Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF Full Episode - 5/14/2025
Episode Date: May 15, 2025Michael Popok and Karen Friedman Agnifilo anchor the midweek edition of the Legal AF pod and debate: how Trump is selling the presenting and influencing peddling on his tour of the Arab countries; whe...ther the Supreme Court will pull the plug on birthright citizenship or hand trump another loss tomorrow during its oral argument; how federal judges are resisting Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act; Judge Hannah Dugan firing back at Trump using his own case against him in her criminal indictment case; and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Remi: Go to https://shopremi.com/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF at checkout for 50% off. Viia: Try VIIA Hemp! https://viia.co/legalaf and use code LEGALAF! Armra: Head to https://tryarmra.com/legalaf or enter promo code: LEGALAF to receive 15% off your first order! Qualia: Head to https://qualialife.com/LEGALAF and use promo code: LEGALAF at checkout for 15% off your purchase! Subscribe to the NEW Legal AF Substack: https://substack.com/@legalaf Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast 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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Well, as the president of the United States continues his influence peddling scheme, now
going abroad to the Arab countries, in Riyadh and other places, announcing deals, some of
which were in the works during the Biden administration,
bringing along his true, true cabinet.
Not the ones that are responsible for, you know,
running agencies and things like that and departments.
You know, the oligarchs, the tech pros,
all those like Elon Musk that want to make money
in Saudi Arabia and in Riyadh, you know, in Riyadh,
and in Qatar and all that.
You know, I thought the big announcement, Karen,
was gonna be some sort of peace deal somewhere.
But for Donald Trump, a big announcement
has to do with transactional, has to do with a deal,
has to do with I'm getting a giant plane,
has very little to do with how he helps the American people
or fulfills any of his campaign promises.
But we have that as the backdrop,
but things are still going on in the United States or fulfills any of his campaign promises. But we have that as the backdrop,
but things are still going on in the United States
while Donald Trump goes on his influence peddling tour,
selling off America one piece at a time.
We've got a huge, and we've got New York.
Look at me, listen to New York.
It must be Karen's apartment.
Is that your apartment?
Yeah, you know, sometimes it's really loud outside.
What can I say?
All right, okay.
Sometimes the life intrudes.
Okay, we have, I can't put a too fine a point on this.
We got a momentous Supreme Court decision
or Supreme Court oral argument tomorrow.
Gonna be live on Legal AF.
Yeah, of course.
It's gonna be live on Legal AF.
We're live streaming this 10 a.m. start.
Usually they're on the bench by 10.05.
We'll be doing commentary before, during, and after.
I got Dina Dahl who's doing commentary before.
She's gonna join me after.
We're doing it in the chat about,
well, it looks like it's about birthright citizenship,
but it's really about nationwide injunctions.
And even though there's been 13 or so emergency applications
by the Supreme Court, this is their first one, Karen,
about a Trump policy as an oral argument.
All the other oral arguments before it
were about older cases that have been kicking around
for the last couple of years
through the Biden administration.
But this is the first one, and they took up this case,
which gives everybody a little bit of concern.
But we're gonna do a preview of tomorrow,
like a little bit of a watching or listening guide
for tomorrow's oral argument.
Then we got some developments in the area
of the Alien Enemies Act, including a new ruling
that's come out by a Pennsylvania Trump judge.
And she's an outlier.
We've got four judges have all found Donald Trump
improperly invoked the alien enemies act because we're not at war really with Venezuela and a foreign terrorist organization doesn't count.
But not this judge.
We'll talk about judge Haynes in Pennsylvania and her ruling and what it
means while judge Zinnis in Maryland.
There we go.
Judge Zinnis in Maryland has more on her hands
because at the end of the day,
the Trump administration may be lying
to the American people about,
well, we're never bringing a Brego Garcia back.
But in secret filings and sealed filings with the court,
they're saying the opposite.
They're saying they're working on a diplomatic solution
and the Brego Garcia lawyers have have had enough and the media has had
enough with the secret filings and the Supreme Court has said that that Judge
Zinnis needs to get to the bottom of what steps are being taken to facilitate
Abrego Garcia's release from an El Salvadoran prison and we're on forget
about the 120 days or whatever this is of the administration you know we're on
like day 70 or more of Abrego Garcia being illegally held as a hostage in a El Salvadoran jail. So we got developments
there as courts around the country start to release from ICE detention graduate students
for the crime of speaking out and exercising their First Amendment rights. And then we've got the courageous case of Judge Hannah
Dugan, profile and courage.
And it's not what you do when you've been floored
and you hit the canvas.
It's what you do when you dust yourself off
and then dust yourself off at the next punch you throw.
And so Hannah Dugan was indicted for the BS made up crime of
administering justice in her courtroom as a state court judge in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin. But she's also filed a motion to dismiss and I'm gonna leave the
audience a little bit in suspense but you can leave guesses in the comments tonight. She cited a case as grounds to have her indictment dismissed
and which we're gonna go over in detail here.
And guess, I'll give you one guess,
which Supreme Court case she cited
to give herself immunity.
I'll make it, I'll spot you a couple letters.
Starts with a T and it ends with a P.
And we're gonna pick it up there
with one of my favorite co-anchors.
I almost said the favorite, but then we get mad at me.
Karen Freeman Agnifilo,
we're here on the Midas Touch Network,
fresh off a win for another podcast.
What's the name of that podcast again?
The Midas something brothers, sisters podcast?
Yeah, they won Webby of the year
Holy cow will run some b-roll of them accepting the award
Down in lower Manhattan the other day
I'm so proud of them and proud of you my podcast partner for all the work that you do inside the podcast studio and in
Real life. How are you?
I'm good. I'm good. I'm really happy to be here a lot going on
Trying to keep up with all of the flooding the zone that this president of ours does.
I think the strategy is to throw so many things out there and of course we have to chase them all because they're all criminal.
And you kind of forget some of them. You don't notice some of them or some aren't as bad as others.
So you're kind of like you're numb to it. You're like, well, how's that so bad? But the the grift continues.
I just can't get over the airplane and the cryptocurrency scam
that he's involved in and that he's he claims he's going to save people
the taxpayers money by accepting a 400 million dollar plane from the Saudis.
OK, so I need I want Air Force One.
I'm going to say 400 million dollars from the Qataris
Oh, I'm sorry. You're right from the Qataris. I apologize. I can't even keep track of who's trying to get
The grift of the bribes exactly the Saudis are the crypto are the crypto memes the meme coins
But but so so the Qataris want to give him a 400 million dollar plane
And this is the very definition of gaslighting, right?
Because he'll say, oh, saving taxpayer dollars.
