Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF Full Episode - 8/9/2025

Episode Date: August 10, 2025

The most corrupt and criminal Presidency is using the most corrupt DOJ created in its image to try to destroy the Democratic Party, state, federal and local, and distract from Trump failing the Americ...an people.  Ben and Popok are back on the top-rated Legal AF podcast to call out the corruption and examine: 1) the "secret" White House meeting of the corrupt DOJ/FBI and the White House in furtherance of the Epstein scandal coverup; 2) Trump's depraved efforts to deny birthright citizenship suffering a 4th blow with a new federal court injunction with no Supreme Court "emergency appeal" to bail him out in sight; 3) Trump conspiring against a sitting US Senator and New York Attorney General to have his DOJ open phony criminal investigations against his main political rivals, 4) Texas Democrats fight back to stop the elimination of Democratic house seats; and so much more in the defense of our democracy. Support Our Sponsors: Liquid IV: Get 20% off when you go to https://Liquid-IV.com and use code LEGALAF at checkout! One Skin: Get started today at https://OneSkin.co and receive 15% Off using code: LEGALAF Everyday Dose: Visit https://everydaydose.com/LAFBOGO for more details. Magic Spoon: Get this exclusive offer when you use promo code LEGALAF at https://MagicSpoon.com/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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to Legal AF. We've got a lot to discuss. Donald Trump has lost not just one time, not twice, not three times, but four times on the birthright citizenship issue. This follows the United States Supreme Court's ruling that many people thought was favorable to Donald Trump on the issue of birthright citizenship. Not so. We'll explain what went down. And if you've been watching Legal AF before we told you that that Supreme Court ruling was not going to impact the district courts still blocking Donald Trump. trying to overrule the constitutional right to birthright citizenship. We're going to talk about Texas Democrats fighting back, both in terms of blocking the
Starting point is 00:00:39 quorum, also in terms of what's going on in court there as the MAGA Republicans in Texas say that they're sending their own police forces and the FBI to go after the Texas Democrats who are both in Illinois and California. We'll talk about also if Democratic states are doing in response. is Donald Trump trying to cover up the Epstein files, his connections with Epstein, what he's doing with Geelaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker. Donald Trump has spent a lot of time this past week ordering his DOJ to go after people like Senator Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James and a grand jury is being impaneled
Starting point is 00:01:22 to a criminally prosecute or go after former President Obama and his administration. There are now criminal cases, these criminal investigations open into shift at New York Attorney General Letitia James. In the AG, Letitia James case, Donald Trump claims that he was actually the victim and that the DOJ needs to vindicate his rights as a victim of his own civil rights violations based on her successfully prosecuting him in a civil case. We'll talk about that. We'll give some Epstein updates as well. Michael Popak, good to see you. You and I were supposed to see each other in person, but with the mess that Donald Trump has turned the FAA into,
Starting point is 00:02:06 your flights got canceled. So we were not able to do this together in person, but it's still good to do this with you this week. Oh, absolutely. We're going to reschedule for September. Yeah, I got stuck in that. And just to touch on that for a minute, not only is the air travel and disarray,
Starting point is 00:02:21 but Donald Trump just fired the head of the national, the NTSB, the organization that's supposed to be an independent body to investigate air crashes. We'll talk at another break about that. It just shows you that Donald Trump is just the king of chaos. And all we're watching, I think one of the themes for today's show, for every show that you and I do, every analysis that you and I do, is that Donald Trump is using what I consider to be, of course, the most corrupt presidency. He's wielding the most corrupt Department of Justice.
Starting point is 00:02:55 in order to go after his political enemies. He knows that the cases that you and I are going to talk about today, whether it's the Obama, the Adam Schiff, the Letitia James cases. It's not that he thinks he can win those. It's that he wanted the headline, one of which you put up, he wanted the headline of Adam Schiff, criminally investigated for mortgage fraud, Letitia James, DOJ opens up criminal investigation. They want the headline.
Starting point is 00:03:21 And then they hope that's the talking point that will distract people. and give MAGA some reinforcement now because they're pretty beleaguered given the tailspin that the Trump administration is in over the economy and the immigration and issues and Epstein. And they're hoping that these sort of shiny objects, which are well-timed, purposely time for political purposes, all we're watching is a Department of Justice that is nothing more than the political arm of the Trump campaign, of the Trump administration. It's just there is, is the fact that we're going to have to talk about a Wednesday night meeting with the FBI, the Department of Justice, and White House officials, including J.D. Vance and others,
Starting point is 00:04:05 to talk about the Epstein files and what to do about and talk about firing senior people in the FBI, just shows you that the Department of Justice is just a sock puppet for Donald Trump. We've always known that, but we would never have been able to report on legal AF. about a Biden administration meeting between Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and the head of the FBI, or a Clinton, or an Obama, because those things never happened, because the integrity and independence of the Department of Justice was sacrosanct. Donald Trump accused Joe Biden of having those meetings
Starting point is 00:04:41 and influencing the prosecutions. Because he can never accept the fact that the reason he was prosecuted, whether it was in New York or in D.C. or in Florida, or he was fraudulently, or his fraud was. investigated and the civil case prosecuted is because of his own misdeeds and wrongful conduct. Since he can't accept that, he has to blame the prosecutors. And I'll leave it on this. The fact that they just fired two of the most senior FBI agents because they worked on the
Starting point is 00:05:12 Jan 6th task force, this begs the question, and it's a rhetorical one. If Trump had been elected again and not Biden, what would he have done with all of the 2,000 criminals that attacked and tried to burn down our capital. He would have instructed his FBI and as a Department of Justice to ignore it. The crimes that were obviously being committed all caught on closed circuit TV, they would have just been ignored. I mean, what, they were just doing their job. They didn't, they didn't lead the insurrection, but the fact that he's still rooting out, and as a result, whether it's the hundreds and hundreds of Department of Justice attorneys that in senior positions and otherwise that have left the Department of Justice,
Starting point is 00:05:57 hollowing it out, making us less safe, making the rule of law less protected, or the FBI, hostage task force, domestic terrorism task force leadership. We are not safer today because these people are being shown the door and not being replaced because nobody wants to work for this administration. We are, what's the old question the politicians always ask, are you better off today than you were six months ago, seven months ago, economically, national security, global security, the answer is a resounding no. This has Donald Trump also posted this morning, essentially, that he intends to completely take over Washington, D.C. So National Guard, military, Marines, it will, you know, again,
Starting point is 00:06:45 look like a, it already does authoritarian regime, Trump's posters like North Korea, right? Like military Marines everywhere, nobody's going to go to Washington, D.C. Taurus are not coming into the United States. You know, as Donald Trump says, no one's coming in through the border at all. You know, no one comes in through the border of North Korea. Earlier Donald Trump posted, yeah, a Monday a press conference will be held. He says essentially to stop violent crime. But this is one of Donald Trump schemes that we always see over and over again, right?
Starting point is 00:07:17 He claims emergencies for national security or separation of power. Now I'm the executive. There's an emergency. We're under an invasion. I'm going to exercise the power of an authoritarian. Popak, you mentioned the Department of Justice losing all of, you know, huge portions of its smartest, top staff, either because Trump fired them or they've left, they've quit. No one's working there. So you pretty much have the worst of the worst.
Starting point is 00:07:47 there right now. And to your point, you know, these prosecutors, these people, violating their ethical obligations, a lot of them, violating the law, and the DOJ just looks like a criminal cartel. And wait, before you leave that, Ann, we're not going to touch on all this, because, you know, you and I have to curate an episode. But you've got two Trumpers on the D.C. Appellate Court, D.C. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, or federal court, who just ruled that Judge Bosberg had stepped out a line because he had been lied to in his courtroom about the 200 or so people that were kidnapped and sent to concentration camps in El Salvador. And he wanted to get to the bottom of it as a federal judge. And he was wrapped on the knuckles by two Trumpers.
