Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF Full Episode - 9/10/2025

Episode Date: September 11, 2025

The Supreme Court’s destruction of our civil liberties under the 4th Amendment only took 1 paragraph. 2 federal courts today stop Trump’s hostile take over of the Federal Reserve and the Library of Congress. The Supreme Court throws a 95 year precedent out long the morning trash and it only took 1 paragraph (sensing a theme here?). Former FBI Agents file a new lawsuit to get their jobs back. Trump’s “forgery” birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein defense falls apart. All on the top rated Legal AF podcast with Michael Popok and Karen Friedman Agnifilo. Support Our Sponsors: Armra: Head to https://tryarmra.com/legalaf or enter promo code: LEGALAF to receive 15% off your first order! Qualia: Head to https://qualialife.com/LEGALAF and use promo code: LEGALAF at checkout for 15% off your purchase! Oracle: See if your company qualifies at https://Oracle.com/LEGALAF 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. 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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Light the path to a brighter future with stellar lenses for myopia control. Learn more at SLOR.com. And ask your family eye care professional for SLR Stellist lenses at your child's next visit. Welcome to the midweek edition of Legal A.F. on the Midas Touch Network. I'm Michael Popock, joined, of course, with my co-anchor and good friend, Karen, Friedman, Agnifalo. Lots to talk about today, Karen, at the intersection of law and politics. And, of course, we'll have to touch on some real life here at the top. We're going to talk about the Fourth Amendment, having been effectively ripped out of the Constitution and a one-paragraph decision by the United States Supreme Court. We now are allowing racial profiling. So if you look a certain way, so for my friends who are Spanish speaking and are hanging out at a Home Depot parking lot talking to their family about shopping, you now have satisfied a reasonable suspicion to be thrown to the ground and may be taken for interrogation under a new ruling that came out. One paragraph, unsigned. God, I thought if they were going to put the Fourth Amendment out of its misery, Karen, they would have

done it at least with a formal ceremony and a hundred pages of discussion. But no, that didn't happen. So we'll talk about that new decision. We've got two losses for Donald Trump just today. This is not to be confused with four days ago when he had six losses in a row in court. The two losses, though, are important. It's stopping Donald Trump's hostile takeover of independent or non-executive branch agencies or commissions or entities. So today, or actually late last night, Gia Cobb, a D.C. Federal Circuit Court judge, issued a injunction in favor of Lisa Cook, who's one of seven on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

That had a domino effect. We're looking at the fastest confirmed member of the Federal Reserve in history with Stephen Miron, who's not going to be leaving his day job, Karen, apparently. He's going to stay working for the White House at the same time he's going to be serving the Federal Reserve. What happened to independents? Even Stephen Miron would not have hired Stephen Miron based on the way. he attacked Obama people when they left the White House and went on to the Federal Reserve. We'll break all that down for you.

And a new ruling just came out today by a two to one panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, or D.C. District Court of Appeals in D.C., which reminds everybody that Donald Trump can't fire people who don't work for him. And he's tried to fire people in the Library of Congress. It's right there in the title. Library of Congress is not in the executive branch, it's in the legislative branch and under the Library of Congress, which Todd Blanche thinks he runs, but according to the decision, nobody at the Library of Congress has seen him. It looks like it's a no-show, no-work job for Todd Blanche, the Department of Justice. And the person under him, the register of the copyrights, who runs the Copyright Office for America, also resides in the legislative branch. But Donald Trump didn't like something that she did about artificial intelligence, no less, and fired her without having the power to fire her. She just got reinstated.

But not really even reinstated, Karen, because apparently, like office, like, what was that famous movie, Office Space, she never left the job. She just kept going to work, even though she lost at the trial court level to reinstate her. She just kept going to her job. I don't know who was paying her, but we're going to talk about Shira Pro-Mutter and why that decision matters and what happens next at the United States Supreme Court. Then we have a group of FBI agents who are suing to get their jobs back and get reinstated and get back pay because they were fired for merely political reasons because they happened to have been in leadership positions while the

FBI did its job when Joe Biden, starting when Trump was president, and then when Biden took over to investigate and help prosecute Jan 6th insurrectionist and look into Donald Trump. And that's why they get fired, and that's why they hired superstar lawyer. We're going to talk a lot about him on legal A. F. during the next year. Or more, Abby Lowell, who represents Lisa Cook, the person we just talked about the Federal Reserve,

who's representing Letitia James, who is the Attorney General from New York against Donald Trump, and is now representing these FBI agents. And while we bring Karen back in, of course, as we went live tonight, we've got

the tragedy that happened in Utah, with the founder of Turning Point, the conservative right-wing firebrand, Charlie Kirk being shot and killed during an event there that he sponsored our hearts and our hearts and prayers go out to his he has a young family, to he and his young family.

This isn't about what he stands for. I'm sure there's nothing that Charlie Kirk would say that I would have agreed with, but he did not deserve to die at the hands of a gunman today in Utah, and we wanted to acknowledge that. I'm sure tomorrow it'll be time for us to talk about other things related to Charlie Kirk

because the other party will drag us into that, but not today. Today, we're going to talk about just the fact that he has passed at the hands of a gunman and that we are sorry that has happened. That's not the way things should happen in America where things need to be decided in the marketplace of ideas and at the ballot box and not in any other way.