Of course, why wouldn't I accept this?
You know, instead of spending hundreds of millions
of dollars on a plane that Boeing is creating
for Air Force One or PS, the cheapest way to do this
would be to just use the perfectly good Air Force One
that already exists
But no, that's not good enough for him
So he needs a new plane and he wants to get this 400 million dollar one
But what he doesn't say is it's going to cost more money to retrofit that first of all to take it apart
Piece by piece to make sure there's no hidden bugs or anything, right?
You have to from an intelligence perspective figure, figure out that there's no surveillance or
anything in there. Also, you have to bomb proof it, you have to bullet proof it, you have to equip
it with all of the various capabilities where he can receive information, transmit information.
I mean, it's really a souped up White House in the sky. That's what Air Force One is designed to do. It's designed
to be in the air if there's a catastrophic event on the ground. And so that's going to
cost more money to retro taxpayer dollars to retrofit that so that it can serve as Air
Force One. And it's not going to be around. It's not going to be ready in term for Trump's
term. But he that's okay, because once the taxpayer dollars are spent
to retrofit it, he plans on keeping it as his private plane. That's just preposterous. That is
outrageous. And it is a scam. It is criminal. The fact that the Qataris are going to have basically
own the president, what is he going to if Qataris want to do something that's not in the best interest of the United States, he's going to say no
to them because he but now he is their best friend. I mean, it's stuff like that, that
is just horrendous. And I don't know which is worse that or the fact that he is making
hundreds of millions on this trip, he's peddling his crypto and he's making, he's selling access to the
White House if you trade in his cryptocurrency.
He's making, he and his family are making hundreds of millions of dollars.
And what do they say?
Well, they were business people before, they're business people now, they're just continuing
business people.
They're just doing deals that they do.
But that is the definition of gaslighting. They are enriching themselves off the back of the presidency,
off the back of the United States of America.
And I want to see what are they doing for the United States?
What have they done for Americans,
for average Americans? Nothing.
And so that's what's going on.
But we will continue to cover all of the various scams
and lawlessness that is going on.
Yeah, he's made for his family upwards of a billion dollars of the various scams and lawlessness that is going on.
Yeah, he's made for his family upwards of a billion dollars since he was elected, primarily through meme currency,
through the operation of the World Liberty Financial,
which is a liquidity pool marketplace for meme sales.
This is his version of, he didn't make enough with
bibles and sneakers and NFTs. Now he's moved on to memes and it's a great way for you to buy a piece
of the presidency. You can't donate as a foreign entity into a campaign donation, but you can buy
as much cryptocurrency as Donald Trump's willing to sell you. And then Donald Trump knows through
the digital wallets, he
knows exactly who's buying and who's basically, this is the influence peddling that we talked
about. And if you don't want to do it that way, you can do it by buying stock in a couple
of public companies that are closely tied to Donald Trump. He's got DJT, which is his his truth social and his sons just created a new American
Bitcoin company, a crypto mining company and infrastructure
company that's been around since let me just check my watch since
March of this year. That just went public yesterday.
Wow, that's fast.
With no track record, right? Because they got there because
daddy's in the White House. and daddy's going to be the
crypto, he's president crypto.
He's going to do everything to bet over backwards because his goal as any kleptomaniac, as any
fascist dictator before he leaves office is to walk out with everything he can and make
as much money.
There was two goals for Donald Trump on full display here in running for the presidency.
One was to win to avoid going to jail.
Check.
The second one was to make as much money,
there are three goals,
as possible for his family on the way out,
using the leverage of being the president
of the United States to create a printing press for him
through cryptocurrency and through real estate deals
around the country
and other things like taking a $400 million, $400 million bribe from the Qataris
that frankly should have gone to his investors that are his limited investors
in the $5 billion golf course that was just approved by the Qatari government three weeks ago.
See, that was really a success fee that should have gone to the investors. But Donald Trump figured out a way to do money
laundering and tax evasion all at the same time.
Well, he's doing the success fee because, but for the fact that he's president of the
United States, none of this would be happening. None of these deals would go through.
Right. 1000%. So he takes the plane, which as you noted,
by the time they're done retrofitting it,
it will be late into the 2030s.
It will be beyond, he'll help barely get to use it
for a year, and then it will fly away with him
after hundreds of millions of dollars
of taxpayer dollars being spent.
By the way, the Air Force is taking possession of the new
Air Force One. It's supposed to be in 2024, but it looks like it's going to be in 2027 or 2028.
It's still going on. So we spend billions of dollars for the new Air Force One. He doesn't
want to wait around for it. His Trump Force One is old and decrepit. This is younger, so he wants this,
but he'll never get it unless he just decides
he's just gonna fly with it
without having any protection in it,
like bomb proofing, being able to operate a nuclear war,
those kind of things.
Like have at it.
I'm thinking, you wanna do that?
Go ahead.
But so this is the grift.
He just wants it, and he wants the title
to be transferred to the Trump Foundation,
library foundation bought and paid for
by the crypto pros and the tech bros
and the Facebooks and the millionaire,
the million there and the million there,
you know, all these monies that he's getting
and these phony settlements all going to the foundation.
So he can fly around in his old age,
on taxpayer dime, in a giant 787 or 777,
whatever the heck it is.
It's obscene.
And lawsuits, which is why lawsuits are so important.
The last firewall against tyranny and these excesses
has to be the court system.
Whether the Supreme Court is up for it, that's yet to be determined, but that is our process.
Why don't we talk about- Before you move on, I want to just say one
thing.
Sure.
Say many things.
The whole point, the reason people like Doge is because they are purportedly cutting waste,
fraud and abuse and saving taxpayer dollars and not wasting taxpayer dollars.
Fine. If that's really what we're doing,
how much is this trip to the Middle East
that is for his own family business,
it's for his own plane, it's for sell his own crypto,
it's to launch these new golf courses in the Middle East?
How much is it costing taxpayer dollars?
Because don't forget,
he has to have his whole staff travel with him.
He has Secret Service travel with him.
I mean, I bet it costs,
this is costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
And that is what we are paying for as taxpayers.
That is, that to me is absurd.
Absolutely, because none of that is true.
There was no goal of tax savings or efficiency
savings. This was like to get their hands on our data, create a giant treasure trove
of data that could ultimately be used by business like Elon Musk. And that's it. The third goal
was just to, you know, I said there were three goals for the presidency. Avoid prison, check.
Make as much money as humanly possible
as the president of the United States, check.
And the third is vindication and retribution
against all his enemies.
That's all or what?
That's why people are like, where in that list
is anything that helps me around my kitchen table?
None, because that's not why he ran.