Starting point is 00:08:39 Thank God that they don't hold the majority on that particular court. But Katsis and Rayo wrote scathing critiques of Bozberg. We've been waiting for that order. It's been sitting around for a long time. Now we know why. Judge Pallard, an Obama appointee, of course, took the logical view, which is he had every right to find a probable cause for criminal contempt against the Trump administration.
Starting point is 00:09:01 But that's what we're watching. As Donald Trump, and just as a preview, because you and I'll talk about it starting next week and others on Legal A. Judge Breyer is holding a three-day trial, starts on Monday, about whether, in your home state, whether Donald Trump violated the Posse Comitatis Act by using the federal troops on domestic soil for law enforcement purposes or to support immigration arrests and removal, which would violate a longstanding firewall that stops the commander-in-chief from turning the tanks and the troops against the American people on American soil. While we have that trial going on, we've got Donald Trump announcing that he's going to violate the Posse Combatatus Act again, and he's going to use the federal troops in foreign countries without their permission to try to take out drug cartels, like in Mexico, Colombia, you know, and they stand there lying to the American people because it's hard to keep track of all this information. And part of it is they're taking advantage of the fact the American people don't follow things as closely as our audience does or we do. But he stands there and says, you know, a Carolyn LeVette, $50 million bounty on the Maduro, on Maduro in Venezuela for the information to kill or capture him.
Starting point is 00:10:17 All right. Biden had a $25 million bounty. The president before that had a $15 million bounty. These bounties don't seem to be working. But, you know, it's this get tough thing. They've decided that the only thing they have for political gain, besides effing with the map, so we'll talk about that later, is to portray Donald Trump as a dictator, strong man dictator, and they think that gets them vote. So that's why we're saying,
Starting point is 00:10:40 takeover of D.C. We're going to send troops to Mexico. We're going to, you know, this is, this is obviously what the Trump administration and the Trump campaign for the midterms wants to portray him as. Peacemaker. We'll talk more about that later. Peacemaker around the world and strong man at home. You know, you just take a look at his criminal mindset. And I think gets epitomized in his criminal decision-making, you know, he leans frequently to what is the out of a series of choices you can make. The choice that he often makes is what's the criminal one, what's the most corrupt one, what's the most pernicious and evil? I mean, you just take something as simple as the Epstein files. I mean, whether you say it's simple or not, it's simple in
Starting point is 00:11:26 the sense of people want the files released, release the files, turn them over. For Donald Trump, if that turned into, oh, I'm going to release Geelaine Maxwell. People like, why do what do you mean? That's not what we want. We said release the files. No, no, no, no, no. I'm going to give Geelaine Maxwell immunity. I'm going to move her from Tallahassee into this minimum security facility called Camp Ryan in Texas. We're going to give her all of these perks. We're going to make sure that she's treated great. We're going to portray her as a hero in all of this. And we're going to also then stop really the Congress from being able to take her deposition because we're going to, you know, basically tell Congress to
Starting point is 00:12:06 recess as Maga Mike Johnson does, the Maggi Republicans recess, and we're going to coordinate something to actually help the sex traffickers and help the pedaling. And it's like, what? What are you doing? You know, I did a report earlier this week, Popak, about how the camp Brian in Texas, which is where Gilane Maxwell was moved to, in minimum security facility, everybody knows that Trump and Trump's DOJ had to give her a special exemption in order to go there. They don't allow sex traffickers at this facility. Salty just showed an image of just what it looks like. You'll see picnic benches.
Starting point is 00:12:40 There's no guards. And Brian, Texas is right in the Texas A&M area. It's a college town. So if anyone lives near college town or visited college towns, because it's a minimum security facility with women who are supposed to be there for a short period of time, they have all these restorative justice programs, which are good for the community. community and good for Texas A&M until you inject the sex trafficker into the community. So Texas A&M has a puppy program where they work with the women in the restorative justice
Starting point is 00:13:09 who are incarcerated for a short period of time. They raise the dogs together. They train service dogs together. There's a program where the Texas A&M students who want to go into, get education degrees, the women from the prison walk over, they get taught. There's a lot of programs of working with the female prisoners in a restorative justice way. Well, now we know Gilein Maxwell, whose M.O. was going into Mar-a-Lago or places finding underage girls or young women, and then sex trafficking them. Now we have Delane Maxwell injected into the Texas A&M community.
Starting point is 00:13:48 She's there. And then two weeks before that, you had Lawrence Taylor, who was convicted of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl. he was appointed to be Donald Trump's head of the children fitness of the head of the children fitness program. So you have, you know, someone who sexually assaulted an underage girl now is going to be administering fitness tests to underage girls. So that's Donald Trump's decision-making tree. And you take a listen to what the survivors of Epstein are saying like Annie Farmer. She's like, I wanted to meet with Todd Blanche. I wanted to meet with the DOJ. They didn't want to meet with me. They're not responding.
Starting point is 00:14:25 The DOJ is responding to the traffickers, the sex traffickers, and not to the survivors when the whole purpose of the DOJ is to help victims. This is what Annie Farmer said, Popa. Let's play. Yeah. And when you ask those questions, does anyone answer? What kind of response do you get? So far, there hasn't been a lot of official response, you know, to our queries.
Starting point is 00:14:51 You know, even in this, you know, I reached out to the prosecutors who, you know, brought, you know, who got the guilty verdict for Maxwell saying, you know, what's going on? And, you know, they knew so little because they have not been involved in this process. So I wrote a letter to Deputy Attorney General Blanche saying, you know, these are my concerns about what's happening. And there has not been a response. So, you know, we, I know speaking with other survivors in this case, that even though so many people, politicians are talking about this. I don't think anyone has actually been contacted by anyone. So you reached out to the deputy attorney general and you haven't heard back. Yes. Wow. Jennifer She'll never hear back. And that she'll never hear back. And that again, upends the very nature. Like, let's keep it simple, stupid, right? That upends the very nature of the DOJ Popock. You'll talk about it. The secret meeting they have, not so secret at the White House, which they deny they're going to have. to help the sex traffickers. I mean, that's happening in the United States
Starting point is 00:15:55 helping sex traffickers in plain view and normalizing sexually assaulting 16-year-olds with Lawrence, you know, and other things. I just read that the only reason Donald Trump is hesitating pardoning P. Diddy still could happen. It's not because of what P. Diddy was accused of, but because P. Diddy came out apparently against Donald Trump politically during a campaign and so that's making it hard for Donald Trump to make the to make the
Starting point is 00:16:25 consideration i mean wait to use if you think what's happening now is bad there's just Donald Trump just has a thing for people have been accused or indicted or convicted of sex trafficking or sex crimes but what else what would we expect then we have an adjudged sex abuser um from new york in the eugene carroll case in which dozens of other women have also come forward some of which we have testified under oath, besides these survivors that we just pointed to for the Epstein matter, against Donald Trump in multiple trials. Under oath, no one was, no one was prosecuted for perjury because everybody told the truth about Donald Trump. That's the administration that you and I describe at an hourly basis on Midas Touch and Legal A-F is the administration that we knew was
Starting point is 00:17:12 going to happen when you send a criminal, a judge, sex abuser, misogynist, narcissists, assist back to the White House for his triumphant return. This is, I mean, nothing about what's happening surprises me. Now, I will say one thing about community and about what we do here in legal AF and on Midas touch. And I've been using this phrase lately. We shall overcome Trump administration. We will do it together.
