Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Texas Goes FULL HANDMAID’S TALE, QAnon Shaman is Going to PRISON and More!

Episode Date: September 5, 2021

The top-rated weekly law and politics podcast, Legal AF, produced by Meidas Touch and anchored by MT founder and civil rights lawyer, Ben Meiselas and national trial lawyer and strategist, Michael Popok, is back for another hard-hitting, thought-provoking yet entertaining look at the most compelling developments at the intersection of law and politics. On this week’s real-time, filled-to-the-brim episode, Ben and Popok explore and explode: The Texas Chainsaw Bounty Reproductive Rights Massacre, & SCOTUS’ abuse of the Shadow Docket.  Rollback of Trump’s efforts to decimate the Clean Water Act The suit by the Sandy Hook Elementary school parents against Remington, and it’s efforts to cause the parents more pain in the discovery process McCarthy’s underhanded attacks on the credibility Jan6 select committee by threatening telecom companies, and whether his actions are a federal crime and an ethics violation.  Update on DeSantis’ continued efforts to undermine student health by appealing the judge’s ruling finding his school mask ban illegal. President Biden’s efforts to assist the victims of 9-11 and their suit against Saudi Arabia by declassifying FBI files on the link between the Saudi government and the hijacker l-terrorists,  And the usual collection of GQP Shamans, Charlatans Conspirators, and so much more.  Special Easter Eggs Alert: Ben throws 2 more yellow cards at Popok!  Reminder and Programming Note: All past episodes of Legal AF originally featured on the MeidasTouch podcast can now be found here on this channel. Follow Legal AF on Twitter here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up, Midas Mighty and Papokeeds? Ben Myceles here with your Papoke and Shaman. Michael Popok 4, legal AF. If it's Sunday, it is legal, AF, Michael Popock, the fan favorite. How are you doing this weekend? I'm doing really great, Ben. And I've always wanted to be a shaman. And I never thought it would happen. And you just, you just added yet another, another name for things that happen on the show. Popock is a shaman. You have been shaman, popok. What do you think about this new live format that we're doing? We went live on a whim last week. A broke records, legal AF, one of the top, if not the top legal

podcast in the world, the live seem to be a big hits. Everyone got to see their popokian do his thing. It's funny, Popok, as I say that there's pretty much unanimously five star reviews, but there's this one review. And it just shows you and you know the exact one I'm about to talk about that goes enough with this popokian, my celacid nonsense. That's what makes the show fun. If you just want to sit in a lecture all day,

I can direct you to some real boring stuff. But that's not what you get on legal, I have, right, Popok? Our competitors, I mean, I won't name them by name, but there are podcasts that do a dry recitation of the law. But I don't think there is. And I know there isn't because you and I research this before we decided to do it. There's not a podcast. And it's certainly a group of followers and listeners that are at the intersection of politics

and law with, you know, our normal banter and sense of humor. I mean, the pop-up, pop-up thing is sort of funny, but that's not the essence of this show. The essence of the show is the DNA of Midas Touch and what you and your brothers founded, which is a progressive democratic analysis and factual analysis of the law. And you and I said, I wonder if there's an audience for this, you know, a year and a half ago or two years ago, I found the original version and for those fans that want to see it, we'll post it one day of the terrible production values. You and I, 200 people watching doing what we called a legal roundup. We had Brett running around with graphics and floating heads and all sorts of things.

And we said, you know, we might be onto something here. And now we had 240,000 people tune in last week for our live broadcast and download the pod. And we couldn't ask for more. You and I talked about this. We said, well, we ever leave the Midas Touch mothership and do our own channel. What do you think will happen? And you said to me, what did you say to me?

I said, Po Pock, I think that we need to stay in the Midest Touch Channel a little bit longer, but then I think we're gonna get a hit and sure enough, here we are, one of the most downloaded legal podcasts, Po-Poc, one question, before we get into the legal news, I gave you a yellow card, I'm holding the yellow card up that I gave you.

