Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Popok LIVE Full Episode 2/14/2025

Episode Date: February 15, 2025

Legal AF's Popok provides an urgent live briefing on late breaking events. Tonight, Popok takes a deep dive into the growing scandal surrounding the Trump Administration 7 prosecutors who have quit to protest Trump cutting a corrupt deal with NYC's Mayor Adams; he looks carefully at the 68 lawsuits and 19 injunctions in the first 3 weeks of the Administration and what it means for the future; JD Vance being celebrated by Russian TV for his attack of our democratic European allies; and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Support Our Sponsors: 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. Fatty 15: Get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription Starter Kit by going to https://fatty15.com/LEGALAF and using code LEGALAF at checkout. Hims: Thanks to HIMS! Start your free online visit today at https://hims.com/legalaf for your personalized ED treatment options. Manukora: Head to https://manukora.com/legalaf to receive $25 off your starter kit today! 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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Welcome to PO-POK Live. At the top, I usually give an agenda for the rest of the show, but this is going to be more of a freewheeling show and not just because I'm wheeling on the road in transit, moving my family to a new place. It's because of what's happened and trying to make sense of it all over the last week as we watch a rogue and out of control, almost criminal presidency, take root, where they don't respect justice, they don't respect the rule of law, they don't respect ethics, they don't respect any of the parts of the firewall of our democracy. It shouldn't come as

any surprise. We have our first felon in chief in the White House, but the speed and the velocity at which he's moving is a concern. I'm going to talk specifically about profiles and courage, federal judges. There are now approximately 68 of them just in the first three weeks of this administration that are handling Trump-related matters, to hold him accountable, to check and balance him, to create a firewall to protect our democracy. We're only three weeks in, folks. I'm going to talk about many of those 68 cases, but I'm going to do it as an organizing principle, looking at what's going on in the scandal related to Mayor Adams in New York. We covered that story at the beginning on Legal AF

and on the YouTube channel, but this is now a microcosm of everything that's wrong and corrupt in the Trump administration. It's rotten to its core, and everybody in that administration is an enabler for Donald Trump. Mayor Adams was caught in a bribery scandal. Mayor Adams was indicted, appropriatelybery scandal. Mayor Adams was indicted appropriately by career prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, sorry, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's

Office, State Federal for a minute. That's the Southern District of New York. That's Rudy Giuliani's old office. He was also investigated by the Eastern District of New York. And there they found he indicted him for participating in a bribery scandal where the Turkish government bribed him in order for him to look the other way and make his fire marshal and building officials look the other way about a Turkish consulate or embassy in return for plane tickets and luxurious hotel gifts and the like. He was indicted. He's been seeking a pardon from Donald Trump ever since. And Donald Trump wanting to stick it to democracy has curried favor with Eric Adams and finally offered him a deal. Was it a pardon?

It wasn't a complete dismissal of his indictment? No, it was transactional. It was a quid pro quo. A quid pro quo that they and the Trump administration are so brazen about, so ballsy about, that they are willing to admit it. In the letter written by Emil Bové, who used to be Donald Trump's head criminal defense lawyer and is now doing his bidding as his lead henchman and hatchet man for the Department of Justice under Pam Bondi, wrote letters to require after a deal was struck

between Mayor Adams, his lawyer, Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Elon Musk as well, and the Trump administration in which they would agree to dismiss the indictment without prejudice, meaning they're going to hang it over the head of Eric Adams, like a sword of Damocles over his head. That's the stick, and the carrot is, we'll dismiss your indictment. And the stick is, if you don't play ball on our immigration policy, if you don't allow us to dismantle that shining beacon of a sanctuary city we call Manhattan and New York, we're going to indict you again. And it's that quid pro quo they're so brazen about. Pam Bondi complimenting Eric Adams today about how tough he is on immigration

just after the deal was struck. So they went searching after they struck this unholy deal for a career prosecutor who would go to the judge and tell the judge that they were wrong and for political purposes, they were gonna dismiss the indictment. Except they ran into Danielle Sassoon. And Danielle Sassoon stands on the shoulders

of six other prosecutors who all resigned noisily to object to letting Mayor Adams' indictment be thrown into the trash can for political expediency purposes and a transactional bargain struck by businessman in chief, Donald Trump. On the same week that Donald Trump got rid of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

in which we told our American businesses, if you operate abroad, you have to do so on a level playing field. You can't bribe your way to a competitive advantage. Sounds like a good thing. Sounds like something that aligns with American values and morals, not to the Trump administration. It makes an uneven playing field.

