Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Prosecutors FIGHT BACK against TRUMP THE FELON

Episode Date: July 14, 2024

Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok are back for the weekend edition of the top-rated Legal AF podcast. On this episode, the anchors discuss and debate: how the Supreme Court’s recent rulings may actually benefit President Biden and opponents of the MAGA agenda, as the prosecutors in NY and DC, and civil rights groups, fire back at Trump and urge the continued prosecutions of Trump, and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Join the Legal AF Patreon: https://Patreon.com/LegalAF Thanks to our sponsors: Fum: Head to https://TryFum.com/legalaf and get a FREE GIFT with the JOURNEY PACK today when you use code LEGALAF MD Hearing: To get our $297 when you buy a PAIR offer, including a free charger, head to https://ShopMDHearing.com and use code LEGALAF Field of Greens: Thanks to Field of Greens! Get 15% off your first order + free rush shipping at https://FieldOfGreens.com and use promo code LEGALAF Zbitoics: Head to https://zbiotics.com/LegalAF to get 15% off your first order when you use LEGALAF at checkout. 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 Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson 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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The app will suggest some on sale. To get started, just open the app. It's as easy as that. See the PC Optimum app for details. So you've heard of Newton's third law of motion that states that for every action in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Well, let me give you the first law of legal AF. When fascism strikes, democracy responds. When the corrupt Supreme Court makes a ruling that is so out of touch with we the people, we the people respond. When the Supreme Court tries to block prosecutors from getting to real law and order, prosecutors strike back, judges strike back. When it comes to actually enforcing the law, we're seeing that play out in real time. Of course, the Supreme Court ruled that Donald Trump is entitled to absolute immunity for core constitutional functions, official acts, and they also provided for evidentiary

inadmissibility of anything related to official acts or core constitutional functions. They basically tried to hand Donald Trump quite literally a get out of jail free card. But now the prosecutors, now law and order judges are saying bet. We still believe that where you commit crime, you got to do the time. Prosecutors aren't backing down.

The Manhattan district attorney's office is not backing down. Special counsel, Jack Smith is not backing down. And then interestingly, in a unrelated case, a kind of less high profile J-6 insurrectionist case involving someone named Spencer Onoff that took place this past week, that's before Judge Tonya Chutkin, who's also the judge presiding over the case involving Trump's attempt to overthrow the election. Judge Tonya Chutkin, without saying Donald Trump's name or without saying the Supreme Court's name, sent a very stark message, a very

strong message, basically saying, I've seen the videos of what went down on J-6. I know the law enforcement officers who still suffer from PTSD, those who lost their lives by suicide as a result, those who were seriously injured in Maine, those who were killed, the way that has completely harmed our country's standing. I haven't forgot about that.

So she said to the insurrectionist who she was sentencing, you're not some bystander. You're not just someone who was there. You participated in terrorism. You participated in an act to terrorize our country and try to overthrow our democracy. So what we're watching here, what I want to spend this episode talking about now, following the Supreme Court's ruling, what are the moves the prosecutors, the judges, and Donald Trump are making in response? Going back to what I said when I opened this show, Newton's third law, that every action in nature

has an equal and opposite reaction, and the first law of legal AF, fascism strikes, corruption strikes, democracy and transparency, try to fill the void and take its place. I wanna also talk about how the Chevron decision, the Supreme Court overturning Chevron, basically removing the ability of agencies to basically enforce its own enabling statutes where there's ambiguity trying to gut agency action.

How that's actually going to backfire on what the Supreme Court was intending to do and why I think the unintended consequences of it may actually be more harmful to Donald Trump and MAGA's agenda than they ever anticipated. They didn't necessarily think this through. Popak, you did a hot take on it, but I want to spend more time talking about that here and more. This is Legal AF. You know, Popak, the number one most searched thing on Google in the realm of politics and

law right now, it's Project 2025. And that is because that is at the intersection of law and politics, taking away our rights by destroying our legal system. That's at the heart of what Project 2025 is. And so you and I have been talking about Project 2025 now since basically Legal AF started. But that's why the stick-to-itiveness and talking about this each and every day, what these plans are, you gotta be relentless when it comes to protecting and preserving our democracy.

How you doing, Popak? And how is being a pop street? So like a baby Popok and mother Popok are doing great. And, and, um, we're fired up. I mean, I know you're fired up on this episode. I've been fired up on my hot takes lately. It's just, we're at the network. We're mad as hell. We're not going to take it anymore, which is a great place to be in July before a November election. It's a terrible place to be in December or November 6th after an election, but we are right where we need to be. And the

Supreme Court through what you just said about every action has a natural reaction or as I've said before, as Robert Merton back in the 1930s, a sociologist said, every there's the law of unintended consequences and the law of unintended consequences. And the law of unintended consequences we're seeing over and over again, backfiring against the MAGA agenda. You talk about Project 2025, it intersects not only law and politics, it intersects with the Christian national right, I just did a hot take about them and the funding of attempts to undermine the will of the people, and more importantly to impose on America a biblical, this is their words, not mine, a biblical structure to dominate the seven mountains of our society, which includes arts, government,

technology, and the like. And they're not going to rest until they get their guy, Donald Trump, in. Do I think Trump actually naturally supports these causes that are listed in Project 2025 to ban pornography? Donald Trump, the one who gave Playmate Playboy interviews, the one that ran a strip club in his casino in New Jersey? No. But he'll do anything to get elected. And he doesn't care with which parties he makes his bargains with. And we're going to talk about that, the law of unattended consequences, as it relates to the Supreme Court decisions. We've picked ourselves up off the mat now. We know

how to apply it. And if you're gonna give us that, you're gonna give us a way to undermine agency action, which is primarily, as pointed out in one of my hot takes and some analysis, is primarily very MAGA because of who is headed some of these agencies appointed by Bush and by Trump, right? The actual agency action is terrible

for the industry that they're regulating and for the people they're trying to protect. And so now there's an opportunity with the new Supreme Court decision, which is just an article of faith for federalism. One of the things is to hollow out administrative agencies, hollow out the administrative state and shrink it down to size.