I heard some rumors. You were crying last, last podcast in the evening. Are you doing okay? Any better, Popak? I'm doing fine. I'm going to, I'm going to paraphrase one of my favorite characters on Ted Lasso, the striker, Oi. I don't cry. There is a lot of oil, though, going on a lot of oil, a lot of a way, they put back, let's start by talking about this Texas abortion ban law. S B 8 was the bill in Texas. The bill banning essentially banning abortions and end run around Roe v Wade, you know, after about six weeks, that's six weeks, you know, this is a very weird law, SB 8, because it has this abortion ban in the law. The law, though, basically says that the government itself, the state

of Texas, would not be the arm that enforces the ban. So they ban it. The end run around Roe v. Wade at a reversal of Roe v. Wade, a patently illegal law on its face, but saying the Texas government is not going to enforce it. Instead, the law says that private citizens basically are deputized as bounty hunters. And anyone who aids and abets anybody getting an abortion would be civilly sued the same way you would be sued for negligence, the same way you would be sued for negligence, the same way you would be sued for any of the types of torts or breach of contracts or things that we talk about here, but you would get sued. Essentially turning Texans into brown shirts. It's the most or well-eum thing I've heard. You have organiser. organized turning your neighbor, turn in your neighbor,

turn in your neighbor. You have organizations that are setting up tip sites about how you can report your neighbors to receive these types of bounties. And the Supreme Court, and I want to understand, Pope, how the Supreme Court even made a ruling on this, given that it didn't go through the normal process. We've talked on might as touch how the Supreme Court before it makes like a ruling, before it issues an opinion, you generally have oral arguments, you have lawyers for the respective sides go up there. If Amicus briefs from people that are friends of the court

who take positions to educate the court on the law and social policy. And what's happening here is the Supreme Court new Trump majority, and I say Trump majority because I don't believe these people are conservative. We know these judges, Trump appointed three justices to the Supreme Court. They're frequently ruling with other judges who are appointed by Republicans in a way that's been referred to as shadow dockets. It's a kind of a new terminology that there are these like almost like rulings that are

going around the normal process here. And and pop up explain what happened in this ruling and maybe talk a bit about what this shadow docket situation. Yeah. Yeah. And let me, let me lead into it by giving a little more detail on the Texas law because it was crafted in a way to invite the very shadowed docket ruling that occurred. This was all cooked. This whole, this whole thing was cooked up by conservative and right wing

policy makers to try to find a fast track to get to the five right wing justices on a non-married based docket. We're going to talk about the difference between the merit docket, which is the one you and I always talk about, full briefing oral argument over a year. Amicus briefs being submitted by organizations, and then a ruling that's considered and reasonable. And there's debate in the hallways of the Supreme Court and the chambers of the Supreme Court among the clerks, among the lawyer, among the judges before an opinion and dissents are issued. All of that has been short circuit and in bypass. Not just here, we've now, you and I have now talked about

at least three or four shadow docket results that have happened within days with half-page opinions changing the laws we know it. We saw it in the asylum stay in Mexico case. We saw it in the Biden eviction moratorium case. And now we're seeing it on a full frontal attack on reproductive rights under Roe v Wade that go back 50 years. I mean, it is, it is an example of justice Roberts losing control of his court. It used to be the Roberts court. As of two days ago, it is no longer the Roberts court, the center no longer holds. He has lost control. He is now citing with the with the with the liberal wing, the Democratic wing of the Supreme Court in this kind of case. He was on the losing end of the five four decision that came out on midnight two

nights ago in two paragraphs. So let's back it up. Texas. What was the cute clever way to try to win on the emergency appeal or emergency application? Because the emergency application sought an injunction. When we've talked a little bit you and I about injunctions, and they're a little bit different breed. There you're asking the court, in this case, the highest court in the land, to enjoy or prevent or stop usually state actors from doing something during the dependency of an appeal. Stop the enforcement of the law. We've satisfied the four criteria for an injunction, which are adequate remedy law, irreparable harm, likelihood of success on the merits, and public interest tips in our favor. And here,

the court said, well, let's look at this bounty rule. They didn't call it the bounty law, but that's what it is. Because what the Texas Senate crafted is state actors like the governor, the Department of Health are not enforcing the law. No, not us. We've deputized private citizens with a private right of action to sue abortion clinics, plan parenthood, doctors, anyone who drives someone to end a pregnancy. They're all subject to a private civil lawsuit with 10,000 or more infines and attorney's fees plus plus plus a Bounty is being paid on the heads of fellow Texans the result of that and at six weeks At six weeks, which frankly a lot of women don't even know their pregnant at six weeks