Yeah, it's really sad, a beautiful little family that he has, and I really feel bad for them and my heart go out to them. It's really sad for them. Yeah. And so we just wanted to acknowledge that at the top of our show. But let's return to things that have happened since you and I last got together and since Ben and I did the show on Saturday. Let's kick it off with the Fourth Amendment, something that I'm sure is near and dear to your heart as a former prosecutor. The Fourth Amendment is in the Constitution for a reason. It protects us and provides an aspect of our civil liberties to be protected against the illegal search and seizure at the hands of law enforcement. Whatever that law enforcement is. be state, could be federal, whatever it is. ICE, Border Patrol, your local cop on the beat, FBI, you name it. If somebody's got a badge and a gun and they're trying to talk to you, stop you and talk to you, frisk you and talk to you, or in the case of Donald Trump's ICE and Border Patrol, hog tie you, throw you to the ground,

and zip tie you, and then ask you questions, then the Fourth Amendment is supposed to be implicated. That's what I was taught. That was the Fourth Amendment until yesterday or the day before when off of the, an appeal by the Trump administration of a ruling by Judge Frimpong in California, of course, which is ground zero for the fight for our civil liberties right now in Los Angeles. She ruled that there were certain aspects of a person or their location or their accent or their ethnicity that cannot be used as part of a reasonable suspicion. That's a term of art in the Fourth Amendment landscape developed by the Supreme Court over time.

The reasonable suspicion that a law enforcement officer has to stop somebody based on the totality of the circumstances and based on a reasonably objective observer being that law enforcement cannot, according to Judge Frimpong, include what people look like, their race, the language they speak, the accent, where they hang out or where they work. and seem reasonable to me. You know, oh, look, there's a brown person speaking Spanish in the Home Depot parking lot or the car wash or the field of picking fruit or up. I got to go over and ask me if they're a U.S. citizen,

like no, or if they're a proper legal status. And now, in a one paragraph off the emergency shadow docket, a one paragraph with no explanation except for what Kavanaugh has to say in his concurrence, and of course, Sotomayor in a fiery dissent, they just destroyed the Fourth Amendment. Talk to the audience about it from a former prosecutor's standpoint, what it means, and then we can pick up with the battle between Kavanaugh and Sotomayor. Yeah, so there's the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

It reads the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched in the person. or persons to be seized. That's what the Fourth Amendment says. And that has been interpreted throughout history by a gazillion courts. And they have essentially created this statutory or this legal framework, this framework that has been interpreting this to say that you can only stop people and seize them, okay, search or seize them when you have probable cause. Now, that doesn't mean,

police can't also stop you and ask you questions or pat you down for their safety. That's what you need reasonable suspicion for. And even sooner than that, even like if a cop sees you on the street, they're allowed to just walk up and ask you a question. You don't have to answer them, but they can talk to you. But in order to be able to search someone or pat them down, you need reasonable suspicion. And again, if you want to detain them, you need probable cause

or if you want to completely search them, et cetera. So that's the statutory framework. And they define what these things are. And one thing that they all have in common is you're not allowed to make generalities. You're not allowed to say, oh, a black person in the wrong neighborhood who looks a certain way. I'm just going to stop them. You can't just do that because of he's black. You can't use certain protected categories, but you just can't make generalizations, broad generalizations,

and especially when it comes to racial profiling. And that has been the law in the United States. That's how I've always understood it to be. And what this does is it completely guts that. It completely eviscerates it. It says, no, you can, you don't have to make an individual determination about the individual person. You can just make these broad generalizations like they look Hispanic.

They speak Spanish. They are in an area where Hispanic people go or congregate. They are in an area where there are low-wage jobs that are typically held by people who are immigrants. And so they essentially said that that's okay. Now that is what you can do. You no longer have to have an individualized basis to stop someone just because they're part of a certain group that you can now make these assumptions about you can stop them. And frankly, if they don't have their papers and they can't prove that their citizens,

they're going to go and say, I now have probable cause to seize you and deport you, frankly. And this completely eviscerated the Fourth Amendment, this decision, without any guidance, without any specifics for lower court judges. What does this mean now for the body of four? Amendment law that we've all relied on in cases. I mean, this doesn't apply just to immigration. This Fourth Amendment law, I mean, who knows, a judge might interpret it that this is only for immigration, but they didn't give any guidance. And so what essentially this does is it allows people to say from going forward that, no, the Supreme Court says it's perfectly fine to

to use these racial stereotypes and generalizations to arrest people or deport them or seize them. And that's what's going to be really, I think, challenging. And to do an emergency order like this on the shadow docket, you deprive lower court judges and lawyers the ability to know exactly what is this mean and how do you interpret this. And so it completely, as you said, eviscerates the Fourth Amendment. And I think people are going to have to start carrying around their passports on their papers because otherwise, you know, they risk being taken away from their family and deported.

I mean, we know from Abrago Garcia that they make mistakes deporting people. And they're certainly sweeping up lots of people. There have been United States citizens who've been detained and they just don't mind casting a wider net. So this is extremely troubling for everybody, I think, because of this decision. And one other thing I want to just point out is the hypocrisy, because this is the same court that has ruled that Harvard and all the universities are actually not allowed to look at race. You can't consider race. You can't take that into consideration or ethnicity.

But you know what? ICE officers or officers on the street, you can consider ethnicity and race. So it's just really ridiculous how they have different standards depending on if it suits their needs. So this is a very, very troubling decision, in my opinion. Yeah, and Kavanaugh and doesn't help matters any when he writes his 10 or 12 page concurrence, which is the only thing we have since there is nothing to go on, as you said, and I said there's a half a paragraph, literally half a paragraph that put the Fourth Amendment out of the court's misery, apparently. Cavanaugh says, I don't know what world he lives in, he doesn't live on planet Earth,

but he lives in a world where there's, we're just, L.A. is just run amok with immigrants, criminal immigrants. And he doesn't think that the mere inconvenience of being stopped and asked a few questions, just simply asked a few polite questions from law enforcement is any great thing. But it completely rejects and ignores the record developed by judge Frimpong below, that's not what's happening in real life. What's happening in real life are these people who happen to have an accent who don't speak English exclusively, which newsflash to Kavanaugh, even though he recites it in his order, there's no constitutional requirement that to be an American citizen or have legal status that you speak English,