Well, now we can go to our local federal judge and make the decision to argue that the Congressional Act is being violated by the rule that's being created by the Republican head of that department, cabinet level agency or whatever. Law of unattended consequences for every action. There's a natural, there's a natural reaction. You know, we always talk about how what's really been exposed is all of these frameworks used by the far right are really just ways to cover up that they're just a bunch of sociopaths. It's like we're strict textualist except right there. We're textualist, except right there.

We're states rights, except right there. We're originalists, except right there. You know, and then they use these for, we're conservative, except when it's conserving our democracy and the underlying institutions. Like what everyone hears about that Chevron decision, which gave the deference to administrative agencies to do what they need to do. People forget though that the Chevron decision was actually pushed in order to promote Ronald Reagan's agenda to deregulate because what happened was there were all those environmental and

civil rights laws and voting rights laws and the agencies that asserted their power and got all of these rights and were created in the 60s and the 70s in response to problems like pollution and all of these things. We need to address it, so let's address it with agencies because there's got to be some way to figure it out. So the whole Chevron decision was basically to allow agencies to interpret their enabling statutes to undo the regulations, to deregulate, but then Chevron deference was then used by other administrations to then provide for common sense regulation. So it would basically see saw back and forth depending on which administration was in power

and you would give deference to the agencies ultimately based on the priorities of individuals who were elected, namely the president, who would set forth their agenda and send the agenda and the message to the agencies. Well, now the courts have stripped that away. The Supreme Court said, we're not going to defer to the agencies at all. So, ultimately, it's the courts that are going to interpret these statutes. So ultimately, let's say, let's say hypothetically in a horrific world, there's a far right wing government that comes into power and they want to try to deregulate and they want the agencies to have deference.

Okay. Well then an environmental group will file a lawsuit and basically say, no, we don't give them deference. You judge, make the decision and you decide judge. And then it gets caught up in litigation versus what would normally happen. We'll talk more about that, but that's what we mean. These law of unintended consequences. Michael Popak, as I said at the outset, uh, prosecutors are not backing down.

They're not stopping. I mean, let's just take a look at the Southern district of Florida case before judge Eileen Cannon. Special counsel Jack Smith gave a one page notice of his intent to file supplemental authority. But Jack Smith saying, I don't believe at all that the Supreme Court ruling providing for absolute presidential immunity has anything to do with Donald Trump stealing classified documents once he left office.

Also Justice Clarence Thomas's concurrence about how the special counsel is unlawfully appointed and unlawful appropriations flow to the special counsel is also, I mean, uh, other than basically saying it was entirely unlawful and corrupt special counsel. Jack Smith basically said that wasn't even a question before Clarence Thomas. And what the message from Jack Smith, the judge cannon was, look, we know that he was sending you a message, but guess what? Despite that ruling being a horrible one, none of the other eight judges sent you that message.

So are you going to just be on you and team Clarence Thomas, and we'll go to the 11th circuit to try to flag that? Is that your team? Or are you going to do what you already said, which was that the Supreme Court's already allowed for there to be special counsels. What are you gonna do, Judge Cannon? And then, Pope Pock, we see in Manhattan as well,

no sign that the prosecution's backing down. I mean, the only thing that Justice Mershon did there, very smartly, I think, even though I think it's frustrating, is move the sentencing to September, but that would allow the briefing to take place on Trump asserting absolute immunity. So if and when Trump loses that briefing, the sentencing can basically happen right away. Trump filed his brief there.

But talk about it, Popak. You could start with either one of them, but no one's backing down because of the Supreme Court. No, I think what they've now been able to do, Ben, is they've been able to read carefully the lines that were written in the Supreme, I almost sounded like I said, lies that were written in the Supreme Court opinion,

that too, the lines that were written there and between the lines and then you use appropriately things like concurrences rarely dissent, sometimes, sometimes the sense depends on who's writing them to help guide you in your arguments. And so here, let's start with Mar-a-Lago. Here's my favorite part of the Mar-a-Lago argument. When they threw, as we said, and as you and I predicted, and you and I did hot takes on it, soon as we saw the love letter from Clarence Thomas almost addressed directly to Judge Aline Cannon

and his concurrence, he wasted his entire concurrence, which we'd rather have recused himself because of his close affiliation with his wife, who is an insurrectionist, testified for the Jan 6 committee. But having not done that, well, you know, he had to poke his fingers, his big fat finger in the eye of democracy, boop, and say, I'm here, and I'm going to challenge the jurisdiction and the legitimacy of the special counsel position and argue that they are improperly appointed,

improperly authority delegated. I don't know where the delegation of authority comes from. Well, I can point them out where in the CFR, the Code of Federal Regulation, and the Department of Justice manual it does. And therefore, I just think this is a stranger to the case, a member of the public that's running around like it's Halloween acting like he's a prosecutor. And so we knew that was a lot. We saw that you and I circled it. We were like, here we go. Because he knows that he's not supposed to be communicating with trial court level judges, but he does it by way of his concurrence. Knowing he does full well that Cannon is considering more than we ever thought she should, although with Cannon anything's possible, that a motion to dismiss, arguing that the special counsel, in which she's taken friends of the court

briefs because she thinks it's interesting, briefs arguing that the special counsel was improperly appointed and delegated authority and doesn't exist the entire indictment should be dismissed on those grounds alone. And, you know, we kind of joked about it as much as we could, a little bit of gallows humor a couple of weeks ago. We said, oh, here's another thing she finds interesting. Every federal judge and appellate judge, including the Supreme Court, has ever looked at the issue, has not found it that interesting, and has not challenged the legitimacy of the special counsel.