Let them bribe. Other countries are allowing bribery to go on. Let our businesses be unbridled in their attempt to bribe their way to a competitive advantage. Who else? Who else but Donald Trump would do that? He gets rid of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. He gets rid of the Foreign Extortion Act while his administration tries to extort Mayor Adams. And so seven different career prosecutors, including a handful that are in the Public Corruption Unit, Public Integrity

Unit, sorry, at the Department of Justice, the one that Jack Smith used to be the head of, all said, we're out. We're not going to dismiss an indictment. The prosecutors didn't want to dismiss the indictment against Eric Adams. Danielle Sassoon, the 38-year-old rock star, Federalist Society, conservative, Orthodox, Jewish, conservative, Yale law graduate who wanted to be the U.S. attorney in Manhattan and a clerk for Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court and came out against Joe Biden when he granted those 1,600 pardons for people on the unequal playing field of drug cases and wrote an op-ed piece against them. No friend of the Democrats. She's a profile on courage now though, because she wrote a seven-page letter to Emile Beauvais

and to his boss, Pam Bondi, and said, that unholy alliance that you just made with Eric Adams, I cannot and I will not move to dismiss a case that is proper. And you asking me to do it as unethical, she went on to say. And a quid pro quo, because you're trading off and trying to influence public policy and influence a public officials functions by holding the threat of a future indictment against them.

And I will not participate. Now, when reached for comment, right, Donald Trump said, well, the person that resigned, we would have fired her anyway. That's a lie. He looked the American people in the eye and he lied. That person would have been the number two to Jay Clayton, who was Donald Trump's Securities and Exchange Commission

head in the last administration, first administration, and his golfing buddy. That's who he wants to head the US Attorney's Office in Manhattan, but he hasn't been confirmed yet. So they looked around for a Patsy and they ran into Danielle Sassoon, who said, I'm not doing this.

And it's unethical and it's illegal and you shouldn't ask me to. And more importantly, in her letter, she said, not only are we not gonna dismiss the indictment, we wanna bring a second indictment, a superseding indictment against Eric Adams. Because he obstructed justice, because he destroyed evidence,

because he lied to the FBI and the Department of Justice under Donald Trump, is that's who's the Attorney General right now. I don't care what the titles say on the name tags. Pam Bondi is not the Attorney General. Mila Bova is not the Attorney General. Donald Trump is the Attorney General. Elon Musk, by extension.

Stephen Miller, the White House Counselor, is the Attorney General. Elon Musk by extension, Stephen Miller, the White House counselor is the attorney general. And now they're looking around and they're threatening to fire any US attorney, assistant US attorney in that office in Manhattan if they don't do their bidding and go to the judge and lie to the judge and say, we don't have grounds to continue this indictment

and we wanna dismiss the indictment. So finally, Ed Sullivan, no, not that one, career prosecutor in the office, just to save the other younger US attorneys and other US attorneys in that office, stepped forward and said, I'll file it. Not because he agrees with it. He doesn't agree with it, but he doesn't want to see any more decapitation, any more heads rolling in that office, any more career sacrifice. So he stepped forward and took the bullet. He fell on the bomb and said, I'll do it, I'll file it.

But he made it clear, not because I believe in it, but because I don't want other people, it's an act of courage. So even when you hear some of the reports might be out there on mainstream media, Ed Sullivan finally steps forward to do Emil Boves and Donald Trump's bidding and moves to dismiss the case against Eric Adams.

It's a lie. It's another lie. And so I wanted to use that case to show you that there is resistance going on. There is revolution going on within the career federal workers, within the career federal workers, within the career prosecutors, within the lifetime appointed federal judges

that need to be honored. We should put them on trading cards. We should put them on posters in our children's bedrooms because it matters. Because it matters that we talk about them and that we give them by way of our support, the courage to do the right thing. As I half joked, the revolution may not be televised,

but it's here on YouTube and I might as touch on illegal AF and certainly on BOPOC Live. And so we have that. I'm gonna give you the numbers of where we are after just three weeks and you'll see how perfectly this matches with what I predicted at the time of the election. Now before this administration is done and in the ground,

there will be three to 4,000 lawsuits filed against them. And I heard people chuckling. I heard people confining in my chats. Popak, that's a large number. There was only a thousand the first time I said three to 4,000 because watch Donald Trump. He's turbocharged. He's energized.

