Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF Full Episode - 5/31/2025

Episode Date: June 1, 2025

Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok, hosts of the #1 law and politics podcast on YouTube, dive into a packed agenda tonight: Trump’s meltdown over his recent court losses and his attacks on the Federalist Society and Leonard Leo; his failing legal strategy surrounding tariffs and the courts’ response; his corrupt pardon scheme and blatant influence-peddling; and his bizarre claim of severe emotional distress in a court filing aimed at pressuring CBS into paying him tens of millions to settle a lawsuit. All this and more at the intersection of law and politics. Support Our Sponsors: Fatty 15: Get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription Starter Kit by going to https://fatty15.com/LEGALAF and using code LEGALAF at checkout. Hims: Thanks to HIMS! Start your free online visit today at https://hims.com/legalaf for your personalized ED treatment options. Mud Wtr: Start your new morning ritual & get up to 43% OFF your @MUDWTR by going to https://mudwtr.com/LEGALAF #mudwtrpod FAST GROWING TREES: Head to https://www.fast-growing-trees.com/collections/sale?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=legalaf right now to get 15% off your entire order with code LegalAF! Check Out The Popok Firm: https://thepopokfirm.com/ 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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What are those courts rule? What was Donald Trump's response? I'll give you a hint. He attacked his own Trump appointed judges and he attacked the Federalist Society calling the Federalist Society, Leonard Leo, a sleazebag scum and that that's why these Trump judges are now ruling against Donald Trump. Let's talk about Trump's ongoing lawsuit against Paramount, CBS, and 60 Minutes in Texas, one of the most frivolous lawsuits in my opinion I've ever read, where in the

most recent court filing, Donald Trump says that he's suffering from severe mental and emotional distress because of the 60 minutes feature of former vice president Kamala Harris back in October of 2024. Past and future emotional distress, Donald Trump says it's worth $20 billion. That alone should disqualify you from holding any position of leadership, yet alone the presidency. What should also disqualify you is when you do things like this. We'll talk about Trump's corrupt pardons. Reality TV shows stars who defrauded the government out of tens of millions of dollars, who were sentenced and convicted by a jury.

We'll talk about his corrupt pardons of a sheriff, of people who have paid to be at his fundraisers, clear quid pro quos going on. It is absolutely embarrassing and humiliating for the United States. And also, let's talk about the Supreme Court ruling that took place at Donald Trump's request, which will now lead to 500,000 Cubans, Venezuelans, Haitians, and other previously protected groups.

They will lose their temporary protected status. They will lose their ability to stay in the United States. So do the Cubans and Venezuelans who supported Donald Trump and did not support President Biden. Biden was the one who supported your protected status here. Donald Trump is now sending you back to Cuba and Venezuela where you'll likely be tortured and die. I don't know how else to, I don't want to mince words.

Let's bring in Michael Popak, but according to the new Magar-Republican campaigning tactic, we're all gonna die, right? That's what Joni Ernst said, Magar-Republican senator. And so why does it matter what the policy? Stop complaining America. Stop whining is what Joni Ernst said. It's it's it's gonna happen one day anyway. Why do we even care? That's where they're going. That's why I call it a death cult, Popeye. It is, that's the first time we've heard that.

There's been other people that have said, well, we're all gonna die. So that is their mantra. It's a weird mantra. Although I call Carolyn LeVette, I called her in a recent hot take, Kool-Aid Caroline, because she just hands out, she's the chief distributor of all the bullshit at the podium as the press secretary. Look, the most remarkable thing of all the stories

that we're talking about today is when we get to the one about Donald Trump deciding to not just bite the hand that feeds him, but amputate the hands of the Federalist Society and Leonard Leo. Mainly, and we'll get to it later, mainly over because he's had a 96% losing streak in his court cases. He's not even doing that great at the United States Supreme Court, although there are some victories. It's about 50-50, and he completely controls that court, at least Leonard Leo does. And yet he's decided to go after the shadowy figure named Leonard Leo because he had a loss at the apparently what triggered him. He had a loss at the Court of International Trade in New York, a hand-picked court by him

just like the CBS Paramount case we're gonna talk about. He had picked the venue, he transferred the court there in order to pick up a Trump judge. He picked up a Trump judge, but then the judge ruled against him because, what's the word I'm looking for? He's wrong from a constitutional analysis standpoint or statutory analysis standpoint about his tariff power, which he doesn't have. And then he has Carol LeVette and everybody else called the guy an activist judge, an activist judge that he picked and that was nominated and was ultimately confirmed. But to go after, I want to get your view on this, of course, to go after Leonard Leo and to create this cleave or this schism between the,

what I like to call the country club Republicans, the real conservative Republicans and the MAGA, MAGA MAGA, and what it means for the future federal judge picks, like Emil Bové, who we're gonna talk about next. Because if it means that Stephen Miller is gonna be picking your and my next federal judges, then get ready for Associate Justice Alina Haba, Associate Justice Pam Bondi, Associate Justice of the Supreme

Court, Emil Bové, and the rest. But there is impact, electoral impact, on Donald Trump going after the Federalist Society and Leonard Leo, and I want to talk to you about that when we get there. It makes perfect sense though, doesn't it, in a nonsensical way, in the sense that authoritarian regimes that we've seen, some of the first groups that they clamped down are actually their own party to make sure that there's full 100% loyalty. I think about that moment where Saddam Hussein assumed full dictatorial power. Remember he invited all of the members from the Ba Party Which is the party he took over and then he started calling out names of people brought them all to an auditorium

he would call out the names your name would be called you'd go out and you would be shot and killed and The message is you all need to be loyal to me 100% now There's a variation of that that's really been underway in terms of the House of Representatives and the Senate, right? Anyone who's not 100% MAGA and crazy has basically been pushed out and Republican equals MAGA now, MAGA equals Republican, yet they still use the label conservative when there's literally nothing conservative about them, but they know that corporate dues pushes that label. So now they want to do it with the judiciary and Trump looks at these judges and he sees that he keeps on losing. And he's like,

I don't need judges who follow the law. I need judges who just do what I tell them to do. I need judges who just do what I tell them to do. And I'm looking for more, to your point, Alina Habas. I'm looking for people like that, or like Judge Eileen Cannon. Like Cannon was good. I need more Judge Eileen Cannon. Another point I wanna make quickly, and I wanna talk about the tariffs.