So if that is the mark you have now banned effectively So what the, the Supreme Court justices said is, well, it's very unique. There's no state actor for us to enjoy. So therefore, we don't think that's been fully briefed properly. It's a fascinating issue. This is the Supreme Court talking. The five. Popo, I like your, I like your whiny Supreme Court impressive. That's my whiny. And let me give the exact quote.

The applicants now before us have raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law at issue, but their application also presents complex and novel antecedent procedural questions on which they have not carried their burden. For example, federal courts enjoy the power to enjoy individuals tasked with enforcing laws, not the laws themselves. That was me doing the opinion not the old but the good winey Supreme Court. All right.

Well, I'll, I'll, I'll stop. I like your impression. I like your impression. That was a artist rendering of what a whiny right wing Trump's. Yeah. When it named the abundance in the law, but look, it, there's one more thing here, because the, the, the way that Texas, and this is evil genius for right now, the way that Texas is banning an overturning, roe v. Wade, for at least the next year until the Supreme Court takes up a Mississippi case, which we'll

talk about next, which really goes to the heart of roe v. Wade. The way they're doing it is through lawsuits. Well, who are participants with lawsuits lit against and a judge and the Supreme Court questioned now on an injunction level whether they can enjoy a state judge From taking jurisdiction over a case because the laws on constitutional and you know They can sit in their ivory tower and they can sit at the Supreme Court in there, you know the five of them especially Coney Barrett a former former, you know, a Catholic from Notre Dame. And they can say, well, this is a fascinating question as to whether we can enjoy in a state judge. And we'll take a look at that a year from now. In the meantime, for the next year in Texas, there will effectively be no abortions. Period. Meaning they're going to have

to leave the state. We're back to back alleys and women dying and back alleys to illegal abortion procedures or people standing and delivering facing not criminal sanctions, but economic ruin if they participate in the end of life process. And Popak, you have some strongly worded descents here. I don't think I've ever read any descents, at least in any recent history that basically calls out the majority's opinion for being illegal, unconstitutional, and to flat out say, you know, and sometimes the Supreme Court can be a little cryptic in how they go after each other, but genuinely calling out the majority for these shadowed docket. So from Justice S. So to my or she says the court's order is stunning, presented with an application to enjoy a flagrantly

unconstitutional law, engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights, and evade judicial scrutiny. A majority of justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand. That from Justice Sotomayor, Justice Kagan, without, she to my or justice Kagan without she's with justice Kagan said without full briefing or argument. And after less than 72 hours of thought, this court green lights the operation of Texas is patently unconstitutional law banning most abortion. Today's ruling illustrates just how far the courts, quote, shadowed docket decisions made depart from the usual principles of a pellet process.

Here ladies and gentlemen, might as touch papokians, all the people who are listening right now. The descent is saying that the majority are criminals, right, Popok? They're saying that this majority is rogue and is not following the law, throw out your law textbooks because we don't know what the hell you're doing, right, Popok? Yeah. Well, it's, it's attacking the analysis of the, of the, of the four that were in, that were in descent, including Roberts. You mean, we, Kagan certainly took a very strong position. So, to my ear, expectedly

did. But Roberts, who normally, who was the fifth vote when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was alive just two years ago, in a case that upheld reproductive rights and the right was Robert. This is how far this court has gone wrong. And to the right with the addition of Amy Coney Barrett. Look, we've known that justice Thomas, because every chance he gets, even if the case doesn't involve a reproductive rights privacy or Roe v Wade, he says, like in a footnote, oh, by the way, Roe v Wade was wrong. We decided we should reverse it at the first opportunity. So we've known Thomas has wanted to do that. He just needed to get his fifth vote. It used to be we only needed when the when the court was properly balanced. And it isn't now. We only needed one one vote from the right to come over to the other side. And that often was Kennedy before he left.

