Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Legal AF RESPONDS to BREAKING Legal News NOW

Episode Date: January 26, 2025

Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok are back on the top rated Legal AF podcast and debate whether Trump's use of Executive Orders to govern actually plays into the hands of the Democrats and others concerned with the rule of law; how the Democrats can use Trump's pardoning of the Jan6 criminals against him; Trump's illegal efforts to fire almost ALL Inspectors General including ones he appointed who are the independent watchdogs of America and agencies, and how they are fighting back in court to keep their jobs, and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Support Our Sponsors: Trust & Will: Get 10% off plus free shipping of your estate plan documents by visiting https://trustandwill.com/LEGALAF Zbiotics: Head to https://zbiotics.com/LegalAF to get 15% off your first order when you use LEGALAF at checkout. IQ Bar: Get 20% off all IQBAR products. Text LEGALAF to 64000. (Message and data rates may apply) Uplift: Elevate your workspace and energize your year with Uplift Desk. Go to https://upliftdesk.com/legalaf for a special offer exclusive to our audience. 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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Visit td.com slash DI Offer to learn more. The executive order calamity. Donald Trump suffers major losses already in federal court. Donald Trump's absurd, unlawful, and dangerous pardons of January 6th insurrectionists, which also turns the entire federal judiciary in Washington, DC against him. And there's already been fallout there as well. Donald Trump's Friday night massacre, where he fired about 14 to 17 different inspectors general. These are the watchdogs embedded within the various department and agencies that

look out for crimes, fraud, waste, and other misconduct. Well, they're fighting back and they're threatening a major lawsuit. Then Donald Trump tried to pull a stunt flying out to California, not returning governor Gavin Newsom's phone calls, but governor Newsom was there on the tarmac showing Donald Trump, who is the alpha in this situation. Just take a look at this handshake. Governor Newsom squeezing Donald Trump's hand, pulling him in, putting his finger at Donald Trump, putting his fist towards Donald Trump and basically saying, if you could read lips like, hey, we're here to be

adults. You want to say what you're gonna say? You could say it to my face. You want to call me Newscom. We'll go out in front of the cameras and all of those keyboard, warrior, social media posts you make with that. Let's, let's be adults or you can do what you're doing online. They went in front of the press. Donald Trump said nothing about new scum, none of the crap that he spews. And it also, I think it's symbolic of what else we've been seeing this week. You got to stand up to the bully.

You can stand up to him quite literally and look down on him. The way Gavin Newsom was as Donald Trump tried to wear those like three inch weird brown heels as well. And you do it in the court of law. You do it by pushing back, punching back, fighting back in the court system. The inspector generals are doing that. We're seeing attorney generals doing that. We're seeing private lawyers do that as Donald Trump's trying these, you know,

raids, these ICE raids at schools and work sites, causing work productivity to decrease significantly as Donald Trump's trying to change birthright citizenship, which is a right embedded in our constitution, where even a Reagan judge in the state of Washington said, I've never seen such an egregious violation of the constitution that is so clear cut. And what Donald Trump's trying to make arguments that we should look at people who were born here, like, like, like native American tribes. None of them should be citizens at all.

None of them actually belong in the United States of America. Michael Popak, and I will break down all of the happenings. Week one of this chaotic administration also worth noting the main lawyer at Doge quit resigned, uh, this private lawyer, Bill McGinley, who was basically the legal muscle behind Doge, he left Elon Musk, who was supposed to get an office in the West wing. He's been kicked out of that by Susan Wiles. Vivek Ramaswamy is out of Doge.

A lot of chaos there, Michael Popak. This is week one following the least watched inauguration in history. Trump has the lowest approval going into an inauguration in history, the worst ratings. He had to cancel the outside portion because people didn't show up and he blamed it on the cold weather. A lot to discuss. Hey, is it only week one? So when you put up, maybe salty can put it back up. That that photo of,, we'll start there with

Newsome and Trump. I also see, if you could put Melania in the picture, show that video. Melania was actually showing the alternate uniform for Trump's new militia. See that? See her uniform? I'm sure, what kind of outfit is that for a first lady to wear? And look out, she knows her husband is getting cuckold here in front of her, even if he doesn't realize it.

I love the Lyndon Johnson pull-in by Gavin there. It says a lot about the future. New York Times is already writing the obituary for the Democratic Party and its leadership. I don't think so, not at all. And just to, I want to read a quote that I picked up from The Guardian this morning from a Republican. We're gonna talk a lot about Republicans opposing Donald Trump and standing up

and understanding they need to do that now more than ever. Tara Setmayer, a former Republican Communications Director, after watching the flurry of executive orders, most of which are unconstitutional and against the law, that she had this to say in observing it, folks better make a decision whether or not they're committed to stopping this extremist rightward fascist march the country is on under Donald Trump and who he's surrounded by. And I agree with her.

And that's why we're here. You commented, and we've been talking about it a lot between you and me and others here on the Midas Touch Network and of course on Legal AF, our new channel together, about what would be the group standing up against Donald Trump and having to do it robustly, in a muscular way, full-throatedly? We're seeing it. 22 attorneys general joined together to go after, hours after it was signed in some weird whooping it up

ceremony in the White House, the birthright citizenship denial executive order. And also strategically, we'll talk about it filed in two separate jurisdictions, both leading into appellate courts that are more moderate or liberal, joined by the ACLU and the NAACP who filed another case against birthright citizenship, also in a very favorable jurisdiction and appellate court. We said right after the election, you and I did hot take after hot take after hot take

to talk about what would happen within hours of this administration. We're already seeing it. This administration is five days old. It's already been blocked by a federal judge, Judge Kofenor in Seattle. Seattle, the site of the, who also blocked one of the first executive orders for Donald Trump the first time around on the, the travel ban on the Muslim travel ban so this group and new groups that have been created in the last year or two there's some out there Norm Eisen is organized some that you and I know and have helped

support who are ready they already have the lawsuits filed so that's off of one executive order we will be, he signed 20 or 30 of them over his other memorandum. And the good news about what we're watching is just as you and I had predicted, Donald Trump has to operate by executive order. Executive orders sometimes are not worth the paper that they're written on, mainly because the Supreme Court doesn't like executive orders about big major decisions. You can easily find ways to challenge them in federal court for violating Congress's statutes and laws or procedures. We'll talk about that today. And or the Constitution.

So when you have to rule by fear and executive order, that plays into the hands of the Democrats and us fair-minded people and plays into our court system. Now, I know the court system, people understandably have misgivings about the federal court system when they watched it with Donald Trump. But now we're talking about civil, constitutional, and statutory interpretation, and that is what federal judges were made for. And we know where to file. The Republicans have what I call, I've referred to now as the Texas two-step. You file in Texas,

you get one of the single judge venues there, you take it to the Fifth Circuit, and then you take it to the Supreme Court. We have our own version of that. We have California, we have Washington, we have New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, the District of Columbia, of course, for many of these regulatory issues, and they all report into very favorable appellate courts.

