Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF Full Podcast 2/8/2025

Episode Date: February 9, 2025

Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok are back on the top rated Legal AF podcast to discuss: the tsunami of injunctions and restraining orders against Donald Trump and Elon Musk in the first 18 days of the administration, with 42 cases already filed and 11 major victories for the rule of law; a brand new federal injunction against Elon Musk stopping him from accessing American’s most private and personal financial and health data; Pam Bondi’s destruction of the klepto busting task force, which is a win for Putin; and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Support Our Sponsors: Armra: Head to https://tryarmra.com/legalaf or enter promo code: LEGALAF to receive 15% off your first order! Graza: Go to https://graza.com and use code: LEGALAF to get 10% off your Graza Starter Kit and get to cookin' your next chef quality meal! Magic Spoon: Get this exclusive offer when you use promo code LEGALAF at https://MagicSpoon.com/LEGALAF Miracle Made: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://TryMiracle.com/LEGALAF and use the code LEGALAF to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. Check out the NEW Popok Firm: https://thepopokfirm.com 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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Come and get me! Captain America, Brave New World. Seed and IMAX this Friday. Hit tickets now. A tsunami of injunctions issued against the Trump administration for their unlawful acts, whether it was the late night Friday order, forcing the treasury department to stop Elon Musk and Musk's team from getting access to information, also compelling Musk and Musk's team to immediately destroy

all of the data they've obtained. That was a big win by attorney generals across the country, led by none other than New York attorney general, Letitia James. She's back, whether it's Trump appointed judges like Judge Carl Nichols ruling against the Trump administration on their attempt to just totally fire pretty much everybody from USAID with very little notice and thus stranding people internationally, potentially killing hundreds of thousands or thousands of people who may not get the medications that they need. An injunction was issued there, whether it was injunctions related to the FBI class actions filed by FBI agents against the Department of Justice for

trying to out their names to January 6th insurrectionists, whether it's injunctions like the one issued from the state of Washington on the issue of birthright Citizenship and that birthright citizenship is in the Constitution. Hence you can't via executive order overturn the United States Constitution Whether it's injunctions emanating out of both Rhode Island and Washington DC to stop emanating out of both Rhode Island and Washington DC to stop Donald Trump's government funding freeze or whether it's an injunction also in Washington DC to stop Donald Trump's cruel and unusual policy to take trans women in prison, take off their clothes and throw them in general population in male prison showers.

Folks I'm not making this up. The judge said that is cruel and unusual and absolutely a villainous act to do. Federal judges are standing up, even Trump appointed judges, Reagan appointed judges, Democratic appointed judges. We're seeing that. And as that's happening, the Trump administration is just further trying to tear down our government every single day, tear down the guardrails of law and order, full buyouts to try to push out everybody in the CIA, trying to push out people in the counterterrorism division of the FBI, dismantling the kleptocracy unit, an elite special division within the department of justice that seizes Russian oligarch asset used to try to

spread disinformation and try to influence and corrupt people in the United States. Is that a shocker that that's one of the first things that the Trump administration tried to dismantle? And also now we're seeing, Musk and his band of misfit 19 and 23 year olds trying to do this now in each agency, forcing AGs, civil rights groups to play whack-a-mole here to stop them, identify them.

And Musk has literally his team of kids kids or they're not kids, they're adults, but they act like kids, um, sleeping in the government agencies, like with their families now, restricting access to government workers. I mean, this is about we, the people who are these oligarchs literally cooing in our, our buildings that belong to we the people well the law is fighting back this is what we said was going to happen with AG's and lawyers stepping up in this time it means a lot for us to cover here on Legal AF as well let's bring in Michael Popak Mr. Popak how are you

doing sir on this weekend? Barely sleeping with what's happening with the winning of that. The rule of law, um, is doing against the Trump administration, 41 cases in 18 days. And so far the track record is 11 wins and two temporary setbacks for the rule of law against the Trump administration. Those are Hall of Fame numbers right there. I never tire of that kind of winning. The 41 cases are all in the right places. They're in the original colonies of the United States, from Rhode Island down to New Jersey. They're in the West coast from California up to Washington in DC, and multiply filed on major issues that Donald Trump has put front and center in front of

the American voter and the American people because of his exec, these all stem from his executive orders, most of them signed on the 20th of January on day one. So if you're doing the scorecard at home, we're going to cover a lot of these today, you've got just on the temporary restraining order, the injunction tsunami that you let off with. We've got, we had two about birthright citizenship as attempt to rip out the heart of the constitution when it comes to citizenship by executive order. We have two about cutting off the spigot in a mean-spirited, inhumane way of federal funding to the states and to not-for-profits. That's separate from the TRO about shutting off $60 billion of aid across the world to the

disadvantage, which also promotes our business interest and our diplomacy. Again, all done without giving anybody warning, not even saying like a sundowning, like, well, well, you know, six months from now or three months from now or a year from now no overnight so that people's lives are literally turned upside down as is the American economy so we got a couple of TROs about federal funding one about the inhumanity and depravity of putting transgender women in male population jails we've got two temporary restraining orders blocking some version of Elon Musk and Doge. We've got one temporary restraining order preventing the firing of government employees with the fork memo, which we'll talk about more. We've got a temporary restraining order arising out of

two FBI agent cases about their being decapitated and thrown out of their positions. We've got one involving USAID that you touched on, issued by, a lot of them even issued by Trump judges like Carl Nichols. We got two separate, that's temporary restraining orders. Then we got two preliminary injunctions, which is the next level,

soon to be three preliminary injunctions concerning two on birthright citizenship and one I'm sure it's gonna be handed down on Friday in New York about Elon Musk rummaging around our privacy, personal information, financial information, health information all housed on Treasury Department servers. The Trump side has only gotten, and their Department of Justice has only gotten two minor wins out of those cases. So it's 11 and 2 folks in favor. The two losses are relatively minor.

One was about the Office of Personnel Management and its server and whether Elon Musk again could access it. And so Randolph Moss, a judge, denied the TRO for now. And another one about Doge had a standing issue as it was being raised by labor unions, and which is another element I want to continue to talk about here on Legal AF, is that who are the groups that are obtaining these wins? We know the judges are, but who are the groups that are leading the charge that we're supporting? It is the attorneys general in 22 states, which are democratic. It is labor unions who are

representing, some of which who didn't defend Biden or Kamala Harris or support them, are now stepping up for their federal workers who were being canned left and right or the issues related to that. So you got unions joining together with attorneys, generals, joining together with the ACLU and the NAACP and other brand new groups that were just created like Norm Eisen's Democracy Forward Group, who was just created since the election almost, or since the end of the campaign, to do what we're doing now. This is exactly what you and I hoped would happen, but I'm getting, I'm seeing results that are even greater than I thought. As I told people as a historical context, first Trump administration, 1,000 cases or so were filed by some of these same groups.