Roberts, when he had the ability to do that when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was still there. But now you need two. You need a gorsage. You need a Kavanaugh. You need a Koney Barrett. These are not in play. They are firmly locked and wedded to the other side of the spectrum. And with the other thing that's appalling about where you get your opinion on this, do you remember the days, I mean like two years ago, in the history of the Supreme Court, where justice is and chief justice is,

were concerned about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court in society and how the rest of the public would look at it. It was their excuse for not getting involved with election decisions. It was their excuse for not issuing midnight rulings in two paragraphs, attacking fundamental rights because they were worried about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court so that people didn't take up pitchforks and torches in the streets, which are about to happen. Where is that concern about them as the co-equal branch of government? Where is it?

And this was a very easy call, Popak, of what the Supreme Court would normally do. It is a patently illegal law under Supreme Court precedent. And what you would always normally do is have a legitimate process where you would have briefing, where you would have all of this information go before the court. We've talked about this on past podcasts and for those who want to delve a little bit deeper, the seminal cases in this area, codifying the constitutional right to an abortion begins with Roe v. Wade in 1973. There's a number of other very important cases from planned parenthood versus Danforth in 1976. There's planned parenthood versus Casey in 1992. Popock, these cases, over time, the level of what we would like to call, you know,

strict scrutiny versus undue burden, you know, the standard of review with which the Supreme Court viewed the right to an abortion as a fundamental right has shifted over time, but it's without any doubt that it is a constitutional right to an abortion and that this law, one presented with it, you go, look, it's patently illegal, it's clearly an end run around where we as the Supreme Court are not going to rubber stamp this. Well, let's give our followers and listeners something to hang their hat on. So we often throw around lawyers and non lawyers often throw around the term that Roe v Wade and the right to, you know, choice and all of, where does that come from?

No where in the Constitution of the Bill of Rights is a right of privacy. There's lots of rights, but right of privacy as a defined term was created by Supreme Court precedent analyzing the 14th Amendment and what they referred to in the 70s as the number of rights emanating from the 14th amendment,

creating a right of privacy. It is a Supreme Court created interpretation of the language of the Constitution to find in the interplay of the various provisions and the prior precedent, a right of privacy, from the right of privacy stems reproductive rights starting with 1973 and Roe v Wade, which as an interesting aside, the majority opinion was decided by Harry Blackman, a conservative Republican appointed by Nixon, just to show you how far we've lost the Supreme Court's way in making proper decisions, regardless of partisan politics. Black men who, who no one would have thought, and he didn't even think, because he's been interviewed before he passed away,

and gave a lot of talks about this. He never thought he'd be the one to write Roe v Wade, but he saw an important constitutional issue that needed to be established. And he wrote it. And then what you're talking about, I believe, is that over time, because of medical science, there's been an evolution of the reproductive rights that are established originally by a Roe V Wade. And there is a continuum between the right of a woman of choice, to make choice about her reproductive rights

and issues and to terminate a pregnancy being first among them. And the right of the state on the other side of the continuum, the government to protect the life that the mother is carrying. And that over time, that continuum, the interest of the government, this is what the case law says that you refer to 50 years of president, increases as the, as the fetus ages, the younger, the younger the, the fetus, the more the woman has the right to make a choice. So the choice of, to have an abortion or not is not an unfettered absolute right and hasn't been.

But over time, the state has an interest. The problem is setting where that interest is and what is the appropriate age. I can tell you what it's not. It's not six weeks, which is what Texas is relied on. I don't even think it's 15 weeks, which the Supreme Court on its traditional merit stocket is going to take up in the October term. But we're not going to get a ruling on full briefing and oral argument for a year. So for the Supreme Court to sit and in a callous way and ignore the suffering of Texas women for the next year, who are who now can't get an abortion if they need it under

Roe v Wade, which every other woman in America at present is allowed to get. They are now, I know people have referred to it as, you know, the, what's the show on television that everybody refers to? If you're gonna ask me for shows, oh, I can't take part culture. Oh, I can't get me in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main,