Starting point is 00:17:40 That's why we cover the 450 cases that have been filed against them, the couple of hundred injunctions that have been filed against him. and things are working. I know people get beleaguered about the Supreme Court report when we get there about, oh, we're winning 90% at the trial level, but we're losing 90% at the Supreme Court. But right, not every case gets to the Supreme Court. Not every case gets appealed,
Starting point is 00:18:00 and we'll talk about that with birthright citizenship, to the Supreme Court. And there are things that we can influence Donald Trump and make him stop doing because of the onslaught of lawsuits, especially, as you did a great report about Janine Piro, especially when they don't have enough talented personnel in the Department of Justice to fight off the democracy forwards, the ACLUs, the Attorneys General, who are all loaded for Bayer to come at this administration. They are getting whipsawed,
Starting point is 00:18:29 and that's a good thing, the Trump administration, and getting stretched by all of these lawsuits. And we're only seven months in. And so good things will happen. When you get an exhausted DOJ, an exhausted, mentally exhausted Trump, good things happen. So I want to talk about that meeting, what took place because there was more than just what happened with Gayline Maxwell there at the White House meeting. The fact that they, you know, in the past former presidents would have these meetings to discuss war and peace. Now they're talking about how they're helping sex traffickers and cover up the Epstein files. And though it's not within the legal wheelhouse, it's worth mentioning as well, you know, this meeting that Donald Trump announced in Alaska with Vladimir Putin. and Donald Trump sending a real estate buddy to speak with Putin and to handle these negotiations.
Starting point is 00:19:21 Steve Whitkoff and what was initially believed to be what the deal was going to be, what Putin said. You know, Putin's out there saying, well, I never said that to Whitkoff. And mind you, the translator that Putin gives to Whitkoff is a KGB agent and not someone from the embassy. And Putin and the Russian position ahead of this meeting where, it legitimizes Putin going to Alaska, going on the U.S. soil, is we basically take all of Ukraine, you know, not just the areas that, you know, are right now unlawfully occupied by Russia, but we want all of the areas highly, all of the areas where the Ukraine's really set up great
Starting point is 00:20:04 defense systems. We want that too. And, and Ukraine, and Donald Trump's like, Ukraine, you can't show up. Europe, you can show up. And so he's just, he's, just makes a mess of everything, making the world a more dangerous place, making the United States of America unsafe, and frankly, gross. Like, I just want to lose track. This is gross behavior. It's criminal, but it's grotesque. But he's a grotesque person. I mean, he was best friends with Gila. He's lived a grotesque life. Yeah. Well, okay. Hold the point. I want to take our first quick break. We're going to talk about it. Michael Popock's law. firm, everybody. I want you to check it out. You all wanted him to start the firm. He listened. He started
Starting point is 00:20:49 the firm. You've been in a catastrophic injury, auto accident, trucking accident, victim of sexual assault, knows somebody who's been the victim of a wrongful death case, negligence, malpractice. Reach out to Popok. The consultations free. Throw that up one more time there, Salty. Call 877 Popok A.F. 877 Popak AF or visit thepopfirm.com. Thepopfirm.com or 87777.com or 877 Popok A.F. Get that free case review today. Let's take our first break, Popak. Oh, Reminders, subscribe to the YouTube channel, the LegalAF YouTube channel, and the Legal AF substack. First break of the show, we've got a lot to discuss. We'll be right back. Guys know I love my late night snacks, but not the sugar crash after. That's why I'm obsessed
Starting point is 00:21:34 with Magic Spoon. It's the cereal and treats you remember from your childhood, reinvented. Each serving of their high-protein cereal has a wild 13 grams of protein, zero sugar and only four grams of net carbs. Perfect if you're carb conscious or live in that low-carb lifestyle. And the flavor straight out of the Saturday morning cartoons. Fruitie, cocoa, frosted, nostalgic, fueling, and totally satisfying. Now, let's talk about their treats. They're crispy, crunchy, and packed with 12 grams of protein.
Starting point is 00:22:01 I tossed them in my gym bag, my glove box, even my nightstand. With flavors like marshmallow, chocolate, peanut butter, and dark chocolate, you really can't go wrong. Get $5 off your next order at magic spoon.com slash legal a.f or look for MagicSpoon on Amazon or in your nearest grocery store. That's magic spoon.com slash legal a.f for $5 off. It's almost summer, my absolute favorite time of the year, and everyone knows you've got to wear sunscreen in the summer.
Starting point is 00:22:29 But what your sunscreen could do more than block UV rays is what the scientists at one skin have always wondered. And so they made a whole family of mineral sunscreens that target UV rays, free radicals, and cellular aging on top of it all. The best part, unlike other mineral SPFs that feel heavy and chalky, which I personally don't like, these feel like actual skin care. It's lightweight, breathable, and superhydrating. And now their award-winning OS1 face SPF comes in two new deeper tints formulated with non-nan zinc oxide. OneSkin's patented OS1 peptide is also part of this SPF, as well as potent antioxidants that scavenge free radicals four times better than the so-called anti-aging SPFs.
Starting point is 00:23:18 This sunscreen is one you'll be wearing all summer long, just like I will be. But that's not all One Skin has up their lab coat sleeves. They're launching an all-mineral lip SPF that provides instant hydration and protection with a smooth texture you've got to feel to believe. I can't wait for this. And just like OneSkin's other sunscreens, it's scientifically proven to decrease key aging biomarkers and increase other markers like Elastin production for visibly healthier, more resilient lips.
Starting point is 00:23:45 Try their family of sunscreens with 15% off your first purchase using Code Legal AF at OnSkin.com. I love OnSkin. They've been a longtime sponsor, and I'm so thrilled that they keep sponsoring me. Everybody asks me, how is it that you look so young, given the fact that I am a grandmother and I am approaching another decades very soon. No one can believe my actual age, and I think it's largely because of my skin
Starting point is 00:24:11 and my skincare routine that has included one skin now for over a year. It was founded in 2016 by an all-woman team of scientists, and after testing more than 900 so-called anti-aging peptides, they developed this proprietary OS1 peptide, which targets the accumulation of these senescent cells, which is a key driver of skin aging. So I'm a big fan. It's the world's first skin longevity company.
Starting point is 00:24:40 And by focusing on cellular aspects of aging, OneSkin keeps your skin looking and acting younger for longer. And for a limited time, you can try OneSkin with 15% off using code legal AF at oneskin.c.c.O. It's not dot com. It's dot CO. So that's 15% off OneSkin.com with legal AF code after you purchase and tell them we sent you. please support our show, and thank you once again.
Starting point is 00:25:05 Welcome back to Legal AF. Thank you to those pro-democracy sponsors. Michael Popak, I rudely cut you off there at the end. I know you wanted to say something before we move on. Close friends and podcast partners never are rude to each other. No, I was just going to say that what Trump tries to exploit is the lack of continuity. and the people's amnesia because of the news cycle. And I think that is one of the benefits we bring
Starting point is 00:25:36 on the close reporting that we do on Legal AF and on Midas touch, because just 72 hours ago, Donald Trump announced that there would be a tri-partite, there would be a three-way meeting that he would broker with Zelensky, Putin, and him to talk about resolution of the war. That then morphed a day later into,
Starting point is 00:25:59 while the party's saying, Putin's saying, I'm not coming, to a Putin, a bilateral meeting with Putin and Trump, but then with the announcement that Trump is already telling Zelensky, you're going to have to give up the Donbos and Crimea and all the territory you're lost. We're going to reward, we're going to award Putin. We're going to give him that, which he never would able, that he's not been able to obtain militarily. We're going to give him that as a reward for peace, but I'm not going to bring you. went in the meeting, I'm going to be doing it alone in Alaska.