So where Trump is losing all of these cases, 90% you mentioned, he loses on the merits. You violated the law, usually egregiously. Where Trump wins, he almost never wins on procedure and the procedure that he wins on are basically all of these assumptions, presumptions that the executive branch has a lot of power and we should listen to them because the president is this exalted position so where the presidency says hey we need some help. Basically we should give them a stay because we don't wanna infringe as a co-equal branch of government on the presidency versus say an individual who brought the lawsuit so So where Trump has been winning, it's not the court saying actually, and we're gonna talk about it with the Venezuelans and Cubans and Haitians, they're not saying, no Donald, you have the right to deport these people.

What they're really saying is, we're going to stay, pause the district court because we think that there's potential likelihood that you could, we don't know, but we're gonna just basically say for now we view irreparable harm to the executive branch as so grievous and great that we're basically gonna give you the pauses that you want now as we'll talk about that case in a little bit Katanji Brown Jackson in her eight page scathing dissent says, well, all that does is buy time for the Trump regime

to do the unlawful conduct. The damage will be done by the time the case works its way through court a year from now. He will have already done the unlawful conduct and then the case will be moot. So wake the hell up, rest of the Supreme Court justices. That's what she says. But I wanna make that point.

He's not winning on the merits when he wins. He's winning on the procedure to stay. So that's also the case right here with the tariffs, right? You have the Federal International Trade Court, which I bet you a lot of people didn't even know even existed until this past week. And then you had a, and it's, yeah, the United States Court of International Trade,

three judge federal panel, a Trump judge, a Reagan judge, and a Biden judge, all basically rule in this case that Trump's invocation of this emergency powers, PO-PAC, which you'll explain was invalid. And then a federal judge Contrreras, in D.C., says the same thing. It's invalid. There's no emergency against Canada.

There's no emergency war against the European Union. You're making this up. That's not what this was for. And then Trump goes to the Federal Court of Appeals, which oversees these issues of trade, and they give him a stay through June 9th. Basically, there's like a briefing schedule, right? And so now he can still impose his tariffs and do what he wants unilaterally through June 9th. And then who knows, though, right, Popak? I mean, the court can wait, can take longer to rule and then he can figure out the next illegal thing he's going to invoke.

And now he's also being called a chicken. Trump always chickens out. So he's got that now. And he feels like I got to. Now he raises the steel tariffs to 50 percent unilaterally in a speech in front of the US steel workers, where he completely lies Now he raises the steel tariffs to 50% unilaterally in a speech in front of the US Steelworkers where he completely lies about the Nippon steel deal.

He says they're all gonna get $5,000 bonuses. Like just blatantly lies to these people. But anyway, I digress. Popak, break down what went down. Good, I will. So let me take the plane up 5,000 feet, look down. What we've been watching for the last 170 days, whatever it's been, is Donald Trump's strategy

to use a combination of phony emergencies, this is for all of his policies, and an exploitation of the emergency shadow docket of the United States in combination in order, through velocity and ferocity, in order to try to overwhelm the court system to permit for as long as he can, his various abuses of power.

That's what we're watching. So whether it's the phony emergency of we're at war with Venezuela to deport and remove people, and it's various iterations or it's the phony emergence under the Alien Enemies Act or it's the phony emergency of an economic war or a war that gives them certain economic limited powers in order to do the tariff program. By the way, peeling back the onion just a moment, because we're always at the intersection of law and politics. These policies are hated by the American people, and not just Democrats and independents,

although independents are abandoning Donald Trump and MAGA in huge numbers, whereas they supported him, and that's how he won the election. So all of his signature policies are underwater by disapproval ratings of 60 to 70 percent, with more than 18 percent of Republicans thinking better of their vote. We haven't even gotten to the segment today when we talk about the core constituencies of Donald Trump, including where I'm living in Miami of the Cuban Haitian, well, the Cuban

and Venezuelan community, what he's done to them. So he does those two things, phony emergencies. And then rather than give the supreme, let's just call it for what it is. Federal courts and Supreme courts are having trouble, um, putting guardrails around a, a purposefully lawless rogue, ferocious president,, felon in chief. And he's exploiting procedure in order to stampede them into decisions quickly that they really either wouldn't make with more deliberative time, or at all. And they don't do well,

federal courts up to the appellate courts and up to the lofty perch of the Supreme Court with being stampeded. And that's what the moderates on the Supreme Court, Kataji Brown Jackson, who will talk about Kagan and Sotomayor are saying at length, which is the short fuse of a skeletal record, no briefing, and no oral argument, and more importantly, no

time for us to exercise our normal deliberative process, to circulate competing opinions at the Supreme Court, to lobby each other for votes, you know, by way of, you know, law clerks and pizza boxes, which is what really happens back there. We don't do well under that and then generate a one paragraph decision on procedure or other things, but has the effect of giving Donald Trump a win, you know, and Donald Trump knows it. And so everything has to be an emergency. We've had 16 or 17 emergency applications by this president, more in this period of time, more than any other. So now what do we have? We have Donald Trump, a suit gets filed and it was really kind of below

the radar. We were like who is this group? It was like a group of lawyers that you know public interest law firm like okay that's interesting and a bunch of small businesses that were getting harmed by the Chinese tariffs and all these retaliatory tariffs. they brought a case. It was not at the Court of International Trade. It was at a regular old federal court. And Donald Trump was like, well, I'm gonna lose with this guy.

So let me transfer it. And he was right about, it's one thing I agreed with, that the Court of International Trade in New York, which is 11 people, they sit three at a time. It's a trial court, if you will. So, but they sit like an appellate court with three judges handling the case simultaneously. And he pulled the Trump-er. It was like one Trump, like you said,

one Biden, one Obama, whatever it was. But definitely a Trump-er out there. And their argument was that they have exclusive jurisdiction over anything related to trade, including whether Donald Trump as president has the power to set those retaliatory tariffs, yes or no. And you and I look closely at what the founding fathers gave

us and the framers gave us in the constitution. And we were like, where does he have the power to set tariffs? That's the power of Congress. Now, Congress can delegate with clear direction and give certain of its, you know, sticks from its bundle of powers to other branches, but it can't do it in a limitless way.

It can't just say, here, you do it. You do tariffs. No, that's a core constitutional function of Congress. So the case was, the only other argument was, did Donald Trump have the power under the International Emergency, Economic Emergencies Powers Act, which we call AIPA? Yes or no? And you have to have almost like a war footing,

similar to the Alien Enemies Act, in order for Donald Trump to be able to use that power. And what's the war? What a trade imbalance that Donald Trump participated in since 2016? a trade imbalance that Donald Trump participated in since 2016? That didn't just show up on our shores yesterday. That trade imbalance, to the extent that it matters, has been going on for decades. So to say that Congress, in this major question, gave the president the power now, just because they're doormats and limp noodles now, and they're not fighting back, that's not the same thing as having properly delegated under AIIPA under these economic conditions, the power to Donald Trump.