I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, I can't get in the main, So they're referring to it to that we're in that land of, and we are because Texas women for the next year are denied fundamental privacy rights that every other woman in America has. And the scariest part about this development is that six or nine other states

Republican controlled have said, oh, that looks like a great idea. So they're going to pass laws exact with the bounty exactly similar to Texas, making us a separating this country even more into two different countries. Those were there are democratic principles and the ability of a woman to exercise fundamental constitutional rights. And these nine other places where women are in the Taliban. And these nine other places where women are in the Taliban. Correct. And I agree with that, Popak. And from planned parenthood versus KC in 1992, establishing an undue burden standard under which abortion restrictions would be unconstitutional when they were enacted for the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of women

seeking an abortion of a non viable fetus. Clearly the Texas law would be would would go against that very, very, very clearly. Popeyes one thing before we move on to the next target. Then the next topic you referenced on the Supreme Court's docket coming up is another case that will directly invalidate Roe v. Wade and a ruling would be expected in 2022, but the hearing in the October term just briefly discuss that. But yeah, that's a very good one. This high-handedness of the Supreme Court to ignore human suffering for the next year because from an academic perspective,

five of the justices want full briefing on what you referred to in the order as a very serious constitutional challenge to the underlying law, isn't that professorial? Isn't that interesting as women have to return to the back alleys in Texas for the next year? So they're we're going to do a full briefing of a of a of a case in Mississippi where they're going to take on the constitutionality of a law that says all abortions even for rape and incest

after 15 weeks are banned. By the way, same in Texas, the six week rule includes women who have been raped or are the victims of incest and are carrying children as a result. That's how heartless these statues are. So, you know, for, for, and shame on them, we're not even talking about like old, timey, Supreme Court justices in their 90s. You know, Amy Coney Barrett's in her 50s.

She has a bunch of children. Kavanaugh is in his 50s. You know, they're all, you know, they're not well beyond childbearing years or having families. This is callous. And this is an ignorance to human suffering to say, we just want to have it on the normal ballot. You do?

You had no problem killing every other interesting constitutional issue in the last week with midnight rulings. Just enjoying the thing, take it up on a fast track and rule once and for all. But the problem, and I want to get everybody's expectations managed, what do you think is going to happen, Ben? In the full term, after full briefing, an oral argument, when the five right wing justice gets their hands on Roe v Wade, and what's left of it, what do you think's going to happen? Roe v Wade is going to be overturned period. I stopped.

Right. Agreed. Meaning that if the, and back to your other pod, the politics pod, if the Democrats don't, if the Democrats lose seats and don't reverse trends and gain seats, they have to gain seats in the midterm. Because if they don't, they're never going to be able to pass a law, a federal law protecting the right of a woman on reproductive rights. Period. So if people don't think the midterms matter as much as the presidential election, and we're going to let what happened to Biden, what happened to Obama, where he loses one

of the chambers, kiss abortion rights and re-enchoice goodbye in America. Absolutely. Moving topics, but fundamentally talking about why elections matter. Why for all those individuals who said, I don't see a difference, this is in 2016. All politicians are the same. Look, Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices. The reason that we're talking about the reversal of Roe v Wade is specifically because there were a lot of people who had that

apathetic view saying, hey, why do I need to vote? This is why vote-ing matters and voting for people who care about democratic principles and democracy principles and the rights for all matter. I'm going to talk right now about a bit of an archaic law, but also why elections matter. There was a recent decision in a district court in Arizona, tossing out certain Trump rules, which rolled back clean water laws. We're going to talk about water for a second, but we're going to make it interesting and explain why it is relevant to you. In 1972, the Clean Water Act was passed into law, and the Clean Water Act establishes basic structures for regulating the discharge of pollutants, pollution, dumping, disgusting things, needles, and corporations putting their waste

into the waters of the United States. And it regulates the quality standards for for surface waters. You recall back then as America industry was, you know, reaching a fevered pitch and a fevered peak, you had disgusting, dirty looking waters. And so Congress in its infinite wisdom says, Hey, we need to stop this. We should care. There's a balance here that needs to be struck. And what is it? Sorry, I was gonna say maybe the chemical plants outflow pipe shouldn't be put in the middle of fishing waters in a community. You know, and correct them. And is this is the Clean Waters Act?