even though he says, well, some of them don't even speak English, okay, is that Frimpong and then Sotomayor picks it up in her. dissent says, no, that's not what's happening. What's happening is people are being dragged out of their places of work, gang tackled in parking lots for Home Depot, or at car washes, thrown up against the wall, zip tied, having their arms twisted behind them. I mean, that, but, but, but to Kavanaugh, it's a one-liner. A few simple questions about your citizenship and then being let go shouldn't is not an inconvenience, except that's not what's happening. And that's not the real world. But this MAGA Supreme Court has never let

anything like stubborn facts get in the way of making a decision. In fact, they just make a fact, we don't even, according to the MAGA, MAGA on the Supreme Court, the right, all right wing of the Supreme Court, we don't even need cases from below. They just issue pronouncements and proclamations and Fiat. And they don't want to get, we don't want to get, I love with it, we don't want to get bogged down in the facts. You're an appellate court that is supposed to to be reviewing the facts below and the record below, not ignoring it. In fact, if you're ignoring the facts, then there is no live case or controversy, and you're giving an advisory opinion. So Kavanaugh goes on to say basically premised on what I just laid out, which is

reasonable suspicion should be able to include those things in the totality of the circumstances and, you know, it will unreasonably hamper the government to be able to chase after other human beings and determine whether they are citizens or not. We had an example in there from Sozumayor's fiery dissent, which says, now, based on this announcement by the Supreme Court, what you look like, where you work and how you sound, can now lead to the violation of your civil liberties and for you to be illegally searched and seized. And that should not be the America I respectfully dissent. she gives the example

where one guy was born in America he's a U.S. citizen but he had a real ID which is a way I guess to show you're a citizen a real ID but they asked them in the heat of gang tackling him they asked him what hospital he was born in now look sitting here now I can tell you

like over a cup of iced tea I can tell you what hospital I was born in but I'm not sure I'd be able to do that if I was like facing down the barrel of like armed agents and they're with my heart beating and racing and maybe not understanding everything that I'm being asked and they took this real ID and then never gave it back to him but like you said or I said earlier you've got to have like what bro certificates and passports hanging around your

neck like dog chains at this point and I would have thought this is not something the fourth amendment is not something they would have handled on the emergency docket with an incomplete record a short-circuited briefing schedule, no oral argument. But they always pat themselves on the back, like you see Amy Cody Barrett on her book tour right now, to earn her $2 million advance, saying, you know, well, you know, we're only making a procedural ruling right now. We're not, there's going to be a full-blown appeal

off the preliminary injunction that Judge Frimpong is doing. And we'll get the full record. And maybe down the road, down the road, ICE and Border Patrol are all geeked up off this ruling within seconds, they went back out and did raids in schools and factories and farms and parking lots and churches. I thought that's what the Supreme Court was supposed to do, be the last line of defense for our civil liberties and our civil rights.

No, gone. So anything else on the Fourth Amendment, Karen? No, I think we covered it. And I think you're right. It's just very dangerous and very sad for so many people. The only other thing I'll add is so many, They justify it by saying we're deporting criminals. And what we would call criminals are very different than who the MAGA people are calling criminals.

They're saying people who are here illegally, that they are violating the law, and that makes them a criminal. It's not people who come here and commit crimes and then get deported. That's how it was sold to all of us. And it's hard to disagree with that. if somebody commits a violent crime or, you know, does something terrible that they shouldn't be deported. And that's been, Obama did that, Biden did that, everybody, that's been a thing for very long. There's always been this relationship with ICE where if someone is convicted of a crime, when they're done serving their sentence, they get deported. They're defining this whole category, millions of people who are here, who are undocumented, they're saying the fact that they're undocumented and came here that somehow that makes

them criminals because they are here what they say illegally. And that is terrifying to me. This whole country was founded on immigrants coming here for a better life. My grandparents, your grandparents, Popak, so many people are here. And this is just a continuation of what this country is. And to call them criminals, I think, really takes this to a new level and is extremely disturbing. Absolutely. We're going to talk about off of that. We got this kind of competing book tour going on with Sotomayor and Amy Coney-Barrant,

which I think is important to touch on. And then we've got the battle for the Federal Reserve. We've got the Senate MAGA on the Senate Banking Committee in record time confirming or voting out of committee, Stephen Mirren. who's decided he's not going to leave his day job working for the White House. At the same time, he's going to be on the independent Federal Reserve. A move so audacious that even Stephen Mirren would not have agreed with it because he attacked the Obama people that ended up leaving the administration on a revolving door

and ending up at the Federal Reserve. So I don't really understand what has changed besides Berrin wanting to become a Federal Reserve governor, at least for a short amount of time. And that's all in the wake of a decision by Judge Gia Cobb, stating effectively or supporting that Lisa Cook, one of the seven Federal Reserve Board of Governors, will be staying at her chair. And it looks like, even though there's an appeal that's been filed by Donald Trump, it looks like she's going to be able to stay in her chair, at least through the September

16th meeting, to set interest rates. And we'll talk about why that's important. And then we've got FBI agents, leadership, people that were in leadership suing the Trump administration as well. We'll cover all that and more. but we have to do our commercial breaks. Of course, we've got some great pro-democracy sponsors. Some of them have been with us for almost the whole ride here, five years on legal AF.