And so it was relatively, even though we worry, you and I worried during a prior legal AF, like, oh, they didn't enter the temporary restraining order because they rejected the temporary restraining order to block the tariffs while they were getting their hearts and minds around the briefing. But then they got their minds around the briefing and they granted summary judgment,

meaning no trial, undisputed facts, that this guy occupying the White House doesn't have the power under the statute or under the fundamental separation of powers to do what he did and blocked his retaliatory tariffs. Now, not everything was covered by that order. That's why Judge Contreras a day later issued another order primarily about Chinese tariffs, about fentanyl and other things, and also found for the same analysis under IEPA

and under the Constitution that Trump doesn't have the power. So Trump doesn't like that result. So he immediately appeals to a specialty appellate court that you and I refer to as the Federal Circuit Court of Appeal. Not to be confused with the Court of Appeals in DC, which is different. This is a court that only handles patent and trademarks, trade, commerce and trade, and technology. That's all they do. But it's a real Article III court. It's a real court under Article III of the Constitution and federal judges there. And they just sit. It's just organized the way we talked about. And he sought a stay there. So they issued the lowest level of stay in the food chain

is an administrative stay. So they issued an administrative stay just for the purposes of allowing full briefing, because again, judges don't like to be stampeded into making decisions. So they stayed the decision because, you know, it's hard to reinstate the tariffs after the fact until this date in the future to allow for full briefing,

and then they'll make a decision after they see the full briefs. But, I'll leave it on this, I'll turn it back to you, Ben, that triggered Donald Trump, along with his nomination of Emil Bové, Emil Bové, his chief political hack henchman, the closest person I can see to Donald Trump that looks like Roy Cohn from his New York days, to be on the Third Circuit Court of

Appeals on the New Jersey seat. That triggered a war, those two events that we'll pick up with later, between Donald Trump now at full, out now public warfare with the Federalist Society who he used extensively. We wouldn't even have a federal judicial crisis right now if it wasn't for Donald Trump using the benefits of the Federalist Society and all their money to get elected and change the face

of the federal judiciary. Excited to talk about that. And I wanna talk about some of these other topics we stated out from the outset. I want to remind everybody though that your YouTube channel, the Legal AF YouTube channel is just absolutely crushing it. You're on your way to 1 million subscribers there. Everybody please subscribe to the Legal AF YouTube channel.

You also got a Legal AF sub stack, which I'm really enjoying as well. Finally, Michael Popok, you made the big leap and you started the Popok firm at the request of all of our viewers and listeners who had potential cases of their own. The firm that you're running, the Popok firm, has now been helping a lot of listeners, a lot of viewers that they might as touch with their cases or the legal cases of their loved ones.

The types of cases you handle are catastrophic injury cases like bad car accidents, trucking accidents, wrongful death cases, cases involving sexual harassment and sexual assault, really bad negligence cases, and medical malpractice types of cases. Hey Michael, if people here listening and watching want to contact you through your law firm, how do they do that? Yeah, thanks Ben. When I formed it, it was a little bit of a flyer.

It took a leap of faith to support our audience, but we're helping dozens and dozens of people so far with the short amount of time that we've been up and running. I've been a lawyer for 35 years, but this is the first time I've had a firm dedicated to this type of law. And so the two ways to reach us is,

you go right to the website, www.thepopokfirm.com, we're the 1-800 number, 1-877-POPOK-A-F. Hey Ben, I got one thing to say though, when I come back, when you come back on screen. I see in the corner there behind you, both the Webby for Podcast of the Year and some sort of YouTube award for the Midas, am I right about that?

The YouTube award, one million subscribers, the Webby right there for podcast of the year. We're trying to get that YouTube up to five million subscribers and we got that about a year ago. So just talk about the growth of this network over the- Did you know, did you know, and if you don't, then I don't know who would, did you know that the number one law and

politics podcast on the YouTube podcast weekly rankings is a show that you and I founded five years ago called legal AF? It wouldn't shock me a rocket ship as you said when we had 30 people watching. You said Ben, this is a rocket ship. I said, if you say so, Michael Pope, and there you have we'll be right back after our first quick break of the show. You ever notice the signs of getting older creeping in? Poor sleep, low energy, maybe a little brain fog or stiffness that didn't used to be there. Same here. And healthy aging is something I've been thinking about more than ever.

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Welcome back to Legal AF, Ben Mycellus and Michael Popock here. Thank you to those pro-democracy sponsors. The discount code for those pro-democracy sponsors are in the description below. They help fund this show. We have zero investors at the Midas Touch Network, so give those pro-democracy sponsors some show them some love. They got good products and Jordy does a good job with the negotiations with them to get you good deals. All right, let's get into it, Michael Popok, and talk about the kind of reaction to the fact that about the kind of reaction to the fact that all these Trump appointed judges have been ruling against Donald Trump because they're still following the law by and large.

And you know, this ruling by the International Trade Court really set Donald Trump off when he realized it was a Trump appointed judge and a Reagan appointed judge who joined with a Biden appointed judge and said, it's illegal for you to tariff the entire world, citing the I E E, you know, a, you know, the international, this emergency power. IEPA. All right. So this is how Stephen Miller, uh, Donald Trump's top advisor, responds to the question. It's a good question by CNN.

You're calling all these judges leftists and communists, but it's a Trump guy. So is Trump's judge a leftist and a communist? And without missing a beat, Stephen Miller says, yeah, because the Federalist Society, they're communist and leftist. Here, play this clip. That's democracy. So there's 15 communist crazy judges on the court that each of them as a team working together can block and freeze each and every executive action. Joe Biden was allowed by that same court system. Some of them are Trump judges. Why did Trump put these crazy communist

judges, as you call them, on the bench. You heard President Trump himself say that the Federal Society and Leonard Leo has created a broken system for judicial vetting. And God knows this time around, we are not going to be using- So does that mean he doesn't support picking Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court? What it means is simply this and nothing more, we're not going to be using the Federal Society to make judicial nominations at all going forward. But let me tell you about these rogue judges.

This is the most litigated issue over the last 10 years, over the last 10 years, whether or not to deport the foreigners who invaded our country illegally. That is the most litigated issue. That's why you can't really have a debate or a discussion with them. I mean, they're like, they're literally crazy human beings. Yeah, I just wrote., they're literally sociopath, like, like, they literally are just bad, evil people who will lie and it doesn't even matter. Yeah.

The Federalist Society, the people who've enacted your entire agenda, the project 20, they're the leftist communists. I mean, but, but there is no way you can have a rational Discussion like you're not going to be out ever able to convince someone like that of Let's debate and maybe we'll have a good they're always bad faith. Here's Howard Lutnick Attacking the Reagan judge and then saying the Trump judge blue blue slip, not really a Trump appointed judge. He goes, not really a Trump appointed judge. And he goes, Reagan was really bad on trade.