Starting point is 00:26:31 And what we're watching is the failure of diplomacy, among many failures, of the Trump administration, because he doesn't have any adults serving in position. We don't have a secretary of state. It is, for all intents and purposes, Steve Whitkoff, who's not only Donald Trump's golfing buddy, his real estate development, small-time real estate development buddy, who testified in, we'll talk about it later, who testified as a quote-unquote expert for Donald Trump in his civil fraud case who also got him involved
Starting point is 00:27:01 and launched the cryptocurrency business with him with his son, I've said idiot son, with his Nepo baby son and Donald Trump's nepo baby sons. This is the, but that's, that doesn't make you, shooting golf in Boca Raton doesn't make you a diplomat that can go against Putin.
Starting point is 00:27:18 The former KGB agent, he's, he's, you know, and so that he runs Whitkoff around. You know, where are the grand tours by Marco Rubio to go be the Secretary of State. Not that I think he'd be any better against Putin, but this is what we're watching. Donald Trump substitutes his golf buddy to go to go negotiate with Putin and then wonders why the terms of the deals keep shifting against the American position. Popak, talk about
Starting point is 00:27:44 these four cases, Donald Trump losing on birthright citizenship. You and the most recent one being in Maryland, right? Everybody was saying when the Supreme Court made that ruling on nationwide injunctions, that seem to prohibit the idea of nationwide injunctions. But when you read deeper the way we did, we said, well, actually, it only prohibits it on one-off cases that do not involve states or class certification. So where there is a class action or a state that is the plaintiff, the Supreme Court's ruling will not impact that. Now, there's really been no difference in terms of, at least on this issue, particularly
Starting point is 00:28:27 birthright citizenship from district courts because they've just been certifying class actions. They're right for class action certification. What does that mean, Popak? And how come we're not seeing these emergency appeal appeals by Trump right into the Supreme Court as we've seen on other issues? Perfect. Thank you for that setup. So four different cases. Judge Koffinor up in Seattle, Judge LaPlante up in New Hampshire, a judge whose name just escaped me up in Massachusetts and Judge Bortman in Maryland. It'll come to me. They all did the exact same things before the United States Supreme Court ruled at the end of June, not on the substance of birthright citizenship. Why would they want to address that? But rather trying to take a tool out of
Starting point is 00:29:13 the tool bag for judges about nationwide injunctions, wrapping them on the knuckles. No, you never had the power to do nationwide injunctions. That's for the Supreme Court to do unless states are involved. You should use class actions. Do class actions with injunctions on top of class actions. Okay. That was the one area that Kavanaugh and Sotomayor both agreed. Sotomayor literally said in her dissent, like tomorrow within hours of this decision, you guys should be running back to court with class action complaints. Same courts, same judges, just different vehicle, just take your papers and convert them like now. And they all did it. In the CASA case, Cassa Incorporated, which is in front of Judge Bordman, they got in within hours.
Starting point is 00:29:57 and filed. When you file and when the judge makes her decision is two different things, and she just got around and making her decision today. Last month, Judge LaPlante, almost identically in New Hampshire, ruled, if you put them next to each other, two orders are almost identical. Pardon me. First, she certified and he certified a class. And the class is of currently born babies and babies yet to be born.
Starting point is 00:30:25 the born and the unborn, who are subject to this executive order that Donald Trump issued in March to deny birthright citizenship to people born on U.S. soil, the violation of the 14th Amendment. Because all those judges, even before had all universally said, you can't change the Constitution and your interpretation by executive order doesn't do it. Now, there is another thing that got lost by mainstream media that I pulled out during a recent hot take, the position the Trump administration took about the unborn. You would think an administration that spent a hell of a lot of time arguing to the United States Supreme Court to rip down a constitutional right for a woman to choose, arguing that fetuses, no, embryos have rights equal to that of their born mother. would not be taking the position that they took in these cases in the definition of the class by saying unborn,
Starting point is 00:31:25 unborn have no rights, unborn have no standing. How can you define the class's future to be born babies? So they are not, when it's convenient to them and the argument doesn't fit, you see how quickly they drop the argument that those that are not yet born have rights. And those were all rejected by both Judge Laplant and Judge Boardman.
Starting point is 00:31:46 The other interesting thing is, where's the appeal? We already had Judge LaPlante in July give the administration seven days to run to the Supreme Court on an emergency application. Judge LaPlante even said in his order from last month that John Sauer, the Solicitor General, had effectively promised the judge that they would be immediately moving for a stay or an emergency appeal at the United State Supreme Court about the substance of birthright citizenship. And that came and went. And that that's the reason you and I don't talk about the Trump administration implementing and executing on their executive order because that order and another one earlier has kept in place the injunctions.
Starting point is 00:32:37 And they have not run to get those removed. Now, I don't, there's two theories here. I'll get your opinion, of course. One is that they know they don't have the vote. on the substance of birthright citizenship. How would they know that? Oh, I don't know. Ginny Thomas is home every day with Clarence Thomas. I mean, you know, you can do the math and the pillow talk that could happen. So either they politically figured out they don't have the votes to tear down birthright citizenship,
Starting point is 00:33:05 even with this right, right, right wing Supreme Court. Or it's a political timing issue. They're waiting for the last decision. They want to take them all up together. And they're really waiting for maximum distraction. for when they have another bad news cycle and they can then then take the appeal on a political calculus. It's one of those two things, which do you think it has been? I mean, look at what they just took on an emergency basis, though, to the Supreme Court this
Starting point is 00:33:33 past week. They took the issue of racially profiling migrants against the Ninth Circuit injunction. Again, there was a district court injunction in California. Then the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed it. Then the Trump regime ignored what the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals did. They launched Operation Trojan Horse this past week where Trump sent ice agents in Penske trucks, 30 of them at a time. They'd pull into parking lots in California and Los Angeles where migrants were known to work. And then they would all run out the militarized looking ice agents and start chasing all
Starting point is 00:34:12 of the people in the community, you know, like straight out of a horror movie, not knocking them on the ground, beating them, grabbing them by their collars, and then holding them up like, like ducks that are killed from a hunt or like a trophy. Now, that took place this past week in the brief to the United States Supreme Court, I think Popak, they want this, they want this to go first before hitting birthright. I think they want to knock out. So it's a time. Yeah. And so they've argued that if people speak Spanish and have brown, this literally in the brief, They said, while it may not, like, I'm almost reading verbatim, while it may not always be the case that your skin color and language is enough to find probable cause to arrest you, citizen or not, the fact that you have those qualities in Los Angeles, which they argue is known to have at least one out of every 10 people living may be undocumented, no citation, but that's what they say.
Starting point is 00:35:11 that's enough for probable cause i mean literally in the brief brown skin speak spanish in an area known where migrants could work that gives us probable cause arrest everybody that's why we're hearing the stories pregnant women arrested citizen you know uh you know just whoever just just citizens arrested not but whether you're in my own view whether you're a citizen or not a citizen no one should be treated like this animals shouldn't be treated like this and again this is what's going on under the name of the united states a full-fledged authoritarian regime here. It's why tourism from Canada is down anywhere from 32 to 40 percent.
Starting point is 00:35:49 And the rest of the world, tourism is down the same. I want to talk about Democrats fighting back Popak, but the one thing I'll mention just on the Canada front as well is that they have their own version of the Girl Scouts in Canada. I think it's called Girl Guides, 60,000. It's just emblematic of everything. They're canceling all of their travel to the United States It's because the parents of girls in Canada don't want their daughters or sons, but in this case, daughters, coming into the United States, where you can, where horrible things can happen to you.