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senolidic, I felt like I've turned back the clock. I got higher energy, less soreness after exercise, and a big boost in productivity. It's made me feel more youthful and energized as I have the energy level to nurture my baby daughter the right way. Experience the science of feeling younger. Go to qualiaLife.com slash legal AF for up to 50% off your purchase and use code legal AF for an additional 15%. That's qualia life.com slash legal A.F for an extra 15% off your purchase. Your older self will thank you. And thanks to Qualia for sponsoring this episode. Welcome back to Legal A.F. at the midweek, Karen Freeman McNifalo and Michael Popock. Let's pick up with Lisa Cook. Federal Reserve

Governor still had a decision late last night by Gia Cobb. We've been waiting on for about two weeks or so. Who found that Donald Trump both violins. likely violated, Governor Cook's due process rights, or Fifth Amendment rights not to be deprived of property. In this case, her employment for a 13 years remaining on her term on the member of the seven-member Board of Governors for the Federal Reserve, due process of it been violated, which I knew was coming.

I was like, I could tell from the hearing that the due process part bothered her because Donald Trump's DOJ argued that the due process that she got was a mean, tweet from Bill Pulte at the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac entities and then five days later Trump fired her and that that was her due process and the judge is like sorry you're not claiming that's due process right and they said yes and I was like well that's a loss but I wasn't sure about the merits of the four cause termination but she found in her own analysis the judge at four cause as that term is used in statutes like this one the Federal Reserve Act constitutes what is referred to in the law as i n like nancy m like mary i and m which is inefficiency

neglective duty and malfeasance there's some other things that came in after that but it has to be in something that you're doing on the job statutory duties that are not being performed not being performed well or things like that the difference between inefficiency neglective duty and malfeasance i use this is an example in a hot take. Inefficiency is we give you 20 reports to do and you do nine of them. That's inefficiency. Neglective duty is we give you 20 reports to do and you don't do any of them. And malfeasance is we give you 20 reports to do.

You do all 20, but they suck. And so that's all about your job. What she's accused of by MAGA and by Bill Pulte and Donald Trump and Pam Bondi is that she committed mortgage fraud. which is really not mortgage front. She checked the box and got a primary residence loan on two pieces of property, just like 20% of Donald Trump's cabinet and Bill Pulte's own parents, apparently, according to reporting.

Whether that's a crime or not or a misconduct or not, it's certainly not what happened when she was on the Federal Reserve because it happened a year before she was confirmed. And so Judge Cook, sorry, Judge Cobb said, no, that would have been something that would have been known in the public. It should have been part of her confirmation. process. And again, it has to be while she's on the job. So she also said at her preliminary injunction ruling that you're not going to win Trump on getting rid of her for cause and you

certainly didn't give her due process. She also had some language in there about, I need more briefing on some issues and I'm not going to give you a stay. So why don't we, why don't you pick up for what you learned about this issue? And then we'll talk about Stephen Mirren because they're linked and the impact on the Federal Reserve and rate setting. Yeah. I mean, it is, This just really, I think, reinforces how important it is for the Federal Reserve to be independent. It's like the country's bank. It's not supposed to be political. This is really about our economy and how everything needs to be apolitical and needs to be what's in the best interest of America and our economy.

And that's why this is treated differently. You can't just fire her politically. You have to have a for-cause reason. It has to be something she's doing in her job. And the way the Federal Reserve Board of Governors is, was created, if they have people who are appointed for a set period of time, and it's all staggered. And so different presidents get to nominate and have Senate confirmed different boards

of federal reserve boards of government, board of governors. And he just doesn't like her. And so he wants to have a majority. And he's just firing her. He says, you know, this is. basically just, he doesn't really say why. He just basically says, you know, it's because of the mortgage fraud. And the judge said, no, for the reasons you said, Popak, it has nothing to do with her job. This could have been known to, during the Senate confirmation hearing, this was prior to that.

If you didn't do your due diligence on her, that's not my problem. And that doesn't count as for cause. And I think the most important part about this is the court is safeguarding the independence of the Fed. And I think that that is something that is so critical. It's not, like a political entity or political agency, that our nation's economy depends on the Fed being independent. And look, you know, Trump gets very upset about that he can't control the Fed and Jerome Powell and he threatens to fire him. And, you know, he wants the interest rates lowered. And I think he's bullied them enough that they will lower the interest rates when they meet on September 16th because they're worried about what he'll do. And so it's having an effect, I think,

even whether he wins on this or not. But she gets to be at that meeting on the 16th where they have their big two-day meeting where they're going to decide what the interest rates are. But I bet they lower them. And they'll give an economic justification for it, but I think it's partly they're being bullied by Trump.

Yeah, that one I disagree with you on. I don't, they are going to lower the rates because the bottoms dropped out of the jobs market. We just had a reduction of over a million jobs from the end of Biden to the beginning of Trump on top of the fact that Trump's economy is not making any new jobs, they're not going to have any choice. Whether he bullied them or not, they were going to have to cut the rates in order to keep this economy from spinning out of complete control and to regain the bottom, which is the

job creation. So the sad reality is he didn't have to bash Lisa Cook to get what he wanted because his poor economy has forced their hand. I mean, it was already saying, signaled by J. Powell at the Jackson Hall conference a month ago, two weeks ago, that he was going to favor a rate cut. That's why the market has been on fire. The stock market has been on fire since then. I mean, today it was ridiculous for a number of other techie reasons, including Oracle signing a huge deal that has driven the stock market over into magical thinking world in terms of numbers. But I don't think, I give more credit to the governors. The way the voting works is this. There's seven members of the, there's seven voting members of the Board of Covenors.

Right now, it's four to three, three Trumpers with Mirren likely to swing out of confirmation, because he just, in record time, moving to Stephen Mirren for a minute, he just got confirmed as the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, which is a huge position. In March, he's been on the job four months. Now, he's been very public about overhauling the Federal Reserve. You can go on YouTube and find him talking about it in 2023 and 2024. Huge critic to the Federal Reserve.