And so we can trust Reagan appointed judges. Watch Letnik here please. Was he surprised about this three judge panel because it was a Reagan judge. It was a Trump judge. And then it was an Obama judge. So it was a unanimous ruling on this court. Is he surprised by that? Well, I think he was not happy with the panel

because what you call the Trump judge is just one of these blue slip judges, meaning it was a Democrat judge, it was their seat and he just approved their seat, which is the deal for those kind of things. And, you know, while we would love Ronald Reagan, you know, on trade, he just was not a strong trade guy.

So you know, I think the president saw the panel as weak. He's been through this kind of stuff before. I think he's confident on appeal. He's confident at the Supreme Court. And I think he knows he he's gonna win because he's got to protect the American people and again It's always done through this. He's got to protect the American people by imposing tariffs on the rest of the world that doesn't protect me or any of our viewers or Anybody and I can go on and on and on by taking away our health care. That's not protecting us. By taking away FEMA, that's not protecting us. By disappearing Americans and by

disappearing human beings who are just here, don't have to be Americans. That's not protecting. Anyway, we get the point. It's ridiculous. And then Donald Trump posts this long screed that it that looks like literally emails that I would get sent to me from like 5150 people in like involuntary psychological holds the U S court of international trade incredibly blah. Like don't worry folks. I'm not going to read this. Is that one sentence with no punctuation? Yeah, that's one sentence with no punctuation. And then he goes on and he goes, the Federalist Society. I was new to Washington and it was suggested that I use the Federalist Society

as a recommending source on judges. I did so openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real sleazebag named Leonard Leo, a bad person who in his own way probably hates America and obviously has his own separate ambitions. And he goes on to bash all of the judges he appointed because he says the Federalist Society recommended it and they are a leftist communist organization, Popeye.

So let's dive into that for a moment. And it really is jaw dropping. I don't want to we talk about a lot of things and and what we have to avoid is is our eyes becoming glassy and get Trump fatigue because we got to stay focused. And as I've said on my new one of my new one liners on my hot takes is we no longer have the luxury of being the silent majority. We have to speak out. And we have to speak truth to each other. And then we have to actually vocalize it and vote on it and and run the bastards out on a rail come the midterms. And they are giving us the ammunition in order to do that. order to do that. Leonard Leo, and I'll tell you who's done an amazing job, it's really their reason for existence, is Court Accountability Action over with us on Legal AF. Their main focus is on corruption at the federal court system from all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. And one of the main

protagonists of that is Leonard Leo, who is this ultra right-wing Catholic shadowy figure that helped co-found and run the Federalist Society, but not just the Federalist Society. There's another half dozen, maybe a dozen interlocking organizations that he funds with about a $2 billion a year war chest that he takes in from not just MAGA, right-right-wing, religious right-wing, Catholic right-wing sources, and then doles it out. I mean, he is very close with Ginny Thomas, Clarence Thomas's wife, and her organizations, and helps fund those organizations. He helped found the leading ultra right wing law school in America, which is the Anthony and Scalia Law School at George Mason University, which is a training academy

and leadership academy for all federalist judges. And all the judges that Donald Trump has put on and all the ones that you and I have been talking about for the last five years, that are making some of these decisions in his favor, are primarily Federalist Society club members, like Aileen Cannon. And they go to this George Mason University

as Anthony and Scalia on retreats, both at the school, at hunting lodges, around the country, outside of the country, all bought and paid for by Leonard Leo. Speaking of who was bought and paid for by Leonard Leo, Amy Coney Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, who when their various candidacies were on the rocks to be Supreme Court justices, and they took a lot of heat

for past positions or their unwillingness to support President or unwillingness to support Roe versus Wade, he ran multi-million dollar ad campaigns in order, he and the National Rifle Association to get these people on handpicked by Leonard Leo for Donald Trump to give him a right wing six to three conservative majority

or a right wing majority on the Supreme Court. That's all Leonard Leo working with Mitch McConnell then the Senate Democratic Majority Leader, and to the benefit of Donald Trump. That's how he was able to reshape the face of the Supreme Court and to a slightly lesser extent, federal courts and appellate courts. Now, Donald Trump's going to have another opportunity

to do that again, but apparently he's not going to go along with the Federalist Society on this one. And I know there was some reporting that said, well, he doesn't have as many federal judges to appoint this time around. That's not true. He came into office with 45 openings at the trial court level that Joe Biden just couldn't get filled

and three at the appellate court level, which he's now nominated, Emil Beauvais, we'll talk about that in a second. And so he's got those, but that's not the only ones. Through attrition, retirement, and death, he will get another round every month, every few months. And then between now and 2028, 250 judges are gonna go senior status.

And for every senior status judge, Donald Trump gets one pick. So he's gonna have 300 plus federal judges. He may have more if we don't stop him at the midterms. And MAGA continues to control Congress. Watch them try to give him another 100, another 150, a la Reagan, in order to expand the federal judiciary, giving Donald Trump an unprecedented opportunity.

Now, why is there this war that's broken out with the federalists? an unprecedented opportunity. Now, why is there this war that's broken out with the Federalists? Yes, he's on an epic losing streak, Trump. 96% of the cases he's lost, including basically 50-50 at the Supreme Court at this point. So you got that. You've got being embarrassed

by the Court of International Trade, and the Trump are there. But that's not the only Trump, as you pointed out earlier, that's ever voted, or Trump appointee, that's ever voted against Donald Trump since the start of this term. We've talked about them at length. They happen all the time because Donald Trump is wrong in the law and wrong in the Constitution. And he doesn't color within the lines of that giant constitutional coloring book. And that's a problem for judges. Okay? So you got that going on.

But one of the arguments, and Alex Aronson on Court Accountability Action did a great job on Legal AF about this, tying these things together. And we're going to do another piece with Lisa Graves about it, which is Ed Wheelan, who is one of the stalwarts, one of the icons of the Federalist Society, came out publicly against Emil Bove being nominated for the Third Circuit, saying he is unqualified. He is nothing but a partisan hack.

This is his words from the National Review on the 30th of May. He had already been, Wheeland had already been attacked by the White House Department of Justice about a week earlier because they were trying to soften, you know, normalize and socialize and Beal Bovay being put on the third from the New Jersey seat, so to speak. It covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and I think the Virgin Islands. And Donald Trump's attempt to add more right-wingers to these historically moderate or left leaning circuit courts. So when Wheeling came out and attacked, obviously with the

blessing of Leonard Leo, because they're very close, and then the Trump administration started to attack Wheeling, this was open warfare in public between MAGA MAGA, led by Stephen Miller, who's not a lawyer, but plays one in the White House. I'm sad to say he's a Duke University graduate who looks insane and talks just, it's just kitchen magnet poetry bullshit that comes out of his mouth every time he's interviewed. But he is the number one, you know, I don't want to underestimate my opponent.