He thinks he has superpowers, right? He's like Homelander on the boys. He's got laser I-beams and he wants to eliminate everything. And who can stop them? The other branch of government, the judiciary, the pop, the career prosecutors and the like. Where are we by the numbers as of the third week? Right, where are we?

Okay, well, we are only, let's get the numbers right here. We have 68 lawsuits that have been filed. 68 lawsuits in 25 days of the Trump administration. That's almost three a day. Three a day, every day since this administration has been up and running. That's what we got, right? So do the math. Three a day is over a thousand a year. For four years we're gonna be four thousand. Because it's gonna be unabated. Because Donald Trump thinks he's unstoppable.

He's drunk with power, he's mad drunk with power. And so he's going to do things to satisfy his base, his ego, the Heritage Foundation, the American First Institute, the lettered Leos of the world, the MAGA, right, wrong, or indifferent, executive order, executive order, executive order, executive order, executive order, until the Supreme Court tells them to stop, until appellate courts tell them to stop.

So here's the number so far. 68 lawsuits have been filed in three weeks. Of that amount, we have 15 temporary restraining orders, the first stop on the train of restraint. We have five preliminary injunctions. We have two appeals, right? We have 19 restraining orders already between TROs and preliminary injunctions in 68 cases in three weeks. And of course, Donald Trump doesn't like that.

So then, taking a page out of what he did during his criminal cases, he attacks the federal judges. Right on cue, all the proxies, Donald Trump doesn't like that. So then, taking a page out of what he did during his criminal cases, he attacks the federal judges. Right on cue, all the proxies for Donald Trump attack the federal judges, right? Elon Musk, who shouldn't be anywhere near a government, let alone being in charge of boring out and hollowing out the government, he steps forward. He hates any kind of regulation.

That's why he attacks Europe and European commissioners and European regulators. He hates American regulators, he fought with the Securities and Exchange Commission forever, he hates any organization that stops him from getting contracts. If it wasn't for the publicity on media of the $4, armored Cybertruck procurement, that would have went through. Still probably gonna go through, except for the conflicts of interest

that we're calling out on places like Midas Touch and Popak AF, Popak Live, sorry, it was at Popak AF. And so you attack the judiciary, you call for their impeachment, never happening by the judiciary, you call for their impeachment, never happening, by the way. Never happening. MAGA can try in the House, but their vote total is so small, their majority, so small they can't do anything. That's why we haven't heard anything from them. Let's take a moment, moment of silence to listen to what the 119th Congress is doing under MAGA control.

Nothing. Nothing to help you. Nothing to help your food prices, your rent prices, your gas prices, your stock market, your 401k, whatever you have, where your children are gonna sleep at night, how they're gonna be educated, and how they're gonna be fed, nothing at all. Because they can't get anything done, because that party isn't a legitimate party that can govern. And so Donald Trump even recognizes that himself. He's going to do it all by executive order,

executive order after executive order. Get rid of the Department of Education. That's for Congress. I'll do it by executive order. I'll make them so lame and so hollowed out there'll be nothing left of them. Get rid of US aid. $60 billion we use around the world for diplomacy, aid, $60 billion we use around the world for diplomacy, supporting American jobs. Who do you think creates the aid? Aid packages, Americans. He got rid of that. It was an arm of diplomacy. Now in that vacuum with people hungry, with people dying from disease around the country. Who steps in? China, the Middle East, the Saudi Arabians, the Russians. around the country. Who steps in? China, the Middle East, the Saudi Arabians, the Russians. The Russians, we have created Russia and China's wet dream. They could never in their wildest imagination believe that we would elect somebody to run our government like Donald Trump.

We're picking people to be in the cabinet that even Putin and the Chinese president couldn't believe that we would pick. Tulsi Gabbard to run 18 different intelligence agencies makes his son safe. The Fox and Friends makeup trailer guy to be the head of our Pentagon, can't even say his name, won't even say his name. He's gonna head up the Department of Defense. Half of our economy

under the control of RFK Jr. and really all under control under President Elon Musk, put him on the money. Tell Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, start the engraving, get him on a new dollar, get him on a new $150 bill. Even the robber barons in our society, in our country's history, could never imagine that they would be able to control and the people would allow them to control them through government, never in their wildest dreams. And the way he does it, Donald Trump and MAGA is they wrap themselves in an American flag of populism. We're popular, populism.