And they were an 80% winning percentage, but because Donald Trump has gotten more unhinged and more outrageous and has decided that what the lesson that he learned from the Supreme court decisions that benefited him in the immunity decisions and on a ballot and the criminal law area, this would, this has empowered him in his mind with the lesson he learned is I can try anything and I'm going to do anything as the executive branch to violate the separation of power, to violate the Administrative Procedures Act, to violate the First Amendment, to violate the take care clause of the Constitution. So we're going to be you and I, and I don't want people to think it's like a

repeat episode or a repeat hot take, but where you're going to hear a lot of the following over the course of the next four years, breaking news, a temporary restraining order, Trump administration under the Administrative Procedures Act, the Constitution and First Amendment and these groups because we are now averaging by my math 18 days and 41 cases, almost three cases a day, which is about what I said it would be. And I don't think it's just the first 18 days. I think we're gonna have three cases a day for the whole more than 1,200 or so, what is it, Four times three, it's more than 1400 days

of the administration, because it's gonna be triple what happened in the first administration because his outrageousness has been empowered and tripled. When you talk about those three cases, by the way, those are like, I guess the three major headline grabbing cases that are kind of being brought as class actions. But like we could equally mention the fact that one of the members of the National Labor Relations Board, the first black female National Labor Relations Board member who Donald Trump fired. She filed a lawsuit as well saying that her termination was not for cause, that Donald Trump did not have the right to fire her.

So there's even employment actions at the highest level from appointments like her. Donald Trump also on Friday fired one of the members of the FEC, the Federal Elections Commission. Donald Trump didn't like her more, I guess, a more liberal member or someone who, I guess, actually wants to enforce FEC laws. Donald Trump fired her. I expect there to be legal action there.

The inspector general's legal action there. The inspector generals, legal action there. Remember, remember, don't forget that story where one of the first actions that Donald Trump in his regime, we shouldn't call it an administration. We should use the right labels and we shouldn't be afraid to talk about that this is a coup on our government right now, and this is an authoritarian regime. These aren't scandals in the traditional sense that are taking place, right? This not I didn't have sex with Lewinsky. This isn't stuff like Iran-Contra, which is bad. The bad scandals, sexual scandals, this is not that.

This is the wholesale using playbooks of authoritarians that have been tried, tested, and proven in places like Hungary, Victor Orban by Vladimir Putin. It's being utilized in El Salvador. It's being used by Malay in Argentina, often places with very high poverty rates as well. And this is a playbook that they are following. And so this regime is engaged in a constant, unlawful act, tsunami as well. And the last place on this battlefield, because Congress, which is controlled

by Republicans, spineless MAGAs, they've given up their co-equal branch role. So that was one of the checks, right? So the other check when you don't have that co-equal branch are the courts. Now we know our Supreme court is compromised. That's a problem. There's six right wing and then there's three liberal. Now, if you want a silver lining in the way the

Supreme Court is, you have to look a little bit to Justice John Roberts, who don't, when you have to say that, you're already saying, uh, that's kind of a rough, a rough hill to fight on. Justice John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, who sided with the liberal judges to not stop Donald Trump sentencing from taking place, they have indicated at least through justice John Roberts, annual report, remember we covered that here. That's why we cover these things.

Cause justice John Roberts seemed to put in his annual Supreme Court report that the threats of violence, dismantling law and order, not following court orders, he seemed to be talking about Donald Trump, who he gave absolute immunity to and essentially giving a warning of, hey, we gave you absolute immunity, don't make us look stupid. Well, Donald Trump is the king of making everybody that tries to appease him look stupid. And so that's what we're going to see if that develops, but I'll tell everybody to go this, do this, go and study Victor Orban's rise in Hungary.

Victor Orban was once a student protester. He was a liberal guy. And then he changed to become very right-wing. He kind of w why do people, why do all the right-wing magas like Viktor Orban? Because he created in Hungary, the types of gerrymandering that was then adopted in that laboratory for autocracy here in the United States, where Orban basically when he took power, gerrymandered the liberal parties out of existence and then basically made it so he doesn't lose elections.

He ripped apart all of the institutions in Hungary and started ruling like an authoritarian. That's why, whether it was Tucker Carlson or Elon Musk, why they applaud him so much. I want to share this with you as well. As we try to talk about, you know, these injunctions, the big class action style lawsuits, the individual lawsuits, you know, at its core, you know, what's happening though is, you know, Elon Musk is given free reign on our government. Just think about that.

Donald Trump has allowed Elon Musk to go into different agencies to take your data, to take we the people's data, whether it's access to the trillion dollar transaction payment systems, whether it's medical information, whether it's geological oceanic information, bank account information, you know, you name it. They go into different departments and Elon Musk has his own oligarchical business interests as well. Elon Musk's made a lot of his money getting funded

by the federal government and then, you know, turning against the federal government, recapturing the federal government now for his own oligarchical purposes. But so what Musk does is he's got his little team of like hackers. And it was interesting to note that in the New York Attorney General case, in the federal opinion

by the judge that was issued on Friday night, he referred to them as hackers and as what took place as hacking of your social security, our banking information. So Musk takes these people, they go into these various kind of government agencies, and this is what's been reported in the agencies. They live in the agencies. They bring like sleeping bags in the agencies. They show up and then they like torture the government employees.

And they tell the government employees, hey, justify your existence. They kind of mock them, they treat them like crap, and they try to kind of push them out, make their lives miserable while gaining access to your data. And now we're learning about the types of character or the lack thereof of these people. And surprise, surprise, you know,

Elon Musk who posts this hateful misogynistic stuff and has turned Twitter into X, which is now this fascistic authoritarian hellhole when you actually like look at what the type of content that's being flooded there by bots and being pushed and that he's reposting as well. You know, one of these people were, um, you know, very racist, supports eugenics talks about, you know, how we should never, you know, negative stuff about

Indian people and never marrying outside of the race. So I think Trump's chief of staff, Susan Wiles, you know, basically forced some of these, you know, racist Elon people to resign. But then during, but then JD Vance and Elon said, bring them back in. They're just kids. They're just kids. They made a mistake. Let them get back in. Well, these quote unquote kids never apologized for what they did.

Number one, number two, even if they did, they shouldn't get access to your data or your information. And so I'm just trying to understand this. They're kids when it comes to saying horrific racist things, and then that's okay, and then they should be brought back in and Trump decrees they get to come back in, but they're adults when it comes to taking your data and having all this in. They're so immature, but now they get all of your data. This was at the press conference with Donald Trump, where he was asked about bringing back these Elon Musk

thugs to take your data. And just watch how Donald Trump handles the question. Play this clip. As part of this Doge cost cutting effort, one of the Doge engineers was fired for some inappropriate posts. The vice president says, bring him back. What do you say? I don't know about the particular thing, but if the vice president said that, did you say that?

I'm with the vice president. Thank you, Peter. We haven't heard anything from JD Vance or being with the vice president, but the vice president does say, bring the racist pro eugenics person who took your book, who had access to your private information, bring him back. And then Donald Trump's, I got to listen to JD Vance. Let's, let's bring them back. Popak, I want to bring you in and we got to go through all of the cases right now. Um, one by one, the various injunctions. I just wanted to frame it that way. I wanna do this, Popak.