Starting point is 00:36:21 And so as we start to look towards the World Cup and the Olympics and America as this fascist regime, I think there's going to be a lot, a lot, a lot of problems there. And, you know, and then Popak, the other wrinkle of this authoritarian state, and the Republicans are saying it, outright is we need to turn Democrats into a permanent minority. We need to get rid of Democrats, have a one-party country, and the way to do it is to exploit that Democrats operate under rule of law, independent commissions, good faith, constitutional norms. But if we the Republicans don't, then let's just do unlawful stuff and say, good luck trying to, good luck trying to catch us if we don't go by the noon. On that point, that's a
Starting point is 00:37:14 very, very good point. I've been starting to make it in piecing together what we're watching with the attacks on Letitia James and Adam Schiff and Obama, Clinton. What the Republicans are trying to do, what MAGA is trying to do, is tear down our icons, tear down our leaders, destroy the credibility of the Democratic Party as a viable party. You do it through changing congressional maps and shrinking our ability to turn red states purple or blue or to have or to win back the Congress and things like that. But you also do it, as you've said before, you also do it in attacking the symbols of the democracy and of our party. He's already scarring the White House. We have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fix that if we can
Starting point is 00:38:08 when the Democrats hopefully take back the White House. But that symbol of the White House scarred because of Donald Trump, the symbol of the Capitol forever scarred because of Donald Trump. And now going after the Mount Rushmore of leaders for the Democrats, because it's not just about he's a sore winner. It's that he is checked, as Tom Tillis just recently said, about a Trump nominee. He's just checking all the boxes.
Starting point is 00:38:35 They're just all the wrong boxes. And we have to fight back both to circle the wagons and ring fence around our leaders like Obama, like, you know, Clinton Schiff and Letitia James. That's one thing we have to do. But that's what we're watching. Make no mistake about it. We are watching them trying to put the Democratic Party and its leadership out of business. Here's what California Governor Gavin Newsom had to say about. held a press conference yesterday with some of the Texas state lawmakers who have left the state
Starting point is 00:39:15 to break quorum. Talk about that in a moment. And other Texas state lawmakers are both in Illinois and in California. And we're seeing Democratic governors step up. Here's California Governor Newsom. Let's play it. The leader of our congressional delegation, they are unanimous in their support moving in this direction. You're the Speaker and the Pro Tem, and they strong support of their caucuses, and leaders of critical committees, caucus are here to express support.
Starting point is 00:39:45 We are moving forward. Make no mistake, California is moving forward as a state that's larger than 21 state populations combined. We are not a small, isolated state, state larger than 21 population combined. We tried to play by a higher set of standards and rules with our independent redistricting. and we believe in that. And we are not talking about eliminating that commission. We are talking about emergency measures to respond to what's happening in Texas, and we will nullify what happens in Texas.
Starting point is 00:40:19 You hear what he said there. Governor Kathy Hokel in New York came out with a similar statement doing that in New York, and now Republicans are saying, well, okay, well, we're going to do it in Indiana. we're going to do it in Florida, in states that are already unlawfully gerrymandered by Republicans. They're now saying, well, we're going to make them doubly unlawful. And so, again, we have this system, Popak, based on good faith and norms. And every 10 years, there's a new census, and then there could be redistricting. In the past, there used to be something called preclearance under the Voting Rights Act,
Starting point is 00:41:02 which was a major way to step. Our lawmakers in the 60s knew this would happen. And on a bipartisan basis in the 60s, they wanted to stop that. So they passed a voting rights act in the 60s. On a bipartisan basis, Democrats and Republicans coming together. Yes, far more enlightened in the 60s than when they are now. But when the outcome of fair play was the outcome that MAGA and Trumps didn't want, They said, F those rules, we're throwing that out.
Starting point is 00:41:35 Now, I hear, we'll talk about Democrats fighting back, but Popak, I hear a lot of Republicans now doing this gaslighting or this lying thing and saying, actually, it's the Democrats who are the ones who are doing this worse. So we had to respond in an emergency basis. Well, let me just make two points. Wrong. Number one, wrong. No Democrat has ever done any type of gerrymandering. right before a midterm, not even halfway through a census. That's never happened before.
Starting point is 00:42:07 But more simply, Democrats, under former President Biden, introduced H.R.1 as their first piece of legislation for the People Act, literally the legislation that would ban all of this partisan gerrymandering and unlawful gerrymandering across the country, introduced legislation to block it. you know who voted for blocking gerrymandering Democrats Democrats you know who voted against it the Republicans Republicans said no we want the partisan and unlawful gerrymandering so they can do just this so don't give me the well Democrats have done it worse if you look in this specific state Democrats wanted to get rid of gerrymandering in general tomorrow if you put it up for a vote Democrats would get rid of gerrymandering across the country
Starting point is 00:42:58 because Democrats know if you played by fair rules on the issues, the Democrats would win if you played by the fair rules and Republicans know they would lose. So Republicans are going down this path. Popak, we're seeing Democrats fight back, but I want to take our last quick break on the show because I think it's a good way to combine two topics here, Texas Democrats fighting back,
Starting point is 00:43:22 but also what we're seeing with the weaponization of the DOJ and how, MAGA, how Trump, how they're now using the DOJ to go after Schiff, Letitia James, Obama, anything to distract from Epstein, and anything to further Donald Trump's retribution tour. A reminder, Michael Popock's law firm, has taken cases from legal AF listeners and viewers and might as touch viewers. Call 877 Popok A.F. 877 Popak AF or go to thepopokfirm.com. POPACAF or the POPFirm.com. If you've been injured, catastrophic injury,
Starting point is 00:44:03 whether that's an auto accident, a trucking accident, you're the victim of sexual assault. If you know someone who is the victim of wrongful death, who died in an accident, medical malpractice negligence, reach out to Pauk's firm.
Starting point is 00:44:17 Sorry, on that point, just because people know I was there, I just met with the team that I work with across the country when I was in Chicago for three days. People saw my, That's how I got a little bit under the weather. And I just came back so, so jazzed up about representing our legal a effort
Starting point is 00:44:35 and our mightest, mighty. These are the lawyers that obtain billions with the billions of dollars in form of justice for people who have been injured. I met some of the, that work on our team, met some of the top truck accident, car accident, ride share, Uber and Lyft accident, lawyers in the entire country. And they're all plugged in for our mightest, mighty and legal a fers home stretch on legal a f reminders subscribe to michael popock's youtube channel the legal a f youtube channel subscribe to his substock legal a f substock let's take
Starting point is 00:45:06 that last quick break of the show you know that feeling after your morning coffee that crash the jitters the bloating yeah i was getting all that every single day but coffee was part of my routine and it wasn't ready to give it up then i found everyday dose and it completely changed the game this isn't a coffee alternative it's coffee with benefits I'm talking 100% Arabica coffee combined with functional mushrooms like Lions Main and Chaga plus collagen protein and neutropics. It fuels your brain that supports your skin, hair, and joints and gives you clean, sustained energy all day long with no crash, no jitters. I switch between coffee plus their mellow, low acid, light roast that's easy on my stomach and coffee plus bold of full-bodied medium roast that gives me a little extra boost when I need it. And here's the best part.
Starting point is 00:45:55 Get 45% off your first subscription order of 30 servings of coffee plus or bowl plus. You'll also receive a starter kit with over $100 in free gifts, including a rechargeable frother and a get this gunmetal serving spoon by going to Everydaydose.com slash LegalAF or entering LegalAF at checkout. You'll also get free gifts throughout the year. That's Everydaydose.com slash LegalAF for 45% off your first order. Try it. Your mornings will thank you. This show is sponsored by Liquid Ivy. As summer winds down, I've been trying to soak up every last drop of it. One more beach day with the family, a weekend road trip.