He is the number one advisor and ear bender for Donald Trump is Stephen Miller. As the from his perch of being that weighs a lot of things. He's got a post at Homeland Security. He's got a, but he's a technically the deputy White House chief of staff. And from that role, or as their presidential counselor, he sets a lot of the policy for Donald Trump. He took over from Boris Epstein, who took over from Michael Cohen. It's that, it's that role.

And so it's gonna be Stephen Miller picking these judges. Stephen Miller, we think, is the reason Pam Bondi is the Department of Justice head, Todd Blanche is the number two, Emil Bove was the number three, and John Sauer was the number four in the Department of Justice. So we need to keep a close eye on him. The question is, can we kill the nomination of Emil Bové

with all of these things that Ed Wheelan pointed out in the National Review? Certainly, the Democrats are going to have to try, because if we don't draw the line in the sand on, on Emil Bova, you don't like him? Then you're gonna hate Supreme Court Justice Alina Habba or federal judge Alina Habba or federal judge, and then fill in the blank. Now we see that we can have an impact on federal, on even Republican senators who are starting to rebel

against Donald Trump at the federal court level. When they rejected Donald Trump's choice, original choice, Ed Marks, Ed Marks, yeah, to be the head of the US Attorney's Office in DC. So there is a way to peel off some votes here. You only need a couple to get it, you know, so it dies in committee.

And we gotta try to do the same thing for Emil Bove. It is that important. And then finally, when I watch these clips that you show, like with Howard Lutnick, Howard Lutnick was, and you can look it up, Howard Lutnick was a Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton and everybody else until about five years ago. So for him to try to wear the mantle of Ronald Reagan, who effectively, as Asin said in a posting from the Midas Touch Network, said, he's, oh, Reagan is a Republican in name only, he's a rhino. You know, but they're shameless. They are shameless political hacks that will say anything. That's what Donald Trump wants around him, who will say anything

in order to show fear, show loyalty and fealty to Donald Trump. And that's what we're going to see with his federal court nominees. You know, um, we're going to see only the ones that he thinks are going to rule in his favor on a litmus test are going to be, and that's scary proposition, uh, from now until the end of his term. That's why once again, I'll just say it out loud because it's important. If we don't, if we're not successful at beating the Republicans, and this is a referendum on Trump at the midterms, there's no Kamala, there's no Biden, even though he keeps talking about them incessantly, it's just thumbs

up or thumbs down on Donald Trump and MAGA and the Republicans. If we don't win back the House and the Senate, we have to win back the House and the Senate in order to have any semblance of checks and balance between now and the end of the term on the way to the 2028 election. And more importantly, or as importantly, we've got to deny the Republicans the ability to confirm these radical right wing,

out of step with America, unpatriotic judicial picks. On this next topic, it's a hot take that I covered in depth, so I'll just do it briefly here again, but it's worth mentioning that in Donald Trump's $20 billion lawsuit against Paramount, which owns CBS, where the show's 60 Minutes, is distributed by, Donald Trump filed an opposition to CBS and Paramount's motion to dismiss. Now in the background of all

of this we've learned that there have been mediations between Paramount and Trump. Paramount is trying to merge basically sell the majority shareholders' stake to a company called Skydance, which would become the controlling shareholder. That merger requires approval by various government entities from the DOJ, from an antitrust perspective, and also the FCC because they control a lot of individual channels and local TV channels. And so Donald Trump has basically threatened, if you don't settle with me, you're not going to get approved for the merger. All of the reporting which has gone thus far un-rebutted is that Paramount has offered to settle with Donald Trump on this ridiculous lawsuit for $15 million,

but Trump wants at least $25 million and a public apology to be paid to Donald Trump personally. This lawsuit and CBS hasn't agreed to those terms yet. There have been a lot of people at CBS from the main producer at 60 Minutes to the president of CBS News who have resigned from their positions because they feel their editorial judgment has been compromised by all of this. You know, ultimately, if CBS and Paramount settle, you know, I wonder what Skydance is even acquiring because, you know, the asset itself, I think, will be so sullied that they're

going to be acquiring, this is my opinion, a dead asset because who the hell is gonna watch anything if they settle for that amount of money or ever kind of, how could you ever trust anything they say ever again? So they gotta deal with that. But this lawsuit, Donald Trump filed it in last year.

It was, former Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on 60 Minutes. Donald Trump was too afraid to appear on 60 Minutes. They did a promo of Kamala Harris's interview where her answer on Israel was, and what she was doing in Israel, on Gaza was a bit meandering. It was a bit just wordy and it wasn't

crisp in the final production that aired. Her answer was a bit tightened and it looked just a little bit crisper. Some removals of ums and ahs, you know, and just the answer was a little bit more compacted. Um, and Donald Trump said that that was something that caused, like there was no real manipulation that took place. There was no edit that was of any material nature. I still think that the answer that she gave when they showed the one on 60 minutes, like wasn't not necessarily a clear answer,

but in, you know, they sit with you for hours and hours and hours. They have to compact it into 45 minutes when you add the commercial breaks into it. And usually you'll use your editorial judgment and say, hey, I'm not cutting something material. I just have to shorten this thing so it could go on TV. But Donald Trump said that's caused him

grievous emotional distress. He had Ronnie Jackson, his MAGA Republican Congress member from Amarillo, Texas join the lawsuit so they could file this in Amarillo, Texas to draw a Trump favorable judge, who was the only judge who sits in Amarillo, Judge Matthew Kaczmarek. And they got that judge because they said,

look, Ronnie Jackson was injured too. And they were like, what were you injured for? They're like, yeah, we were consumers. We were deceived by the ad about what was going to be shown. Then we watched the 60-minute show, and then that caused us real serious emotional distress. And now we're in pain. We have pain and suffering in the amount of $20 billion. And again, don't take my word for it, go read their filings.