Sure, we got to end up with the United States Supreme Court. But so far, so far, the Supreme Court is not rubber stamping Donald Trump's executive orders. We're going to see what happens, but my inclination is that they're walking back having empowered Donald Trump so, and they're going to be tough on John Sauer, his former criminal appellate lawyer, now solicitor general, or soon to be solicitor general, when he makes some of these crazy, crazy arguments that are consistent with Project 2025 in the Federalist Society. You know, there's dynamics that's developing is interesting, right? The corporate media went all in on

Donald Trump, they put on their knee pads, they kiss the ring. And they're trying to prop this up, but the American people are seeing visually, these billionaire oligarchs, these broligarchs, sitting there with Donald Trump at the inauguration, being invited to the white house, you see the bro-ligarchs fighting with each other who are all embroiled in litigation already against each other, right? Like Donald Trump brought in Sam Altman and a bunch of other oligarchs to talk about this AI project that they were developing and they tried to give Donald Trump credit

for it and talk about look at all these factories and things that we've just built. Really you built those things in 24 hours or maybe you built them based on the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Act and the CHIPS Act that President Biden did and that's why these massive factories are built in 24 hours. But like Sam Altman, the guy who does open AI, he announced we're doing Stargate, right? And Elon's like, well, I'm Starlink and you're Stargate. And Elon's suing Sam Altman for converting

a nonprofit open AI into a for-profit AI and not cutting Elon in when Elon invested a hundred million dollars into the nonprofit version of it and so Elon starts making posts about like crack pipes and crack and saying look it looks like Sam Altman must have been smoking crack when he came up with saying that they were investing five hundred billion dollars and that like undermined Trump's lie about five hundred billion, a trillion dollars. It's all going into the economy. Whereas President Biden would actually like do these things,

it wouldn't be like we intend to do it. It would happen. The money would go into the economy and then Biden would talk about it. Once it happened, he wouldn't just start making up fake numbers. So that was a big hit to Donald Trump's agenda right away being undermined by those prolegarks. But American people are kind of watching this and saying, what about lower prices? What about that? None of these executive orders are dealing with lower egg prices, making

housing more affordable, expanding health coverage. In fact, the executive orders do the opposite, right? They roll back or rescind executive orders from Biden that reduce the cost of prescription drug prices. It actually makes it more difficult to access healthcare. It creates all of these blackouts across the agencies that are no longer communicating publicly health data or engaging in health-related research. I mean, you've got orders as well that are revoking things like the Equal Employment Opportunity Executive Order of 1965

that was signed by LBJ, which prohibited employment discrimination in federal hiring based on race, religion, and gender because Trump and the MAGA Republicans claim that that is racist. To do that, to prevent discrimination is racist to white people. And by the way, as Donald Trump is doing these ICE raids on, we're learning about the ICE raid in Newark, the ICE raid in Chicago, ICE raids taking place here in California. Like you're seeing what we said was going to happen when you roll back as well, prohibitions of doing raids on churches, schools, places of work. Biden wouldn't have those, allow those to happen there.

What's happening? People in critical fields are not showing up to work. Migrants are not showing up to work. And guess what? Some of the employers who are out there raising money for Trump, they're like, whoa, wait a minute. We actually need a comprehensive immigration strategy. What do you mean? Like the one Biden was proposing that had a very strong border, but recognize

that migrants are working in fields like agriculture and hospitality and construction and shipping and all these other areas and that they're actually needed and there's a way to do this. So they're not hiding and we can, yes, of course everybody wants to get rid of the criminals and the terrorists. That was what was happening already. But Donald Trump, by killing the bipartisan border deal that Biden was trying to pass,

stopped the funding to law enforcement. And by the way, law enforcement and border patrol, they're now pissed because Donald Trump's out there pardoning not just the January 6th insurrectionists, but that old bridge guy, that Ross old bridge guy who was put in prison in 2014 sentenced to life for running the Silk Road website, which was used as a conduit for sex trafficking, massive drug abuse, terrorists would use this program and Donald Trump pardoned Ross Obrich. I mean, like literally this guy's Silk Road program provided more drug distribution than the Sinaloa cartel.

It gave terrorists more weapons than like Al Qaeda. Like that's who we're talking about in this dark web marketplace. Trump pardoned this guy. And then we'll talk a little bit later in the show as well Michael Popak about how Some of the judges reacted to Donald Trump's January 6th pardons of these insurrectionists the Oathkeepers the Proud Boys Everybody got pardoned and commuted. So you either got pardoned the most violent of the violent

They got commuted which means they got released pardon the most violent of the violent. They got commuted, which means they got released. So the head of the Oath Keeper, Stuart Rhodes, the head of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tario, and all of their leadership structure, these are the worst people. Like these are people who tried to kill cops, many of them. These are people who have prior rap sheets, many of them.

They get released and what do they do? They go to the Capitol right away to rub it in the faces of the lawmakers. And I think passively kind of threaten them by going there. Some of the judges, like Judge Mata in DC is like, look, even though you were commuted, you still have to report to me as a federal judge, let me know if you're going to go to the Capitol and what does Trump's DOJ do, Popey? They rush into federal court and they go, uh-uh. if you're gonna go to the Capitol and what does Trump's DOJ do, Popak? They rush into federal court and they go, uh-uh, we want the insurrectionists to be in the

Capitol. That's cool. Let's have them there. And finally, I'll pass it to you, Popak, while all of this is going on, Donald Trump's surrogates are on TV literally calling him daddy. They're like, daddy's back, daddy's back, daddy's here. And I'm not making MAGA Republican leaders refer to Donald Trump as their daddy. And they go on these, and I just think people are like, what the, and we go, yeah, that's what we were trying to point out to you all along, Popeye.

I like that, I like that Passover. we were trying to point out to you all along, Pol Pot. I like that, I like that pass over. All right, why don't I dive into just to show what we're talking about. Let's talk about something that just happened that's really, really important to the law and politics intersection. We've got the birth, let's take birthright citizenship as an example.

Let's bring structure to the show, I like that. No, no, no, I like, listen, that was like my cellist live. That's like my boat block live on Tuesday nights. At one point I was like, if we just put an ad on the end of it, I think we're done. So on the, on the, on the, okay, let's go to cases. Cases.

This is why we have told our audience that ruling by, you live by the executive order, you die by the executive order. Donald Trump knows he can't get a darn thing passed through MAGA Congress. I'm not talking about the Senate and the confirmation hearings. Yes, Pete Hegseth, JD Vance made him the head of the Pentagon.