I'm gonna give you the next segment. I talked way too long there. It's an appropriate time to do a quick break. I wanna give you the segment though, talking about AG. Go through the injunctions about the freeze, one by one, explain to people the import. Don't worry, folks. I know I spent a long time talking there

and I gotta let Popak, Popak gets the whole next segment. But in addition to getting the next segment, Popak started the Popak law firm and it's crushing it. And Popak, I think it's great work. I know lots of people were asking you, hey, if I've got cases, even cases like if I was in a car accident, if I was sexually

harassed at work, if someone in my family suffered a catastrophic injury, you get these messages all the time. You weren't able to help, so you started the PO-POK firm just to help. You're working with Big Auto, who has top lawyers across the country as well. You want to make sure you get thousands of phone calls since you've announced this, so it's important that you have it all. But just again, tell people where they can call if they've either been into an accident

or they have someone that they know and they want the PO-POK firm. Where do they go? Yeah, I really appreciate it. Everybody's very, very supportive of it. People know that I'm a practicing lawyer for the last 35 years. I was in bigger firms and big firms.

You and I litigated cases together and separately and all of that. And I get, and I've always gotten a lot of phone calls and contacts and DMs from people about their cases and certainly, you know, it wasn't doing those because we're sort of dedicated here to the Midas Touch Network. And at a certain point, as I've said,

I've just decided, all right, people want me to be involved in cases, people want me to help them with their cases, there's a natural fit to do it. But let's be frank, I'm one guy. And I don't have a thousand people and a thousand lawyers to work with. And so, you know, I searched around

for a good collaborator and knew the guys and the people at Big Auto. And Big Auto has these amazing personal injury and other types of injury damage type lawyers around the country which kind of gave me instant 50 state presence if you will, which I think I needed for our type of show and our type of audience which is in all 50 states

and 138 countries. So it was really by demand, I was like, I'm gonna set up this firm. Because people are asking about it and asking for it. And its focus is on all sorts of ways that you can get injured, as you outlined. It doesn't it could be auto, which is, which is a natural for big auto, but they do everything else that we do, you know, civil rights violations, employment law cases, you know, constitutional, you know, issues. So whatever it is that whatever it is, you can come to 1-877-POPOC-AF, or come hit the website at www.thepopocfirm.com and I'm all over it. It's just a way to kind of

continue what we started together as a legal AF audience and building on that. We're always very loyal and appreciative to our audience. We thought this is something that they've wanted. And so, you know, I set it up. Amazing. Everybody hit subscribe right now on our YouTube channel. We're getting close to 4 million subscribers.

When we get back, we're gonna talk about every one of those injunctions. You may wanna get a pen when we go back, so you can take notes to follow all of this. A lot happening. Let's take our first break of the show. Your nighttime bedroom temperature has a huge impact on your sleep quality.

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Thank you to our pro democracy sponsors right there. Michael Pope, let's just get into it right away. Yeah, there have been numerous injunctions filed. We talked in brief about them at the beginning. We spent five to seven minutes on them. Repetition is the best form of trying to keep track of all of these. So why don't we start with the most recent one, I guess,

from Friday night, one of the most recent big ones, New York attorney general, Letitia James, she announced this big win. Why don't we start there and go through the others? Sure. And look, we have to talk truth to each other before we can talk truth to power. And so that's one of the reasons that you and I established this venue of Legal AF. And now's the moment for us to keep track with our analysis and our commentary for our

audience. And so let's do it. We, you know, I joked on a recent hot tech. It's like, I know you think this is a repeat. This is not a repeat. Newsflash, temporary restraining order from a federal judge against a Trump administration policy that maybe involves Elon Musk. We're going to be talking a lot about that over the next four years, unfortunately, as Donald Trump has completely abdicated his responsibility as the constitutionally appointed president of the United States to an outsider who was not confirmed by the Senate, or as Letitia James, the New York Attorney General said in our own website posting, the world's richest man is no longer going to have access, at least for now, to our most sensitive and private financial and health data. Think about out there what

you've had to provide the government in order to get your benefits or in order to get, you know, the things that you're entitled to. Social Security, disability, veterans benefits, student loans. Think of the medical information you've got to provide to them. Scott Bissette, who's our treasury secretary, and name only, he's a puppet apparently for Donald Trump and his worst urgings and for Elon Musk, ultimately, immediately threw the keys to the kingdom over to Elon Musk, not confirmed by the Senate, running around with a phony organization called Doge and just said, sure, you can rummage through the servers

containing the confidential information, the privacy breach of a level we've never seen. And we were all like, no, no, you can't do that. And a couple of federal suits got filed back to back. You and I talked about just, this is actually the second temporary restraining order in 48 hours. Judge Colar Cotelli, a senior judge in the District of Columbia, stampeded the Department of Justice and the lawyers for the other side into a

temporary restraining order that was agreed upon that was in place that covered most of what just happened in New York in terms of stopping Elon Musk from doing it. Scott Bassett who I mentioned before I lost track of my thought there, he actually had the nerve, I couldn't think of the word, to tell Bloomberg News that don't worry about Elon Musk, they're just trying to figure out how to make it run more efficiently and save us money. They're not just a roving band. They are a roving band of rogues who are rooting around in our most private information, Scott. I hate to differ with you and debate you on this, but that's

exactly what they're doing. And nobody buys that this is all about making your check show up more efficiently in your bank account. I would, nobody who gets benefits or entitlements from the government, we've never had a problem. My mother gets her Social Security deposited in her bank account on a regular basis, anybody else does too. So what's more efficient about how the payment system is being made? That's not what they're doing with their sleeping bags and their keggers and their foosball tables or whatever else they're moving in, creating some sort of Twitter, Tesla, WeWork thing

in the middle of my treasury department. Like get your myths off of my federal funds and off of my information. I mean, that is the thematic here. So, Coler Cattelli, she gets them into a TRO. And to answer a question that often comes up in the chats and it came up with me on PO-POC Live on Tuesday, the new podcast, why are there multiple lawsuits

and why are there multiple injunctions and what do you do about them? The reason that you and I are reporting on multiple injunctions about the same topics is because they're brought by different groups in different courts in sort of a portfolio method. You file in various courts hoping that you'll then, if you get a loss here or there, you still have a win and you can take that to the right appellate court. So you'll do West Coast, East Coast, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Illinois, DC, and then see where you are.