You know, we used to ask our presidential candidates,
remember back in the day, Karen,
when they'd be interviewed on 60 Minutes or something,
and they'd ask that question,
tell the American people why you want to be president
of the United States.
Remember when they used to ask that question?
And you'd have to have like a burning desire.
And if you didn't, there was, I don't know,
was Gary Hart or somebody was like,
they couldn't, it was like they weren't expecting
the question.
Like how are you running for president?
How are you not expecting to answer that question?
And it like tanked their,
remember those days you just tanked your whole political career
when you couldn't answer that kind of question.
But Trump can't answer that question.
It seems kind of cute, you know?
Right, why do you want to be president?
Right.
So that's where we're at.
Do you remember how cute it was, the biggest scandal that,
you know, the biggest scandal that Trump did
was he didn't release his tax returns
Like that was like like horrible, right? How adorable the biggest handle for Obama was he wore a beige suit in the summer?
That's true tan suit. I just I can't I
Just so frustrating. It's so frustrating. I mean and the thing is he's not even being
He's not even trying to be secret about it. No, just like this is what I'm
doing. I'm, you know, do something about it. There's
nothing you can do about it. And you know what to him? He's
like, that means you're a loser, and I'm a winner. And that's I
value that 1000%. This is all the you know, the whole the
whole thing about I like people who weren't captured as
prisoners of war. I like people like he really does.
He like to him getting rich and finding the loopholes
and scamming the American people make him a winner.
And he got to him. That's a point of pride.
It was a good article in The Times today or yesterday.
I forget I got on the digital version that
basically said the enemies and the frenemies have figured out how to negotiate with Donald Trump. You don't listen to any of his bullshit. You don't
listen to any of his threats. He'll cave on every threat he ever makes, whether it's the
tariffs or anything else. All you have to do is start waving around contracts for investment
and wait him out. That's what's going to happen in China. China has got the the
United States by the balls, courtesy of Donald Trump. He
declares a win after it's a loss that he's that has been made
slightly less bad, but it's still terrible. And that's a
win for Donald Trump. It's like I said, I'm one of my hot
takes. It's like, I had 100% of something. And then Donald
Trump did something bad. And I lost 20% of my hot takes. It's like I had a hundred percent of something and then Donald Trump did something bad
And I lost 20% of it
So I'm down to 80% and then it went up to 85% Donald Trump said we won. I'll say what do you mean?
We won. Where's my other 15% of the thing that I had? That's not a win
To give me back less than what I that less than what you took
But that's Donald Trump's whole game.
And the frenemies and the other's counterparties
against our country know this about Donald Trump
and China knows it.
And all China's gonna do is China's gonna go,
this is where they really eat our lunch,
is they're just gonna say,
we wanna have more investment
of American companies in China.
Let's make deals that you can announce
and that Donald Trump's salivating
and whatever things that we're trying to do
to contain China go completely out the window
because Donald Trump just sold us out to the Chinese.
And everybody knows it.
Every one of our adversaries knows that Donald Trump
is for sale and therefore the United States is as well.
Until we get him out, until we get him out.
So let's talk about, well we did a nice intro there,
it went for a while.
But we're gonna talk about birthright citizenship
and nationwide injunctions,
because the Supreme Court is making us talk about it.
Because they took up the case,
they're holding the hearing tomorrow, oral argument.
You guys, hopefully everybody else come to Legal af mtn and hit the subscribe button and the reminder
button because you're going to want to be there for that 10 o'clock it'll go on about an hour
hour and a half it'll be fascinating and we'll know right away whether trump's going to be winning
or losing and i'll give you some ideas here on the podcast of my thoughts along with karen we'll talk
about the alien enemiesemies Act.
That's a new reporting today
that Donald Trump really didn't like the fact
that his national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard,
obtained a memo from the intelligence community
that completely undermined his arguments
about the use of the Alien Enemies Act.
And now it's off with their heads.
Everybody's been fired that wrote that memo
just as recently as April.
As Judge Zinnis comes to terms with how quick,
when is she gonna declare the Trump administration
in contempt and have we moved closer to that
based on some new filings in her courtroom?
And then Hannah Dugan, I love her in many, many ways.
We support her here on Midas Touch and on Legal AF.
She's the judge out in Wisconsin just doing her job
of defending the rule of law and the propriety
in her courtroom and courthouse
and got indicted for it yesterday.
But today, the motion to dismiss has been filed.
We're gonna cover all of that.
But now it's that moment in time where we talk about
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And we got things like the thing we're gonna talk about
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that got a bunch of people fired today
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And we're back, thank you to our pro-democracy sponsors
and thank you to everybody in the audience
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Karen, tomorrow, 10 a.m., be there, be square.
Supreme Court, oral argument, right?
Legal AF, showing it, live stream, live feed.
Why don't you, if you can, kind of frame the issue.
Why is it important?
And why do you think the Supreme Court
took this particular case to talk about nationwide adjudctions? You know, one thing I love that
you're doing, Popak, is you're providing a one-stop shop for people, which is just there's so much
going on here and there's so many things to follow. It's so much easier for people to have
one place to go for all of the content, the information,
the filings, if you want to learn about it,
hear about it, figure out what's going on.
So it's really, really a huge service that you,
that you're providing to people.
And so I really, I just love the Legal AF Substack.
It's really a phenomenal resource.
So it's just fantastic.
So birthright citizenship and the Supreme Court
and what is happening tomorrow is really momentous.
This is a huge deal.
There are two big issues that are being decided tomorrow
or that the court is deciding tomorrow.
The issue that's presented before the court
that they're going to brief
and that you're gonna hear a lot about
in some ways has nothing to do with birthright citizenship.
It has to do with whether one district judge in one place
can issue a nationwide injunction.
If you remember, back when Judge Kaczmarek in Texas
issued a nationwide injunction,
it seems like a hundred years ago now, but it was a couple of years ago now on
the myth of Prestone and the abortion medication.
A lot of people, including myself was like, how could he do that?
How can, how can, how is it possible that one judge in the middle of Texas in a one judge district?
And there are districts like that, right?
There's big districts like where I live, the Southern District of New York and where I practice.
And there's dozens of judges who sit in the federal district court, the trial level court.
And those judges are assigned randomly in a wheel, literally. They put their names in a tumbler.
And depending on your seniority, if you're new or if you're senior,
if you're a new judge, your name is in there more times.
If you're a light docket and you don't have a lot of cases,
your name is in there more times so that you have more of a chance
of when they literally spin the wheel and take a name out, that you will get that case.
Now, there are, but depending on the size of the jurisdiction, there are fewer judges.