There we are. Which just shows us, just take a side detour for one second, how the Christian right have so completely supported Donald Trump, they put Hegseth up early because they wanted it as a test case. I'm talking about Trump. They could have put him towards the end. They put him at the beginning of the confirmation process

because they wanted to try to muscle and brass knuckle Pete Hegseth through and find out who would be disloyal to Donald Trump and then pay them back if they canned Hegseth the and find out who would be disloyal to Donald Trump and then pay them back if they if they canned Hegseth the way you know The way that Matt Gaetz never got out of the starting gate then they would have through retribution Which is a hallmark of Donald Trump's current current Administration they would have paid back these people and got everybody else in Hegseth went first and they were able to brass knuckle his way through. He, if he

lost one more vote at the rate he was going, he was about to lose it, he would not have been Pentagon head. That clears the path for Tulsi Gabbard, probably Cash Patel, maybe even RFK Jr. If Hegseth can get through, really anybody can get through. That's how beholden to Donald Trump this party is. And the Christian right wanted Hegseth because of his Christian nationalist views. And that's what's happened. Executive order, though, that's different than getting things passed in Congress in the House. That's going to, 119th is going to be the same do-nothing Congress as 118th.

Except without all, well, I would say except without all the public hearings about Hunter Biden's laptop and pictures of his junk, but they'll do that too. But they're not gonna get anything passed. They're not gonna do anything to egg prices. Egg prices are, you can't find eggs in most supermarkets now because of bird flu and how, and this group of people, Donald Trump as he's busy talking about disbanding FEMA, is not going to be helping you. And FDA regulation and agricultural regulation is not gonna be helping you with your egg prices. So you've got, he can't get it done through Congress,

which means he's relegated as a president to using executive orders, which seemed very shiny at the time. I mean, as the shock and awful as we like to call it, you know, the day, the first day, he's signing all these things. Most of them are unconstitutional. Most of them are illegal. And as they get tested one by one in the court, you will find that. Now, of course, he got the fanfare that he wanted. He got the rally and I'm gonna reverse everything Joe Biden's administration did and what. Okay. He's the rally and I'm gonna reverse everything Joe Biden's administration did and what. Okay, he's already violated the law in a number of ways. He's already

got enjoined or blocked by a federal judge. Let's talk about birthright citizenship. We said he was gonna do this. We said he couldn't do this by executive order. The 14th Amendment section one provides not as a gift as Donald Trump likes to refer to it, as a constitutionally enshrined right. Anybody born on this soil, as long as it's not by birth to a foreign diplomat like the ambassador of France, is a US citizen automatically by the birth on US soil. It's called jussoil. It's one of the, it's one of the, the entire North America uses it. Canada, Mexico, and the US uses it. Some other places do something else, but that's how we've always done it. And it came out of our,

our civil war and our, and all of the amendments around our reconstruction period to try to make newly freed slaves, now black Americans, have civil rights. And from 1868 until 1898, that's how it was done. You're born here, you're a U.S. citizen. 1898, U.S. Supreme Court case takes a look at the case of a baby born to Chinese parents who are still beholden to the emperor of China but happen to be in San Francisco. That baby is a U.S. citizen. How do I know that? Because the U.S. Supreme Court case says it from 1898. We always suspected that they were going to try to use this one line in 14th Amendment section one about subject to the territorial jurisdiction of another power. That does not refer to people that came here and who are undocumented. Because you came here undocumented from Mexico, you're not still bald into cloudy a shine, Bob. Okay?

You know, and your baby isn't either. Or Indonesia, there's a huge Indonesian population in New Hampshire, talk about in a minute. They're not subject to the government of Indonesia and neither are their children. And the executive order said, in a cold-hearted and unconstitutional way, that federal agencies under Trump would tell babies and their mothers that they are not entitled

to federal aid as U.S. citizens. I mean, Head Start for Children, food stamps, health care for children, any of these programs, because they're not going to be recognized as US citizens. Just to give you the population number, in California alone, 25,000 children are born on US soil to undocumented parents. We call them, there's another word for them, US citizens. That's just in California. And so that, in order to change an amendment to the Constitution, there's only two ways to do it. You either pass another amendment, which means you have to get two-thirds of the states and

two-thirds of the House and the Senate, which you're never going to do, or you get the Supreme Court to interpret the 14th Amendment in your direction. Now where has the Supreme Court ruled on a 14th Amendment in Trump's direction before? Oh right, Colorado Insurrectionist 14 section and the third clause. I get that, but I do not believe even have them having rewritten the language of the Insurrection Clause of the 14th Amendment for disqualification, I do not believe that the United States Supreme Court will find five votes to change the language of the 14th Amendment and 125 year old precedent to find that this

child born on US soil by an act of an executive order is no longer a U.S. not recognized as a U.S. citizen. They're either gonna want Congress to do it under their major decisions doctrine or they're gonna want the good old-fashioned constitutional amendment. So I know we understandably have zero faith in the United States Supreme Court, but I don't see John Roberts, who already has this failing legacy, the Dobbs decision ripping away a woman's right to choose, writing the decisions about insurrection and immunity in favor of Donald Trump to get him elected, also having going, yeah, that's fine. Let me see the executive order. Yeah, that's fine. writing the decisions about insurrection and immunity in favor of Donald Trump to get him elected. Also having, going, yeah, that's fine.

Let me see the executive order. Yeah, that's fine. We'll just change the 14th Amendment that way. So the, immediately, I mean, within hours of that executive order, three different groups broke into action that we're gonna talk about here and on the Legal AF YouTube channel

over and over and over again. ACLU that sued the Trump administration in the first go around over 400 times. You can triple that number now. NAACP and the attorneys general. They all, I don't know if they coordinated their efforts, but they certainly had these cases ready to go immediately. They filed in Seattle federal court. They got Judge Koffenor, a Ronald Reagan

appointee who's in his 80s. They filed in New Hampshire and they filed in Massachusetts. 22 states, two cities, and the Indonesian population that came here under asylum in 2023 in New Hampshire, of all places. And they're representing everybody similarly situated. Boom, there they go. Immediately, Judge Kofordor in Seattle goes first effectively. And he calls an emergency hearing and a temporary restraining order to block it, to block that executive order from going into effect to give him time to have a full blown

preliminary injunction hearing on further briefing. And then Donald Trump goes and presses into action literally a lawyer who was in private practice like 24 hours before at a big firm out in California called Jones Day. Leaves Jones Day, goes back into the Trump administration. He had been a right-wing Federalist in other, in the prior administration. He's a, he's, he's maga-maga. He, he clerked for Edith Jones in Texas in the fifth. I mean, he okay, they get this guy Brett Schumate to go appear for the Department of Justice. And he goes in there. And the judge says, All right,

everybody in this place is packed. The reporting is this room is packed for the hearing. And the issue is, is this a constitutionally appropriate? Or does it violate the Constitution, this executive order on birthright citizenship. Shimate gets up, the attorney general, Nick Brown for Washington state gets up. All right, here we go. And you and I have been there in court and the judge starts

off first, hottest of hot benches. I want to ask you one question, Mr. Shimate. He was like one second into like just announcing his appearance. Let me ask you something. Do you believe this executive order is constitutional? Absolutely, your honor. You're always dead when you say absolutely.