Right now, it's an embarrassment of wins, of riches, for the rule of law and democracy, because they're 11 and two, and they're getting double injunctions on the almost exact same topic. So how it works is those injunctions, they can both be nationwide, they both, they may not be exact,, the judges are not drafting them

exactly the same way, but they will stop and block and join the Trump administration and that particular policy until the next round, which is the preliminary injunction round. First stop is like an administrative stay, maybe on an emergency basis, then a TRO, temporary restraining order, on certain factors, and then a preliminary injunction a week, two weeks, three weeks a month later, which then, if it's granted, keeps the stay in place for the duration of the case. Effectively it is the case because, yeah, you can keep trying the case and have a trial, but really these cases rise and fall on

the injunction or the TRO method mechanism and then they go up to appeals. So that's why when I round this out we'll eventually talk about the birthright citizenship started as a TRO in two places by Judge Kofordor in Seattle and another judge in Maryland, and then got converted into preliminary injunctions. And then one has already been up on appeal. Like the Trump administration is taking it to the ninth, which is just where we wanna take it for an appeal from a rule of law side of the equation,

as opposed to taking it to the fifth from a rule of law side of the equation, as opposed to taking it to the fifth in Texas. So back to- And then, Popak, when you're talking about the ninth and the fifth, just so everybody knows, you're talking about the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. As you start going through all these other cases, one other point, sometimes these lawsuits are filed in different courts because different groups have different interests, right? The unions are representing the injuries to the union members. So when the SEIU or when AFL-CIOs

filing, they may enter a stipulation that's going to help the union workers who they're representing. And it's great if it has an effect on more people, but they're focused on their group. So when the AGs are filing, they may want to have a broader scope, more than just the unions, everybody in their state who's going to be impacted. So if let's say the unions enter into a stipulation, that's a win for them. The AGs may say, well, actually we need a court order. That's more expansive. And in the case of, as you talk about these other cases, like Letitia

James got the judge to force musk's team to destroy anything that they got, which went beyond what the stipulation was by the unions. I'll let you go. Sorry. Yeah, no, it's not Yeah, no, don't apologize. You're right. We always like to do legal AF law school kind of in the middle of these things.

And that's the other reason that they're multiply filed and we had multiple overlapping injunctions. So now that's the way to turn back to the New York case. So they ran, and we'll do a little procedural breakout session here as well. They ran in kind of with a temporary restraining order request. Twenty nineteen, sorry, attorneys general really led by Letitia James of New York, who people will hopefully remember and find to be heroic

because she took down Donald Trump personally a number of times, including a four hundred fifty million dollar civil fraud judgment that she obtained after a 12 week trial that we're still waiting on an appellate court to rule on how much of that 450 is going to remain, but substantial win for Letitia James. MAGA and Donald Trump hate, hate, I mean hate Letitia James. People within his inner circle during the campaign actually said out loud on

television that they wanted, they had no, their major desire was to get Letitia James's quote fat ass into jail. Okay. And does, does anybody think that backed off Letitia James? No, she's out front and center with a press conference saying, we just want a major temporary restraining order against Elon Musk and against Donald Trump. So it ends up with with Judge Engelmeyer. Why? Not because he's the judge assigned to the case. He's not the judge that's assigned to this case about blocking Elon Musk and anybody else from rummaging around the Treasury Department servers is going to be in front of Judge Vargas. But we can't wait for Judge Vargas because it looks like her, she wanted the briefing schedule for the preliminary injunction, one level

up from temporary restraining order, to be this Friday. So we can't just sit around and let harm happen, irreparable harm happen, between you know, between Friday night and next Friday a week. So a judge who's sort of the duty judge for emergencies or what he referred to as the part one judge, he looked at the papers, kind of looked under the hood of what the arguments were and said, yeah, this looks like a violation of the Administrative Procedures Act because you can't change your privacy

and data disclosure regulations by just tossing Elon Musk the keys. There's a procedure if you're going to, because people need to know about it in order to publicly comment on it if you're going to change that rule or regulation of the IRS code because this Bureau of Financial Services covers the Internal Revenue Service, disability, all the places that matter. It's probably, even though you and I never talked about it in five years on Legal AF, it is probably the most important federal agency or bureau that

touches more lives that's important to our audience than any other we've ever talked about. It takes in the five trillion dollars worth of revenue from various sources, mainly internal revenue, IRS collections and loan repayment and that kind of thing. It doles out because Congress tells them to dole it out through funding about 4.3 to 4.5 or even five trillion dollars per year of funding. That's why it drives MAGA and Elon Musk nuts. We got to kill the checkbook because we can't kill the fundings because we're dying you know in the courthouses so let's get to the

back door and get to the computers. Like no. So the judge took a look and said this looks like an Administrative Procedures Act violation. Most of Donald Trump's executive orders are just that. This also looks like a take care clause violation and a separation of powers violation under the Constitution. And all of those things together signal to me that you're more likely than not to win. So I'm gonna give you your temporary restraining order right now and here are the contours of it. And this is really all of what the 19 attorneys general wanted. Broad, stop what you're doing right now.

And to the extent since January 20th, you've gotten anything off those servers, you are to destroy that information and not use it. Now some people might say, well, how do we know they're gonna do that? That's a good question. They're gonna have to file a certification ultimately probably with Judge Vargas to show compliance with this order even though the order doesn't technically say that we as federal

court officers know that's what it means. So they better be prepared at the Friday hearing in front of Judge Vargas that you and I'll report on to tell how they've complied with Judge Engelmeier's ruling about destruction and he's serious about it and people say well what if they don't do that? Okay, then the judge will hold a contempt hearing and it'll probably be Judge Engelmeier, although it could be Judge Vargas, about non-compliance and you'll see cabinet like Scott Bessette, the treasury secretary who's been sued is gonna have to show up and explain why the things weren't taken out of Elon Musk's hands. So this is all important because it's a blueprint

for how we win and how we beat a presidency that's trying to rule only through fiat and executive order. The silver lining of that is because Donald Trump doesn't color within the lines and doesn't understand the limits of executive orders. He's constantly touching the third rail of constitutional violation and or Administrative Procedures Act violation

or all two of those things, which gives us the wind at our sail in all of the these 41 cases That you and I over time will talk about many many tonight Lastly on that point before I give you the the others before we move on to the others is the That it stands in stark contrast just to switch the politics for a minute, to the do nothing 119th Congress. They can't get a darn thing passed. They're not even trying. They're basically become, you know,

it's like what's it Mr. Irrelevant, the last pick in the draft, they become completely irrelevant. Donald Trump ignores them, except when he tries to use them for blocking and tackling for any of his crazy policies. But otherwise, you know, we don't talk about policies that they passed or laws that they passed because they haven't done any.

It's all watching this play out and trying to get Donald Trump's most obscenely unqualified cabinet picks confirmed. We'll talk later about Pam Bondi already being confirmed to what she did on day one, and I'll do some criticism about the confirmation process when we get there. So that's Elon Musk being blocked on that. And Elon Musk getting blocked again by another federal judge. We haven't had an overlap of judges yet about his putting in his

words, U.S. aid and it's $60 billion that it gives out as part of our diplomacy and promotion of American interest and economic interest worldwide through a woodchipper. He actually used that reference from Fargo, I assume, he loves that phrase. He just destroyed and fired over a thousand people. This is Elon Musk making his own decisions about things without reference to the APA constitutional law or the Congress or anything else. Fired everybody, turned it over to Marco Rubio

and just in a very inhumane way turned off federal funding to everything overseas, including those that promote our interests. And all that's done, besides the inhumanity of it, besides the people that are literally going to die because they don't have food, water, shelter, disease control, or anything else. And doing it, I just want to make a point here, doing it is not only Russia's wet dream,

but part of the rationale they've been using, both Trump and Musk, is quoting Russian troll and Russian disinformation that's been up on the internet, feeding right at playing right into their hands. Elon Musk said one of the reasons he was getting rid of US aid is because he said $40 million was given to Hollywood actors to go overseas. That is a Russian troll, bald-faced lie. And Donald Trump said condoms to Gaza before he was talking about building condos in Gaza. That's a whole other issue of him being unhinged. The both of those things are complete lies. In fact, USAID before Trump takeover must takeover

had a debunking section on their website about the condoms and the Hollywood BS, which has now been taken down. That's the other thing that fascists do, right? They scrub the website in a Orwellian fashion of anything that doesn't fit with their new narrative, their new false truth, right? Their new profit.