This is their memorandum of law in opposition to the motion to dismiss that was filed. On page 25, they go, finally, plaintiff being Donald Trump's reliance and damages are more fulsomely discussed with respect to plaintiff's injury. In fact, as noted, plaintiffs relied both on defendants' false and misleading advertisements, as well as their deceptively edited content,

leading both to pecuniary damages and for President Trump damage to his campaign, as well as mental anguish and confusion as to the truth of the matters asserted by defendants and then they cite their complaint that he's suffering from mental anguish as a result of this because one of the arguments CBS raised is what there's no way in addition to it not being defamatory or or not being a violation of any consumer statute what's his his injury? And Trump says mental anguish, $20 billion. I mean, again, how pathetic can you get right there? Go back and watch the full hot take that I do where I read Trump's complaint,

I read all of the allegations. So you can go back if you wanna see and just verify what I'm saying here that Trump claimed his injury was. The advertisement used slightly different words than was in the 60 minutes when they edited and cut it. That's what he said caused them serious damage. Anyway, we'll talk about that more

when we come back from our next break. And then I wanna talk though about what the Supreme Court ruling means for Cubans, Venezuelans and Haitians. They did it on procedural grounds, but their procedural ground is going to lead to Cubans, Venezuelans, and Haitians and others likely getting sent back to the regimes that they fled and probably getting tortured and killed.

So when we talk about- 500,000 people are going to be shipped out while they're working on the niceties of the appeal. And while they're working in the United States on construction sites and businesses. Absolutely, with sponsors. With sponsors here in America. And paying taxes and contributing to the American economy. It's just the dumbest, cruelest type of policy, but that pretty much sums Donald Trump up.

Reminder, subscribe to Michael Popak's YouTube page, Legal AF, they're on their way to one million subscribers. Let's help them get there this summer. Subscribe now to the Legal AF YouTube channel, just search Legal AF on YouTube. Next reminder, Michael Popak's sub stack, the Legal AF sub stack is doing great. Make sure you subscribe to the Legal AF substack.

And finally, as I mentioned earlier in the show, Michael Popak took the plunge, started the Popak firm based on the requests of our audience. Lots of people had cases. They wanted Popak to be their lawyer. He couldn't based on what he was doing before. He started his own firm, the Popak firm. They handle catastrophic injury cases, catastrophic injury.

He'd love to help everybody, but the injuries have to be catastrophic and that's sad and difficult to, you know, but those are the cases he handles. So bad trucking accidents, bad car accidents, where there are surgeries, wrongful death cases, if you know people who died in an incident, medical malpractice cases, sexual assault cases.

Plane crashes. Plane crashes. Popak, where could they find you? Yeah, we made it easy. Thanks, Ben. I couldn't do it until I founded my own firm, and now just so heartwarming to be able to work so closely

with our audience on cases that have turned their lives or their loved ones around them upside down in topsy-turvy and help get them justice. Two ways, all roads lead to the same place, which is to have somebody get on the phone with you and do a free case evaluation for you. And this is all what we call contingency fee. We don't get paid unless you do at all, ever,

as long as we take the case. So you can go to the website, www.thepopokfirm, P-O-P-O-K firm.com, or a 1-800 number, 1-877-POPOC, what else, POPOC-A-F. There you have it. Let's take our last quick break of the show. I want you to break down that Supreme Court order. You know, you live in Florida. You know the stakes there. And then I want to talk about a few other topics as well. Let's take our last quick break of the show. Did you know Fast Growing Trees is the biggest online nursery in theS.? With thousands of different plants and over 2 million happy customers,

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democracy sponsors the show is not possible without them the discount codes are in the description below hey popak let's talk about the Supreme Court ruling. The effect of which is to remove the temporary protected status. What also is also called kind of these paroled in or parole status for 500,000 Cubans, Venezuelans and Haitians. This is in addition to a Supreme Court ruling about a week and a half ago that impacted another 200,000 Venezuelans with the same basic result of removing their temporary protected status.

If you read the Supreme Court ruling, they do it on technical grounds. They say that they are staying a district court ruling from a federal court in Massachusetts, which blocked the Homeland Security Department from removing the parole status, removing the temporary protected status on a blanket basis. What the initial federal court said is you can do it even if it's cruel. You're the new administration, you could be cruel.

But you can't just do an executive order that says everybody loses it. You have to do it the same way the Biden administration granted everybody protected status, which was rigorous, but it was on an individual basis. They had to apply. They had applications. They had to, you know, you had to get checked off.

You know, you can't just say everybody loses it. You have to go through a process. And look, I think the judge knew in the federal court in Massachusetts, this Trump regime is lazy. They won't go through a process. And so make them go through the process I mean, but that but that's what the law required But but let's be clear the federal district court said you could remove them just go through the process and Trump was like, nah

I just say they leave they're gone. I don't want the Cubans here. I don't want the Venezuelans here I don't want the brown people here. That's what I'm sad basically, right? Like I don't want them here. Bring me the white Afrikaners. I want, they come in. White South Africa, I'm going to make up a fake genocide that doesn't exist. Whites in, browns out. Like, let's be, like, that's what he's doing. If you don't recognize that that's what he's doing, then you need to really rethink your own kind of logical abilities because it's freaking very very obvious. And then you have all the Cubans and Venezuelans who, as you know Popac, they're, look the

Cubans and Venezuelans who vote, they're here, they're citizens, that's how they vote. These people under TPS don't vote, but they're the family members of the people who are here, who sponsored to bring them here to flee the regimes, Maduro and the regime in Cuba, where they would be killed. So Biden said, I hear you Cuban community, Venezuela. I hear you. They can come in. We're gonna give them temporary protect, we're gonna protect them.

Donald Trump said Trust me. Trust me. I got your back to Biden said he doesn't have your back I promise you read the signs mass deportation on day one He's going to he's gonna deport your family members. He's gonna try to kill your family members Don't do it Trump. Trust me. Trust me. Trust me. So you had, you know, the show with the, on one shoulder you had Biden, on the other shoulder you had Trump. And who did the Cubans in Venezuela expect? Trump. We like Trump. And then he just, and then he just killed your family. What?

Popak, break it down. Yeah, well let's do the procedure then I'll do the politics because I know the Cuban community, Cuban American community very well in Miami for years of having lived down here and practiced down here. And they should be shocked about it

because if you substituted just another ethnic group or religious group like if the Jewish community if there were a group of Jews that just got Supported and have their status violated and sent back to places where they could be killed Jewish community would be up in arms about the Trump administration and what they just did So let me just break it down this way simply. What we're not talking about. We're not talking about undocumented.

They're documented. They have temporary protective status to allow them with a sponsor, they have to have a sponsor and jobs to stay in the, pardon me. Been talking all day. They're documented with temporary status, with a sponsor to allow them to work in this country

to pay taxes, billions of dollars of taxes in this country while they seek more permanent legal status, asylum or something else. They get to stay here and not be sent back to war-torn and economically unstable places where they could be killed like Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Okay? Sounds like a good thing. Sounds like you're making potentially new loyal patriotic Americans and we should be in that business. That was the business we were in when my great-grandfather came here and my grandfather came here right loyal America

That's how you make loyal Americans, you know, they don't just come out of thin air and so These people were here for that reason. They have relationships. They have to they have to be sponsored in Order to stay here. They're not criminals, quite the opposite. The reality is that the percentage of people on TPS status who commit crimes is almost infinitesimal because they're trying to get status. So they're not committing crimes.