Perfect. No, but is it a helpful tool used by the EPA, used by the United States environmental protection agency to enforce regulations that go after major polluters to try to ensure better quality water? This was a fundamental principle that we want to have clean water. Well, Trump comes in and he establishes something called the navigable waters protection rule, which basically attacks what the definition is of waters of the United States, because if something's classified as water of the United States, the EPA can help with regulations, prevent corporations, as Popak discussed, from putting their pipes directly in the water and polluting the water and causing people to get sick. We know about the carcinogenic effect of this. And we drink this water. So we want to care that we're not drinking like medicine or needles or disgusting

things. And so this navigable water's protection rule up ends the regulatory regime that was in place for decades under which streams, wetlands, navigable lakes, among other critical waters received protection, and how to do it. The navigable waters protection role said all of those things aren't water. I mean, basically, as crazy as it sounds, it basically says, those things are not things that we should protect under the new definition. No, things, things like wetlands that are natural aquifers for cleaning, you know, the, the Okeechobee aquifer in Florida, for instance, if there wouldn't be a state of Florida, if that aquifer of that wetlands didn't operate.

But let me, let me, you're, you're exactly right. By the way, is this a party issue? Who's anti clean water? Who's anti clean air? There's a reason these things were passed. The same people, Popak, who are anti-vaxx, who are pro-coated, who, I mean, it is real crazy. I mean, how could this, you're so right, Popak. How in the world could this be a partisan issue? And look, even from the perspective of, here's what happened when the NWPR, the navigable water's protection rule goes into effect.

You have all these corporations and developers and everybody utilize the safe harbor, this NWPR safe harbor. And they all basically try to start building right away because they want to do an end run around the EPA's regulatory ability. But see, even them, it's like, okay, it's the most short term thinking in the world because when you do that and you make people sick, we've seen this story before. We know about the Aaron Brockovich type case. And so for what, for five years, you want to make, you know, tens of millions of dollars. And then in 20 years, basically get sued and then, you know, and then make your money run away. That's not

patriotic. So, so you know how you and I have talked about. We should do a sort of an Oprah book club, illegal AF book references. I got, I have one for our listeners now. Aaron Brockovich is a good example, but there is another one. I don't know if I read it actually in law school. Did you, did you ever read a civil action? I think I saw the movie Popeye.

Okay. So movie with John Travolta. So that's if people are interested and I know our legal AF followers and listeners are in learning the intricacies of civil procedure as it relates to a polluting case and death and destruction that resulted and really learn the fine points of civil procedure and like inside the courtroom in a very entertaining way, read a civil action. It was made into a decent movie actually with John Travolta. And the heart of it was a polluting chemical company that was pouring waste into water and therefore drinking streams and drinking water for a neighborhood whose

and drinking water for a neighborhood whose carcinogen and cancer rates among children and others went up exponentially in clusters all around this town and they couldn't explain it until this lawyer, it's a real case, until this lawyer got to the bottom of it. So I give you an example of what you're talking about. The original law that was on the books from Obama, in which he expanded what you referred to as the waters of the U.S., which is known, I kind of like this nickname, it's known as WOTUS, WOTUS. And he expanded the definition of WOTUS. I love that. He expanded the definition.

That's a good nickname for you, Popak. Like, yeah, like Popak's alter ego is like, WOTUS when Popak reveals like a legal AF trade secret like us coming out with a book club, that's you being a WOTUS crop. All right. When I do WOTUS, I want to have a hood like, um, what kind of yellow card to Popak just gets a yellow card. and we got a yellow card for revealing a trade secret legal AF that we will be having a legal AF legal book club. Popok any comments about the yellow card before talking about voters. Yes, it was book club, not something else.

