with Jefferson Griffin. Jefferson Griffin. Jefferson Griffin is a court of appeals judge. So the court of appeals sided with their guy, Jefferson Griffin. And then it went up to the Supreme Court in North Carolina.

The Supreme Court gave kind of a mixed ruling where they said the 61,000 voters who filled out the faulty voter registration, as that's how it was framed by Jefferson Griffin. I don't wanna buy his framing. They said, those votes count. The 5,500 overseas military absentee voters from the four Democratic leading counties

who didn't provide photo ID as alleged, they need to confirm their identities right now. So those 5,500 votes are thrown out until they confirm and cure their ballots basically. So that's where we are. She's up by 734. There's 5,500 overseas votes that are now gonna be canceled in four Democratic leaning counties,

which would tip the election in favor of Jefferson Griffin most likely, unless all those 5,500 people are enough that keeps the 735 lead, switch their vote, I mean, confirm that they voted. So now in a short period of time, they're gonna have to cure their ballots and be reached out to in those specific counties. Allison Riggs, she's going to appeal

to a federal court right now, and she's seeking relief in federal courts over the elections because it's a violation of federal law. So that's where we're headed. I had her on. Let me do one comment on that. What I found fascinating was that's an entirely Republican Supreme Court. The two that were in dissent, I thought, oh, too dissented? They wanted to throw out the ballots? No. The two that were in dissent wanted all the ballots, including the military's ballots, to be included. And this is a quote from a dissent

of a Republican in North Carolina. It's no small, this is Justice Earls, it's no small thing to overturn the results of an election in a democracy by throwing out ballots that were legally cast consistent with all election laws and affect the day of the election. Some would call it stealing the election. Others might call it a bloodless coup, but by whatever name,

no amount of smoke and mirrors makes it legitimate. And so, look, let's that that Riggs, who's the daughter of a 30 year military veteran, is able to succeed at the federal court, maybe at the Supreme Court level, if necessary, to get those that that are willing to give the ultimate sacrifice, give them their vote. This is about a photo ID being attached to a vote, we're supposed to, we are supposed to make sure that if we understand

the voter's intention, we're not supposed to disenfranchise them and throw their vote into the trash and reward a, I mean, that justice should be ashamed of himself, that he's trying to steal, in order to win, he's got to steal the votes of veterans. In a state like North Carolina, which has a fair percentage of veterans and military bases, that is a recipe for future disaster. I believe that Riggs's 735 may still hold,

and at the very least, she's doing the right thing to fight for military's right to vote. Yeah, absolutely. And he targeted just the Democratic counties and only this race. So they're saying all the votes counted in the Trump race and other congressional races. But just in this one specific race in Democratic counties only, not Republican counties, they're not ordering. You know, look, if you were to say, well, OK, then do the recount of all military people everywhere, you know, in Republican, no, no, no, they targeted the three or four Democratic counties, you know, which to me is ridiculous. It wasn't even the voters fault.

It was the board of elections for having enforced the new rule on photo ID. I mean, you should never disenfranchise, that's what the majority said, you should never disenfranchise if it's not user error. It wasn't user error, It was board of election error. But listen, as we watch the MAGA try to steal an election and failed in Wisconsin through DOGE Musk money,

it is encouraging that now two times in a row, assuming she's able to prevail with that 734 lead and gets the military, she's doing the right thing there, both politically and morally as the governor of the state has also said to Josh Stein, get those military votes in. She's already won the day of the election two recounts. I'm hoping we're going to be talking about Justice Riggs on the North Carolina Supreme Court for a long, long time. Yeah, I'm going to bring her back and we we're gonna have her on the show again next week.

It was great to have her on before. You should all check out that interview. I did about a 25 minute interview with her. Michael Popock, always great being with you. Remind people right now if they or someone they know were in a catastrophic injury, wrongful death case, serious injury case, required surgeries, car accident cases,

trucking accident cases, sexual harassment, medical malpractice, cases like that, where do they call? Yeah, Pope, it's a 1-800 number, but it's 1-877-1877-POPOC-AF. Or if you wanna just go on the website, you can go to www.thepopocfirm, or one word, dot com. And make sure you all check out the Legal AF YouTube channel.

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