That's it, we're a populist message, right? And so we have, we have JD Vance, I think he's the vice president, I'm not sure. I mean, when you have two presidents, I'm not, you know, things like the number three in the administration. They trot him out, stumbling and bumbling his way through a speech in Munich to our allies. Maybe they didn't tell him on Air Force Two that these were our allies. And he decides his message is not going to be how to stop the war of Russian aggression against Ukraine. No, no, not when Donald Trump calls Putin directly first and says,

keep all the property that you obtained illegally in violating the sovereignty of Ukraine. Keep all that and then we'll have peace. And then maybe I'll get around to calling Zelensky. No, he doesn't talk about that. What was he talking about? His speech in Munich today was so electric and so wonderful that I'll tell you the two groups that got really excited about it and applauded him. Russia TV and the rightest of right-wing German parties like neo-Nazis, right? They celebrated J.D. Vance's speech. It couldn't have been written better by them. Russia TV said, we applaud the speech of J.D. Vance, who took it and caned, publicly caning of Europeans. He looked them in the eye as their guest and he said, your version of democracy sucks. This is my paraphrase.

Your version of democracy in Europe, we can't support any longer in America. You're not worthy of defense. See, this is Donald Trump's, I'm not gonna support NATO, I'm not gonna support allies. When they're attacked, I don't care what the NATO alliance says, I'm not gonna protect them. You don't support my brand

of out of control populist democracy, which is a charade and a window dressing for fascism. And so we're not going to support you. You need to listen to the clarion call of your electorate, even if it's uncomfortable for you. This is JD Vance now. Yeah. And illegal immigration and mass deportation is the order of the day. Germans get all the German right wing got all excited. Whoa, he talked about mass deportation. We want to get rid of our Muslims. Russia TV said yes, he took it to the other democratic countries. This is supposed to be the leader of the free world, the beacon of freedom around the world.

We're supposed to be making new democracies. We're supposed to be making new democracies. We're supposed to be supporting existing democracies who align with our values. We're not supposed to trash them. We're not supposed to do, I mean, this is the communist and socialist party wet dream. The implosion of the democratic party, I'm sorry, of democracy, not the democratic party, I'm sorry, of democracy,

not the democratic party, the implosion of democracy before their very eyes, detonated by one of their own. Is he, I'm gonna question this right now. Is Donald Trump a Trojan horse? Is he a Manchurian candidate? Was he put here by a foreign power to destroy our country? Because there's no other way to interpret everything that he's doing than under that guise. Is he a foreign agent? I don't know, but he's acting like he is one. Get rid of the Department of Education,

allow red states to determine what teaching standards and student standards of achievement are. I'd rather not live in that country without public education properly regulated at the federal level. Get rid of aid. Why don't we just get rid of our role in the world because we're gonna focus so much on America first. And by making it everything America first, we actually make America second.

We actually undermine our own credibility, our morality, our authority, our moral authority around the world. Yeah. And so these lawsuits now back to the 68 lawsuits, we're watching federal judges do what they're supposed to do. We're filing them in, yes, we're filing them in the right places. We're filing in the original 13 colonies. We're filing them in New England. We're filing them in the right places. We're filing in the original 13 colonies. We're filing them in New England. We're filing them on the West Coast. We're filing them in DC and all those places.

We're above the Mason-Dixon line. Sure, maybe it's because I just drove from New Jersey all the way down South and I had every state along the way. But these federal judges are doing the right thing. And as a result, the anti-Trump administration lawyers, the 22 attorney generals around the country, the other public interest groups are now by my count 19 and 2. Two small losses based on standing. Today they had a little bit of a rough go with the inspectors general, waited a little bit too long to bring a motion for temporary

restraining order. I'll talk about that in a minute. And Judge Chuckin was, I'm not sure, I'm not sure she's going to issue that temporary restraining order. But I'm going to talk about that. We'll do a little legal AF law school breakout session, the difference between an injunction, preliminary temporary restraining order, and just a regular old lawsuit. We're gonna do all that, all that kind of teaching moment. I'm gonna talk about the cases in more detail

and what they entail and what we can do about it as people, not just right here speaking truth to each other, speaking truth to power and prepare and reload to run the bastards out on a rail come midterms. And I mean everybody with an R next to their name. They're all got blood on their hands. I'm no longer going to call it MAGA. It's just the Republican Party. And they've tried to take the beating heart of democracy and wrap it and reskin it. I joked it's like when you see this car with a wrap on it, like a Matt rap on the cyber truck, right? The beating heart of democracy is under the shrink wrap of Donald Trump's out of control populist brand of democracy, which is just another word for fascism.