And it's really luck of the draw, right? We were with the, with the Trump Mar-a-Lago documents case, we were so, we were, we were all so surprised that a Trump appointed judge got that case, right?
But that was the luck of the draw. That's what you get.
Sometimes you get good judges.
Sometimes you get judges that are not the ones you want.
But then you've got these jurisdictions like where Judge Kazmeric sits in Texas, where it's such a small district.
He's the only judge there. And you have plaintiffs who go and forum shop
and bring cases in places like that
where you either have 100% chance or more of a chance
of getting the judge that you want.
And then if they can issue a nationwide injunction,
I mean, that in, there's no other case,
I think there's no better case to show the power of that
than that nationwide injunction with the abortion pill
and how that was going to affect millions of Americans
as this one person.
So this case tomorrow is really about that question.
And it's happening in the context though
of this issue of birthright citizenship
and whether or not if you are,
it's whether or not the 14th Amendment that basically says
if you were born here, you're a citizen, right?
It actually says all persons born or naturalized
in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens
of the United States and of the state where they reside.
And that's in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
It's been the law of the land for over 100 years.
And there's this fringe theory out there that it doesn't apply to people
who are here temporarily, that it was passed,
the 14th Amendment was passed around the time of slavery.
This was about giving citizenship to children of slaves,
not everybody else.
And who is one of the architects of this fringe theory?
None other than a lawyer who we've talked about considerably
in this podcast for years, John Eastman.
Who's John Eastman?
He's the several times indicted architect of the, basically,
of the false elector scheme.
And so he's been disbarred in California.
He's been indicted at least twice.
And judges have found that the attorney-client privilege doesn't
apply with him because of the crime fraud exception.
I mean, this is the guy who has been peddling this
and it has caught fire and it has caught fire with MAGA.
And this case was decided, by the way,
this issue was decided in 1898
in a case called US V Wong Kim Ark,
a man born in San Francisco
to Chinese parents.
And the judges basically said, he's a citizen.
And it made me actually want to Google,
I made this issue made me look at when Baron Trump was born
and he was born four months before his mother
became a naturalized citizen.
And Trump's executive order conveniently makes that,
because Trump's a citizen, it doesn't count, right?
Because otherwise, even his own child would not be a citizen.
But he had to say, oh, no, if one parent, if the father is a citizen,
you know, then it's okay.
But it's, what is this going to is a citizen, you know, then it's okay. But it's it's what what what is this going to do for the for the,
you know, the hundreds of thousands, probably more of people who.
What if you what if you're 18 years old and you were born here
and and you've never lived anywhere else?
And then what?
Suddenly, you're not a citizen of this country
and you don't speak the language of another country, a country
where you've never been.
And then where are you citizens list now? I mean, what's supposed
to happen? Or what happens if you are in a state that recognizes this, but not, you know,
but you live close to another state and you happen to give birth when you're in that other
state, but you reside in the state that does, you know, it's, it's going to cause so much
confusion. But really the issue that's going to be discussed, I think tomorrow is this
issue of whether one judge can issue a nationwide injunction.
And it'll be interesting to see.
I think, I think they have to be able to, or the chaos here would just be insane.
I mean, because I think what, 28 states have sued.
And so what are those the only states that are
that if they rule, if they rule that the states that sued
in this particular case, that those ones
if you're born in those states, you're a citizen
but in the ones that don't challenge it, you're not a citizen.
I mean, this is the kind of issue.
First of all, it's completely well established law
and it's black letter law.
It comes from old-timey times,
which is what the Supreme Court loves, right?
They love what was it back in the olden days,
and it's written in the Constitution.
So I think this is a slam dunk win.
I can't imagine that it won't be.
And I think in issues like this that are so clear
and that affect so many people and where chaos would ensue,
I think they're going to say that, yes,
they can issue a nationwide injunction,
but that's just because that's what common sense would say,
but who knows anymore.
What are your thoughts on this, Popov?
Yeah, I just interviewed with Alex Aronson,
Leah Lippman of Strict Scrutiny,
a professor at University of Michigan.
She got a new book coming out called Lawless,
and we talked to her about the book,
about the Supreme Court.
And I asked her that particular question.
I said, what do you think?
She said, well, it concerns me that they took
up nationwide injunctions.
They took up the issue on the backs
of the birthright citizenship issue, which gave her, you know,
anytime they're like lifting up the hood and start monkeying
around under the engine of the Constitution when it comes
to birthright citizenship, it gives her pause. She said, you know, they have a couple of fringe
dissents by Gorsuch and some others. They generally have allowed and affirmed the use of nationwide
injunctions when it's appropriate. I can't think of a more appropriate purpose of having one or
as a remedy in the toolbox of having one
federal judge issue a nationwide injunction than when you're talking about a constitutional right.
Maybe that's why they decided to do it because it's so clear on a nationwide injunction grounds
that you need to have one judge, not 50, not 500,
make a decision about something so fundamental
as whether the 14th Amendment does or does not provide
for birthright citizenship to people other than slaves.
Donald Trump's words, not mine.
Yes, they came out of the post-Reconstruction period,
and they're known as the Reconstruction Amendments Trump,
but that doesn't mean it only applies to people
from that time or to former slaves. I know you fell asleep during any aspect of civics or history, but you do have people that
work for you, don't you? So maybe the reason, one of her theories is they took it on the backs of
that case because it's such a clear cut that nationwide injunction is appropriate for
a judge one single federal judge and one single federal district and they have
affirmed the use in the past but there are look things that were fringe
theories have say have gained new currency on this Supreme Court because
they've got the numbers you know another example of that is the unitary theory of the presidency.
That was a ridiculous fringe theory that would have gotten you laughed out of academic circles
if you raised it in the 80s and 90s. And as a historical analysis, to claim that our founding fathers intended for us to create, to have a president operate as a king
and suck in to one executive branch in one person,
all of the powers, king-like powers,
regardless of checks and balances,
there's just no way that's the history of our republic alone
tells you that that's not the case.
But to those who believe, well, there's three branches
and Congress is over here and judges are over here
and there's just one guy over there.
So I guess he gets all the power of being the one guy.
I mean, that is a fringe lunatic theory,
but look, now that you have four or five votes for that
at the United States Supreme Court,
we'll know soon when the Supreme Court
stops sticking around and granting procedural rulings in Donald Trump's favor
and starts granting substantive rulings,
which could start with this oral argument tomorrow.
But these fringe theories,
all these fringe theories kicking around like,
oh, that one line in the 14th Amendment
about subject to the laws of the territory,
you're not subject to the laws of the territory because you're undocumented
and you're really subject to the laws of Venezuela,
blah, blah, blah, and so that line alone
eats the rest of it and therefore,
it's not that I'm changing the constitution
with the 14th Amendment, I'm just giving the,
with the executive order, I'm just giving
a proper interpretation.