But had also been very public about not thinking that the revolving door between the White House and the Federal Reserve was healthy either for its independence. So every time an Obama person, on to the Federal Reserve, having left them, oh, that's just pure politics. You can't go from being a political animal to being an independent person. Well, not only is he going from White House position to the Federal Reserve, he's keeping his day job. So he's staying in, he's taking a paid leave, but he's going to return. Why? Because his chair that he's taking over probably certainly before the 16th in the vote is up in January, because he's taking.

over for somebody whose term was going to be coming up in January. So he gets a stub term. So he wants to be able to go back to his job. But what does that say about the independence of the position? If he's going to stay basically on the payroll, effectively on the payroll, keep his day job at the White House while he's on the Federal Reserve. But that will only give them three, Trump, three votes, Waller, Bowman, and now this guy. But that's, but 12 vote for rates, because the Open Markets Committee, the Federal Open Markets Committee, is 12. It's the seven on the Board of Governors, plus five from the regional banks, Federal Reserve Regional Banks.

You've got to get a majority. So every rate meeting up until this last one was a unanimous vote, including of the Trumpers, to keep rates right where they were. Waller is very public about, who's the Trumper, this is very public about being, we have a jobs creation problem. He just thinks the rates need to be dropped now and not worry about inflation. Pardon me. So even with Mirren joining, he only has three out of 12 votes for rate cutting.

However, if he gets the Lisa Cook out, he then gets the lead four to three. He can start firing presidents of the regional Federal Reserve branches, replace them with Trump lackeys and then two or three open meetings from now, suddenly he's got the majority of the 12 that vote. But with the economic numbers that I know about and that I report on every day on legal AF and the ones that I don't know about that only the Federal Reserve has through all of their inputs, there is no doubt they're going to cut rates by a quarter to a half a point on the 16th. And if that doesn't work, they're going to cut them again. But I don't think it's because of the, but it'll look like it. It'll look like it's, the abuse is working.

It's not working. Look, I don't, I hear what you're saying. He fired two people. One of them just decided to resign, or take the firing, I should say, and not appeal it. Talk about Coogler? I can't remember what his name was. And then he does Lisa Cook. I just think every one of those people is going to worry about getting fired if they don't vote for that. Even if you're right, that it justifies it. You didn't fire another person, though. This still puts a, this still, maybe I'm confusing it with something else. But either way, this completely makes, if I think, makes them all, takes away their independence

because they have to worry about their job. So even if they ultimately vote for it, you know, for whatever reason, I do think that they're all going to worry that they could be the next one. That's what's great about this show. I think you're confusing it with the FTC, where the, where he fired Slaughter and he fired the other thing. I am confusing it with the FTC. I apologize. That's all right.

You don't have to apologize. We'll talk about that too because the Supreme Court just ruined a 95 years of precedent with Humphre's executor because we'll talk about this when we come back from our next break. Rebecca Slaughter tried to get her job back on the FTC. She's the only remaining Democrat. The other Democrat who got fired by Donald Trump decided to take a job that pays. Yes. Yes. That's what I was thinking of. I apologize. Thank you for correcting me.

But I still think with the Federal Reserve, with the way he's been bashing them and the way he fired her, I just think they're all going to, it's just hard to look at it objectively because they're no longer being treated like they're this objective body. They're being bullied. Except there's insulators, right? The Federal Reserve Regional presidents, like Goolsby that sits in Chicago, was an Obama, it was an Obama White House. his bosses are the Board of Governors. Now, if the Board of Governors switches, it'll get fired. But, like, I don't think that influences Goulsby's not going to vote for a rate cut unless he thinks it's appropriate for the economy.

He's going to shit about Donald Trump. But if he gets the, it's the breach of the independence of the Federal Reserve that we're really able to watch closely. Exactly. Because even Kevin Hassett, who is on the short list to be the chairman of the Federal Reserve,

after Jay Powell's term is over in May, next May, even he has said just recently over the weekend that the independence of the Federal Reserve is sacrosanct, and every time a country has violated that and allowed the president or dictator to take over the Federal Reserve or their version of it, it's only led to hyperinflation and consumer misery, those were his words.

So even the Trump or even inside the house of Donald Trump's White House, even they don't believe in Donald Trump's assault. on the Federal Reserve. When we come back, we'll talk about a 95-year precedent, which seems to be, if not a life support, it's about over called Humphrey's executor and why it matters.

We'll also talk about the FBI agents who have turned around and sued today, the Trump administration and the FBI, for having lost their jobs, for doing nothing more than doing their job, which is to investigate Jan 6th's insurrectionist and Donald Trump himself and those around him, leading to indictments and criminal convictions and sentencings.

just doing their job. What were they supposed to do? Turn their back on their job and just say, well, you know, that was interesting, the 1,600 people that attacked the Capitol. But what else can we go after today? It was totally ridiculous. And they got a very fine lawyer and Abby Lowell. But we're going to, to handle that.

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precedent and what looks like it's about to happen with a case involving this slaughter, Rebecca Slaughter, the only Democrat who was on the Federal Trade Commission, which was actually the commission that Humphreys was on in 1935, and got fired without cause by Donald Trump, leaving it in complete control of Republicans in that very important regulatory commission. But we had a emergency docket decision by the United States Supreme Court.