JD Vance at the Temerity looked at our European allies in the face at Munich today, in Munich of all places, and say to them that they're for censorship, they're not for free speech, they're not for following the will of the people. Really? Who signed up for this lurching chaos of an administration resulting in 68 lawsuits

where the president of the United States wants to stand with a crown on his head, unchecked, unbalanced by any other of the co-equal branches of government. See, that's what Donald Trump took away from Chief Justice Roberts' immunity decision and all the wins that Donald Trump got on his criminal cases that he can be, no one can check him.

And that's why federal judges need to step forward and we're watching them one at a time. I got some amazing news that people know about. I wanna touch on it right here. Got a new law firm, started it after the election and because of the election. It's called the Popak Firm. And the Popak Firm is working with a national group

of trial lawyers because I've been asked, God, over the last five years, thousands of times to get involved with cases. Didn't have the bandwidth, didn't have the support team to do that, I'm one person. Now I've got, I was able to stand up at instant group in all 50 states to bring cases for justice.

We've been operating for three weeks, kind of standing on the shoulders of our legal AF community. We've already got about a hundred cases that have come in that we're evaluating in the process of joining them. We're proud to represent a family that is a surviving family of the American Airlines crash. That came off of what we're doing here. So come to www.thepopakfirm.com for justice.

That's what we're there for. And it's really everything where you've been injured. Could be anything, workplace. It could be employment law, car accident, truck accident, any kind of thing that resulting in the death of anybody in your family for which you need justice. I'm gonna be involved with that kind of case.

As I continue my work here on the Midas Touch Network, holding truth to power related to the law and politics intersection. So come to that www.thepopacfirm.com. So we're going to take our first break. And when I get back, we're going to pick up with what, take the plane up, speaking of planes dropping out of the air, we're going to take the plane up a few thousand feet, look back down and I'll give you the lay of the land of what we do next and what we can expect next from federal courts. We got to look to federal courts and we got to look to the attorney generals and public interest groups to do the bidding here and we got to get behind them and support them. That's the call to action on PO-POK Live tonight. Every Tuesday, I'm doing it on Friday, sorry, because I've been in transit. I apologize. Thank you for the honor of letting me do this. New podcast, Tuesday nights,

regularly PO-POK Live right here on the MidasTouch network. And then come on over to Legal AF, the YouTube channel. As MidasTouch crosses their odometer of 4 million subscribers, I was there from day one. We've got a new pro-democracy channel we're also building in collaboration with Midas Touch Network and to reflect that collaboration, the name of the YouTube channel is Legal AF MTN for Midas Touch Network. We're going to get to half a million with your help in the first five months of our existence really, only because of you were humbled by it. So let's take our first commercial break, come back, keep talking about Donald Trump

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and use code LegalAF at checkout. Welcome back. You're on PO-POC Live. Now, I am not hopeless. I am quite optimistic. I've lived in my life through a number of administrations, including one that was particularly corrupt before Donald Trump.

And I do believe that our democracy and our rule of law can survive even what Donald Trump is doing now. But he has to be held accountable. He has to be held accountable for people to look at and line up. This is what I tell people. When you're in that voting booth, you have to look at what your own list of morals and values and the things that are important to you and find the party that is closest to that list. Take off the labels. And that's when people ask me, how can you be a Democrat? Because its policies, its ethics, its values are closest to me. They have been forever.

And so this optimism takes the following form. I am confident, just as I am by watching these 68 cases, these almost 20 restraining orders, the federal judges are up to the task. Donald Trump is spinning out of control. You know, he's trying to do by executive order that which he could never do. And it's up to federal judges to hold him accountable. I am not at present concerned, although there is already suggestions, no, nay suggestions, there are already threats by the Trump administration and those around him, including Elon Musk, that they will not follow the orders of a federal judge.