By and large, violent crime in America is committed by blue passport holdingholding white Americans and other Americans, not other people. Sure, you can point out a terrible, terrible story of somebody being raped and murdered by an undocumented, but why don't you tell the story about the school shooter who's just an 18-year-old white kid? You don't talk about that on the Republican side. So that's the status.

Now, the Republicans love to misstate vocabulary and try to capture the narrative. So they call them parolees, as if they're out of jail. No. It's just that under the statutory language that's used, when you're under this program and you're allowed to work and go out, you're considered a parolee. But Donald Trump and MAGA, like, oh, they're parolees, like they were in jail.

No, okay, that's the group. The thing that is politically, and I'll get to the court case, the thing that's politically unsavory and should be a wake-up call for these communities is that your aunt, uncle, colleague, employee have now been, in fact, everybody in Miami, for instance, is not one degree separated,

it's a half a degree separated by people who are here under that program. And I honor the hardworking Cuban-American community and what they made in Miami. They're pillars of the society. They're the bankers, the real estate developers, the accountants, the lawyers, the doctors. They are, they run Miami.

But look at what's happening to your fellow Cubans. I know everybody says, well, let's lift up the ladder. We're in now, but you know, like Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State from Florida, but that's not the way we're supposed to be operating our democracy. Haitian community as well, hard working here in Miami and Venezuelan as well. And they vote, not the Haitians,

but the Venezuelans and the Cuban community voted in large numbers for Donald Trump. He still loses in Miami-Dade County when he runs, but by smaller numbers than in the past, which means the state has moved into the red zone and out of purple and blue. Supreme court gets the case from a decision of the court of appeals that refused to stay their order,

which is supposed to mean something, and determines that Donald Trump's decision with Kristi Noem is arbitrary and capricious because he doesn't do, they don't do a case-by-case assessment. They just do a mass deportation, which violates the statute. There's also a very good argument that the current, the new head of the Homeland Security

can't undo a decision by the prior head, because nothing has changed in those countries. They haven't healed overnight. They're not Cuba is no better than it was under Joe Biden or Venezuela. The only thing that's changed is the election. So there's also that argument. So they, the lower court and the appellate court block the deportation order and the ending of the TPS status for these 500,000 people. And then Donald Trump, as I started the podcast with, takes an emer, like the 17th emergency application to the Supreme Court to try to stampede them into a quick decision. And the first decision they have to make

is whether they're going to stay the order. It comes out of the first circuit out of Massachusetts. So the first stop on the train is Kataji Brown Jackson. She turns it over, although I keep imploring these people not to turn it over to the full panel. Just deny it. Just deny it if you want to deny it. But they're so like into process,

oh, I must let the rest of my brethren weigh in on this. No, you don't. That's not how the shadow docket used to work. Just deny it. And then let them lob another appeal in or request into the full panel. She sends it to the full panel and then the full panel votes.

Now is interesting. It looks like it's seven to two. So I'm not sure where Kagan ended up on this either, but the decision is that they're going to stay the first circuit court of appeals decision, meaning that the deportation can continue. So they'll get rid of all 500,000 while they get around to the full appeal being on the merits being litigated.

But in order to do that, if it's being done properly under a set of factors that's called the Nikken or Nikken factors, you have to look out whether there's a likelihood that they're going to win. If there's a fair chance that the administration is gonna prevail on the merits, they have to find that and under certain circumstances they also have to find irreparable harm is in favor of the Trump administration and apparently they found both things which freaked out Ketanji Brown Jackson who wrote a scathing

eight page dissent because the decision this is the problem with the shadow docket the decision is a half a paragraph. That's all we got to go on, you know, until a year from now. Katunji Brown Jackson said, you got to do an analysis of the factors. And my brethren have botched it today. Because there's no way you can look at this case, especially coming off of the Court of Appeals having denied the stay, which is supposed to create a heightened burden having denied the stay, which is supposed to create a heightened burden for Trump to convince the Supreme Court to overturn that decision. It's supposed to be only under extraordinary circumstances. And what are the extraordinary circumstances? Right? She can't believe that they think, I think she's also chastising the majority, or the ones that voted for this, that they think that the Trump administration is going to win, that they're able to deport these people en masse

without case-by-case analysis. And she calls it for what it is, which is, if you're issuing this administrative stay, which is not technically on the merits of the case, you really just made a merits decision in a very short amount of time without a proper record, without oral argument, without deliberation, because the end effect is the same. Trump is gonna be able to deport most of these people

before they get around to ultimately make a ruling, and the Supreme Court is already signaling, if it ever comes back to us, we think it's probably okay. And so that's one of, Donald Trump is losing at the trial court level before every judge 96% 65 or more injunctions losing record in 200 cases at the Supreme Court. It's about 5050 right now I think he's running maybe one ahead of 5050 with this new decision

But you see again a Supreme Court that's struggling with to a degree with trying to restrain Donald Trump at the same time, their own internal struggle about over giving the imperial president or the unitary president as much power as possible kind of spills out when it comes to immigration and deportation issues. And we're starting to see this pattern play out as the Supreme Court wrapped for this current term. But we're still waiting on like 20 more decisions over the summer. And the new term, of course, starts the first Monday of October of this coming fall. That brings us finally to the Trump pardons,

which deserve a lot of attention. He is pardoning anybody basically who's full MAGA, regardless of their crimes, people who are convicted of heinous crimes, of fraud, of bribery, of building, well, pretending to build statutes for fallen police officers, but using it for their own cosmetic surgery. You go full MAGA, you get the pardon. For example, Todd and Julie Chrisley, reality TV show people who, you know, basically defrauded the government out of tens of millions of dollars. They were convicted by a jury very, very quickly.

Their daughter was like a MAGA influencer who would speak at the Republican National Convention. They get pardoned. And, you know, one of the things that they were asked as they left was, you know, do you have any remorse for what you did? I mean, you, you know, you stole money, you were found guilty. Do you have remorse for for what you did did? You've ripped off a lot of people. You wrote bad checks. Here, this is what they say. Here, play this clip.