But, of course, canon is going to. Well, then, yeah, this thing here. Here's my favorite part of what they're filing when they filed and then we'll talk about Jack Smith's quick counterpunch response just to show you how attenuated this is. And to remind everybody the law of the land once it becomes a mandate is the Supreme Court majority decision. Whether it's nine zero six to three five to four somebody drops off or accuses themselves whatever the numbers are. Whoever is in the majority., there's multiple concurrences about one part of the opinion, not another part of the opinion. It becomes a little bit more

difficult to figure out what the majority opinion is. But when, you know, on this one, it was basically six to three. There are a couple of concurrences, but it was, this is the ruling. The dissents are not the law. Sometimes what was in the dissent becomes the actual proper legal analysis of position later adopted by a new Supreme Court. That happens. And the concurrence is not the law either. Sometimes you look to the concurrence to see if some clarity about what some of the issues are. But when somebody like Clarence Thomas just inserts an entire new argument that wasn't briefed, that wasn't argued, that was just assumed and presumed by the Supreme Court that the special counsel is legitimate

and issued rulings as if he were legitimate. This is what, this is the best that the Trump could do in his filing. Listen to this one, Ben, in our audience. They said, "'Justice Thomas'," in supporting Justice Thomas' position to, and promoting it to, canon. "'Justice Thomas' cited Justice Scalia's Morrison dissent,

which is consistent with Justice Kavanaugh's comment at oral argument in Trump that Morrison was one of the court's biggest mistakes. I mean, can you see how attenuated this is? I got so excited I knocked my microphone over. How attenuated this is? Another dissent mentioned and then an oral argument comment by one out of nine is supposed to be the persuasive precedent that this judge is supposed to declare

the only time in our history that a special prosecutor or counsel is invalid and illegitimate? Come on. And that's basically what the lawyers for the special counsel have argued back to the judge, reminding her that it is a dissent at best on issues that were neither brief nor argued nor a part of the majority opinion. In other words, we know it's a love letter to you, we're on to you, but you need to reject it. And if you don't, we're pretty confident the 11th circuit, your bosses will and all of that.

So look, if we know this Supreme Court, especially the MAGA part of it, if they wanted to find a very quick silver bullet to get rid of all the indictments against Donald Trump, rather than this Rube Goldberg contraption they've created of absolute immunity and almost absolute immunity, but you got to take it to the outer boundaries and then maybe, and then there's a little bit left over and maybe that part is prosecutable, they would just say special counsel was improperly and invalidly appointed and as the and he's funded improperly and the whole thing should go away. They know how to do that when they want to do it. They're not doing that and so that should die unfortunately a slow death either at the hands of her or failing

that at the 11th Circuit. Flipping over, again, that's one group of prosecutors very ready, having read carefully what happened. If anybody thinks the Manhattan DA's office was caught flat-footed by what just happened at the July 1st and the immunity decision that dropped out of the Supreme Court, then you're doing something. You're smoking something. All the prosecutors have been ready because they're just very cautious people to begin with and they're cynics to begin with. That's what makes good prosecutors and good future defense lawyers. They saw this coming and they had it mapped out and game

strategied out that this could go bad for them on immunity, on official conduct particularly. You've picked it up from the oral argument. You and I were like, oh, here we go, official conduct. Then that's the SEAL Team Six order there. That's the selling pardons that actually came up during discussion with the oral. And so they were ready, they'd been ready. And they knew that Donald Trump would try to argue,

just as frankly, Karen Freeman at Nippelow, our colleague said about the evidence that was presented. They can't argue with a straight face, even Trump's lawyers in New York, that what he did to cover up Stormy Daniels and the Sex Act and the payoff while he was candidate Trump is somehow covered by immunity. The best that they could argue is that under the evidence portion of the opinion by the Supreme Court, official conduct could never be used, even stretched to its outer boundaries, could ever be used as evidence to support the prosecution of

something outside of the immunity defense. And so they're arguing, I'm not sure they got that exactly right, but that's their argument. And so they're arguing that lots of the evidence, as Karen anticipated, about the female employee in the White House that was responsible for- Westerhouse. Westerhouse, thank you,

who's responsible for the revolving door and keeping it swinging properly in front of Donald Trump's office. And you know, Hope Hicks. It was her, it was Hope Hicks and others. Popak, I want to cover that. I want to take a quick ad break first. I want to tease that a little bit, but I want to tell you something, Popak.

Is it odd that I'm actually feeling very good right now? Because of my analysis? I know because I think that people are fired up, you know, and I think people try to take a big swing at our democracy. And I think it's been very revealing what's happened over the past few weeks. But I think there's a resiliency that is different right now than in 2016. And in my heart of heart, I feel confident. I feel stronger than ever by this pro-democracy community. And I want to remind everybody as well, patreon.com slash legal AF is the place

where you can catch those Ben and Popak lectures, get some exclusive content there, but really most importantly, help the growth of this platform. We don't have outside investors and I know the media has let you all down. It's let us down. It's led me to quit my job and to work full time

on this as a result. So patreon.com slash legal app, my old job, not my Midas job. Just like, did you just quit your job? No, it made me quit my job as actually a practicing lawyer. I had to explain to my parents that I became a YouTuber and running a media network. They appreciate it though with the love and support of the Midas Mighty. Let's take our first quick break. We'll be right back. When my mother-in-law arrived from overseas for the birth of our new baby daughter this