And if that happens, we're gonna have to have federal judges, this is what I believe is gonna happen, deputize their own police force in order to enforce their inherent authority of contempt. It is the way for federal judges to make sure their laws are and their rulings are abided by. And if they have an out of control president who won't allow them to use the federal marshals,

they're gonna have to deputize their own court officers to take over that role. I hope we never get there. I hope that an outcry in the public of Donald Trump not abiding by federal law and federal restraining orders will be enough to check him. We'll continue to call it out right here. But short of that, the federal judiciary, including by the Supreme Court, is going to have to think about having their own force to enforce their laws, enforce their rulings. There's no other way around it. Federal marshals, unfortunately, are under the Department of Justice. The Bureau of Prisons is under the Department of Justice and all under the executive branch. We might have to build our own court prison.

This happens in Bonata Republics. This happens in third world countries. Here the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court, co-equal branches of government. What's Donald Trump going to do next? Vote to just order the disbanding of the Supreme Court? Like happens in communist and fascist and army takeovers? So look, I mean, we're going to have to figure out what's going to go on here as a society. But so far, so far the rule of law is holding. Donald Trump

is abiding by the restraining orders. He's squawking about it, he's complaining about it, but he's ultimately abiding by it. We don't yet have an example brought to a judge's attention that in the 19 or so restraining orders, temporary restraining orders or preliminary injunctions, that we have a violation. We've got the Department of Justice, junctions that we have a violation. You know, we've got the department of justice, you know, keeps wrapping themselves around their own ankle because they're amateurs. They keep making mistakes. They keep having to refile things in courts, but so far they're

participating in the court system. They're not, they're not taking the game ball and going home. Got to keep an eye on it. They are worried about public opinion. I mean, the $4 billion or so cyber truck thing, or whatever it was, that died because of public outrage and attention on it. So we got to use the Midas Touch platform. We got to use the Legal AF platform. We got to these things. Now, what we can expect and what the attorneys general and the other groups can expect is that he's going to use an executive order to

try to implement every page and every paragraph of Project 2025. I think right now we're in like chapter three. It's like a 20 chapter book. But we're ready. I mean, I want to give some confidence here, just kind of give a modicum of my own confidence and transfer it to you. I know these public interest groups, whether it's ones that we know well like the ACLU or the NAACP, new groups like Democracy Forward, Democracy Now, groups led by Norm Eisen and Mark Elias, different groups, they know what they're doing. They've drafted these lawsuits already. They know which judges to go after. They know which judges to ask for temporary restraining

orders and their record of success, 19 and two, 68 cases filed, tell you all you need to know about who's winning this war to protect our democracy. Yeah? Somebody who's a Republican in my life cracked a joke to me. He said, every day is the Super Bowl in Washington. I said, what do you mean? It was right after the Super Bowl. He said, well, it's the Steelers versus the Patriots. And I said, oh, you mean the Democrats are the Patriots in that one? And he changed the subject.

Quickly, quickly. I try to have dialogue and conversation on a regular basis with people who are independent libertarians and Republicans. And even MAGA, it's hard sometimes. It's hard sometimes, because as I said earlier here on the show, my party would never go insane. All right? You know, they can make all the jokes they want about Joe Biden's mental competency, but he didn't go bat shit, mad as a hat or crazy, start issuing

executive order after executive order, gutting everything that we hold dear as an American people. Right? I don't want a government that is controlled by technology owners or billionaires or somebody who hasn't had a balance of checkbook or figure out how to make ends meet or live paycheck to paycheck or sleep in their car one day. I don't want that. I want people who work their way up in government who can be proud of a day's wage, an honest wage to be in our government and around our government. It's not woke, it's not DEI, it's reflecting America. I believe that our government should reflect the American people and our best instincts,

not pander to our worst instincts. It should, government should appeal to our better angels, not to our devils. And all we're watching is devils at play right now with the Trump administration. There's no other way to put it. You turn off the spigot of US aid to the disadvantaged and underprivileged around the world as an arm of our diplomacy without any notice, without any giving them any of the ability. How mean-spirited, how depraved to make people suffer

around the world, to make transgender people in a transition suffer. It's this masochistic, I'm sorry, sadist approach to making people suffer. These are human beings, These are human beings. These are transgender Americans, US citizens who have hopes and dreams or somebody's child who are parents. The people that we so cavalierly refer to as the undocumented so that we dehumanize them are people. They have mothers, they all do. They are somebody's child. They may be your relative, and if they're not, they may be a lot like your relatives depending upon what era they came into this country. And this use of the nomenclature to demoralize and dehumanize those people so that we have no humanity about them. Where is our humanity? Where's the humanity of the Trump administration? I just don't see it. I don't see it. Who's being benefited? As we say in the law, follow the money. Follow the money. If you don't understand why something's being done