Absolutely, your honor. So stop right there. I can't believe that a member of the bar, here we go, here are the ethical dilemma. The member of a bar would come into my courtroom looking at this executive order and tell me it was absolutely constitutional. After he went and said to him, he asked me, let me ask you a question, are these people, these undocumented people and their children,

are they subject to let's say the criminal laws of the United States? Oh yes, they're subject to the criminal laws. So how, and he gave another few examples, so how can you tell me that they're not subject to the laws of the United States, they're subject to the laws of Mexico or wherever they're from in this courtroom? He says, let me tell you something. In 40 years, because this guy's a senior status judge, in 40 years, I've never seen a more blatantly unconstitutional executive order or item in my courtroom ever. Temporary restraining order is granted.

There's some more back and forth, including a great line that really sums up what you and I are doing here and what we're doing over on Legal AF, which is history will, he said, history will look back and ask where were the lawyers and where were the judges? And he announced that in court, meaning we are gonna be the firewall against these fascist tendencies and aspects of Donald Trump's administration. Because I don't want history to look back and say, or to your daughter or my daughter saying to you and I, daddy what did you do during the second Trump administration? You know, I just read about it in school. I'll sit on my lap, babe, and let me tell you all

about it. So this was one of those hearings that you and I have been at before in our own practices where you're about to get up, right? And you realize you should just sit down because the judge is doing the heavy lift. It's blocked for 14 days. I think there's 13 days left. They'll do a preliminary injunction hearing. They're gonna lose that.

In my 35 years, I've never lost a PI after I've won the TRO, the temporary restraining order. So the states are going to win that. And then it's going to go up on an emergency application to the Ninth Circuit, which leans moderate to left. I mean, there's some Trumpers on there now. It's not as reliable as it used to be, but it'll go up to the Ninth. In the meantime, the other two filings in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, which report

into the First Circuit, are going to, they're on their own pace, and they'll set their own, just because one guy ruled, I mean, they'll use that as precedent, but just because one guy ruled doesn't mean the other two are state in any way, they're all independent federal courts. The reason they were all filed at the same time is sort of a portfolio approach,

because you don't know what judge you're gonna get, you don't know what the ruling's gonna be, and maybe you split the difference, this guy says blocked, this guy says, or woman says not blocked, and so on and so on and so on. So I think they're going to go 3-0. I think they're going to get block, block, block. Then it'll go up from the ninth and the first

on an emergency application to the United States Supreme Court. Both the ninth and the first are headed by more moderate Democratic United States Supreme Court justices. So, they'll have to make the initial decision. So we avoid the Clarence Thomas problem and the Alito and all the rest of the problem. And then it goes, I think we're going to be in the United States Supreme Court then within

the next 30 days on this particular, maybe 45 on this particular issue. Exactly what the federal judge Reagan appointee said during that hearing in the state of Washington is really the thesis for why we created this network. It's why I left my private practice. That's why we built this. It's why you made the sacrifices you did to kind of pivot to be able to spend all of this time here.

And it's why a lot of the other lawyers have joined this network to provide this. It's like, where were you in this moment? I didn't go to law school to be an arm of the oligarchy. That's not why I went to law school. It's not why I studied law. It's not why I practice civil rights law. And if I have the ability and you have the ability and this

network has the ability and you have the ability and this network has the ability and legal knowledge to kind of educate everybody on what's happening, the strategies behind it, because corporate media sure as hell ain't doing it. That's the side of history that I want to be on. That's what we're going to do here. That's why it's so important you subscribe to this YouTube channel right now. The subscriber growth here is exploding and it's equally as important you subscribe to this YouTube channel right now. The subscriber growth here is exploding and it's equally as important you subscribe to the Legal AF YouTube channel

because that's where there's legal takes every day over and over again, nuance stuff over there. So make sure you subscribe there. We've got a lot to discuss. We got to talk about those January 6th pardons, how the federal judiciary is reacting to that. We got to talk about those January 6th pardons, how the federal judiciary is reacting to that. We got to talk about the inspector generals responding to Donald Trump's mass termination of them

in violation of a federal law from 2022. They're threatening legal action. Everything you said, Pope Park, right before inauguration, these lawsuits are ready. People are ready to go. The legal community is activated. It's gloves off time, gloves off time. Let's take our first quick break of the show

and we'll be right back after these messages from our pro-democracy sponsors. This episode is brought to you by IQ Bar, our exclusive snack sponsor. I grab an IQ Bar as my on-the-go snack because it satisfies hunger with no sugar crash, and they are easy to travel with. Start the new year off right with IQ Bar's brain and body boosting bars, hydration mixes, and mushroom coffees. Their ultimate sampler pack includes all three. And right now IQ Bar is offering our podcast listeners an exclusive deal. 20% off all IQ Bar products plus get free shipping. The

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We don't have outside investors here on Legal AF. So the way we grow is through those pro-democracy sponsors, through the Patreon.com slash Legal AF so the way we grow is through those pro-democracy sponsors through the patreon.com Slash Legal AF and the fact that you all subscribe here the subscribe to the Legal AF YouTube channel That goes a very long way as well Michael popok. Let's switch gears. Let's talk about the January 6th insurrectionist pardons the way it was described as insurrectionist pardons the way it was described as Donald Trump was supposed to only pardon, it still would have been horrific, the so-called nonviolent insurrectionist. Donald Trump had Pam Bondi, his AG pick, testify and she said

that she was supportive of the nonviolent but not the violent so she's already been undermined by Donald Trump. JD Vance did the weekend shows before saying that there wouldn't be pardons of the violent insurrectionists like the leadership of these terroristic groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. But apparently Donald Trump was getting the pardon list and he was asking about the people and then Trump just lost patience

and he literally said, "'F it, all of them get pardoned, all of them get commuted. And then that's how it happened. That was the, again, the lack of temperament. And then everybody got pardoned, everyone got commuted. And then the federal judiciary had to respond, Popak, break it down what happened there. You literally could not, stay on for one minute, Ben. You literally could not write a book, like Bob Woodward could not write a book about the process that was used by Donald Trump to grant these pardons or even a chapter

because literally from inside the room, we have intel that he got frustrated about a quarter of the way in, threw up his hands and literally as you said, said, F it and pardon them all. That's the process. So it's not like you can't write a book about the process. That was the process, which is scary

for the guy that's got his finger on the nuclear button. That's a scary window into his mental executive function that we should keep a close eye on as this administration continues. Because if that's how he's gonna be. And Hope, I wanna go back to this. Exactly, exactly. It's why you and I always talk about temperament,

character, it's why these oligarchs and CEOs who would never allow anybody even like a Trump in their organization, the fact that they've kissed the ring, character, temperament, leadership, the past ability to deal with challenges, that's why you and I have talked about this type of stuff for this exact reason. Yeah, yeah, so let's talk about the pardons themselves and fundamentally.