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or scan the QR code on the screen to get a free gift with your order today. Those pro-democracy sponsors are great. Those ad reads are great. They go a long way to help this independent media network. As I mentioned before, we don't have outside investors. We see what happens when you go down that slippery slope of what let's just say our competitors do and what has happened there. You know what I'm talking about? But that's why I help our pro

democracy sponsors. They have great products, great services, and remember that patreon.com legal AF is a way to help and get those emojis as well by hitting that dollar sign below. As I've always said, emojis is probably not the greatest business model that there is, but it seems to be working though in terms of the integrity of our reporting. So Popak, before the break, you were talking about is that Supreme Court absolute immunity decision really had three parts to the immunity decision. One, you get immunity for core constitutional functions. Two, you get immunity for official acts, and the Supreme Court said give broad presumptions

that anything a president does is an official act. But three, the Supreme Court said any evidence of something that a president does that could be an official act or core constitutional function is not allowed to ever even go before a grand jury or go before a jury or make its way into a proceeding at all. So here in the Manhattan district attorney criminal trial, what Trump is arguing and what the district attorney's going to have to oppose is Trump saying,

look, you called Hope Hicks to the stand. You called Donald Trump's assistant Westerhous to the stand. You talked about Donald Trump in the White House, Donald Trump's communication with Hope Hicks. We talked pop-up about that Perry Mason moment where Hope Hicks broke down. She started crying on the stand when she was relaying a

conversation she had with Donald Trump, where Trump made some comment to her like, hey, you think we got away with this? And she's like, that's the moment I knew that he was very much aware of what Cohen did. And she admitted it, but that conversation took place in the White House. So Trump's going to say that conversation is an official communication, how Trump received mail in the White House. So Trump's going to say that conversation is an official communication, how Trump received mail in the White House, Trump going on Air Force One, his habits, Trump inviting over David Pecker and Cohen into the White House. He threw a party for them. So on the one hand, the prosecution's going to say that's harmless error. There was all this other evidence as well. It's not reversible error. Or two, the prosecution's going to say that's harmless error. There was all this other evidence as well.

It's not reversible error. Or two, the prosecution is going to say, regardless, that's not even private conduct. Donald, the fact that you had a conversation inside the White House is not the test. You still have to look at the conduct itself. And talking about falsifying business records, undoubtedly a personal act to cover up sex with the porn

star is not official conduct. So then it starts looking like your Nixon v. Fitzgerald blasting game outer perimeter test. And is it outside the outer perimeter? You think I got that right, Popeye? How would you analyze it now? And you think that's where the prosecutor's gonna go? Yeah, I think, yeah, as we started to say before the break

and as you picked up here, the evidence, it shows a weakness that Donald Trump knows he has. I thought, I would have thought, given their past behavior, that they would have tried to argue to get automatically into one of the core constitutional function buckets for absolute immunity or at least the fallback one of core of official conduct

which gets you a presumption of immunity that is very hard for the prosecutor to overcome but they went on the evidence one which we anticipated I think that's the that's where they have to go, unfortunately for them. The testimony of Hope Hicks, of Wester Hoot, about the logistics of how you get an appointment with Donald Trump in the White House, who uses the Sharpie to mark up his calendar, the issues that Hope Hicks testified, both before she, most of her testimony was about when she was campaign communication director. Very small amounts of when she was there about interactions with Michael Cohen,

all about private checkbooks on a private contract to cover up a private sex act with Donald Trump private money with Trump bucks. So there is even this United States Supreme Court would not find that at the outer boundaries of official conduct, his communications with these people or their testimony would constitute the official conduct for which there is an evidence bar

under the new immunity ruling. So they're gonna fight this out. I read the brief, I was sort of waiting. Every time I turned another page of this 30 or 40 page brief followed by Trump's lawyers, I was like, okay, now the shoe's gonna drop now, right? There's a smoking gun somewhere in here, isn't there? And I got to the end, I was like, that's it?

That's their argument? So now we're gonna wait patiently for the Manhattan DA to file their brief. And my prediction is that Mershon is going to very quickly dispatch this immunity argument in a very orderly and well thought out and reasoned way in an opinion that the loser on the other side of it, meaning Donald Trump, will take his appeal to the first department, which will set up some, I don't know about a short briefing schedule given

or an emergency briefing schedule. Maybe somebody will ask for that given the September sentencing date, but that could always be pushed off. We'll have to see. The first department's an odd duck. I've appeared in front of them a number of times. They move at their own pace. And even if somebody jumps up and down with their hair on fire and asks for an

emergency briefing schedule or handle something in an expedited fashion, they move at their own pace, especially over the summer. That's why everyone was like, why is the New York Attorney General Appeal not going to happen until the October term because they don't do things in August. It's like there's no court in August. So they're not going to convene specially for this. And then it has to make its way to the Court of Appeals in New York to fully exhaust the appellate grounds in New York. And then you got to try to take a special writ if you're still the loser like Trump to the Supreme Court. So I like where we are in terms of the law and the application of this continuing thematic today of unintended consequences or every action has a reaction.

I think the prosecutors are primed for the fight. They're making the right arguments. They're making the right record. And there is a lane for them to travel down within the Supreme Court decision itself and come out the other side with the prosecution and the convictions intact. Having said that, it'll go and take some time, and it's more than a New York minute, to get all of what I just outlined, you just outlined, out and done. So that's not going to time out before the November 5th election. And I think Murchand understands that. And so the sentencing in September is sort of a

control date. He's even said if necessary, he may delay that to allow these appeal process to come forward. So I'm not, this is the only thing, and I'm all, I always get accused of papachium. I'm just managing this is the only thing, and I'm all, I always get accused of popachium. I just managing expectations. I don't believe Donald Trump's gonna get actually sentenced before the November election, not because of the election, but because of all these other appellate issues that we just outlined. Well, think about it like this.

Start with the E. Jean Carroll trial. There were two of them. Donald Trump went before a jury. A jury unanimously found Donald Trump sexually assaulted. E. Jean Carroll, the federal judge, made that clear. Same thing as rape is what the federal judge said. Donald Trump had another trial, got a jury. He lost that one involving defamation. A unanimous jury found Donald Trump defamed his sexual assault victim. The Trump Organization got a jury trial before a Manhattan jury, and the jury found that the Trump Organization engaged in more than a dozen felonies.