I mean, it's eye popping.
So I think there's gonna be a lot of nationwide's eye popping. So I think there's gonna be a lot
of nationwide injunction discussion tomorrow.
I think there's gonna be a little
birthright citizenship discussion on the substance.
Although that's ripe for appellate review
by the Supreme Court too.
Because we've got like four different appellate courts
who have all ruled that Donald Trump
and his arguments are all wet.
So, although if you look at the math,
every time somebody files a motion,
it is the movement at the Supreme Court so far,
they've sided with the movement without exception.
So the movement tomorrow is the Trump administration.
But I think that this is the one where I agree with you.
I think they, it's just so clear cut.
Maybe that's why they use this particular case for that.
And we'll see, but let's not get too high or too low.
If they rule the way we think they're gonna rule,
you know what the press is gonna run with.
Oh, Trump is rebuked.
Trump, Trump's been slam dunked by the Supreme Court.
See, they're not monolithic, they're Republicans.
They ruled against him.
Let's not get too high or too low here, okay?
They have generally, they side with Donald Trump
on the most important issues, fundamental,
and they have for a very, very long time.
Is there an outlier here or there on something so clear cut
that even they have to rule against Donald Trump?
Yes.
We have to take this big picture approach.
Anything else on birthright and tomorrow?
Karen
No, I think you covered it perfectly popok. I just I think
You know if you want to know what they're gonna do just look at what they say, right?
They've been talking about this for a long time read project 2025, you know, that's like the roadmap to everything they're doing
They're just doing it all.
Absolutely.
One of our contributors, Dave Ehrenberg, was going to do a hot take about
trying to ban pornography.
I'm like, just go to page 327 of Project 2025 or whatever.
It's right there.
Everything that we are watching is coming straight out of verbatim
Project 2025, the
thing that Donald Trump said, he didn't know what it was and he wasn't familiar with it.
Everything, really just about everything.
Let's move on and talk about Alien Enemies Act.
We got a ruling coming out of Pennsylvania that seems to be an outlier, and then Judge
Zinnis. And what's going on in the filings there you want to take Judge
Zinnis? You start I love when you set things up. I got Judge Haynes she's a
Trumper, captain in the JAG Corps, Army person and I went through her, her 46 pages or whatever it is,
I'm still scratching my head.
She's the only federal judge so far.
And that includes two Trumpers and a Biden and all that,
that has found that Donald Trump's proclamation
declaring that the trend to Aragwa,
the narco terrorist decentralized gang
that's been in this country for years, is because Donald Trump called them a federal,
a foreign terrorist organization, an FTO,
that that is enough for him to use the Alien Enemies Act,
because that's the equivalent of being a military combatant,
an enemy combatant, that's conducting an enemy,
a predatory incursion.
And she got all excited and all,
and all, and all enthusiastic
about her dictionary analysis.
Yes, you heard me right.
You don't have to adjust your volume.
She found dictionaries online from the 1880s and 1900s,
the 1780s about what the word predatory means,
what the word incursion means. She had this whole dictionary analysis. She did, it 1780s, about what the word predatory means, what the word incursion means,
she had this whole dictionary analysis.
She did, it was funny though, Karen,
she did a little dig to Donald Trump
in the middle of the dictionary analysis.
She said, I got this dictionary courtesy
of the National Endowment of the Humanities,
which Donald Trump is trying to get rid of
and defund and destroy, I'm sure she knew that.
But that was about the only thing in there
that was against Donald Trump.
The rest was, and it's this complete catch 22
chicken and the egg problem that she has in her analysis.
He called it a foreign terrorist organization.
Therefore he gets to use the proclaim war
and he gets to use the alien enemies act.
So then was the declaration of a foreign terrorist organization enough?
And where is that? That's not in the alien enemies act. We didn't have foreign.
We didn't have to work as she noted.
We didn't have the word terrorists back in the time when the alien enemies act
was passed. So I don't even get her analysis. All I know is judge,
Rodriguez in Texas, Sweeney in Colorado,
Hellerstein in New York have all said, as did Judge Henderson on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals,
all said the same thing. What we're watching is migration. They came to this country and they
committed crimes, but that's not the equivalent of a war, a warlike combatant against the United States
to allow you to use the Alien Enemies Act. And then of course, she did make a note of saying
that regardless of what I declare here, they still get notice and due process because the Supreme
Court says they do under the J.G.G. case from just a couple of months ago. So they will get a writ of habeas corpus, right?
They will get a notice and due process
as long as Donald Trump doesn't take away
the writ of habeas corpus, right?
Which he's threatened to do
through his henchman, Stephen Miller.
So that's what happened there.
You wanna pick up there
and then we'll flip it over to Ibrego Garcia?
Yeah, I mean, look,
to people who don't practice law every single day, what is the writ of habeas corpus,
right? And it essentially means bring the body to the court. And
it's it's to when Stephen Miller, who is, I think, who's
on my list of the top, the top most evil Trump people
and is the architect to a lot of these terrible policies. When he says, we'll just suspend habeas corpus,
it's extremely dangerous.
It is extremely it's something that we should all fear.
A writ of habeas corpus is the only thing that a lawyer has.
And how you go to a court and say,
I want you to bring this body to this court so that we can have process, so that there
can be due process. Otherwise, what's going to happen? People just get sent away, locked
away somewhere, and you'll never hear from them again. There will be no court proceeding to have,
to figure out was this lawful?
Are you a member of Trenda Aragua?
Or is this somehow an arm
of the Venezuelan Maduro government?
Is this a foreign incursion?
None of those things can happen if there is no court case,
if there's no matter,
if there's no body in front of the court.
And that's why, for example, you know, all of these things that Trump is doing, sending
bodies to, he's sending prisoners and deportees to El Salvador, Seacote, infamous, terrible
prison.
But he's also looking to do this third party prison thing
all over the world.
He's looking for places to ship immigrants,
and he's looking for places to hold criminals.
And that's what he's trying to do.
And he wants to set up these agreements, basically,
to outsource our prison system as a form of deterrence,
to send them to the worst countries, the worst prisons.
But there is precedent for that.
Look, we have Guantanamo Bay, and that is what we have.
And now those are people who we declare
don't get any process here.
You can't have a writ of habeas corpus,
because these are people who are foreign nationals,
who are people who have essentially committed terrorist acts
on our country, and they are in another country.
They are in Cuba, and he's trying to set this up
for immigrants.
He's trying to essentially say that he's trying to turn
immigrants into terrorists.