Thank you. Thank you, Joe. Uh, Mr. Chris Lee, do you have any remorse for the actions that led to your evictions? Oh, you must be CNN. Um, do I have any remorse? I would have remorse if it was something that I did. Well, you're likely to apologize I did. Well, let me

explain to you how that works. If you don't mind. You're placed in a position as a defendant to either bow down and kiss the ass of the Department of Justice and accept responsibility for things that you did not do in order to avoid a stronger sentence. And the corruption that went on in our case is going to continue to unfold and Alex is going to continue to give each and every one of you the evidence that as it comes in. You know, and that's not accountability there at all. I mean, that's absolutely ridiculous. You know, they go, oh, you're CNN, you must be CNN, you know. It's just all this MAGA nonsense. Popak, you had the former Culpepper Sheriff in Virginia we talked about who was basically

giving away badges to people in the town who would pay money. Fraud and bribery. Fraud and bribery. He was pardoned. You've got this guy, Paul Walsack, whose mom went to this $1 million fundraiser. He gets pardoned. You got this lady who calls herself, this woman who sat on the Las Vegas City Council,

Michelle Fiore, who called herself Lady Trump, and she raised money for a fallen police officer killed in Vegas in the line of duty in 2014, took that money, paid for her own cosmetic surgery. She was pardoned. And they all go right back to it. No shame. She's like, I'm going to go back to my job and be a judge. She was on the city council. She got removed there, but she was also a judge. And she goes, I'm a judge now. I'm going to start ruling on people's cases. And

the judicial panel there were like, no, no, no, we're not going to do that. And so she's fighting to get reinstated as a judge, you know, as a result of this pardon, you know, and then across the board, you're now seeing all these people try to angle for pardons now. And this is what Trump wants by kissing his ass and saying they're MAGA and attacking Democrats and it's, it is a total stain on our country and it is reprehensible. Your thoughts? Yeah. I mean, the one that of all of those, so you've got the Chrisleys who bank swindled

$30 million from banks, which means ultimately taxpayers. Use the money to live a lavish lifestyle and make it look like they were successful real estate developers, then use that, this was all done before they became reality TV stars, then went on reality TV and defrauded America, speaking of fraud on America, defrauded America into thinking they were successful

when they just stole money from a bank, how hard is that to do? Donald Trump's then hit the daughter, Savannah, ends up getting close to the Trumps, gives a speech at the Republican National Convention about the weaponization of the Biden Department of Justice to go after her family. How about your family stole $ million dollars and was convicted by a

federal jury? Let's just call it for what it is. I would have a lot more respect for Donald Trump, but I have a lot more respect for Donald Trump if he would just look the camera in the eye and he'd say, they swindled money from a bank and lived a phony lavish lifestyle and then made more money off of that in a reality TV show. But I got a soft spot for him. So I gave him a pass. I would just like, just say that rather than, now the one that really got my goat, well the one you just talked about in Vegas, is pretty disgusting and depraved. But if I had to pick one, the healthcare executive who stole four4 million and then his mother may be using some of the proceeds from the 4 million that he's not now having to repay

who got a pardon. His application wasn't getting any attention until mama with a lot of money in the bank from the swindle went to Mar-a-Lago at a million dollar a plate dinner. So it's transactional. She bought a pardon. Gorsuch or Kavanaugh, I think it was Gorsuch,

during the immunity decision was positing about a president, like it was some sort of hypothetical. What if a president sold pardons? Would that enjoy immunity? And we were thinking, what if a president sold pardons? We're watching it. It's not just transactional. It is influence peddling.

We've seen so many variations in the last less than 200 days of this administration of influence peddling. Donald Trump taking all of, not his cabinet, him taking the tech bros and others over to his Saudi Arabia and Arab world tour in order for them to sell and buy and be bought and sold with an influence peddling. The billion, the two billion dollars that Abu Dhabi is investing through a Trump platform, we haven't talked about this time so we didn't have time, the cryptocurrency convention

in Vegas led by JD Vance and his sons. Because that's how he's influence peddling through the sale of cryptocurrency on a platform that he controls and gets a brokerage commission on, selling meme coins. And you and I haven't even really dove into, we will. I did a hot take, you did a hot take about Abu Dhabi's $2 billion investment

in another company that's a fraud company, using an entity controlled by Donald Trump for him to get the VINC, for him to get the commission. So we've got the influence peddling. Because if you're a foreign entity, and you're a foreign person, you can't make a contribution. It's a campaign violation. So you do the next best thing.

You buy tens of millions of dollars of Donald Trump's meme coins in a wallet. You show up at a dinner that Donald Trump shows at with a presidential seal on it. Half of the audience was foreign people. Who vetted them? Where's the transparency around that? Carolyn LeVette, the press secretary said,

oh, he's very transparent about all this, but he's doing this on his own time. There's no his own time. This isn't like, this isn't like, what's the show on HBO about getting your brain separated from your private life in your public life? We don't have that He's full-time president. He's standing there in front of a seal of America

Okay, who's vetting these people in the room? Nobody and they're all this is all influence peddling of the first order on full display And the parts are just another example of it That kind of rounds out the episode and We covered a lot on today's show. And things are going to start heating up even more, Michael Popak. You know, I think we're seeing the full-fledged showdown, federal courts, Donald Trump. For now, the Supreme Court trying to stave it off by doing these, you know, stays which are actually really hurting and harming the people. Eventually though, the Supreme Court's going to have to make substantive ruling on these cases.

Like we expect later this month to get a ruling or later next month in June to get a ruling on the birthright citizenship case. That'll be an interesting kind of a tell of where they're going with some other issues. But we'll cover it every step of the way. It's more important now than ever to be focused on the law, focused on these legal developments, and we're gonna cover them in a way

that frankly no one out there is covering them. Look at the opinions, we'll look at the facts, we break them down in ways that everybody could understand. All right, wanna remind everybody about Michael Popak's YouTube channel, the Legal AF YouTube channel, subscribe now. It's on its way to one million subscribers. So go to the Legal AF YouTube channel.

Then I want you to check out the Legal AF Substack. Michael Popak's Legal AF Substack is crushing it as well. They do all of the case updates and all the legal updates there also. It's the Legal AF Substack. And then also Michael Popak's law firm, as I've said a few times on the show already, really this was born out of our audience listeners

saying we've got cases, or we know people who have real serious cases, we want Popak to handle it, Kenny. He couldn't, so he started his own law firm, the Popak firm, and they're handling catastrophic injury, wrongful death cases, so big truck accident cases, big car accident cases, malpractice cases, sex assault, sex harassment cases.

If you or someone you know has a case like that, it's a free consultation. And then Popak takes the cases on contingency, meaning he doesn't charge anything unless he recovers for you. So you should note that as well. But reach out to him now that the show's over. Reach out to his firm. Popak, where can they contact you? www.thepopokfirm.com for a free case evaluation or if you'd like to phone instead 1-877-POPOK-AF.

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