And I think I was just doing a trial balloon to see if people wanted a book recommendation. Anyway, moving on from my yellow card back to Wotus, the, I'll give you a perfect example of how this plays out in real life in, in the, I think it's because I also want to say this name in the Oki-Fonoki region of Georgia. There is a mine, a mining company and all of the sludge and mining remnants that flow from a mine that is next to a big body of water. They wanted to expand the mine. And under Trump's rule, they were able to, they have now been stopped dead in their tracks by this, by this decision, because now it's going to have to go through full environmental

protection agency EPA review before they can actually operate that mine next to drinking water. And so that's a good thing. But of course, the home builders are against it. They're the ones that brought the lawsuit. The mining companies, the factories, commercial development is all against the expansion of what is water that's under the protection of the EPA and the Clean Water Act. But you're exactly right. People think, oh, I didn't like Hillary. Who cares? What you care about is the policies and the administrators and the justices that that kind of progressive person

is going to put in place. I don't care if it's a ham sandwich. I really don't, I don't have to like my president. Okay, I voted for DeCoccus. I voted for Walter Mondale, not because I thought they'd be, I thought they'd be fine presidents, not because I was, I wanted to go have a beer with them. Who cares? I wanted them to align with my politics and my morality and appoint people and set policy based on that for the next four or eight years. That

is the number one consideration. Not whether you like Hillary's pantsuit or not, where Joe Biden looks like my grandfather. So I don't want to vote for him. Suck it up, people. And how many people drank water today? Every one of you, every one of you drink water every day. And so we don't think about the importance of presidential elections on things like water, things that impact us every single day. That's why we're talking about it on legal AFO to arm you with this type of knowledge to say every aspect of my life could be impacted by these elections. The Biden administration already said that it plans to appeal this Trump error rule, changing the definition of WOTUS, not Popeyes alter ego, but actually water of the United States

and issue new regulations defining which waterways are federally protected under the Clean Water Act, intent the waterways, not removing things that are water from the definition, but the Trump rule remained in place in the meantime and certain environmental groups, Native American tribes, and others said that it could lead to the loss of wetlands, damage wildlife habitat, and allow business and farmers to pollute waterways. And in a district court decision this week, Judge Rosemary Marquez and Arizona sided with those groups, sided with water, it was a pro water ruling, determining that the Trump administrations rule last year improperly limited the scope of clean water protections.

And this is what was in the ruling. The judge said that the EPA, Trump's EPA, which actually was at the EPA because Trump appointed people who hate the EPA to run the EPA. He appointed mining executives and people from the polluting industry to head the EPA. And this is the ruling market. The judge said the EPA under Trump ignored its own findings that small waterways can affect the well-being of the larger waterways that they flow into. A pretty elementary concept that the transient quality of water means that water can move the pollutants to the other waterways and then get in the cup of water that I'm drinking and cause a little child to get cancer or to cause an adult to get cancer or to cause someone to get incredibly sick.

You know, it's interesting about a ruling though, and just to show you that it shouldn't be partisan. She did not roll back the law to Obama's extension of the law. She rolled it back for now to the original 1986 amendments, the Clean Water Act, giving Biden time and space to issue his own ruling through proper rule-making process that we've talked about in the past.

So it's very interesting. She sort of, it was like an etch of sketch. She wiped it all the way back to 1986 and said, okay, now, president, if this current president, you're going to make rulemaking. You got the time. In the meantime, we're going to use the definitional of woe to definitions of woe to back in 1986, which she believe would be pretty protective versus what Trump did.

Absolutely. So there you have it. We spoke about first and foremost, the unlawful Texas law that under our current Supreme Court has been permitted to stay on the books as the Supreme Court appears to be poised to completely overturn Roe v Wade as other anti abortion cases, anti women's right to choose cases, come on to the docket. We talked about the clean water laws and compare the Trump administration to the Biden administration and what's at stake regarding the very water you drink. I want to speak about another topic popo. That's, you know, less overtly political, but nonetheless has political overtones or

this is a very, this is a very dark podcast so far. I mean, I, I mean, I, we should like take a, like a quick break. We're not going to, but this is like it started with, you know, fundamental reproductive rights and the Texas, what I call the Texas chainsaw bounty massacre. And now we just gone through babies getting cancer. So and it was now and now we're going to talk about really the tie in with the second amendment and how, you know, the GQP and the right wing, we've talked about, we've read, you know, the second amendment for, you know, for everybody. I mean, I'll just read it one more time. The second amendment says, a well-regulated militia, comma, being necessary to the security of a free state, comma, the