So USAID goes out of business at the same time that American aid through states and not-for-profits gets shut off except for judges stepping in and stopping that from happening. So TROs related to that as well. Uh, every major financial economic thing that Donald Trump has tried to try has been stopped in its tracks by a federal judge with more to come. Where do you want to go next, Ben?

I'm going to keep you on your track. Where do we want to go? Yeah. Let's talk about, um, FBI agents. Let's talk about the buyout offer. Yeah. But first, I think let's take a quick break. I want to remind everybody about, you know, your new venture. Whenever anybody in my Midas orbit is taking a big swing, doing something new, I know you've always wanted to start your own firm. Just give everybody that number

just in case they've got a personal issue, whether it's anything like a car accident or their own employment issue, and they wanna get PO-POK and the network of PO-POK lawyers that they go to. Where do they go? And let me do one pitch also

for Legal AF, the YouTube channel. We haven't talked about it tonight. We're gonna hit 500,000 in less than six months, and that's a testament to our audience, how engaged they are, how loyal they are, and how hungry they are to help us build another pro-democracy channel. I curated, for sure, in collaboration with Midas Touch,

but can't do it without them. And we've just been overwhelmed with the support that we're getting there. And then we're doing our part, putting out the content on a regular basis, six, eight, 10 videos a day, every day, over on Legal AF MTN. Yeah, I mean, look, it was a natural segue for me

after you and I built Legal AF, especially post-election, is like to leave my day job. It's a big leap, but leave my day job inside of a firm that wasn't doing these things. And so I can direct a firm in my own image the way I wanted it to that's consistent with the ethos and the ideals of what I do here on Legal AF. And so the popocfirm.com is where to go.

You'll see we've got about 15 different types of cases that we're interested in helping you with and you can flip through all of those. And then, you know, so I can't be everywhere at once. So I'm only one guy and I am committed to you and your brothers to go full-time really with Midas Touch and Legal AF. And so the law career, I wanted to be able to kind of stand

up quickly to law firm. And so after doing a lot of searching, we decided, I decided to do a collaboration with Big Auto, which is just a name for a group, a network of really sophisticated, high-end lawyers in your towns, in your cities, in your courthouses. And so that's why that collaboration there just made perfect sense, kind of gave me instant breadth and depth in areas and frankly in states where I don't regularly practice. So, uh, and the 800 number is easy. It's 1-877-POPOCK-AF. 1-877-POPOCK-AF.

Everybody make sure you hit subscribe now help the Midas Touch YouTube channel get to four million subscribers. We're almost there. Let's take our last quick break of the show. This episode of Legal AF is brought to you by Graza. Everyone knows I love food. And lately, what's taken my food to that next level of flavor is Graza. Graza is my olive oil of choice. It's top notch, extra virgin olive oil at an affordable everyday price. Graza is always fresh, never blended and made from one kind of olive from one place,

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All right. Welcome back to legal AF. Thank you to those pro democracy sponsors. Jordy spends a long time negotiating those deals with those pro democracy sponsors, so the discount codes that he gets for our legal AF viewers, it's in the description below, make sure you click the link. We appreciate those pro democracy sponsors. Um, a lot going on in a lot of different, uh, courthouses.

Let's talk about, uh, first let's talk about the federal judge in Boston, who has temporarily it's judge O'Toole who temporarily enjoined the federal judge in Boston who has temporarily, it's Judge O'Toole, who temporarily enjoined the federal government from implementing mass buyouts at federal agencies until at least this week, the U.S. district judge, George A. O'Toole Jr. announced he was blocking the quote fork in the road buyout program temporarily to allow the parties more

time to brief their arguments. Now lawyers from the various unions and other groups that were filing this lawsuit said that number one it's an unlawful buyout because there's no appropriation money for it. So if you take the buyout there's no money from Congress to actually pay you for it. So if you take the buyout, there's no money from Congress to actually pay you for it. So where's that money coming from? The way a country exists, that's a democracy laws have to be passed.

And then the money goes to those buyouts. If that's what Congress actually wanted to happen. Then they also argued that the buyouts were coercive in nature, not actual buyouts, because they were also joined with the threat. If you don't take the buyout, you get fired. So that's not an actual buyout. That's just literally a shakedown, different than a buyout. And so those were the main arguments made there. The judge pressed pause on the buyouts. We're also seeing

the fact that those buyouts have already been demonstrated. I wonder if we're going to see this in the future briefing on Monday, but the buyouts have already been proven to be, you know, kind of fabrications, at least with respect to a bunch of IRS workers who took the buyout. Donald Trump said he's going to fire all the IRS agents anyway. So a bunch of IRS agents said, all right, screw it. We'll take the buy right, screw it. We'll take the buyout, I guess.

And then they were told, actually you have to work through tax season because we actually need you there. And they were like, what? I thought you said you were abolishing the IRS and you were going to start the external revenue service and that all the money was going to come from the tariffs that were going to come from Canada and Mexico and, uh, and, and Columbia, apparently, and Panama and Europe and all these other places you were going to tariff. So you said you didn't need an IRS, um, but now they apparently need an IRS for

tax season. Um, so it just goes to show you that these buyout offers are kind of BS, not kind of, are BS. And here's another point that I'll make as well. And that is, look, the bottom line is that we live in a democracy. So if Congress wants to pass laws and that the laws say we are defunding USAID,

you know, the Congress says we're getting rid of, you know, all of these agencies. We hear by, it goes to the House, Republicans control it, right? It goes to the Senate, Republicans control it, right? It gets signed by a president, Republicans control it, right? So just go through the process. Why do they not want to go through the process? Because they know that they actually can pass it despite controlling all branches. So they're going through a system that's called dictatorship. In dictatorships, somebody, Trump or Elon Musk, decrease it and then it happens. That's not our system. Our system is slower and messier, but it relies, but ultimately it is to build coalitions and ultimately try to express the will of the people.