And that is what's happening here,
and he's, and they're looking at people who come here and migrate as people
who are breaking the law by coming here illegally or unlawfully except of course if you're a white South African you know
that that's a whole different thing than than welcome to this country you refugee and let's let's take care of you. Because
you're you're politically persecuted but but all these other individuals are not.
And so that's what's happening here.
And so this is really important that these things get adjudicated
and that people get processed and that these individuals
who are being skirted away in the dark of night and taken
to foreign countries without any process,
not turning the planes
around despite court orders.
This has to play out and it has to play out in a way
that I think the Supreme Court even is gonna say
this is a bridge too far.
People deserve due process, period, end of story.
And this executive order, his sort of waving a magic wand
by executive order and these declarations, you know, he,
despite controlling Congress and the Senate, he, and presumably, you could do things lawfully
and get laws passed, he's just bypassing all of that because he likes the whole unitary
executive theory and Congress is doing nothing.
You hear any hearings?
No one's holding hearings.
No one's complaining.
No one's doing anything.
It's like Congress doesn't exist right now.
I haven't heard a peep from a member of Congress for any reason whatsoever.
They have relegated themselves into the complete irrelevance and they are sitting
back and just watching and letting Donald Trump do whatever he wants.
And he is just making these declarations, you know, like, like he's a king.
And hopefully the courts are going to start holding him
and his administration accountable.
And, you know, they lie, you know, whether it's, you know,
whether they lie to the American people, right,
whether it's Abrego Garcia who, you know,
has become kind of the poster child of this whole thing,
whether it's him, whether they say,
oh, well, we don't have any power,
we don't have any control to ask him to have him come back.
But then they'll say that publicly,
but then they'll refuse to tell the court why.
They'll refuse to come forward and give any reasons why,
because they'll claim privilege or state secrets
or all these other things, but yet they have no problem
going out and talking about it on TV publicly.
And they say one thing to the courts and they say another thing publicly,
and that's going to come back to bite them.
The problem is going to be, how do you enforce it?
How are courts going to enforce this?
And how are we going to stop Donald Trump from removing people who,
I mean, I know one of the things that we're talking about tonight
is what he's doing to students and grad students.
I mean, I was reading today that there's a Harvard doctoral
student who is being sent back to Russia where she says,
I'm going to be arrested and persecuted
for criticizing Russia in the war on Ukraine.
And, you know, there's people who are, I mean, to say
that somebody who's a doctoral student from Russia
at Harvard is not someone who's going
to benefit this country, right?
She might not be white.
I think she is though, but, you know,
some of these people might not be white,
but they're not these criminals that they're saying,
these MS-13, these gang members.
These are legitimate, these MS-13, these gang members, these are legitimate,
really important people who it's important that our country welcomes them in.
These going to our finest institutions, doing research into things that are really important
for science and for the world, frankly, and that they're getting arrested, detained, and
sent back to countries where they're getting arrested, detained and sent back to
countries where they're gonna be persecuted. I mean not only is it inhumane,
the brain drain that is gonna happen to this country and the brain gain that is
gonna happen to places people like places like China are like come to mama
come here all you smart people who are at Harvard all these things you were
doing come here we want you we. We are going to become irrelevant
because of what he's doing.
He's going to get richer, his friends are going to get richer,
and we are going to become irrelevant.
That's what's happening, and it's really terrifying.
Brain drain is a real thing.
I mean, Russia experienced it
when they made outcasts of the Jewish community
in the 80s and 90s.
One of the reasons Israel and its Silicon Valley equivalent and tech is so on point
and so industry leading is because many of the scientists from the former Soviet Union,
including those that were Jewish and other groups that were maligned in Russia and Soviet Union, including those that were Jewish, and other groups that were maligned in Russia
and Soviet Union ended up in Israel.
And of course, we saw it in Germany,
when Germany during World War II,
again, a lot of Jewish scientists ended up, including Einstein,
ended up in the United States.
Our atomic weapons program, our atomic bomb,
was a lot of people that came over from Germany
and ended up joining NASA and the Manhattan Project
and went to places like Princeton and things like that.
So it's a real thing.
And if people are insecure about pursuing their academic pursuits and research and all
of that in the United States because they're uncomfortable here because of the political
environment that Donald Trump has created, there are, as you pointed out, Karen, there
are, I could put on one hand, a number of our enemies and frenemies that are more than willing to take them
in and give them unlimited budgets and not threaten them
with potentially being sent off to a dark day for a gulag. And,
and as you said, we will be the worst for it. We're certainly
the worst for it. When you're when you're simultaneously
attacking the Harvard's of the the world and cutting their funding
on important things like medical breakthroughs
and technology and all those other things.
I mean, we don't really have a space program
to speak of any longer.
One of the dirty little secrets of outsourcing it
to Elon Musk and to Bezos is that we don't have the R&D,
the research development that we have in our own labs
in NASA with a group of scientists.
And a lot of those breakthroughs ended up being used
for civilian use.
A lot of things come out of the military
end up for civilian use, but we're losing that.
And Donald Trump's cutting all the budgets
and of all the national institutes out there
because he sees them as woke or weaponized
or whatever it is.
And like you said, he's a short-termer
who only cares, he's a short time horizon, literally.
He only cares about making the most amount of money
for himself and those around him as possible.
Cares little, not a whit, about us.
And we are going, you know, it's almost like I feel sorry
for the next incoming president who will be a Democrat,
because they are going to have, they're going to need at least two terms.
It's going to be a Herculean effort to clean up behind this elephant of Donald Trump.
We'll get there. We're a resilient country, led by the right person. We can do great things. It's just not this person who it doesn't
appeal to people's higher angels. He appeals to their worst instincts and the
basest instincts and the devil inside of them. But we will be exercised one day
and it may be coming as soon as the midterms. If we can get the House and
the Senate back to restore some type of checks and checks and balance and
separation of powers that will go a long way and to limit the damage of
a full four years of Donald Trump. But the people have to speak. It can't just be us
talking to each other. It has to be action, and action in the form of in the streets,
emails, correspondence.
One of the things Professor Lippman said today
is the Supreme Court is influenced, at least Roberts
is, and a couple of others, by what
they hear on the streets about people's reaction
to the Supreme Court.
Others don't care.
Alito doesn't care.
He says that.
He says it out loud.
I don't care.
But some do.
And Amy Coney Barrett may fall into that camp.
So letter writing campaigns and protests in the streets
and other things like that matter.
And polling matter to some of these people,
these political animals.
When we come back, Karen, why don't we talk about
and celebrate the courage of Judge Hannah Dugan
and some new developments in her case.