or some policy's being done, follow the money. And where does the money lead? All this money that's allegedly being saved by Elon Musk and Doge, where's it going? For $40 billion cyber trucks, armored cyber trucks? Where is it going going why are tariffs being imposed on allies to create American jobs or to benefit those in the Trump administration right does anybody think Elon Musk isn't going to he made three

billion dollars in government contracts before he bought a presidency spent two hundred million dollars of his before he bought a presidency, spent $200 million of his own money, bought a presidency, doubled his net worth since November. Who on this podcast, who on the Bopac Live doubled their net worth since November? Who? Elon Musk. while we have a president who is continuing to grift in a disrespectful and in a, what's the word I'm looking for, in a way that just completely sullies the office of the presidency. Donald Trump announces a meme coin, the dollar sign Trump meme coin. You know who made money on that meme coin? Donald Trump. It's always good to be the broker, right?

You can ask Donald Trump's commerce secretary how much money he made from owning a brokerage, never taking an equity position in anything until the very end. Because you're just buying and selling and getting a VIG and getting a commission for the buy and the sell. So the Trump family made $100 million in the sale of those meme coins. $100 million as the broker. Okay, you know who else made money? A Chinese wallet.

I don't know who it is. No one knows who it is. A Chinese wallet within hours of the announcement of the Trump meme coin, a wallet was established in China and they instantly bought and sold. And on a $1 million investment, that wallet made $100 million overnight in Trump coins. Everybody else, eight out of 10 investors

in the Trump meme coin have lost money and a lot of it. Eight out of ten. Two out of ten made money including the Chinese guy who made turn a million into a hundred million because it was once trading at $75 now it's now to 17. Donald Trump's a sucker bet. Donald Trump counts on sucker bets. Donald Trump is a living embodiment of P.T. Barnum and the sucker and voter for him is born every minute. That's where we're at. And that's where we're at. Now, when we come back from another quick break, I want to talk, do a little Legal AF Law School breakout because I do get a lot of questions about injunctions versus damages, federal court powers and that kind of thing. I'm not gonna cover it all on PO-POK Live.

Once again, I did it on purpose for years. I mean, for the last five years after I founded Legal AF with Ben Mycelis, I've been inundated with phone calls and contacts and DMs and emails from people who needed my help. But frankly, I'm one person. There's so many cases I could take. So I stood up a law firm called the PO-POC firm, www.thepopocfirm.com. And in that way, I'm able to help people obtain

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$25 off your starter kit. Okay so let's push forward quickly. I'm Popak live. We've got, um, I want to do a little breakout session for the law school class in us, a preliminary injunction, a restraining order, those are equitable powers, there's two types of powers that a judge has equitable and legal. Legal is damages like is money, money damages. A judge can award money damages. A judge can also use their inherent authority and other equitable powers to issue injunctions.

Restraining orders is an injunction. A preliminary injunction is an injunction. These are equitable powers. There used to be two types of courts, and I think a couple of states in Europe there are, court of equity and a court of law. Delaware has a version of this, the Chancery Court versus the regular Superior Court.

But in federal court, they're combined. Civil and criminal combined, equity and law combined. So you can seek justice with one judge. It's one stop shopping, I guess is the way to put it. And you can sue for damages, money, and or you can sue for an injunction. Now, in order to get an injunction, whether it's, we call it a temporary restraining order,

a type of injunction early on in a case, or a preliminary injunction, which is until the case is over, or permanent injunction after the trial and then forevermore. The grounds are about the same. You have to prove four factors at various times in the life cycle of a case. You have to prove that you are likely to succeed

on the merits for a restraining order or a preliminary injunction. You're likely to be the winner based on the law and the facts. Judge looks at that and evaluates that. Then the judge says, do you have an adequate remedy at law? If I don't give you this injunction, can you get money to compensate you?

Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. So that could defeat an injunction. The third one is irreparable harm. Reparable harm means you need immediate relief or you're going to be harmed in a way that can't even be compensated. Adequate remedy of law and irreparable harm sort of flip sides, two sides of the same coin,

but you gotta move fast out of the junction. If you want a preliminary injunction or temporary restraining order, you gotta move within hours of the damage that's happened to you, days. We just had a case in front of Judge Chutkin where she questioned, if it's such an emergency, why'd you take 21 days to file your lawsuit?