Because we know the history of authoritarians and dictators doesn't end well for the populations that they rule. America is a reaction that we don't want that. And that's precisely what they're doing. So I think it's important that I make that point there. Also, I want to talk about the fact that there's another case, multiple cases filed actually by FBI agents against the Department of Justice because the DOJ wants to publish the names of the FBI agents so that the, let's be clear why so that the January 6th insurrectionist can get their hands on the information and retaliate against the FBI agents if any FBI agent was involved somehow some way even tangentially in a January 6th related case

which counterterrorism and espionage and top FBI agents would ostensibly be working on because we all saw with our eyes that there was an insurrection attempt of the Capitol building. They've been getting fired, but not only that are being placed on leave. They want the DOJ wants to just make their names publicly available. And, you know, all of these FBI agents have said look these insurrectionists these bad people these oath keepers these proud boys who Donald Trump pardoned they're gonna go they're gonna kill me they're gonna try to kill my family members they're gonna try to kill people that I

you know people that I know my kids and then what Trump's just gonna pardon them again apparently because Trump pardons these violent insurrectionists who tried to kill cops before. So it's not like there's a legal process anymore. Trump has his thugs running around on the street making us all less safe as he guts the FAA and guts all our government agencies, making us all less safe in general.

Biggest flu season ever, by the way. Ebola case in Africa, by the way. It seems like every day there's another plane crash or there's a train being, you know, you know, imploding or something that I'm seeing, you know, or that we're reporting on every single day. We're being, we're less safe in general. Sorry, I digress there, but I think it's important to connect all this to we are less safe under the Trump administration, but these FBI agents saying we're not safe. And by the way, we, the people are less safe when our top FBI agents who are the ones who investigate trafficking, who investigate drugs, who, you know, who do the fentanyl seizures, they're all getting fired.

And so is our CIA, CIA. In any event, judge Boasberg, remember that name? He's the chief judge in Washington, D.C. He made findings that there's real credible threats to FBI agents. There's now a process in place where, you know, pending a more preliminary injunction, but at the emergency stage, that if any names are going to be leaked, each FBI agent has a two-day period to bring a writ or to file some documents before the judge to stop it from happening. So it was a win for the FBI, a win for the FBI agents there. Popak, there's a few other injunctions that we could talk about. I mean, this injunction that was issued

by Republican Judge Lambert, Reagan appointee on what Donald Trump was trying to do with the transgender women in prison populations. And I should mention as well, I mean, you know, cruelty is the point here. I don't know if anybody saw this, we posted it. Not a lot of news is covering it, but we cover important news on the Midas Dutch Network

so Congresswoman McBride the first transgender women Congresswoman from Delaware and she doesn't like like her whole thing too is People elected me because I helped Delaware not because I'm a transgender woman. So just, I'm not making identity part of my representation of Delaware. I'm just trying to represent the people, but Popak, they try to torture her, the Republicans in the House of Representatives. So one of the things they always do now to bully her is they'll always refer to her as the gentleman or the congressman or mister and so when they you

know there will always be a presiding pro tem speaker and whenever they have Congresswoman McBride speak they'll say what would the gentleman like to say mr. McBride you may speak and so they're doing that that's what the Republicans are doing in this moment of history just just cruel for the sake of cruelty. Like again, even if it's hard for me to wrap my head around the cruelty, but just why, why just be jerks? Like why do that? Just be normal and treat her with respect. Number one. Number two, you have in the prisons, Donald Trump's executive order would take the transgender women out of the people, women who have been there, transgender women who have been in women prisons,

their life, remove their medications, stop them from getting medication. And these are transgender women who have women genitals, breasts and vaginas, move them into the male population, force them to shower with the men, live with the men and take them off their medication. The finding by this Reagan appointed judge, cruel and unusual punishment, cruel and unusual punishment under the United States constitution. And that's similar language to the Republican judge in Washington who blocked the birthright citizenship

executive order of Donald Trump banning birthright citizenship, where that judge said something like, we know that Donald Trump will refuse to follow the law. And this is the one of the most egregious examples of that. So interesting, right? That Washington state judge, Reagan, Lamberth, Reagan appointed judges, almost the Reagan judges using some of the strongest language there, huh? Yeah. And Nichols who's a Trump appointee on the USAID issue. Yeah, the cruel and unusual punishment. It also just shows you that

the Trump administration and MAGA and the Republican Party, I'm not going to call it MAGA anymore, I'm going to call it the Republican Party, it lets the Republican Party off the hook to call it MAGA. The Republican Party has a perverse use of discrimination against transgender people, which they use as a cudgel to go after all of the woke, liberal, moderate, progressive ideals that are in and embodied in our government. There are only 18 transgender people in the prison system. Okay, so to change, I'm not saying it doesn't matter

to those 18, it does, but to like change a policy to force transgender women to be in a male population, you know, to go after these, I mean, this is the right, this is the way the bully pulpit of the presidency and the allocation of resources for our government, that's our focus, to taking away transgender rights, transgender people rights in university settings through changes to Title VII and sports inequality. This is what Donald Trump should be focused on and Nancy Mace attacking her colleague from Delaware saying oh she didn't, she's not historic, there have been men serving in our Congress

since its founding. It doesn't mean, like you said, mean-spirited depraved things. It is hitting a wall that we expected this type of argument, this type of animus driven policy at the it's hitting a wall now in front of federal courts, both Republican judges and try even Trump appointees and others. And it shows you how, how thin gruel the intellectual and legal basis for all of the Trump positions that their Department of Justice is taking. You see it. It's so threadbare that even judges, it's not even passing what you and I have always referred to coming out of law school as the straight face test, which is, can you say this argument with a straight face? And

it's barely that. There was a court appearance recently about back to transgender in the military, transgender people in the military, and the Department of Justice for the Trump attorney actually told a federal judge that even if Donald Trump's actions to ban or reassign transgender people in the military was animated by hatred and animus, it would be okay. And the judge says, sorry? I mean, that's not okay. And here's the four United States Supreme Court cases

that says it's not okay. But this is what they're trotting out and running up the flagpole. Losing, the other losing that's going on as we talk about these cases is the loss of credibility and respect for the Trump Department of Justice people. And that's all you have as an attorney. If you lose your credibility with the jury, with the judge, with the, you know, here with us, with our audience. You don't have anything. You don't have anything. And so for them, this is going to pay dividends into the future for those attorneys general and those unions and those other groups

because these judges in these courthouses that we're talking about. And there's a reason half of these 41 cases are filed in the District of Columbia. This is the, as I joke, this is the revenge of not only the democratically appointed judges, it's the revenge of the Jan six judges who all watched in shock and horror as Donald Trump opened the jails and let the criminals out who attacked our Capitol

after all the hard work the jury and the judges did, including through sentencing. And now these are the same judges. That's why when you mentioned earlier, Judge Boesberg is the chief judge and others. We're gonna hear about Judge Chutkin again and a Judge Amy Berman Jackson again, and Judge Mehta again, and all those,

and Kolar Kitelli again, and all the ones that, because every one of those judges, people forget, this is not, those 1,600 cases that went through the DC courthouse, that was one courthouse. That wasn't like spread out around America. It was the largest prosecution and investigation in our nation's history, the Jan 6. Every judge had dozens of those cases on their docket. And so, you know, they've got, let's just say they got a little bit of an axe to grind here. They're fair, they're impartial, yes, for sure, including Reagan appointees. But we are watching the loss and the diminishment of the Department of

Justice when they need it most as advocates, which is great because this will only help us as these cases continue. Wait, just wait until John Sauer, whose claim to fame is he was a successful criminal defense lawyer for Donald Trump and the appeals, He's confirmed as the Solicitor General, arguing on behalf of the United States of America on these cases at the United States Supreme Court, because he's outlandish. Now, yes, I'll give him credit. He won a couple of cases that were very important to Donald Trump and terrible for our constitutional democracy,

but he takes some crazy outlandish positions. And on these civil cases, I don't think he's gonna have the buy-in that he may think he has at the United States Supreme Court level. It is John Roberts, but it's also Amy Coney Barrett, who's already starting to make her own, kind of moving away from the orbit

of Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas, and standing in the center, center right, center right right, but standing away from those guys. And that's where we have to aim for. Why don't we switch gears for a minute on the same note, Ben, and talk about Pam Bondi's first day after being confirmed, when she's decided that we're getting out of the going after kleptocracies.