First of all, he was so lazy, more lazy thinking that I thought you and I predicted this. I said there's going to be 1,600 to 2,000 pardons in the first few hours. There's more coming. He's not done pardoning the MAGA, Congress people and everybody else. First wave was going to be the 1,600 or 1,500 or 1,600. I thought, okay, well, he'll still be names attached, like an Excel spreadsheet. You know, they have plenty of people on staff. They could have had that drafted up. And I get it. And it just says, everybody will get a pardon. And I direct my attorney general and bureau of prisons,

everybody to work it out. I mean, I'm paraphrasing, but only slightly. That was a half a paragraph, except for eight or nine that they listed that were even too much for him to pardon, which was mainly Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, but not all Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. And they got commutation of a sentence. Quick legal layoff breakout session. Under the clemency powers, the pardon powers of the president, he can either pardon you, which is an absolute pardon for a given period of time or an absolute pardon forever, for any crime that you had committed or will commit or that you've been convicted of, or in the future prosecutor for. It's both backward-looking and forward-looking. You can get that kind of pardon. So that's pardon.

Commutation of a sentence means the person got sentenced, the conviction stays on the books, they're still a convicted felon, but their sentence has been reduced to zero or if it was something like life a death penalty like Joe Biden did, converted into something else. So converted into this case in my example, life imprisonment without possibility of parole. That's called commutation. The difference is obvious.

One, you're guilty, but your guilty, your badge of guilt is taken off the books. And then the other, it stays on the books, but you're out of jail. That's why we saw Enrique Tarrio of all people, who was sentenced to the highest sentence of any of the Jan six defendants, because he, it was proved,

let's just remind ourselves of justice, it was proved beyond a reasonable doubt in front of a jury that he committed the crime of seditious conspiracy, which is the attempted violent overthrow of our government. Sounds bad, right? And he got 22 years, I think, from Judge Maeda.

And he got, by the time the ink wasn't even dry on the signing ceremony for this pardon thing we just put up, Enrique Tarrio was on a plane to Miami, already processed and checked out of jails and prisons. I'm not making that up. Now this other group got commuted. So Stuart Rhodes, the Yale law grad that couldn't figure out how to clean a weapon and lost an eye as a result, the guy with the eye patch, his guilty verdict stays, but he got released from prison. He had 18 years of the books and the rest, Donald Trump effectively wiped out 100 years plus

of prison sentences for some of the most hardened, violent criminals. These are the ones that planned paramilitary operations and tactical operations to storm the Capitol, organize the rabble of all these people, whether they had law enforcement training or military training or not, and turn them into a vicious, not mob, a vicious organized on the fly with communication devices and hand signals and commands as if they were in battle, you know, like on the battlefield,

they were in battle on the battlefield against democracy and led the charge. That's how that all happened because of them. So the judges of the federal court in DC are linking arms spiritually, not actually, and they are opposing Donald Trump and his pardons the only way they know how. If they're forced off of a pardon to dismiss an indictment or to take something off the books,

again, this is all pre-conviction. If they had somebody that's still in the hopper that hasn't yet gone to trial or hasn't yet been sentenced, they're writing long orders preserving for posterity purposes all of the bad things these people did and speaking to history and to others telling them that we can't whitewash, we can't sane wash any of these things. We'll put up some quotes in a minute from, I'm talking about Judge Chutkin, who presided over, over Donald Trump's, uh, election interference case.

That no, you can't whitewash the, the, the, what's the quote Ben? I don't have it in front of me. The feces and what else? Yeah. It's you can whitewash the feces, the urine, the piss, the blood that's soaked on the walls from the people who tried to overthrow our democracy and kill cops, you can give them these pardons and commutations because you now have the power to do so, but history will remember what you did.

And we should never forget about this as a warning about the abuse of power. And by the way, these, these DC judges, these federal judges, all of the cases that are going to deal with a lot of the, um, inner workings of agencies, they work their way through the DC courts, the DC circuits, these executive orders that you and I are talking about and the way that Donald Trump's going to govern, they're going to mainly go through the DC courts and the same judges. So keep an eye on, and we will, we're putting up our poster here in our bedrooms for heroes,

Barrel Howell, the former chief judge of the court, now a judge on the court, Amy Berman Jackson, Amit Mehta, Tanya Chutkin and Judge Cotelli, they've all linked arms. Some of which have said, yeah, I gotta dismiss the indictment because that's what the Article II president did, but I'm gonna do it without prejudice, meaning a future Department of Justice

could bring another case against you, there's no double jeopardy. And good luck to you and get out of my courtroom. A couple of judges did it that way. Judge Mehta, who we're going to talk about now, he decided that because it wasn't a pardon, it was clemency and the commutation of the sentence, that he's still administering justice and can set post-release conditions. So he put a condition on the oath keepers and in particular on Stuart Rhodes that, yeah, yeah, you're out of jail,

but you're still under my auspices and you can't visit the Capitol anymore. You can't visit the Capitol anymore. You're a danger to the community effectively because unless you get my permission, get the court's permission. Well, I said one of two things was going to happen. Either Stuart Rhodes and his group were going to file a motion or the government, meaning Trump was going to step in. Within hours, I think two hours later, Trump filed a two-page motion,

his Department of Justice, trying to tell the judge that he does not have the power to set post-condition, post-release conditions like that because that's violative of the pardon power of the president, citing no cases. And the one case they did cite from the United States Supreme Court, I read it, doesn't really stand for that proposition. Meta, I believe, has what he needs to make his ruling on a motion to vacate the order. I think he's gonna deny it. It's gonna go up to the DC Appellate Court,

which has been favorable for democracy in the past. And then it can go to the United States Supreme Court and they can make a decision as to whether, even with commutation of a sentence, a federal judge loses their power to set conditions of release. Now there is a way to solve this problem, which I've been waiting,

I've been checking the feeds to see it. Donald Trump just has to wave a pardon wand and decide to pardon these people. Now for whatever reason, he chose not to pardon those people only to give them commutation of a sentence. But if he wants to fix made as his wagon, so to speak, he just issues a pardon, which he's allowed to do after the fact.