Donald Trump got a jury trial, and a jury unanimously found that Donald Trump engaged in 34 separate felony counts. Donald Trump had his day in court. In the criminal trials, a grand jury indicted, it's not just some special counsel goes, I wanna do this. No, a grand jury of Donald Trump's peers indicted. And in the two cases, the Trump Organization case,

which still a lot of people don't really talk about, could you imagine a President Biden ran an organization that was deemed to be a felony organization? Just think about the different sets of rules here, yet alone if he was found liable for sexual assault, but there's that. And then Donald Trump was found, was criminally convicted before the jury in Manhattan. Donald Trump had his day in court. Donald Trump said he was going to testify, but did not testify.

He lied about that. He invoked his fifth amendment, which he had the right to do in the criminal cases by just simply not testifying. Those were his choices. But then Donald Trump actually appointed judges, justices to the Supreme Court. Not like President Biden appointed Justice Mershon. Donald Trump appointed three of the judges who ruled in his favor. And the other three, one of them is Clarence Thomas,

and the others are Alito and Roberts, who are far right-wing judges. These unelected judges were the ones who ultimately said, yeah, we may have a jury system, but you know what? We're going to pronounce a rule. And we're going to say, if you are a president, you can do whatever you want. As long as you can say it's official conduct, it's a core constitutional duty, and then we're not even going to allow, we're going to go a step

further than what Trump even asked us. And we're going to say, you can't even introduce evidence of things that occurred that could be viewed as official conduct. So the Supreme Court taking essentially these verdicts out of the jury's hand or doing a lot of work to stop the wheels of justice and our system. And certainly this is not the place where, you know, all things being equal, this is not where we want to be at all. I certainly hope though that we, the people,

and the American people see where this is coming from. This is the same Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade. This is the same Supreme Court we'll talk about in a little bit that overturned the 40-year Chevron deference decision. This is the same Supreme Court that said bump stocks, proliferate wherever you want to use bump stocks. Doesn't matter that Congress actually passed pretty clear legislation

in 1986 saying that component parts that make a semi-automatic weapon look like a machine gun is a machine. We're not going to say that. We're going to ignore the strict text and go back to the drawing board Congress if you want to deal with it. This is the same Supreme Court that's gutted the Voting Rights Act, that's gutted the Civil Rights Act, that's gutted the separation of church and state and decades of precedent in what's known as the lemon test. This is a right-wing Supreme Court that's coming for your freedom, that's coming for your rights because they view things through a prism of extreme versions of a kind of a

Christian nationalistic view that they want to impose. It's very similar to a Taliban. It's very similar to like the Ayatollah in Iran and their Supreme Council. This Supreme Court sees things this way. And, you know, I ask you go take a look before the revolution in Iran, what things looked like the day before and the day after. What this Supreme Court wants things to look like is the day after, and they're working to gut those things. That's why people are Googling Project 2025. It's okay to be scared. It's okay to be frightened, but turn that into action and let's talk about these things. We the people still have the power and so much of my frustration over these past two

weeks has been discourse so unnecessarily self-defeating and silly and not recognizing what the people are really saying and what we the people want and what we the people are focused on. But I digress there. I want to talk briefly though about what Judge Chutkin, one of our favorite judges, also sent a strong message. And she's one of our favorite judges because she's a law and order judge. She's no nonsense. She's like, yeah, January 6th was a horrifying day. Do not try to act like this was some peaceful and patriotic thing. So she's sentencing someone by the name of

Spencer Hoffman This guy is a lower-level guy. He was there He was like trying to climb the fence the next day in the Lincoln Memorial and got arrested and lied Claimed he wasn't there then some of the J6 hunters shot showed the photos of him moving Barricade just an idiot and a moron. But he was there and he tried to basically plead the defense of, I'm an idiot. I'm a moron.

I got all riled up. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done it. And the judge was like, no, I'm still sentencing you even if you didn't do anything, even in attack the police officers. I'm putting you in six months supervised release. I'm throwing you in prison for 30 days that you need to serve." The effects are still being felt of January 6th. This was a violent attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power desecrating the center of

our government, Federal Judge Tanya Chutkin said. And she noted that as a result of the way people have been dealing with it, now the prospect of another election Promises to be who knows and she wanted to say more but she was sending a message there not just to Donald Trump But to the Supreme Court for what they've done and their abject failure So you have judge Chuck in talking about it as well. I want to get your take on that popok We also talked about at the outset of the show though the law of unintended consequences. I've teased it about the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the Chevron decision, which ironically was fueled by right-wing desires to deregulate in the first place, but then when the unintended law of consequences of the Chevron 1984, led to agencies doing things like having robust enforcement to stop polluters, to stop fraudsters, to stop people involved in securities fraud, to deal with

complex issues. Well, now the Supreme Court's like, actually, we don't want agencies to be involved. We did want agencies to be involved when Reagan wanted us to have involved. We don't like that anymore. We're going to decide this. Really? You all are going to be involved when Reagan wanted us to have an involvement. Ah, we don't like that anymore. We're gonna decide this. Really? You all are gonna make those decisions? Let's talk about that and more, let's take our last break of the show. A small regret is sitting in a dentist chair thinking,

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they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to zbiotics.com slash legal AF and use the code legal AF at checkout for 15% off. Wow, zbiotics got popok wearing probably my favorite popokian glasses right there. Those glasses are intense. They're futuristic. They are they are a plus Michael popok. I. I just got to tell you that. Any comments about those glasses as you watch yourself doing the ad read with them?

You asked me for comments about that? No, can I- You can invoke the fifth, it's all good. Let me explain. I want to talk more a little bit about what Judge Chetkin said, how I think she's going to be holding mini trials and what that means, a mini trial. And if we could get one in the next 60 days,

it'll be quite interesting. But I just wanna show this graphic that I was just looking at earlier today. This Brian Stelter guy, this is why there's Legal AF. Okay, this is why there's the Midas Touch Network. He posts this. He goes, rarely has a presidential election, this is what the mainstream corporate media is pushing, rarely has a presidential election been so defined by the gender gap.