We're not going to go after oligarchs in Russia anymore and all of their yachts and the hundreds of billions of dollars that we've been able to collect. There we go. Collect on them and maybe even drop those lawsuits. But we're going to go after terrorists or I don't know what we're going to go after, but it looks like we're not going after Donald Trump's friends anymore. And we're going to get out of the kleptocracy busting business. we're gonna read and my problem I want to leave I want to throw it to you this way bud one thing about cross-examining these people that's not going over well the confirmation process is I would like

somebody to ask the following question what are your day one plans you've been planning you worked on the Heritage Foundation, you were in the America First Policy Institute. I'm sure you've got a script already of what you want to accomplish on day one, including things that have already been drafted. What are they? I want to know what they are right now. And nobody ever asked that question. So everyone's like shocked when she gets in and goes, here's the 26 things I'm going to do. I'm gonna set up a weaponization of a blue ribbon panel to look into weaponization for retribution purposes. I'm going to get rid of the kleptocracy going after money. I don't know where this government gets money from, by the way. If we

don't go after them and we turn off the spigot of the Internal Revenue Service, I don't know how we bring in $5 trillion a year to pay for our- You want me to answer that? Yeah, we don't pay it. We take it from your social security. Right. Entitlement. Exactly. We take it from the people who need it.

We trans we transfer it over to the wealthy people and the government for the purpose of attacking, um, the media going after, going after people who speak out against Elon Musk and Donald Trump on social media. It's Robin Hood in reverse. They steal from the poor to give to the rich. I mean, it should be so obvious that that's like, they're literally doing it in front of our faces. And when people are like, Oh, well, the whole government's like this, it's like,

actually, no, that's not the way it works. But, you know, they live so much in their rage algorithm that Fox and these other right wing propagandists have had them in that some people who are, you know, MAGA supporters just see, hey, this is, this is the game. This is the hustle. This is what Biden and Obama did. So now Trump's just, which is, no, that's not what they did at all.

That this never happened. We were leading our NATO alliances. We were leading in law and order. We were supporting law enforcement, but you know. Can I use one example before you transition and talk about the kleptocracy? There was all this misinformation about Joe Biden and the Biden crime family and money

that Hunter made or didn't make representing Burisma, all this stuff. Cash Patel, I just did a hot take on this, Cash Patel, who's this close to being our FBI director, has between one and five million, this is self-disclosed, one and five million dollars of a parent company who's in China, because he did consulting for them, whose main business is making fashion in China using forced labor of the Igar minority in exploiting the Igar minority in China.

Eager's, yeah. Eager's, yeah. You and me with pronunciation sometimes. But right, so he owns stock in, he was given stock as his fee in Sheehan, right? And then, and nobody cares. Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton, MAGA MAGA, and our Secretary of State, did a whole expose about Sheehan and blocking them from getting SEC approval for going public because of forced labor use. The America First

Policy Institute formed by Stephen Miller where all these people were in their shadow government days where all they had where they were all fellows including Pam Bondi and and and this one, Cash Patel, wrote a whole white paper about genocide and focused on a Shian. And yet this guy says he's not gonna sell the stock that he hasn't yet earned. It's still being paid out to him investing because he doesn't see how that would impact anything that he would have to do in the remit of being the FBI director. I don't know, human trafficking? I mean, the level of denial, this is beyond not passing the straight face test.

So we're okay with that, with him becoming the FBI director, but we were worried about Hunter Biden being on a board. You know, look, I don't want to fully get into the Hunter Biden stuff because then I get into a both sides-m and then I elevate. Hunter never served in a government position under the Biden administration. He never had any position of power to do anything period, full stop. He didn't make millions of dollars, you know, full stop. And also the Burisma board was actually, the purpose of it was to put somebody

who was more reflective of democracy to push Burisma away from Russian oligarchs a little bit towards the West. And Hunter was recruited by the Democratic president, pro-democracy former president of Poland to do it. And it was at a time when everybody thought Biden was never going to run again. So I just wanna give those facts and he never had a position in the, in the Biden

White House. Pam Bondi. Pam Bondi was in the Oval Office, chilling with Donald Trump and Clarence Thomas when all of this was announced. Just as Clarence Thomas was hanging out in the, in the Oval Office with Trump and Bondi. There's a photo of them together. So literally a judge who has been bribed off by the oligarchs next to the attorney general, Pam Bondi, um, and Donald Trump all there together. This, as they dismantled the kleptocracy unit that went after the Russian oligarchs money in the United States. So that's gone. So what does that mean?

That means that there's nobody who's gonna be able to prosecute the Russians going around the sanctions. So right now, you know how Donald Trump's like, I guess I'm gonna have to tariff Russia. There's, you don't need to tariff Russia. Tariffs on Russia would be a benefit to Russia because that implies they could open up their trade into the United States, which they're sanctioned from doing.

So the kleptocracy unit would seize the yachts, seize the money that was being laundered into the United States. So now Russia is going to push all of this was a major win to Russia to evade the sanctions, push their money into the United States. And now there was a slush fund of money, that billions of dollars that was already taken from oligarchs that now is going to be used. We don't know what, in a cryptic memo, Bondi says for other purposes, but one can assume that because Trump's talked about creating a sovereign wealth fund with Elon Musk, which basically means a pool of money. That's probably, you know, and

look, if America is running, if Trump is adding trillions of dollars in debt, you don't do sovereign wealth funds. In the United States of America, we would not want state-run sovereign wealth funds are you know, they betray everything that they claim that they stand for it's not about governments taking sovereign wealth funds and doing good projects and taking your Social Security money to talk with it. So when you talked about the Clarence Thomas, let's keep that up there for a minute. When you talk about the Clarence Thomas photo with Pam Bondi and and Trump, I have a photo in my office, a famous photo in Havana of

Al Capone with the chief judge of the Miami-Dade Circuit Court and the mayor of Havana. It's a very famous photo and it just sort of reminded me of that. This sovereign wealth fund boondoggle, just so people know, it is where the government uses your taxpayer dollars and funds that they have to invest in private companies. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Norway, and other places that have a surplus, in other words, they take in more money

than they spend on social services and other programs, they sometimes do that when their economies are not our size and otherwise oligarchs do it. It's an avenue for corruption. It's a way for Donald Trump to avoid Congress and its appropriations role under our Constitution and have a slush fund through sovereign wealth that he can dole out by avoiding Congress directly to his friends, investors and special projects like TikTok.