Why don't you take it from there? Yeah, look, there's this, case that developed this body of law post Humphrey's executor, as you said, it's a very old law. And the Supreme Court has been chipping away at that, but for a very long time, it's been on life support. Many legal commentators have thought that it's going to be overruled. This was a Supreme Court decision in 1935, Humphrey's executor versus the United States, which upheld a federal law that only allows the FTC commissioners to be removed for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office, like you just said about the Fed, about Lisa Cook. And so this is the thing

that's interesting about Slaughter, who is on the FTC, that's what Humphrey's executor was about. That was about an FTC commissioner. And when Trump fired her and the other guy that I confused. His name was Alvaro Badoia, who was also fired. He decided not to continue and appeal it, but Slaughter did. He basically said that he didn't try to make any bones about it, didn't say anything about what they did. They just said, look, your views are inconsistent with the Trump administration and Trump priorities. And that seems to be, directly in violation of Humphrey's executor. And when the Supreme Court pressed pause or essentially allowed this to happen because

the lower court said, no, Humphrey's executor applies. You can't fire her unless it's for one of those reasons. But, you know, and of course Trump didn't even pretend that it was for one of those reasons. He just said, I'm doing it because I want to for political reasons. The Supreme Court, by allowing the firing to happen, is essentially saying Humphreys executor no longer applies. And they haven't overruled it yet, but I think they're going to. I think it's clear that they're going to. Oh, yeah, they're getting rid of Humphreys executor. It's been on life support for quite some time. The only, the only agency or commission

that they apparently are not going to allow Donald Trump to fire for, without for cause, is going to be the Federal Reserve, only because they said so in May in the, in the, in the Wilcox case involving the National Labor Relations Board, went out of their way in a decision not about the Federal Reserve, to say the Federal Reserve was different. And so I think there, that's why Lisa Cook, back to the top of our show, has a very good shot at staying in office. It just has to do now with how they define for cause, which is different than the Humphrey's executor thing, which was about whether you can fire somebody for cause or not without answering the question of what four cause was. So that's where we are with the death of a 95-year-old precedent under this

administration under this Supreme Court. Let's touch base on what, let's update our audience of what's going on with all things. Epstein. We've got the Donald Trump goes after in July, the Wall Street Journal, because they described it didn't publish a photo or an image of what Donald Trump's birthday submission was for a leather-bound, multi-volume scrapbook 50th birthday card. that Galane Maxwell admits that she'd put together. Everybody, and there's hundreds of pages in this birthday submission,

a birthday book, nobody in it, nobody in it has said that their submission, which has now been made public, it's up on Legal AF Substack, you can find it, you can click through it yourself, all the jokey, portographic pictures and drawings and jokes, which basically confirmed that everybody knew that Epstein was abusing or liked girls. It's disgusting. I mean, not women, girls.

There's enough references. There's actually one cartoon that somebody hand drew of showing Epstein, handing out balloons at like an elementary school to little girls. And then the next frame in the cartoon was him being pampered and Lord knows what else by girls. like things don't change. You were, okay, so there's lots of that in the book. So Donald Trump is least among the problems in there. He's also buried on a page 158 of one of the volumes. He wasn't even like the top bill in the book.

And now he claims that even though the Wall Street Journal accurately described every aspect of this, he then said it's a fraud, it's a forgery. Never answers the question. Who would 30 years ago, Who would forge something and then plant it in there so that it would come back 30 years later to tear down Donald Trump's administration? Who? Who set a plot in motion 30 years ago?

It took a sharpie pen and made an almost perfect replica of Donald Trump's signature and used his language and vernacular for an obscene recognition that his friend is probably a child predator, which is effectively what the language in there suggests. do that oh they never have an answer for that it's just a whole bunch of people amateur handwriting analysts who are looking at the wrong example of his handwriting they're looking at the donald j trump official one not the donald personal one that he uses on things like letters to hillary clinton i just had a live substack today with adam parkamenco and learned something new he's the one that supplied to the wall street journal the letter to george conway um from donald trump signed donald that they use as an exemplar So this whole thing about Donald Trump has been the victim of a forgery going back 30 years,

pasted into a book, is all bullshit. And Ann has only ramped up along, we bookended with the victims, survivors last week at Capitol Hill. We've got the discharge petition, which is oh so achingly close to 218 signatures to take the vote to the House floor. to have the House order the Department of Justice to turn over everything with Republicans including Marjorie Taylor Green. I almost vomit a little on my mouth when I mentioned her and Nancy Mace too. And Lauren Bobert. And Lauren Bobert joining together to sign the petition because they're all apparently

victims of sexual abuse in their past. I know Nancy Mace has come out and said she was a rape victim, which he was 14. But whatever it is, it's getting up to the 218. there's two special election Democrats that are likely coming in. One definitely and another one. We might be at the 218. While Schumer's bill at the Senate looks like it just got shot down while we were on the air. What do you make of it from you've prosecuted crimes like this?

What do you make of Donald Trump's efforts to cover up this, his involvement with Elliot, with Jeffrey Epstein, to the point where, I'll leave you on this, Karen, where the His administration has threatened Republicans that if they sign the discharge petition to allow that bill to be voted on the House floor, it will be considered to be a hostile act, an act of war by Donald Trump. What do you make of all that? I mean, this is just beyond horrific. You know, those survivors who gave that press conference, the way they framed it, and I think it's the way we need to look at this, is Jeffrey Epstein, Everyone talks about the list and who are all the people on the list.

Really what they're what they mean and what they're talking about is who are all the enablers, who enabled Jeffrey Epstein to be able to abuse and sexually assault so many girls, so many young girls, and do it for so long in plain view in front of everybody. And when you look at this birthday book, it's I think 238 pages. And as you said, it was created decades ago for him. it's all about who Jeffrey Epstein is. It's all about it's very rapy and gross and pedophile. Like, it's so disturbing.

Those are his enablers. Those are all people who not only knew it was happening, some participated in it, but also joked around about it and allowed this to happen and participated in this horrible, horrible thing. And I think when you see Donald Trump, he could have done anything for this birthday book. He could have chosen, I mean, it's a distraction to try to do handwriting comparisons.

There's no doubt, as you said, that this is Donald Trump. No doubt that he did this. It's you can do word, people have done word comparison. Those are words that he use that they've done. He's known to draw pictures for people. He's even auctioned them off. And clearly that's his signature. And there's no doubt they were close friends.