Starting point is 00:46:35 Even just squeezing in those golden hour walks with my daughter before the routine of fall kicks in. And every step of the way, I've got my liquid IV with me. Especially their new orange vanilla dream hydration multiplier, this flavor is pure nostalgia, like a cremcicle on a hot day. And it hydrates better than water alone. Just one stick in 16 ounces of water and boom, instant hydration powered by liquid IV hydroscience. It's got three times the electrolytes of leading sports drinks and eight essential vitamins and nutrients. I keep a few packets in my bag at all times, whether I'm heading to the gym, traveling, or just feel and run down. It's non-GMO, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, and soy-free, and the convenience, tear, poor, done.
Starting point is 00:47:15 Savor the last bits of summer with liquid IV. Tear, poor, live more. go to liquid iv.com and get 20% off your first order with code legal a.F at checkout. That's 20% off your first order with code legal a.f at liquid iv.com. Welcome back to legal a.f. Thank you to our sponsors. Discount codes are in the description below of those sponsors. Michael Popock, let's get back into it. Talk about Democrats fighting back. And then let's have you pivot to talk about what we're seeing with the DOJ going after New York Attorney General Letitia James. Now they're saying that Donald Trump is the victim. Donald Trump is a RICO victim.
Starting point is 00:47:54 Donald Trump is a conspiracy victim violent. That's who the victim is of their case. I mean, you can't make this stuff up. And then they're going after shift for mortgage fraud. They're going after Obama and everyone in Obama's administration. They're opening up real criminal grand juries to do this. So yes, they are talking points and headlines, but they have people crazy enough and fascist enough to actually do these things. Pope, I'll break it all down.
Starting point is 00:48:21 Well, let's have a moment of silence for the Department of Justice Manual because it died seven months ago. Pam Bondi put it out of its misery. It's supposed, it is supposed to be the Bible by which federal prosecutors do their job. They are never supposed to open up a criminal investigation, the grand jury, or otherwise, especially announce it so that you're convicting the person in the media when he's innocent or she's innocent. It's all proven guilty. You're never supposed to do that unless you have a good faith basis to believe that there is at least the level of probable cause that you will, as a prosecutor, sustain, obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt for a crime. And if you don't have that, you cannot, you cannot open up that investigation. But what we just, what we're watching, I'll do it in the second half.
Starting point is 00:49:12 We're watching a conspiracy involving Donald Trump and his political hacks. and pit bulls, trying to tear down again, to keep the theme going here, tear down the icons and leaders and idols, if you will, of the Democratic Party, to try to undermine the Democratic Party, which is what we're exactly seeing in the Texas case. The narrative that the Trump administration wants, there's only a few of them. It's relatively juvenile, but you and I call it out, but it is what it is. They want to make the Republican Party, the only party of law in order, a party that abuses the rule of law on purpose for political and financial gain, and they want to have the Democrats portrayed as the party of lawlessness, whether that's
Starting point is 00:49:58 Black Lives Matter or civil disobedience and protests of the streets, or riots or protests that somehow, you know, turn into something else about immigration policy. We are the party of lawlessness. This is their narrative. And they, are the party of law and order. We know what a joke that is, but that's what we're watching. So whenever you see a Governor Abbott in Texas going after 50 proud Texans, 50 proud Texans, who have decided that the only way that they can defend the rights of their constituents is to break and bust the caucus because they're in the minority, but the Texas has a caucus rule.
Starting point is 00:50:44 You have to have a two-thirds of the House in Texas present to conduct business. And if you're short by one or you're short by 30, 40, or 50, no business can be conducted. They can sit around and twiddle to their thumbs, but no justice, no action, no legislative action can be taken. And they were in special legislative session in Texas in order to redo the congressional maps. I was at a recent forum that I moderated where one of the election experts got up. and gave a very good and simple metaphor for this, sports metaphor. Changing the maps six, five years after the census right before the midterms is the equivalent of the Democrats or Republicans go into the locker room tied at the half
Starting point is 00:51:32 in a football game. And while we're in the locker room, each other's respective locker rooms, the referees come out and they change all the white lines and chalk lines on the football field. they shorten some of them they lengthen some of them they make the democrat end zone short you know smaller than than republican end zone and then you come out to play the game it's like and they blow the whistle like here we go here's your football let's go like what do you mean the whole field has changed the rules have changed the middle of the game that's what we're watching for the democrats so the only way for a minority that's been recognized in texas since the 1870s to stop the steamrolling by the majority to change the maps and undercut voting and voting rights and representation is to leave. And because of some Supreme Court rulings as recently as 2021 in Texas, they got to leave the state because arrest warrants don't go beyond Texas, as big a state as that is, and reach into places like Illinois.
Starting point is 00:52:35 So they had to go somewhere. Now you've got a combination of the federal government, Trump, offering the support of the FBI to locate these people. I was just in Chicago. I'll leave it at that. All right, I'll leave it at that. So, FBI involved in a state issue about maps to track down legislators who are doing their job
Starting point is 00:52:59 to protect their constituents. That's one. Two, Abbott announces to great fanfare. He's going to send out the Texas Rangers. Good luck. you're going to have to get Illinois. I mean, this isn't like, you know, that old show when I was a kid, McLeod, I'm now showing my age, when the sheriff used to,
Starting point is 00:53:19 who got reassigned to Manhattan with a cowboy hat, started riding down the streets with a horse trying to do his job. I mean, that's not going to work in Illinois and in Chicago. So there was that. And then there was the announcements by the Abbott administration and their corrupt attorney general, Ken Paxton, but they were going to start filing lawsuits to remove these, people for abandoning their job.
Starting point is 00:53:42 Interestingly enough, and I did a live report on this with Katie Fang on the legal AF substack last week. The only person at the time that they sued to try to get them back and to declare that they had abdicated was the one Asian-American Texan, not all
Starting point is 00:53:58 50, just this one guy that's what's going on now. So they're trying that. Now, the Texas Democrats are firing back with their own lawsuit declaring that to have the court declare that you cannot remove me. There's a process for removal. You have to show abandonment.
Starting point is 00:54:15 What we're doing is not abandonment. It's Texas Supreme Court approved majority caucus busting, right, to have your quorum. Sorry, quorum by, because I said caucus. I mean, quorum can tell about cough medicine. Corum busting. And that's been approved by the Texas Supreme Court as recently as 2021 when they did it then. Now, some people might be saying, what's this, worth. It's worth a lot because in other states where this has happened, and sometimes these
Starting point is 00:54:44 quorum busting goes on for six weeks, eight weeks, you know, or longer, it forces the majority to negotiate and maybe instead of lose, this is all over five seats. The way the Texas Republicans redrew the maps, they eliminated minus five Democratic seats. That's a lot. That's a lot when we're trying to cobble together a win at the midterms to take control of the House again. to lose five in Texas is a lot because then we have to gain five or more in other places and that's hard. So that's what we're fighting over, this congressional map to eliminate democratic seats. So maybe it ends up being two because they got to negotiate after these competing lawsuits get played out. You want to comment about that before I transition?