He even mentioned maybe the sovereign wealth fund meaning you and I are gonna buy a Chinese entity off of China called TikTok because Donald Trump wants you to. And so even the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch came out and said, this is a destroyer of wealth. So that was the headline, Donald Trump, destroyer of wealth. And, but every time you hear, we're going to get rid

of a fund of money coming in or divert it, then you're gonna see it in places popping back up where Donald Trump can control it. He doesn't want to turn it back to the general treasury. He doesn't want to turn it back where it's supposed to be constitutionally for the Congress to handle. He wants a presidential slush fund. And that's why the sovereign wealth thing is so shocking. And then they're lying about it on top of it. Scott Pesent, the Treasury Secretary, said, well, we'll just monetize our assets. Okay. The United States has $5 trillion worth of assets on a balance sheet. Yes, there's a balance sheet, but like half of it is equipment

and property it owns. How are you going to monetize that? Put it on a collateralized shelf and sell stock in it. I mean, you could try to do it like a collateralized mortgage unit and try to sell it off. Or and then the other half of it is student loans. So how you I mean, you're going to package them all up and sell off people's student loans so people can invest in it. It's just it's just it's just nonsense. It's like using our money to buy Bitcoin and cryptocurrency to benefit Donald Trump and others to create a strategic stockpile. You know, this is not where as I said in a

hot take, get your hands in your midst of my public money. If you want to go, y you all came from business, if you wanna stay in business and go with the credited investors who have money and you wanna go sell them on whatever you wanna, go do it. But the treasury, the US treasury is not your plaything, is not your personal piggy bank.

And that's why we have to call out every one of this. But all we're watching, whether you put the name Pam Bondi in, or you put the name Scott Basentin or Marco Rubio, these are all meat puppets. These people don't have any real power whatsoever. This is Donald Trump with his small band of Heritage Foundation,

Project 2025 and Elon Musk. This is where it's coming out of that stew of the brain there, and he's just directing traffic, telling Bondi what to do and Scott Pecette what to do, and Elon Musk is doing the bidding. As you and I predicted, Elon Musk has effectively become the co-president. I mean, you hear things like the press secretary, what's her name, Carolyn LeVette, say out loud, well, we're gonna let Elon Musk decide if he has any conflicts of interest of his own economics with government service. I'm like, sorry? Elon Musk is gonna decide if he's in conflict or Elon Musk is gonna make direct referrals to the FBI for investigations related to corruption. I'm like, I'm sorry, who voted for this guy?

You know, did you see this, Popak? The United States attorney in DC, I think we have a copy of that memo from the DC attorney. And it just says via X Elon Musk's platform that dear Mr. Musk, we've gotten your referrals. We will be investigating all of the networks and all of the people who have not that one. It's the one that has the DC letterhead on it. It's from Ed Martin, who's the United States attorney now from DC. And he's someone who said that the January 6th insurrectionist should be revered.

And, you know, and he put that memo up. Popak, let me leave us with this right here. Sure. The Wall Street Journal headline from April in the Biden administration, the Wall street journal headline today. United States economy, the envy of the world last April. Today, the mood of the American consumer is souring, tariff threats, market turbulence, calling jitters early in Trump's second term. This is supposed to be the honeymoon period. America already wants a divorce or a

restraining order and lots of groups are getting that restraining order. This is supposed to be the honeymoon period. America already wants a divorce or a restraining order and lots of groups are getting that restraining order. This is supposed to be the time where you rally around, who's ever was just elected kind of regardless of your political party and you cheer the person on as they, you know, it's, it's supposed to be the victory lap. They walk around, they do, you know, they, they do these appearances. Um, and I guess because the super bowls tomorrow, I will, I'll leave everybody with this, you know, point. I represented Colin Kaepernick in his case against the NFL. Um, and I saw a lot of players being

asked questions of like, well, what do you think it's like with, you know, Trump being in, uh, with Trump being in, you know, being at the game, how does that make you feel? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, you know, Colin took a knee, stood up. Donald Trump called him SOB told him to get off the field. Colin stood up for his values. He never got a job again, but Colin can look himself in the mirror and Colin can,

uh, know where he stood in history and to all of these, you know, players and, uh, coaches and others who are normalizing this, uh, fichistic takeover of our country. Those who are normalizing this when it's hurting them and their communities and their families. You know, I'll just say to you that there's going to be a time where you're going to have to explain to, you know, your kids or grandkids or others in your life in general, where you were in this time of history. And what did you do and were you complicit?

Did you obey and did you comply with the orders of the oligarchs? Were you tools of the oligarchs? And when you see Donald Trump sitting in that box, looking down at you, he sees you as his playthings. He sees you as his propaganda tools. And you should know that. Take what you want from it, but know that you're gonna have to look at yourself in the mirror.

And, you know, that's for you and whoever else you won't think that you answer to, to judge that. But you live once and we're all going to, unfortunately, leave this earth at some period of time. So I think you should rather want to live with courage and with dignity than with constant cuts of humiliation over and over again at the expense of this orange blob thing that is seeking to destroy what we all cherished about our great country. I'll tell you where we stand here at the Midas Touch Network and Legal AF. That's

with our democracy. That's with we the people. We will fearlessly fight every single day until they literally rip this microphone from my very hands. We will be here fighting with you, bringing attention to these issues. And as I think we're going to start to see peaceful protest taking place across the country, it's important that we keep growing this network so we know where and how to organize best. So please make sure you hit subscribe. Let's grow this to 4 million subscribers. Check out Michael Popak's YouTube channel, the Legal AF YouTube channel.

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That's Patreon.com slash Legal AF. Subscribe on audio podcasts to Legal AF as well. The Midas Touch podcast actually beating the Joe Rogan show right now was number one of all news, and it was number two of all podcasts in general, and across all categories, thanks to you, and make Legal AF go up on the charts there as well, PO-POK quickly, the phone number,

if they wanted to reach out to the law firm, if there's a car accident, employment case, what have you, what's the phone number? It's 1-877-PO-POK-AF, and the law firm's website is thepopokfirm.com. Let me just say one thing as you gave statistics and talk about our ratings. Let me talk about on the way out,

the good news is America's not buying whatever Donald Trump is selling and he has already, according to the Gallup poll, he's already at the bottom, as you said, the honeymoon period of ratings for a president to start his administration and it's only going to get worse. He's at 47%, which actually sound high for me,

and it's the lowest of any president since 1953. It's 10 points lower than Joe Biden. It should be in the 60s and 70% during the honeymoon period. So he comes in at the lowest historical ratings in the history of the start of a presidency And it's only gonna go downhill from there We'll continue to cover all it from how the how the lawyers public interest groups attorneys general Unions you name it might as touch legal AF and how we're winning in courts the right courts around America

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