Masculine versus feminine framing. It's Donald Trump's chest-beating macho appeal versus Joe Biden's softer, reproductive rights dominated all gender inclusivity. Okay, Donald Trump is a rapist. Like, I don't, Donald Trump was found liable for sexual assault, which a judge found was rape. That's not macho. That's called rape. Okay, that's not macho.

Being a convicted felon, that's not macho. Okay. Mocking the disabled. Who mocks the disabled, mocking disabled people, disabled persons. That's not macho. Calling our veterans suckers and losers. That's not a macho thing. You want to talk about macho and alpha, which I think is a ridiculous conversation to even be having. But real men, if you want to know Brian Stelter macho, don't mock the disabled. We don't attack women. We don't attack people for being part of the LGBTQ plus community. You support equality and you call out sexual assaulters. And when I see dialogue like that, I think to myself, how screwed up in the head

can you be? I mean it. How screwed up can you be to think that that's a framing? And the corporate media that goes along with this, frankly, they're aiding and abetting a sexual assaulter. They're thrusting a sexual assaulter onto the American people. Just stop with your freaking crap and focus on the facts. And that's why we focus on the facts here and law and order on legal AFI. That guy, Brian Stelter, I have to remind people he was the chief media correspondent for CNN. And he was also a former media reporter for the New York Times and an editor for other things. It's not like he's fringe as we normally use that phrase. And the fact that he posted that ridiculous MAGA cartoon of Donald Trump and NFT in the making, and would rather, as you said,

would rather have a person who is a... And look at it, when did it become a bad thing to make sure that women in this country aren't second class citizens and have control, bodily autonomy, and make their decisions about the reproductive rights. He says it like it's a four-letter word that our president is in favor of women and reproductive rights. Yes, and twice on Sunday, please. And for them to say, you know, what he wants to say is that we have an afe liberal quiche eating this is was all the vocabulary of the 1980s and 1990s. You know, rosé swilling group that's trying to control America.

That's not what's controlling America right now. What is controlling America right now is a right wing MAGA fundamentalist Christian based set a set of small power brokers who are bloodthirsty to get back into office on the backs and the coattails of somebody named Donald Trump and they'll do anything and they'll do anything in their power to do it. And that includes trying to manipulate and shape-shift the law to fit their corrupt agenda. That's what we're watching.

And Popak, it's fake Christian too. I mean, Donald Trump goes to churches with all these people wearing like MAGA hats and Haq Pua 2024 shirts, and Donald Trump leads cursing in churches. He has kids curse in churches. He has kids curse in churches. He leads church curse chance. He doesn't even know Bible verses.

By the way, there should be a separation of church and state, but if we want to even go there, President Biden goes to church every week. He doesn't throw it in anybody's faces because he recognizes there's a separation of church and state. Donald Trump goes into high schools and talk, like this doesn't even get reported. I looked at it the other day. Trump went to a high school

and talked about getting pissed on by hookers. He go, I don't really like getting pissed on, but they call it a golden shower. I don't like it. I'm like, that's what he's talking, what are you even talking about? That's why when President Biden says you're not getting a pass,

what is this fake, bizarro fascism? It's just cruelty. And so when the media does this both sides crap, it pisses me off. And anyway- Can I just say one thing, not to add to the rant, but why doesn't the media, and I don't mean the thing that you and I founded

and the thing you and your brothers founded, I mean the media, and I don't mean the thing that you and I founded and the thing you and your brothers founded, I mean the media, what we call them. Why don't they get off of Biden being tongue tied occasionally in the middle of a deep, deep discourse on foreign policy and everything that he's accomplished in his administration? And why don't they get on the things that you just talked about and that I talk about in Hot Takes? Because why? Why don't they get on the things that you just talked about and that I talk about in Hot Takes? Because why?

Because there's a combination of that they are ignorant, they are lazy, and they also want fascism because they think it's going to be good for them, and they also think this is a game. And you can see how they smile. It's just we the people understand the stakes. Anyway, I digress. I think I covered the Judge Chutkin thing enough.

I want you to- Well, one more thing on Judge Chutkin, what I liked about Judge Chutkin. Remember back in September of 2023, she made comment, she's not afraid to say the truth and without being biased or being grounds for disqualification. Trump didn't like it in 2023, and he moved to disqualify or didn't go anywhere

because she made similar comments during sentencing and other because she's one of the active judges, line, L-I-N-E, line judges who have been handling all of the Jan 6 prosecutions. Everybody should remember, if they don't, I'll mention it here, that the entirety, almost the 99.9% of the prosecutions, trials, bench, and jury have gone through one department, one division of the federal court system in DC. It's not like a crime spree where it gets handled spree where it gets handled in every federal court in all 50 states. The strain on the DC court system, on the federal DC court system, has been tremendous. They haven't added more Article 3 judges to handle this. Every judge has had 10, 15, or 20 cases involving Jan 6 in front of them,

and they've tried many of them as bench trial, meaning they made the ultimate decision as the fact finder or presiding over a jury trial, just like Chutkin has. And so you can't pull the wool over former chief judge Beryl Howells or Jeb Boesberg or Tanya Chutkin. You can't pull the wool over their eyes. They haven't seen just one Jan six case or sentencing. They've handled dozens of them. And the fact that they mentioned that in the course of their

and make their findings usually during sentencing about how bad Jan six was, it's not a reflection that they're biased and they can't make a proper decision against Donald Trump. It's a reflection that they are a thinking sentient human being that has a job to do and has seen this movie 15 times and is qualified to talk as experts about what the evidence shows. Popak, let's talk about finally the Supreme Court's Chevron, the new decision overturning

the Chevron decision. It hit with a big thud. The decision was called the Loper Bright Enterprises versus Ray Mondo was decided June 28th, 2024. So about two weeks ago, we covered it with some hot takes. This decision kind of gutting the ability of agencies to interpret their enabling statutes that create them and that interpret the types of regulations they can enforce where there's ambiguity. This is important because Congress doesn't always act with a great degree of clarity. They reach compromises.