And it solves, pardon me. And it solves the whole problem. So we're going to have to keep an eye on what Donald Trump. I think he waits for made it a rule, but before it goes to an appellate court, he may just solve his own problem through a full pardon of these people. What do you think, Ben? Yeah, you know, it's just Trump's DOJ is taking the position that all of these

people, even who Trump commuted should not have conditions attached to them. I just want you to, they're going out of their way to do that. Like they don't have, they could just leave it and just be like, whatever. I mean, the judge is saying there are some conditions attached to the most violent people in our community. Like, just check in with the judge if you're going to go to the Capitol, right? And then Trump's DOJ is like, nope, that's where they belong, inside the Capitol. The oath keepers, the Proud Boys. So we know, but we know why we know why we're going to talk about it after the after our break

or whatever, because Donald Trump has been lobbied by the Jan 6th insurrectionist families constantly. He feels he owes them something, and so he's always going to side with them against democracy and the rule of law, just like we're going to see when we tell the Sorted Tale of how Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road, illicit drug, heroin and cocaine distribution, a dark web, how did he get out? Because his mommy, speaking of daddies, because his mommy and the libertarians of all things have been lobbying the crap out of Trump to let this kid out because they see him as the poster boy of libertarianism and he's a crypto bro of the first order. Bingo. Specifically the latter part there, that the Silk Road facilitated a lot of shady commerce.

Shady would be putting it nicely. The conviction was for trafficking terrorist weapons, the most horrific conduct. So, Ross Ulbrich was a hero among the people in the dark web who launder money and shuffle money. And that's one of the main reasons why Donald Trump, who's now in meme coins and crypto stuff and scammy coins and all of these things. It's always traces back to Donald Trump. And, you know, the, the, one of the main reasons why he pardoned these January 6th insurrectionists, you know, where we started this episode, uh, salty,

pull up that video of, of just, uh, the handshake of, uh, Gavin Newsom. Look, Trump is a weak man. He wore three inch heels there. Gavin Newsom was look, Trump is a weak man. He wore three inch heels there. Gavin Newsom was alpha-ing him. Trump, when you confront him to his face, is a very weak person. Trump, like a lot of authoritarians like that, have these psychological complexes, they're pathological,

but Trump's view was, and Hitler did this as well, which is, you pardon people who are the most dangerous thugs and it is a tacit form of intimidation that's what it is. Let me just say before we break for the next thing just just to bring this full circle Jacob Chansley who we talked a lot about on this channel the QAnon shaman you did you see what he posted on his social media after he got his pardon? Summs it up.

I got a pardon, baby. Thank you, President Trump. Now I'm gonna buy some mother effing guns. I love this country. God bless America. Exactly, and you know, I'll just say this to our audience. You know, yes, we get lots of threats here. Yes. This is a daily occurrence here We're not going anywhere. Okay. I mean this network's not going anywhere

This is the time that you stand up. This is the time you put it all on the line And that's what we're gonna do each and every day here. We've got one more quick break in the show Let me remind everybody subscribe to the legal AF YouTube channel It's an incredible channel with meteoric growth. It's needed now more than ever to keep track of all of these things Yes, we have legal updates here. Lots of them on the Midas touch YouTube channel. So subscribe here as well You're still gonna see popok here legal AF here, but I know you crave more legal updates So that's why we created legal AF for all those other updates that you want to see. Patreon.com slash Legal AF, check that out as well.

Popak's putting some great posts there, check that out. And then a reminder to everybody too, our editor in chief Ron Filipkowski has been doing a great job curating MidasPlus.com. So check out MidasPlus.com, it's the Midas Touch sub stack. It is a membership, but you can start as a subscriber for free, test it out, see if you like it. And I promise you that Ron's updates are probably

the best in the business. I mean, he does these incredible daily updates. Mitusplus.com, let's take our last quick break and we'll be right back after it. Are you like me and you made some packs with yourself in the form of a New Year's resolution list? Mine starts with being more present with my wife and daughter, even when my podcast work

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That's 10% off and free shipping at trustandwill.com slash legal AF. Let's face it, I'm 59 and after a night with drinks, I don't bounce back the next day like I used to. I gotta make a choice. I can either have a great night or a great next day. That is until I found pre-alcohol, Z-Biotics pre-alcohol probiotic drink

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Same thing about mitasPlus.com. We really, really appreciate it. So Friday night massacre as it's being referred to, Donald Trump terminates 17 inspectors general. Inspectors general are the individuals who are independent watchdogs of the various departments and agencies. These are people mostly who are appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate.

And a lot of the people Trump fired were people who Trump appointed. These are Trump holdovers who Biden couldn't fire because they're really not fireable. And Biden followed the law, even with people who Trump appointed, but these people Trump viewed as not sufficiently loyal to Donald Trump. So Trump had his director of personnel, a guy by the name of Sergio Gore, and this guy Sergio Gore sent a terse email to all of these inspectors general. And by the way, these inspectors generals have big staffs as well. So the staffs get impacted.

Um, and they, he said, you're fired. You're not needed due to the changing priorities. Your position is hereby terminated. Just the background on Sergio Gore, the guy who's leading Trump's director of personnel. I think it's an important fact. He's a DJ. He's a disc jockey at Mar-a-Lago

and he would be the guy who was like the party promoter at Mar-a-Lago and now he has this position and you know he would be known as the guy who would hype the party like the guy everybody throw your hands in the air throw your hands in the air. That's this guy. And he now is the leading, the director of personnel in the White House. So again, you know, Hegseth, Fox News Guide, defense secretary, the party promoter. No offense to party promoter. DJs, I love DJs, but shouldn't be running the director of personnel and firing inspectors generals. The inspector generals shot back and they said, Whoa, whoa, whoa, these terminations are unlawful. There's a 2022 law that specifically requires 30 day written notice to

Congress. If you're going to terminate inspectors general, and you have to detail specific instances, you can't just say I'm firing them because specific instances where the inspector general engaged in some form of wrongdoing or misconduct leading to the termination, not generalize. So they're saying you violated the law, common theme here, right? Violated the law, violated the law, but these inspector generals are getting ready to sue. They're like, we're not leaving PO-POK.

Friday night massacre, backfires in the Saturday letter. These people were prepared for this. They were ready to do their own move in response. Talk about it. It's not a Friday, yeah, that's the headline. It's not a Friday Night Massacre because it's ineffective under the law and there's plenty of Republicans that agree. Talk about mainstream media. I was reading the article about this to the law and there's plenty of Republicans that agree. Talk about mainstream media. I was reading the article about this to prepare in one of those places and they said they never just come out and say what we say here on Legal AF, that it violates the law.