Something happened yesterday and something
that just happened today before we went on the air.
And now we're gonna do that part of the show
that some people may enjoy and some people might tolerate,
be agnostic towards or some people may not like it.
But we gotta do it,
because that's how we keep this pro-democracy channel
together talking truth to each other is subscribe here, listen to the show on audio podcast Legal AF, watch the show on YouTube,
tell your friends about it. We do these Legal AF after dark clips. We send them off in different
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We got Legal AF, the sub stack,
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We just went over 30,000 subscribers like today.
And it just shows that there is a real need for people
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So the motions that are filed, the oral arguments,
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Welcome back to Legal AF.
Thank you to our pro-democracy sponsors.
Thank you to everyone.
It is humbling and heartwarming
to see the overwhelming support for all things Legal AF,
the Substack, the Legal AF YouTube channel,
contributions to the various contributors,
and we do appreciate you from the bottom of our heart.
And let's talk about, speaking of heart and soul
and courage and conviction,
let's talk about Judge Hannah Dugan,
currently suspended by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, currently indicted.
But there's a bigger picture here,
and I want Karen, I want you to lead on it.
Hannah Dugan, indicted today, motion to dismiss file.
Tell our audience what it's all about.
Yeah, so this is a judge who,
she's a local criminal court judge.
This is not a federal judge.
This is a local elected judge in Wisconsin
who was doing what she does, hearing criminal cases.
And she gets wind of the fact that one of the people
in her, one of the defendants was going to be arrested
by ICE and in order to not disrupt her courtroom,
she had him walk out of a different door,
a few doors, by the way,
a few feet away from the courtroom door.
So it's not like some back door to get away.
It was just a few feet away.
So not to influence or not to interrupt the flow
of people coming in and out of her courtroom,
which I think is totally legitimate and totally valid. But regardless, she that's what she did. And and
so what is the DOJ doing? The DOJ is they arrested her very publicly, very humiliatingly.
I mean, they they showed up and arrested her in court, clearly trying to send a message to
everybody.
And now they've indicted her and they're going to try to make an example out of her.
I think they are going to lose big time.
And she's very well represented.
She has a very conservative, well-respected ex-solicitor general attorney representing
her, Paul Clement, and that should tell you something,
that he's conservative and he's representing her,
because this is so outrageous.
I mean, this is so not...
This is just, this is like crazy.
I mean, the fact that the arresting judges
who are trying to just manage and control their courtroom
is insane to me.
But it's, you know, it's just very interesting to me.
The Department of Justice, the FBI
and the Department of Justice made an announcement,
I think yesterday or the day before,
that they're scaling down their work in white-collar crime,
and they're focusing on immigration.
They are really, that is what this is becoming.
This is becoming one giant immigration
Department of Justice, and they want to send a message to a judge, because it's so easy for them that is what this is becoming. This is becoming one giant immigration department of justice.
And they wanna send a message to a judge
because it's so easy for them to find people
if they can just go to court
and go to their court appearances.
But if people get word of that,
then what's gonna happen?
People are gonna stop showing up to court,
whether you're a victim or a witness or a defendant,
people are gonna stop showing up to court
if you know that, gee, there's your name,
you know you're gonna be there at a certain time,
how easy is it for ICE to find you?
And so what's gonna quickly happen?
People are gonna start losing control.
Judges and local judges are gonna start losing control
of their dockets, of their cases,
and cases will get dismissed.
And also the other thing that's gonna start happening
are people who are victims of crime or witnesses of crime,
who are not full United States citizens,
are gonna be afraid to go to court
and to report crimes or to go to court
and be witnesses to crimes in addition to,
again, if you're a defendant.
And so what's going to start happening to our judicial system?
It is so inherent in a judicial
a judge's power to have control of their courtroom.
I mean, just federally, every federal judge has what's called local rules,
their own set of rules of everything that you have to do in their courtroom
and how you have to do things how page limits
font sizes margin sizes
I mean you name it how you how you conduct yourself in court how you
Want communicate with the court?
I mean and they are allowed to do that because how you control your court how things work is such
Inherent it's such an inherent part of being a judge.
And so if that's what she has determined she needs to do
in order to run effectively run her criminal court,
then she needs to do that.
And I think she's going to win for two reasons.
She filed a motion today, a motion to dismiss
one citing judicial immunity,
one issue was judicial immunity and the other is federalism.
And those are the two issues that were in her motion
to dismiss and you alluded to it in the introduction.
The very first thing she does is she cites
to United States versus Trump, right?
The decision that, or maybe it was Trump v. US at that point,
but it was the decision where they gave Trump
absolute immunity for anything that he does
that's presidential.
And so that case was decided because something like immunity
is gets to be decided in the beginning of a case,
not at the end of a case.
There's certain issues that you appeal
after a case is adjudicated,
but there's certain foundational and fundamental issues
like immunity that get to be decided first
before you can go on and prosecute someone.
And so she sided to Trump v. US where they found that, yes, this was perfectly legal and lawful
to decide this presidential immunity issue at that stage,
because this is so foundational.
So she cites that as a reason why she gets to appeal this
now, and I think that's very compelling.
But she talks here and says, look, first of all,
I have judicial immunity because I was being a judge.
I was controlling my courtroom.
This is absolutely foundational part of what I do as a judge.
And I think she's gonna win on that.
But she also argued the 10th Amendment federalism
and the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution,
which was, I think from the 1700s or early 1800s,
it's part of the Bill of Rights.
And it essentially deals with the balance of power
between the federal government and the states and says that the powers that are not specifically delegated
to the federal government by the Constitution nor prohibited to the states are reserved
to the states respectively.
So it basically means that federal authority, the federal government's authority is very
limited to the powers that are in the Constitution, right? And, or powers that Congress, meaning the people, give them.
And so everything else is reserved to the states.
And that's why police powers, for example,
are almost entirely the state's purview.
I learned by reading these filings and preparing for this
that 99.4%
of all criminal cases filed in the United States are state cases.
Not even 1% are federal criminal cases.
That's how miniscule the jurisdiction over the federal government has over police powers.
And so this is essentially the crime in criminal courts is essentially a state function.
And by coming in and big footing this judge
and saying what she can and cannot do
and how she can control her courtroom,
they're essentially disrupting a state court proceeding
and disrupting a state court sovereignty
of how sovereignty to handle their cases their way.
And that is what I think is so powerful
and why I think she's going to win.
And I'm so glad she's so well represented
because they're trying to make an example out of her.
I hope she makes an example out of them.
Yeah, I liked everything about it.
My gut is, I don't know, that eight pages of that motion
which I read sort of looked to me
like a placeholder motion.