And what's the subject matter that Donald Trump chose to put in that birthday book? He chose to essentially acknowledge because he has this outline of a woman's body, or probably a young girl's body, with, you can see breasts and really suggestive words and signs his name is signature in her pubic area. I mean, it's disgusting. If that doesn't, if that's not Exhibit A, that he was part of all of this, and knew of all of it. And the fact that he's fighting so hard

that he's threatening members of Congress that if you vote to release this stuff, I take this as an act of aggression. As a prosecutor, we would call that consciousness of guilt because he is absolutely, if he had nothing to hide and nothing to worry about, he would say, release it all, get it all out there. But it's not.

And I think that that is even more proof. And honestly, I have to say, I give Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Bobert, and Nancy Mace credit for standing up for what's right here. I do. Yeah, they're disgusting in every other way. I definitely don't agree with anything they normally say, but I give them credit for standing up for what's right here. It does be on, sorry, I mean, keep going. No, no.

I mean, it shows they're actually human beings, not just. Barely, barely. But Nancy Mace is disgusting, the way she's going out of. I agree, I agree with transgender. I know, it's disgusting. But I still give, at least, I give them credit for at least standing up for what they believe in it. Yeah, sometimes she believes in things that are absolutely disgusting. But here, you know, she's not being cowed.

They are doing what's right instead of doing what the dictator wants. And so I think that's a good thing. Well, it's all getting under Donald Trump's skin. He had an interaction at the, at Joe Stonecrab, which actually, no, I went with my wife when we were in Washington. But he was going out for a big fat cat, white male-only dinner at Joe Stonecraft in D.C. And a group of resistors found out about it. That's a good thing. And they showed up and started chanting against Donald Trump calling him Hitler.

He didn't like it. And there's some great video of it that's up on the Midas Touch Network about it. It just shows you how weak he is, how insurious he is. And what the resistance is supposed to look like, just to update the story that we let off with, just as a touch on it, the FBI is reporting that they do have in custody now, the person that they believe was the suspect who shot and killed, apparently, Charlie Kirk. So I did want to bring that to everybody's attention because it was a little unclear whether he was in custody or he's not custody. It looks like he is in custody. We don't have any other further details, but, of course, they'll be developed over the next 24 to 48 hours. Let's do two quick stories as we wrap up here in the home stretch. One is about the Library of Congress and Donald Trump losing today related to his attempt

to take over the Library of Congress, which by very definition is in the congressional branch, the legislative branch. You can't fire somebody that doesn't work for you. We'll talk about that. And then the FBI agents suing to get their jobs back and reinstatement. You want to take the FBI agents? Karen? Sure.

All right. Why don't you take that first? So, look, three former FBI agents were fired by Cash Patel, and they're suing him, and Trump saying their terminations were part of this White House directed bullying purge from MAGA loyalists, because apparently there's these social media MAGA people who were putting out a lot of information about these three FBI agents. And it looks like that's why the White House directed Cash Patel to fire these really highly respected agents.

One was named Brian Driscoll, who was the former acting FBI director for a month, seemed to be an accident or a mistake that he was the FBI director, but he was highly respected. Also, Stephen Jansen, who was the assistant director in charge of the Washington officer. and another agent, Spencer Evans, who led the Las Vegas office. And they basically said, look, this was all political. You politicize the FBI, and you're prioritizing politics over the American people. So they filed lawsuits in Washington, and they basically said that their firing should be declared illegal.

They want to be reinstated. You know, they want to come back with back pay, all of that. And they gave, what was interesting about their complaint is, they gave first-hand accounts about how tumultuous and how political the Patel-driven FBI is under this White House. And, you know, they're doing things like having to, they told Driscoll to fire anyone identified as having worked on a criminal investigation against Trump. And meanwhile, if you remember, during his Senate confirmation, Cash Patel was asked. if he would fire anyone based on cases that they worked on, and he said no.

But yet he wanted to fire all these people who had anything to do with any investigation into Trump, whether it's Mara Lago, the other, you know, the Jan 6 case. And so that's, you know, basically why they were fired and they're trying to get their job back. I mean, these are highly decorated, highly respected agents who were fired just because they wouldn't, you know, they don't carry the party line. And apparently, again, like what I was saying was these MAGA conservative people were

aggressively posting on Patel and Bongino's social media calling for their firing and retribution. And they think that's what's behind this. And, you know, it's, and I think one of them was fired because of, because he had some, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, wouldn't he fired some he he wouldn't fire someone it had to do with COVID and COVID restrictions and you know these are just like again these are old grudges and that that they're taking out on these on these FBI agents so it'll be very interesting to see how this goes yeah let's turn to while we got another minute let's turn to the library of Congress library of Congress established in the early 1800s to serve as a research arm for Congress

and doing its legislative work, what laws it should pass, and the kind of inside the Library of Congress is the Copyright Division, if you will, and the Register of Copyrights, who is the person responsible for copyrights, copyrights being the way that we protect inventors and artistic creators or writers, anything that's kind of written, digital music, art, is all has some sort of copyright, a machine, anything that you invent, not trademark, not what something looks like or a logo or what a bottle looks like in terms of a merch, a merchandise. We're talking about the actual creative engine and how it's protected so that people can monetize

it and get paid for it if somebody else uses it. It's an important position. But it sits over in the legislative branch and Donald Trump has tried to take over. I mean, it is the library. of Congress. That's what I said at the start. It's in the title. So you can't fire somebody that doesn't work for you. Now, two of the judges,

and this was a two-to-one decision that the register Shira Perlmutter, who is responsible for all copyright issues, including everything under her, she can only be fired by the librarian of Congress.