It appears to violate the 2022 congressional law. Yes, it does appear to do that because that required mandatory language. That required that before the independence of the inspector general is compromised by a political hack firing in the middle of the night, that the Congress not only be given notice, but that they all should be given per person,

not like all 17, changing priorities. I love that phrase. Changing your priorities are no longer ethical conduct. Your priorities are no longer having an independent inspector general making sure that each agency is not corrupt. Yes, I mean, that was a Freudian slip. In Washington, they call it a Freudian slip, somebody accidentally telling the truth. And that's what just happened there. It is a change in priorities but you have to by person, each 17 or 12 to 17, whatever the final number is, you have to say why, the reasons and the reasons can't be I don't like the guy, he's against me. Many of these were appointed by Donald Trump. Now the only one that

survived the phony firing is Horowitz, the guy for the Department of Justice because Donald Trump liked that guy because he's the one that tried to do some reporting about the Russia investigation by Mueller. They're like, keep Horowitz. So it just shows you how politically hacky this is, has nothing to do with it. The problem is it's also up against, there's a rock in a hard place, this letter written by the DJ. It's like, joked with you guys before we get on. He must have fell asleep in DJ class when they taught statutory interpretation, because I love when the head of the entire inspector general group,

inspectors general group, they have their own like union, their own group, and it's the inspector general for the Small Business Administration, he wrote, he said you might want to check in with the White House counsel on this, you know, because it's not lawful. And in doing it, in sending him this note, they're up against that. And the hard place is there's a number of Republicans, including Republican senators, that are on Inspector General caucuses because after the first Trump administration, they wanted to make sure that the independence of Inspector Generals was not compromised by future. So like Joni Ernst, who yes folded like a cheap card

table when it came to stopping Hegseth from becoming the head of the Pentagon, she's on the Inspector General caucus, to inspectors general, to make sure they're protected. So I'm not even sure giving last-minute notice is going to be effective because I'm not sure Congress is going to rally around this mass firing. In the meantime, they're gonna run to court. I'm sure you and I will do hot takes on Monday about the filing by the Inspector's General in court. I think that'll be in the District of Columbia, maybe pulling Amy Berman Jackson or Meta or Beryl Howell or Chetkin or somebody like that. And they're gonna go, I mean, this will be the simplest thing the judge will do all morning in that courtroom.

Let me see the statute. Let me see the letter. Temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction granted. And this is what we were hoping for with the immature, not professional, disorganized group of people coming in with Donald Trump and that they would overreach and that we would make them pay, both here and reporting on it, in the courtrooms, and then at the all-important midterm elections. You want to throw the bastards out? That's where you do it. And in the meantime, we're gonna keep them, we're gonna, we're gonna expose them through, through the court system over and over and over again. People ask me all the time now, besides the threats I occasionally get, the ones I like are

the ones where they say, we want to make a difference. Popok guide us. What should we join? What should we do in our community or otherwise? And I spent a lot of time talking to these people about about things that they can do. But we have a gift in this presidency, a silver lining, and that they're gonna have to operate through executive order and letters written in the middle of the night by DJs and we're ready and we're ready and the federal courts are ready to help us as the firewall to protect democracy. One thing I'm noting, I'll leave it on this and turn it back to you Ben, one thing I am encouraged by is how quickly the stakeholders of the world are uniting against Donald Trump and

rebuking him to his face in church pulpits in European parliaments in federal courts Even members of his own party like when he did the pardons some of the senators were like wait a minute We're supposed to be the party of law and order You just compromises you just compromise the security of the entire capital by doing what you just did. So people are starting now week one. So if Donald Trump, it's going to be a long four years, not just for us, but for him.

And you're seeing elected officials joining in as stakeholders here, like Gavin Newsom, and he's not the only one and the Attorney General wait till Letitia James starts filing her cases or joins in her cases from the New York perch and and this is going to help box in Donald Trump make him the lamest of lame duck presidents if we can take the House or the Senate or both in in in just two short years or less four days less than two short years then we won't have to worry about the back half of the of the Trump administration how about President Claudia Scheinbaum of Mexico with an 80% approval rate every Wednesday she gives a press conference where she officially

addresses all of these issues and pushes back forcefully against Trump. But she does that almost every single day as well. She was ready for that. How about in Canada, the people uniting? There was this maple maga inclination happening there, but the people of Canada seem to be uniting to find ways to boycott the United States. You know, unfortunately, look what's even happening now that Trump has pulled out of the Paris Climate Treaty, the World Health Organization.

You now have other actors internationally, like China, saying, look, we respect everyone's national sovereignty. May we help? May we join? And you know, whether that's CCP propaganda, they're there to fill a void if there is a weakened United States of America. And so you're seeing this shifting of an international order, isolating the

United States very quickly. The world was prepared for this and you know, the incongruity of all of the pushback, forcible pushback, how ridiculous, weak, pathetic Donald Trump looks objectively, but you still see Popeach, the corporate media doing their damns. I feel like we're doing a tug of war right now with independent media, trying to expose the reality that we're all seeing before our eyes, the legacy media and the corporate media trying to cling on for dear life to do the bidding of their oligarchy.

And I think the people are now on our side of independent media saying we can see it with our eyes. Stop feeding us the BS corporate media. We know what's happening when Donald Trump moves to end refugee resettlement and parole for Cubans, Haitians, and Venezuelans, groups that were pretty reliable voters for him. People don't like to find out that Trump gutted key aviation safety committees, fired the head of the TSA and the coast guard.

Cause when we get on airplanes, we'd like to be safe. People don't like that Trump's federal hiring freeze is now raising the TSA and the Coast Guard. Cause when we get on airplanes, we'd like to be safe. People don't like that Trump's federal hiring freeze is now raising fears about VA medical care because our veterans deserve the best. That's what president Biden was fighting for. People don't like that Donald Trump is ordering health agencies to stop warning Americans about bird flu and to halt publication of scientific reports, which comes at the same time egg prices are skyrocketing right now. People don't like the Trump administration executive order blackout on public communications by

agencies across all government departments and agencies. Guess why? Because they're public and we pay our taxes. This is information that we should know about, but it's Donald Trump basically saying, um, shut down the testing. And if you shut down the testing, then we don't have to even say that there are cases, remember what he said during the first administration, we don't publish the data. Nobody knows how much I'm screwing up.

And then I'll rely on the corporation to do my bidding. People don't like that Trump has hit the NIH, National Institutes of Health, with devastating freezes on meetings, travel, communications, and hiring. Think about people as well who were in test studies to save their lives, who are now finding out that they can't get life saving potential medical care. People don't like that the DOJ is threatening to prosecute state and local officials for resisting immigration enforcement because states rights. Wasn't that what the right wing was telling us about? That this is federalism and states have a lot of rights. Wasn't that what the right wing was telling us about that?