They send it over to the agencies to then kind of interpret it. Usually administration that's, democratic administration will have certain priorities, Republican administrations will have other priorities and whether there's regulation, deregulation, reflects those types of priorities. So yes, some of the people in the agencies are unelected bureaucrats, but ultimately they're following

an agenda of someone who is elected. But in the Loper-Brite decision, the Supreme Court, which is comprised of unelected bureaucrats, Supreme Court justices and federal judges who are appointed and confirmed say, eh, it's not going to be agencies anymore. They don't get to do it. We do it. Why though, Popak, do you think this could backfire? Oh, absolutely. You have two opinions that came out almost back to back that will ultimately backfire. Let me just back up for one half a step. The reason the Supreme Court finally did this, and when I say the Supreme Court, just translate that into the MAGA right wing, ultra-ultra-ultra-fascist right, which is now comprised

of a voting bloc of Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas, who then bring over when they can and generally do when it comes to Federalist society principles and articles of faith. Chief Justice Roberts, who's now, as I won't mention who said it to me recently, but somebody who's very well known to the network and to you and me, said,

this is an attempt by Roberts to salvage his reputation. He can't beat them anymore. So he joins them in order to have these majority opinions that at least he can write the opinion related to. That has been the devil's bargain that he's made, along with Amy Coney Barrett and Kavanaugh. And when they go over there, they had that checklist. It was in the back pocket of Clarence Thomas

since he was put on the bench back in the 1990s, back when, talk about how long Joe Biden has been with us, back when Joe Biden was the head of the Judiciary Committee for the Senate. And then when they got Alito on there, and then they lost Antony and Scalia and then they got these other people on and now they finally got their block and they've been checking off, it's like a shopping list, they've been checking off their five or four major tenants of Federalist society thinking from the

and they're just writing it all off. Get rid of abortion and get rid of the Roe versus Wade decision. They always use the same phrase, an abomination, it was wrong then it's wrong now, take that off two years ago, take off, expand Second Amendment gun rights, we got that in the Bruin decision in New York, you know, and make it a personal right and don't tie it to the militia and don't have any sensible gun regulation around it, check. Third one was destroy the administrative state, which means get rid of executive branch headed by the president. Think about that for a minute. Executive branch administrative agencies. Hollow them out.

Don't allow any of their rulemaking to actually regulate for people's safety and for the the we the people part of this podcast for their benefit, just totally ignore that and put the power back in a unitary president, right, and an imperial president, and ignore all of these agencies that are filled with people that may not be of the same party of the president. Although a lot of the rulemaking, especially when it comes to clean air and clean water and energy, was written by industry owners of those industry businesses. Big oil, big gas. It's not a coincidence that the first press conference in late July with the new, whoever the vice president candidate is going to be for Donald Trump is in front

of the oil and gas industry. That's not like, they didn't go, I wonder which is a good place to roll out the new VP candidate. Yeah, oil and gas, because Donald Trump is in the back pocket of oil and gas, and he invited them in Mar-a-Lago to contribute a billion dollars. So anything where there is regulation, internal revenue service, securities and exchange commission, anything about the environment, meaning against oil and gas, Federalists are against it. And so, that was, they finally got them. They've been trying to get rid of the administrative anything related to these agencies for as long as they can. Then the second shoe that dropped, which I started the commentary about,

is that they got around to saying that this sort of insider due process system that all of the agencies were using for years, for 50 years plus, which is they had their own little mini judges, talk about mini trials, they had their own little mini judges, talk about mini trials, they had their own little administrative law judges, ALJs. It's a little dirty secret, unfortunately, of our administrative state. I've been on the other side of it, where you don't have an Article Three federal judge, you have like, you have a person. Yeah, they wear a robe, but they've been appointed by the agency to

handle the agency's enforcement actions because every agency has enforcement actions and what comes with enforcement actions? Money, meaning fines that are get paid which helps support and fund the agencies. Most of these agencies don't really need, SEC doesn't need the money from Congress to allocate to them. They make billions of dollars a year in fines from regulating things in the world of securities and investments. So they have these little mini court systems. Well, the Supreme Court finally got around and said, nope, can't use administrative law judges. Get rid of all of them and all the money that you weren't using to go hire

law firms. You're now going gonna have to get real trial lawyers, real federal court trial lawyers, and spend millions of dollars litigating on your enforcement actions because that wasn't due process and now you gotta, and that was just another way to defang the administrative state. So that is what happened.

And that's where we're picking up the pieces from. Well, there we go, democracy going out of business, 50% off all precedent, get rid of that particular decision. But what is the silver lining that we have found? Well, if you're going to get rid of what the administrative officers of that particular agency, there's over 400 agencies of the federal government, cabinet level included, you know, the big ones we all know, education and energy and interior and commerce and state, justice, we all know those. But there's all these sub-agencies that impact our lives. More so, as you and I said two weeks ago, more so than probably

any other decision that's just been made. This one could be the most impactful. So what the Supreme Court said was, if Congress clearly states something in its rule, in its statute that it passed, an administrative person can't deviate from that and pass rulemaking. And if they're in the area where it seems a little gray, and it should be a major question for the Congress to decide, then their opinion should be given no more deference, even though they're the industry expert in that particular sub-industry, than a federal judge.