That undermines the argument, not for the main case and damages, but for the need for an injunctive relief. Gotta move quick, velocity. And then lastly, the balance of powers or the balance of equities tips in your favor. And that's a public policy assessment by the judge. In the beginning, you get a temporary restraining order. Could last a couple hours, could last a few days or a few weeks until there's full briefing for a preliminary injunction. Then the same standards are applied, but with a bigger record, a more pronounced record. And then somebody wins and somebody loses. At the preliminary

injunction stage, if the loser, I mean the winner could too, can take an appeal at that moment. And we've got a couple of appeals now of Trump, of things against the Trump administration. And then after a trial with the injunctions in place, the judge decides whether a permanent injunction to permanently ban those things. But the reality is you never really get to those last things because if you win the TRO or the preliminary

injunction, usually that you sort of win the case at that moment, especially on the civil side. So that's what we're watching. And for those that don't have confidence in our federal court system, having watched the criminal matters, the federal judges did the right thing. It was the Supreme Court that bailed out Donald Trump. Could happen again. I think there's going to be a lot of these cases.

These 68 cases are going gonna end up front and center in front of the United States Supreme Court. Whether it's this term that's only got a few months left on emergency applications, they get back together, they get the band back together over the summer, or when the new term starts in October and the judges can kick things over to the new term and they can either they can issue injunctions. They can grant an emergency application for an injunction, right? Or if there is an injunction, the Supreme Court can step in and block an injunction that's been issued by a trial judge or an appellate judge below them. We're going to watch all of that play out, the rest of February, March, April,

the end of the term, last oral argument in April, except for emergency applications along the way. But have confidence that these lawyers for justice are picking the right courts, the right judges, the right appellate courts. So what I wanna do every week on PO-POK Live, which is normally again on Tuesdays, is I wanna like take the plane up, look down, and give you where we are at that particular moment in time

and what it means moving forward. And I want to explain to you the things that are happening in a way that makes sense and help you make sense of it. Stay here as a community with us, link arms, be shoulder to shoulder with us, continue to help us grow both the Minus Touch Network, which is now over 4 million, and the Legal AF YouTube channel,

which is gonna hit 500,000 in a week or two, but only with your help. Wednesdays and Saturdays, you can, I'll do the PO-POK viewing guide. Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern time on this Midas Touch Network, Legal AF, the OG podcast, number eight in the world, hard to believe, in all genres.

One is Midas Touch recently, two is Rogan, and we're like number eight, fantastic. That's not ego, that's complimenting and thanking our audience, the loyalty of our audience, the dedication of our audience, the focus of our audience. You connect here with us through the screen, but with each other by extension in the community that we built called Midas Touch.

So we got that going on Wednesdays, I do it with Karen Frey, McNifilose. Saturdays with Ben and myself, we do hot takes along the way. Yes, I promise I'll be catching up on my hot takes on the Midas Touch network as soon as this move I'm doing is complete. And then we got Legal AF, the YouTube channel.

We got six to eight videos over there every day, every way. We got Court Accountability Action over there. We've got Dina Dahl, we got Shan Wu and the rest. Hit the free subscribe button there as well. These are the ways to support it. And then finally, our pro-democracy sponsors, shout out to all of them. They know what we're talking about here.

There's no censorship. We're completely people powered, and we're all here because of you. And then of course, finally, the PO-POC firm, www.thepopocfirm.com, 1-877-PO-POC-A-F. I'm there for you for justice. We've already brought in a, I can't for you for justice. We've already brought in,

I can't tell you how overwhelmed we are, but in a great way with potential cases and helping our Legal AF audience and our Midas Touch audience. We're already, you know, already because of this, we're already representing a family in the disaster with American Airlines and the Black Hawk helicopter and some other things around the country that we'll be talking about in a future time. So until my next POPOC

live, I'm Michael Popock and I'm reporting. I'm Michael Popock and I got some big news for our audience. Most of you know me as the co-founder of Midas Touch's Legal AF and the Legal AF YouTube channel, or as a 35-year national trial lawyer. Now building on what we started together on Legal AF, I've launched a new law firm, the Popak Firm, dedicated to obtaining justice through compassionate and zealous legal representation. At the Popak Firm, we are focused on obtaining justice for those who have been injured or damaged by a life altering event by securing the highest dollar recoveries. I've been tirelessly fighting for justice for the last

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