This is federalism and states have a lot of rights. Now the federal government wants to prosecute mayors and governors and act all, you know, whatever, trying to say that they could do all of these things when just because states are trying to protect their own populations and follow the Constitution, people don't like that. One of the immediate moves the government did was the administration just because states are trying to protect their own populations and follow the Constitution. People don't like that one of the immediate moves the government did was, the administration did was remove access to the Spanish language page

and said if you want to go home, you have to only watch the English page. And I'm just naming some of the orders right there, Popak, but all of those things I said, let me, let me finish with this and then turn it over to you. An executive order is not a law. That's not what it is. An executive order simply says that this is the president's interpretation of the law and it directs executive branch agencies and departments to carry out the president's interpretation of the law if there's

ambiguity in the law so to your point it's just a directive saying here's the law enforce it more enforce it less but it's, but it's based on a law that exists. An executive order doesn't create a new law. So all of these things that I've just been talking about, violate the real law, Trump's interpretation, maybe Trump's interpretation, but as we know, Trump and interpretation usually means lie, fraud, crime, something incorrect. So all of this now gets challenged and we're going to see that each and every day, and we're going to be here to sift through it all to give you the most important cover at all, try to give you the background, try to give you the,

uh, the, the legal language so you understand what's taking place and so that the corporate media shilling for the oligarchy, that they're not taking advantage of you and that you know how to convey this to people in your life. So you know your rights. So we know our rights and we know how to navigate through these difficult times. Call me a optimist. Call me a glass half full guy, but Pope.

Oc I actually leave this week feeling optimistic and feeling hope. And I feel that there's a path. I see it. I see that Trump tried to take away our hope. He tried to take away everything, and he didn't win this week. Doesn't mean we should take our guard off in any way, but we have to be vigilant every day.

But what he wanted to accomplish this week, this Blitzkrieg bulldoze over us, he failed. And I think that's a big win for us. I'll give you the final word, Michael. I'll pick up right there. I was actually emboldened and encouraged. I knew he was gonna have to use these executive orders. I knew the executive orders were not gonna color

within the lines of the law or the constitution, whether it was declaring that there's only two sexes that are gonna be recognized in law telling There will be no longer any kind of transgender protection on college campuses or in jails or prisons You know, that's just that's just about one example all the things you just said about immigration using the military on domestic soil every one of these things that we've outlined and we've only scratched the surface of week one I assure our audience will be successfully challenged in courts of law, in federal courts that matter,

before people like the DC judges we talked about at length today, and the judges in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and New Jersey and New York and in California and in Washington and Oregon, and we could probably add a couple of more in there. And we are going to be flooding the zone to get cases to the United States Supreme Court to overturn Donald Trump. And so that his next round of executive order, he'll think twice about it.

But we pulled the mask off. The emperor has no clothes. I know it's a disgusting visual image when it comes to Donald Trump especially, but he has to operate by executive order. to the various groups that he thinks got him elected, whether it's the crypto bros, or the big oil, or the Christian right, or the other oligarchs, you know, because that's all he had up there. He ran on a populist message, but that inauguration was not populist by any stretch of the word. I like the new word that you coined on the show, the the brwligarks for bros and oligarchs, but that it gives me comfort because he doesn't have a trick up his sleeve. He doesn't have a secret weapon. He's got to do it the old-fashioned way, which is unconstitutional, illegal orders, letters, and executive orders, which plays right

into our hands. I used to work for a guy, who I will not name, even though I want to, who used to say when things like that happen, he'd say, that's a gift. That's a gift that we need to exploit. And these are all gifts. Sure, I would rather not be talking of, you know, we thought we'd get the Democrats back in office and you and I would be talking about other things on Legal AF, but that's not how things turned out. And that's why you and I built the channel, you know, built Legal AF on the show

and I helped build with you Midas, is because of this break the glass moment. You know, it's easy, it's easy to exist in good times. Yeah, well, it's make hay while the sun shines But that we wanted to build a durable network and channel for these potential trying times and and we will get through this next four years together and I'm not this is not false bravado. I if I had to have Trump

I want this version of Trump, who's over his skis, who's unconstitutionally performing already in week one. I said we were going to lurch from one constitutional crisis to the other, from one abuse of power to another. I said that months ago and now we're, and you and I did too, and now we're watching it writ large, trust the process, trust the lawyers that know what they're doing at the forefront of progressive and democratic and fair-minded policies

and laws, trust the judges, I know they took a hit, but trust the judges that we'll be going to and the appellate courts, trust the process, and we'll continue to follow it right here on Legal AF. You know, when I grew up playing Nintendo and I'm dating myself here a bit, there was a game called Mike Tyson's boxing, although Mike's MAGA right now.

But Mike Tyson's boxing, all of the bad guys always had like a vulnerability that was like right there. Like they would like turn right all of a sudden and then he would jab, boop, boop, boop. And it's like, okay, why would they so expose their vulnerability? But I think that there is that right now with Donald Trump. I mean, he's the Mike Tyson bad guy, villain from Mike Tyson's boxing.

He'll show you the vulnerability very easily. And there's big vulnerability there. And I think it's up to all of us to see it, to recognize it and know how to react to it. President Claudia Scheinbaum of Mexico, perfect example, she gets it. California governor Gavin Newsom, perfect example, he gets it.

Right, right, reverends Marion Budd, she gets it. She gets it. I mean, look, the way E. Jean Carroll prosecuted her civil litigation against Donald Trump, never relenting against any of it, she gets it. And I think she would say, if I could do it, anyone who's in positions of government at the highest levels can resist and push back. And so we shouldn't forget what she was able to accomplish just as a private citizen.

I wanna remind everybody about the Legal AF YouTube channel. Make sure you all subscribe to it. It's gonna be vital viewing over the next few years. Legal AF, check it out. Patreon.com slash Legal AF as well is a great place to go. It helps support this independent media network. Look, we don't have outside investors, so we try to find fun, interesting,

and unique ways to keep on growing this. Check out mitusplus.com if you haven't done already. Make sure you spell it right. M-E-I-D-A-S-P-L-U-S.com. Some people spell mitus incorrectly still after all of these years together. already make sure you spell it right M-E-I-D-A-S-P-L-U-S dot com some people spell Midas incorrectly still after all these years together M-E-I-D-A-S-P-L-U-S dot com Michael Popak Midas Mighty legal AF first thank you so much for hanging in there this week I mean it it takes a lot of courage to be able to

withstand the barrage of what was thrown your way, but here we are, standing strong, standing proud, standing tall together. We're gonna get through this together. I make you that promise. We'll be here with you every step of the way. I make you that promise. Let's just keep on fighting, okay? And we really appreciate you so much.

I know that we can't always acknowledge all of the work that the millions of people who watch this show do on an individual basis, but I know that behind the scenes you're do you're putting in the work every single day. You're letting people know about this network. You are being kind and loving and compassionate. You're showing people what the way interactions actually should be. And I know you're speaking the truth. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you everybody for watching.

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