The librarian of Congress was fired by Donald Trump and it was not really, I don't know what she did about it. And they tried to replace her with Todd Blanche, of all things. He's the guy that did Galane Maxwell's interview. And he's the number two in the Department of Justice and Donald Trump's former criminal defense lawyer. But according to the new ruling by Judge Pan and Judge Childs,

two to one against Judge Walker, a Trumper, they said that they have evidence that nobody is respecting Todd Blanche, that he's not really acting. as the librarian of the librarian of Congress. And that even though Shira Pearl Mutter got fired and didn't get reinstated by the trial court judge, she's been showing up every day and just doing her job like office space.

So she's actually, even though she don't know if she's getting paid, but she took her job so seriously, she just kept showing up to work, even though she got canned. And what the panel said, two to one is this. This is a legislative brand. It can't be interfered with by the President of the United States. This is what they use for their legislative duties to make law and the research body behind that. Copyright sits here because our framers said it sits here.

And Walker, in his dissent, said a version of, no, it's quasi-executive. And I was like, I got to read this. Why? Because here's all the executive powers that they operate under. They issue copyrights, there's a copyright judge, there's royalties that are collected. I'm like, okay, let me get this straight. I agree with you that if Congress creates a statute that you must faithfully execute that statute on the executive branch side, that doesn't mean that Congress can't keep for itself as part of his legislative acts the ability to supervise or implement its own copyright.

right law. That doesn't mean it always has to go over to the president. There's no separation of powers issue there, not when it comes to the Library of Congress, because it's such a unique institution in our nation's history. Donald Trump hates it. He wants to control everything, whether he owns it or not. And so when he fired her, she eventually took an appeal. What the two to one decision of the appellate panel, Michelle Child's, Judge Pan, with Walker in dissent, what they said is, we are going to enjoy. and we're going to put her back in her position or keep her in her position, Walker's response was, you're violating Humphrey's executor all over again.

You're violating prior rulings of the Supreme Court about other people who were fired by the executive by the president. But the difference they say is this is the legislative branch and a unique quality about the library of Congress that isn't the same as these other agencies created by Congress and turned over to the president. But we're going to have to see, Karen, what do you think is going to happen at the Supreme Court? Because, you know, the D.C. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has been overturned a couple of times. Yeah, exactly. I mean, let's see, because they seem to want to create this unitary executive.

So, let's see what they ultimately rule. It's so odd. I can't even predict anymore what they're going to do. Why didn't the librarian of Congress, why did she step aside or he? She went and got another job. She went into an institute. She was the first African-American head of the Library of Congress. But Donald Trump loves doing that. He fired all of the black women generals and colonels. It got rid of all them, got rid of the first black woman head of the National Labor Relations Board,

Gwen Wilcox, and got rid of the first black woman librarian. And that's why, you know, let's face it, you know, look at his interns, all white, fresh faces. The dinner that just got busted by the opposition group that was Channing Hitler was all, you know, white old guys in suits. This is this is this is this is this is Trump's America as we chase black and brown people you know through uh in an inhumane way. We didn't even touch on it here and I'll do it. I've done it on a hot take 40,000 migrants have this have been disappeared within the United States through a shell game of shuttling them to 10 and 12 different immigration attention centers so that ICE can't even keep track of them, let alone their lawyers, let

alone their family on the way either to a third country or just getting lost in the system on purpose here in America while they're in now taken out of blue states and sent to red states for red judges. And this is not okay. This is a new, this is a new leak that got made to the guardian that just did a great piece today about it and I did a hot take about it. But this is the Trump America that we live in, you know, including the things that we talked about at the top of the show. But I'm glad that everybody is here with us. We, Karen and I really appreciate your fervent support for what we do. It's what motivates us every day to get up and do what we do. You know how to support us. You're here already. Audio versions of legal AF, download those.

Leave comments and five-star reviews. Watch us, listen to us back and forth. Legal AF Substack, become a member there. You'll get amazing content from 12 different contributors, three different podcasts, all at the intersection of law and politics that I curate for you. First four videos every day is usually mine, and then we bring in the other contributors. And then Legal AF, Substack, wait to you see Substack and all the live reporting there. I've got one up right now with, right before we started the show tonight. I did it with Adam Parco Menko. I think you're going to find that fascinating as well. Popa, can I just say one last thing before I say goodbye?

This is a very, because this is a very somber day coming up tomorrow. This is the night before September 11th. And it's always, you know, I live in New York. I live across the street from Ground Zero. I was there with my family when it happened. And it was, I can't believe it was 24 years ago. But I want to acknowledge that. that this, that tomorrow is September 11th.

And it is really the day, for me at least, and for many people, that the world changed, that everything changed. And so many people lost their lives. So many other people lost the ability to feel safe. And it's just something that we can never forget. And I just want to acknowledge it just because it's the night before. And I always remember what I did the night before 9-11. And it's just something that I want to acknowledge for all the people who feel the way I do,

which I know is most of America, that on this incredible, incredibly somber day, just want to just want to know. And look, people know that I worked at Canter Fitzgerald, who lost 658 people in the blink of an eye, including Howard Lutnik's brother, including my boss's entire legal and compliance team. Thank God you weren't there. I came, well, I came in after, after the rebuild, after they rebuilt it. And you can say what you want about Howard Lutnik, and Lord knows I have. But in terms of the rebuild of the company and the support of the survivors and their families, but I lived in an organization where every day we celebrated 9-11.

We talked about 9-11 every day and the results of it. I was there for every day Canter Fitzgerald does a 9-11 charity day, where they bring in celebrities to raise money for charity and give out $15 or $20 million a day. So again, people know I'm a harsh critic of the Commerce Secretary, but when it comes to 9-11, I totally agree with you. Thank you for telling us all about that. So as we sign off here, Wednesday's Karen Freeman McNifalo and me, Saturday's been My Salas and me on legal A-F, and you know the different ways to support us. So until our next show, it's Michael Popock, Karen Freeman McNifalo. Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal A-Fers.

Thank you.