Starting point is 00:55:33 No, I mean, I think you hit it, I think you hit it spot on. I mean, you know, I've been observing these Democratic Texas state legislators, they're in it for the long run. The way Texas maps work and the way their primaries work is that if Texas is unable to have a quorum really in the next four or five months, they're not going to be able to have the new maps in time for the midterms. And so I think we're really talking about can they hold out until November or December or so um and that should do it but you know my but but this is not something that the texas state democratic legislators want want to do and you heard from newsome in the clip that i showed before it's not something that newsome you know newsome california i you democrats people who like
Starting point is 00:56:30 democracy we don't i don't want to see the gerrymandering in general i supported the for the people Act. I supported McCain-Feingold's legislation to campaign finance reform. I would love our election system to look much more like Canada and Europe and elsewhere in other places where there's not money being injected into it where, you know, I even like the idea of snap elections that happened pretty quickly. You can take a pulse of where the country is when these snap elections, you know, are called. I don't like our broken system. I think it's easy to fix it. I think that. I think that it's, and it's very clear in these discussions, if you're a maga friend or Republican running,
Starting point is 00:57:10 goes, well, Democrats, be gerrymandering it also. They're gerryminton. Look, Democrats were the ones who put forward the bill to eliminate all of this, and you were the ones to block it. It's as simple as that shut up, stop gaslighting me move on to the next issue, because we want to ban it, and you didn't want to ban it. So there's nothing else that needs to be discussed. Okay, Popak, let's move on.
Starting point is 00:57:29 Let's talk finally about weaponization, shift, Letitia, Obama, and is this a bluff? Is this the headlines? But they put people like Ed Martin and the guy from the Northern District. Right. Yeah, you put these people there. They're crazy enough to do it.
Starting point is 00:57:47 These people do not follow manuals, do not follow rules, do not follow what the law is. And, you know, they can end up doing it, Popat. So, yeah, well, I agree with you. I don't think it's a bluff. But they got the head, I think ultimately, they've now put shade on Lettisha James and Schiff, not among our audience,
Starting point is 00:58:06 but in general, because now they got a headline. Criminal probes opened against, Letitia James, New York Attorney General, her office, and Senator Adam Schiff. And some people don't get beyond the headlines. I think that's what our audience likes, that we get beyond the headlines and explain why sometimes the headlines are wrong
Starting point is 00:58:23 or out of context. But here, right off of this Wednesday night meeting of the White House, that, again, lying to the American people, You and I both did videos on this. Trump asked about it, about Epstein and FBI, firing of FBI, and him saying, I don't know anything about this meeting, but J.D. Vance is right here. J.D., is there a meeting in the White House tonight? Oh, fake news. Democrats try to distract.
Starting point is 00:58:49 There was a meeting. It was attended by all the people that we reported on having been attended. And decisions were made. And we will see the results of those decisions, such as Todd Blanche, having some phony press conference where he plays edited version. of his discussion with Galane Maxwell to try to exonerate Donald Trump on the path to pardon for her or goes on Joe Rogan or something else like that. We're going to see the benefit. We already saw the firing of the FBI agents.
Starting point is 00:59:17 Now, within that slipstream of what just happened there in that news cycle, they then announce the attacks on, you know, these icons of Democratic strength, Adam Schiff, former prosecutor, congressperson from your area, Senator now, who led the charge against Donald Trump in the impeachment process
Starting point is 00:59:38 in the House. He's done it in the Senate and also leading the charge on Jan 6th. So he has been, I won't even say Donald Trump gave him a nickname, you know,
Starting point is 00:59:50 and he's been a thorn in Donald Trump's side for a long time. Letitian James, and I'll get to what's happened, Letitian James has been a thorn in Donald Trump's side, doing good trouble for a long time.
Starting point is 01:00:00 she brought a successful civil fraud case against Donald Trump proving to a New York State Supreme Court judge, Judge Engoran, that he committed, along with others in his family, along with others in his Trump organization, what we call in New York persistent fraud under a unique statute that gives the power to the attorney general as the sheriff of Wall Street to go after financial crime and financial fraud. I guess the better way to put it. She doesn't actually have much criminal prosecution powers. She has tremendous civil enforcement powers. So she brings the case. It goes on for nine weeks. You and I cover it every day. Literally every day.
Starting point is 01:00:42 We have people in the courtroom. We had reporters that we relied on. And after nine weeks, dozens of witnesses, including Steve Whitkoff, who is your effective Secretary of State with no experience, running around getting his headheaded to him by Putin, testifying on behalf of Donald Trump, as some sort of real estate expert, and Goran concluded that Donald Trump inflated his assets in order to get out from under certain personal guarantees for banks and lower the interest rates
Starting point is 01:01:15 and to brag to Forbes magazine and Fortune magazine about his wealth and deflated his assets in real estate when he wanted to save on taxes. And he entered a $458 million judgment. judgment. And we've been waiting, and this is actually a crime. I mean, I've waited for the first department in New York sometimes, but not nine, ten months for a ruling about whether it's really, they're going to cut that 450 down to size, maybe in half. But I do not think, although now we'll have to see, I do not think that the first department appellate division of New York is going to throw out the judgment. But we've been waiting. And in that time, Donald Trump's able to perpetuate mischief.
Starting point is 01:02:00 Because if it had got affirmed, it would be a little bit better. So that's Letitia James's office. She also went after the National Rifle Association, rightly so, a New York corporation at the time for fraud and other things, went after Wayne LaPierre, the flamboyant head of the NRA, and took him down for embezzlement. And Donald Trump didn't like that either because Donald Trump likes Americans being shot in public schools and in churches and things and supports the NRA. So now that he's got back in power
Starting point is 01:02:30 and he's got the most corrupt Department of Justice in history, he can have Pam Bondi. So here's the conspiracy I teased at the top of our podcast. You've got the Nepo baby and Bill Pulte who comes from the Pulte building family in the southeast.
Starting point is 01:02:45 Every other home in Atlanta was built by Pulte Homes. My late brother-law worked for Pulte Homes. So that NEPO baby gets put in these little baby trumper with political aspirations. He gets to be the head of Fannie Mae and Freddie Beck, which are kind of two semi-private regulatory lending guarantee organizations in the real estate market.
Starting point is 01:03:05 Donald Trump uses him for a number of things. One, he's the chief attack dog of Jay Powell at the Federal Reserve, and he lobbed in a complaint alleging that Schiff and Letitia James both committed mortgage run. Lans on the desk of a willing conspiratorial Pam Bondi. she says looks good to me what about the department of justice manual oh no that died seven months i threw that out seven months ago and she then makes a criminal referral and grand juries get open on on fraud what's the fraud for shift bullshit in order to be a senator representing a state at the the constitution says at the time of the election you have to be resident in that state
Starting point is 01:03:52 and he was but after he got elected he bought a house in maryland And for the next six years, has been listing that as his primary residence. So maybe he got a quarter of a point discount on the mortgage rate as a result. And at the time he runs for re-election, five years from now, he's going to have to reestablish primary residency in California, which he will. But that's the requirement. And I'm sure he's got an ethics opinion that tells him exactly that. That you don't have to be a primary resident of the state for the entire duration of the six years.
Starting point is 01:04:25 because his day job is in Washington. And so he has his primary residence there. He will, I'm sure, reestablish residency should he choose to seek re-election in five years. So that's the mortgage fraud, which he already wrote a letter back to Pulte and told him exactly that and said he had ethics advisory opinions to support him.
Starting point is 01:04:46 Yet they opened up the investigation, so the New York Times has to have that banner. On Letitia James, she owns a couple of pieces of property. One is in Virginia, it's an investment property, I think her father's involved in it, and one is in New York, a multifamily. On the multifamily, it's listed, and I've owned property, I own property in New York, and it's a confusing Byzantine process. It's listed, it was built as a five-unit multifamily, but I think they tore down a wall and it became a four-unit. Why does that matter?