In fact, a federal judge is the actual person that should be making all decisions about the interpretation of law. And there should be no deference whatsoever given to the industry expert that heads up the agency at all. Now you're right, just to show you how on their head the Republican Party has flipped the Chevron decision that you and I talk about at length comes from a case that was promoted by Gorsuch's mother. And Gorsuch was the head of the EPA during this

period of time, this 1983-1984 period of time. And they were trying to help oil and gas through the Chevron deference, through this case, in the case that was established. And she was seen as the hero of the oil and gas industry as she headed the EPA, Neil Gorsuch's mother on the United States Supreme Court. Now, 50 years later, it's no, we know we want to put all the power in the power of the presidency. So then what do you do with the agencies? And if you're only going to look at the act itself, the law passed by Congress, I'll give a perfect example. The Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act says that there needs to be zero pollution, zero by 1985. Okay, last time I looked is 2024, and we don't have zero pollution.

So all of these rulemakings that came out by agencies, usually headed during Republican MAGA administrations by people that are in the industry, meaning the wolf is guarding the chicken coop. This is the reason we haven't gotten to zero pollution. But if Congress, if what Supreme Court is saying is, when in doubt, you've got to go back to the actual mandate of the major decision made by Congress. Okay, zero pollution. Pull all the permits to dump things into our water system and our water supply,

and dump things into our air supply, and that's it. And if you don't like it, and this is where environmentalists and conservationists and anybody in any of these departments that has been on the outside looking in for so long with their nose pressed up against the glass, the Supreme Court just gave them something that they can go do now. They can go file to their friendly neighborhood federal judge, file a suit, and challenge all administrative decisions that they don't like and say, well, that's inconsistent with the Clean Water Act for zero pollution by 1985, so be careful what you ask for. And does it surprise anyone, Ben, that this group of hermetically sealed Supreme Court justices

so completely, they talk about presidents being out of touch. Who is more out of touch with mainstream values and morals than a United States Supreme Court justice, especially on the MAGA side, usually a white male or female who's never lived a life, but yet is making decisions for you and me. I'm going to round it out this way. Where we started, Robert Merton, the sociologist that coined the phrase in the 1930s about the law of unintended consequences said it's often a reflection of hubris, lack of forethought and planning. Right? What have we been watching but hubris and lack of forethought? None of these people ever

worked a day in their life, have no calluses on their hands. I'm talking about the Supreme Court justices. They went from one Ivy League private school to another, very short stints, almost probably not at all in any kind of law firm representing any kind of client, and then right on to the feeder program to the directly to the Supreme Court, never letting their feet touch the ground. And we wonder why they are instead substituting what should be real world street knowledge about how things impact other people. And they instead grab onto these phony policies and edicts that are shoved down their throat willingly

by the Federalist Society. And this is the ramifications that you and I and our audience have to shove against every episode, every hour, every day until things are right. You know, I was playing tennis earlier in the day. I have a weekly tennis match that I do with my buddy Jeff. We were talking and he said, you know, it's just so surprising Ben, like with how crazy Trump is with all of the things that he says, like how, why is it even close right now? Um, how, how is America so divided?

And what I said to Jeff is I said, you know, actually when it comes to the issues, America's not divided when it comes to the issues, America is not divided. When it comes to people, America is divided. What do you mean? I said, well, just take a look at any of these issues. Women's reproductive rights, gun control, democracy, foreign policy, climate, economy, and jobs and wages and raising a minimum wage to a living wage. IVF, the fact that agencies should be able to do their job. The average American isn't talking

about the Chevron deference one way or another. They just want agencies to go about and do their job, stopping bad guys who commit security fraud. Equality. You go through all of those issues. 70 to 75% of Americans all have pretty similar views on those things, which usually align right now with the Democratic Party's views on things, which is a bigger tent kind of pro-democracy community thing, set of views and values. So how is it though that if, just look at all the polling on all of those, it's overwhelming.

So with that, how do you have such a divided country? And the explanation for that is disinformation that's out there and finding ways to pit us against each other, to make us not like each other, and then to rise up cults of personality and focus on the circus versus the substance. And the corporate media pushes these tsunami-type narratives. They don't shut up over and over again, and they wanna manifest outcomes, and enough is enough. And that doesn't always have to be the way it is. And I think why I feel so optimistic right now with still many, many months until the election,

I like there to be a little bit more months, but still with a lot of months before the election is the resiliency of we the people. And for the first time, I think in American history, frankly, the American people recognizing what is being done to them by pundits and elites and other out of touch people and the American people just wanting accurate data, wanting people to just be normal and compassionate. They don't want people cursing in churches. They don't want a leader who talks about getting peed on by hookers like Donald Trump does or even Donald Trump bringing it up in a high school and he doesn't like that. Why are you talking about that? Or Trump

saying he wants to sing the J6 choir instead of the anthem or Trump's picture on flags or these weird things of like these images that Trump sends of himself like like humping and kissing the flag. It's just weird stuff and dangerous stuff. We don't want Victor Orban who meets with Putin then going to Mar-a-Lago like we don't want that crap here in the United States of America And I hope what you all who have been with us for a long time at the Midas Touch Network to our new viewers Know that we stand with you. We this is we the people and this is us this independent media Movement is about us reclaiming our

Agency and our power over those forces who want to hoist upon us an Authoritarian and we're saying no we're rejecting that here on legal AF and might is touch and the way we do it on a show Like this is we're not just Descriptive we are prescriptive is we're not just descriptive, we are prescriptive. We're prescribing remedies and PO-POK is telling you a roadmap for how these decisions that are intended to screw us can actually be used right now in the interim

to battle and fight back against it until there can be Supreme Court justices who support our democracy. Again, spread the word about this network, spread the word about this show. One way to support us as well, in addition to supporting our pro-democracy sponsors, is by going to patreon.com slash legal AF.

Join that, there's a membership fee there, but look, we don't have outside investors, so we gotta find creative ways to grow. Michael Popak and I will be announcing our next meeting with you on Zoom. So if you want to meet Michael Popok and myself right now, join Patreon.com slash legal AF and we'll announce our next meetup. Thank you, everybody, for watching this episode of Legal AF. Have a wonderful weekend.

Stay positive. We're in this together.