Like they wanted to get it out early,
but it's not really the written work product
of somebody like Paul Clement, who you mentioned.
In fact, his name is not on there.
I think this is a placeholder because they got indicted today.
They wanted, or yesterday, after a series of,
and some people know, we talked about the red papus,
scurpus process, grand jury is a lonely place for a defendant because
they're not in the room, nor are there lawyers, nor are there witnesses, nor are
they permitted to cross-examine. It's the prosecutor, sometimes a federal or judge
or magistrate depending upon, if we're in federal court depending upon the process,
20 grand jurors give or take, and just witnesses that are asked leading questions
and documents without context or explanation. It's not an adversarial process. And hopefully,
if the prosecutor is worth their salt, they're able to get an indictment. And they were. After
a full day, they got a majority of the grand jury to agree and indict her. But I think this motion to dismiss,
which you've summarized, is really,
they even say, we'll write a bigger brief if you want,
Judge, and I think that's where Paul Clement comes in.
It was sort of like what the law firm,
Quinn Emanuel, did for Mayor Adams
when Mayor Adams got indicted, like within hours,
their motion to dismiss, but that was like a thing of beauty,
to be frank.
I was like 50 pages, you know,
they've been working on it for like a whole week straight.
And it looked great.
And it started the process.
I mean, Trump winning also helped Adams,
but it started a process to get him
into a good leverage position to negotiate something.
This one, I mean, I like the fact
that they use the Trump case against Trump.
That's great. I like the fact that they use the Trump case against Trump, that's great.
I like the fact they do a lesson,
a history lesson about the 10th Amendment,
which is all power not in the hands
of the federal government is reserved for the states
to say separation of powers, federal government,
you stay out of here,
this is the province of a state judge controlling,
as you said, their courtroom and their courthouse, and they have absolute immunity.
And figure it out now, not later, like we shouldn't move any part of the case forward until this
fundamental issue is resolved, see the Trump case.
And I think it's a novel, but it seems to be square with the facts.
Very little law cited in here, but I'm sure that'll improve as the court sets a briefing schedule.
And we'll see. But I did have to do a double, I sort of did a double take when I looked at the signature block
and I saw the lawyers that I know that she had originally hired, including a former federal prosecutor, Steve Bishkopic,
if I'm mispronouncing your name, I apologize,
had signed it, but no mention of Paul Clement.
Now I did do a little research before we got on the air.
It looks like he's still in the case.
Maybe he's working on the bigger briefs
that they'll file to substitute for this one,
and they wanted to catch the news cycle.
But in any event, it does show that she is fighting hard. It was appalling, disgusting and depraved to pick her up in the
courthouse, handcuff her in the courthouse and take her for a perp walk and then post it through
the FBI, the Department of Justice websites. All things I know are going to be cited by the defense
all things I know are going to be cited by the defense,
as you would, as I would,
as being completely unconstitutional
and against her burden, against her presumption of innocence,
especially when it comes time to ever pick a jury.
But let's see, I think with a well-written replacement motion
to dismiss here, they may have a good argument
to get rid of the case before it goes any further.
And if not, you know, she's going to be on trial for looking at six years and $350,000.
I'm glad she's still getting paid.
I'm sure some MAGA Republicans are trying to figure out
a way how to take her pension away from her,
take away her paycheck.
But that's really the province again,
we're back to the 10th Amendment,
the Supreme Court of Wisconsin,
which is four to three
on the Democratic-Liberal side, they've acted
and no amount of lawsuits can change what they've decided
about Hannah Dugan.
So we will, she's gonna be arraigned tomorrow.
This was filed before the arraignment.
The indictment is out, or it will be unsealed tomorrow.
We already know what it's gonna look like
because it's the people that have seen it
say it's the exact the same as the criminal complaint
that was filed, it's two counts,
obstruction and concealment or something like that.
All total and complete bullshit.
At the end of the day, she did her job,
she administered justice in her criminal courtroom.
That guy got his due, Flores Ruiz. He then stepped outside and he got arrested for something else entirely on an administrative warrant. Okay. I mean, this is all sounded a lot like entrapment
to me. Sounded like they wanted, they knew Dugan would kind of take the bait. They knew she was liberal, you know,
Catholic charities, former life, and they kind of set up to trigger her. And as they remind
everybody in the motion to dismiss, it doesn't matter what her subjective intent was. If she
was managing her courtroom in her courthouse, and the coming and going and the flow of people in and
out, you may not agree with it, you may not like it,
but it is immune from being sued.
Can you imagine if people could sue the judge
for how they handled witnesses in and out of a courtroom
or defendants or for motion practice?
I mean, it would be obscene,
but we'll continue to follow that there.
But as a person, I can't wait till she's exonerated and we
can have her on, for instance, legal AF. This is very similar though, just to put it in
context. Donald Trump did almost the exact same thing his first term. I think it was
a Massachusetts female judge. And he went after her. Eventually when the Biden administration
came in, it got dropped. But this could be hanging over her head for quite some time.
And she's out of her gainful employment. I mean, she's getting paid,
but she's been put on this earth to be a judge.
And the people of Wisconsin have sent her
to be that kind of judge, and she doesn't get to do that.
She gets to sit around and think about her case
for the next year, which is, I know,
is an uncomfortable place for her to be, right?
Yeah, I think it's really such a shame.
Yeah.
So we've reached the end of another episode
of Legal AF at the midweek.
Been doing it for five years, almost straight,
without interruption, Karen Friedman-Iknifilo.
Saturdays we do it, I do it with Ben Mycelis.
We do hot takes about every hour at the intersection
of law and politics, either on the Midas Touch Network
or over on Legal AF, the YouTube channel.
So those are the two places you just need to live.
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And that's what I hope you're finding in a truthful way,
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in a entertaining way here on Legal AF to Midweek.
Karen, as always, last word.
So great to see you, Popok.
It's always my favorite time of the week is doing this
and being a part of this community
and this movement with you.
It's just, I just can't believe what's happening.
I don't recognize this country. I don I just can't believe what's happening. I don't recognize this country.
I don't recognize this president and what's happening.
And so many things that are happening
that are just blatantly, blatantly corrupt.
It is so important that as many people as possible
talk about it, understand it.
And I'm so thankful that,
and just so proud of the brothers who created Midas Touch and
brought us all together and created this unbelievable community so that we can a know that we're not
alone and that we have each other and be just try and defeat this. This is this is a I don't know
what you don't want to call it. I thought it was an autocracy, but it's worse. So we all need to
defeat this together. And the first part of it is to really understand what's happening.
Yeah. Beautifully said. Until next week, Legal AF, Michael Popak, Karen Friedman,