Starting point is 01:05:18 Because as a four-unit multifamily, you get more favorable interest rates than if it's a five-unit. so she bought a four what was built as a five but she bought it as a four and she took out a loan as if it were a four four five is any of this criminal intent criminal mind mens rea to commit mortgage fraud and she's got a great lawyer abby law who you and i know is representing her so that's the mortgage fraud paperwork issue for letitia james ironic that and i'll tell you who's investigating her in a minute. Then you've got this Virginia home and allegedly on the line listed for either co-borrower or whatever, they listed her father as her husband line instead of as the co-borrower when it's her father, as if she was trying to mislead the broker or the bank about
Starting point is 01:06:07 the fact that her father's her father and not her husband. Sounds like a bank issue. If you've ever done a mortgage, you know, there's a pile high, mile high pile of documents to be signed and she might have missed which line that the person is on. I think I did the same thing. I signed an entire set of documents, like in my wife's, and I'm a lawyer, in my wife's signature block instead of where I was, and I had to redo them. It happens. That's not criminal fraud. Now, let's look at the continued conspirators. Who's investigating the mortgage fraud? Ed Martin. Who's Ed Martin? He's so Maga Trumper and Jan Sixer that he can't even get confirmed by the United States Senate to be the D.C. U.S. attorney. That's why we got Janine Piro, because he's so maga, maga. He's the guy that
Starting point is 01:06:56 said, I'll do anything Elon Musk says. I'll prosecute anybody he tells me to. Okay. He defended Jan 6th insurrectionists. And I think this is the thing that got him, he lost a job over, is that he was on both sides of a case. He was the defense lawyer for a Jan Sixer, and he signed the dismissal after the partons on behalf of the federal government, for the same guy. He couldn't even grab another guy. So he signed his own. It's like totally ridiculous. So what they do with him? They might have made it worse for us. They put him as ahead of the weaponization committee under Pam Bondi. Well, the weaponization committee is now weaponized because he's now the prosecutor as some sort of quote unquote special attorney,
Starting point is 01:07:40 not not special, not independent counsel, not special prosecutor, special attorney with whatever powers Bondi gave him to go after these mortgage issues. Separately, the last part of the conspiracy is John Sarkoni, who you and I covered a lot in the last four or five weeks. He's the guy that also couldn't get confirmed in the Northern District of New York, upstate New York, as a federal prosecutor. So she made him, Pam Bondi, the acting interim special attorney with the powers of the northern district, whatever it was. He's also got a couple of problems. One relates to his own residence. He claimed that he lived at a certain location. And when the local newspaper went to go check out that location, it was an abandoned, vacant, boarded-up building. And the response for
Starting point is 01:08:31 Sarkoni was to fire the media outlet and not allow them to cover to any press conferences with him. All right. So he listed an abandoned building as his primary residence. And he's the one going after Letitia James and the Attorney General's office, and he also, there's some mixed reportings about whether he told the truth or lied about somebody, a knife-wielding attacker who happened to be Brown or an immigrant that attacked him. There's a video tape that suggests that that didn't go down exactly the way he said, that he tried to make himself more courageous and the attack more egregious than it really was. In either event, he's the guy that's now not only investigating, he's investigating Letitia James' and Letitia James' office.
Starting point is 01:09:18 So now you've got the Attorney General, a state law enforcement entity, the New York Attorney General, being invested by a local U.S. attorney in the Northern District up in Albany of New York. Talk about that lastly in a moment. In order to find out whether she violated Donald Trump's civil rights because she obtained a civil fraud conviction, against Donald Trump for $450 million and went after the NRA? I mean, so they're going after her for abuse of power in her office. There's many, many problems with a federal prosecutor trying to go after a state law enforcement agency in our system of federalism, which will be played out.
Starting point is 01:10:03 You and I will be teaching our audience about if that case gets beyond the grand jury. Why is it up in the Northern District of New York? Why is it not in Manhattan or Brooklyn? Because of the jury. Manhattan and Brooklyn are very liberal. Juries Donald Trump got convicted in New York in Manhattan, in a state court proceeding. His corporations got convicted in Manhattan.
Starting point is 01:10:26 And Brooklyn's worse in terms of being on the liberal spectrum. More north you go in New York all the way up to Albany. The better chance you got are getting moderates. More importantly, right-wing MAGA. up there. That's where Elise Stefanik comes from and other MAGA, even though it's a bright blue state, there are pockets of red,
Starting point is 01:10:48 especially as you go north. So that's why they're prosecuting it up there. That's why they want the grand jury up there. There's things that she could do to kind of change venue, and we'll talk about that at another time. But that is the conspiracy. It's Pulte to Bondi,
Starting point is 01:11:04 Bondi to Martin, Martin to Sarkodi, and we're a lesser nation because of it. Going back and taking this episode full circle, all of the skilled prosecutors, the career prosecutors, the top people at the DOJ, they've either been fired or they were most likely quit. So now you're left with the worst of the worst. Bad lawyers, bad people, not smart people, evil people, dangerous people, and that's who's running this. And then when they're not allowed to even hold the position, whether it's like an Alina Haba, whether it's like a Sarkoni, whether it's this guy in the Central District of California, we haven't talked about him, whatever, they don't leave. They don't leave.
Starting point is 01:11:57 They get asked or they get fired basically because they term out because you can only be interim for a set period of time. then they get fired by the judges who have the say, if you can keep them on and extend them, then they get fired by the federal judges. And then most people just, I mean, and this to me speaks of this sociopathic maga movement of norms and whatever. You know, most people, you know, you get fired, you leave, you literally leave the office. You know, and Alina Habba, I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving.
Starting point is 01:12:31 I'm not leaving. I'm staying. I'm not going anywhere. Get out. I'm not leaving. but the problem is when we the people who follow the norms are like all right you're just annoying nothing i can do just fine you you want that position stay and that's when these idiots win that's when these fascists win when we like okay you enough just just just just you want the nobel peace
Starting point is 01:12:56 prize just give them the nobel peace prize right i mean just think about the mindset of trump saying that too i want it i get the nobel piece and then you and then they want more and then they want more and then they take more. And so we've had people, we just want to go, I know you watching, you want to spend time with your family and have hobbies and go out and go for walks and go to movies and watch TV, read books, you know, and just do things where these miserable MAGA people, they just want to make you miserable. Like that makes that, that's their hobby, right? Like where you're out there, hey, I want to go to the beach. I want to do that. They're thinking, how can I hurt someone? And that makes them happy and eventually that wears people down and they do it in such a relentless
Starting point is 01:13:41 nonstop way where eventually people who abide by norms say just keep it fine you want to you want that position so badly fine and we can't though right now we can't have that mentality that's what don't Trump's done his whole life right he doesn't take no he keeps on doing it over and over again he doesn't care he blames whatever and it's just a fountain of evil spewing over and over and over again non-stop but that's where we've got to stand up and say nothing stop it stop this crap it ain't happening it's not happening i'm putting it all on the line for this that's what we're going to do at legal a f that's what we're going to do at the midas touch network each and every day we appreciate you for watching um everybody hit subscribe let's get to six
Starting point is 01:14:31 million subscribers here subscribe to michael popox legal uh youtube channel legal a f subscribe to the legal a f substack the might as touch substack let's get those platforms growing a reminder michael popox law firm you all wanted him to start it he's representing a ton of uh of our viewers right now who have cases so if you've been in a catastrophic accident um or you know somebody who has whether that's a trucking accident a car accident medical malpractice sexual assault, wrongful death, call the Popockfirm.com, or go to the Popokfirm.com, or call 87-Popac-A-F, 1-877-Popac-F, or go to the Popak firm.com. Free consultation, reach out. It's free, the Popakfirm.com, 1877 Popak-A-F. They'll review the case, see if it's something they
Starting point is 01:15:24 take. And even if they take the case, they do it on a contingency, meaning they don't get paid unless you get paid. Thank you, everybody so much for watching. Popak, feel better, man. And I thank you, everybody, and we'll see you next time on LegalA. See you next week.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.