right of the people to keep and bear arms, comma, shall not be infringed. When we talk about this amendment, we've always referenced before a well-regulated militia. The word regulation, it's like the only place in the constitution that the word regulation actually appears. And it's in the second amendment, where second amendment, nut cases, who believe that that means you should be able to drive tanks in front of schools as any citizen. They just read out the word regulation. They read out the word militia, they read out the word being necessary to the security of a free state, which doesn't usually seem like that would be situated in the hands of just any ordinary person to start having AR 15s. And it says

the right of the people to keep in bear arms shall not be infringed. And they literally only read the words, the right of the people to keep in bear arms shall not be infringed. And they literally only read the words, the right of the people to keep in bear arms shall not be in friend and ignore the rest of it. And there is a epidemic of mass school shootings in the United States like no other country. You wake up almost every week and there's another mass shooting, another school shooting with individuals who, if there were, very simple, common sense solutions. If there were simple background checks, if there were very simple regulations, would not be able to get their hands on these types of weapons. And certainly should not get their hands on these types of weapons and certainly should not get their hands on militarized weapons that people use for war.

I'm all for people who want to hunt should be able to have their guns to go out hunting. I'm all for people to have certain types of handguns for self protection at their house. But when we're talking about the weapons that we use in Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, and in, you know, and in major war zones across the country that should private citizens walk around those in front of my child's school. I mean, to me, that gets absurd. And all the people I know who are, who are genuine gun people, people who use guns the right way, real hunters, they don't care about certain regulations,

because they don't use the guns to do crazy things. They're not performative assholes like Bobburt and Marjorie Taylor Green, who hold the guns like Rambo and don't even know what they're doing with it. And every one of their political commercials. Exactly. Why are we talking about that right now? One, I wanted to give that background.

But two, there's been some developments in some of the lawsuits that have been filed against the gunmaker, gun manufacturer, Remington in connection with the Sandy Hook massacre, Sandy Hook in Connecticut in 2012, a horrific mass shooting. Certain lawsuits were brought in Connecticut State Court in around 2014 against Remington, the manufacturer. There's been multiple bankruptcies by the manufacturer. The lawsuit essentially alleges a claim. The claim that, first of all, it's very hard to sue gun manufacturers. There's lots of immunities that make it very difficult. But under Connecticut law, there's an unfair business

practices claim that survived over time that was not dismissed. And basically saying that the marketing material that was not dismissed and basically saying that the marketing material that was used by Remington, you know, encouraged the use by the shooter who was encouraged and inspired to use this weapon for purposes that it wasn't supposed to be used for civilian using a war weapon for civilian purposes and basically encouraging and inspiring, you know, this type of conduct. The most recent updates have been about a month ago to two months ago, the court allowed the lawsuit to continue.

The court had the motion to dismiss on its docket for about a year, I believe, and denied the motion to dismiss in a fairly short order, and then allowed discovery to proceed, discoveries the process where the party's exchange information, exchange documents, and exchange data. And what does the gun manufacturer do right away? What kind of discovery do they seek immediately? They go after the disciplinary records of the children.

We're talking about Popeyes first graders, second graders. They were six and seven years old. They wanted their report cards, attendance records and disciplinary records for top for six and seven year olds. And not only that, but they wanted these records without a protective order, without any confidentiality, you know, they didn't even like meet and confer have a conversation with the lawyer representing the families of the kids who died and said, look, Popok, this would be, it's still to me completely

entirely and appropriate that they're trying to get these records. It makes no sense. It doesn't know. What are they going to say that if the if the first grader got a demerit that they're entitled to less money because they know when they got shot and killed, that's basically the implication of their life is less because they colored outside the lines. I mean, it's a really disgusting set of requests, but you go ahead and you're making a point. Go ahead. You assuming you wanted these records, here's what a normal defense lawyer would do. You'd call up the plaintiff's lawyer and you would say, hey, just doing my job here. I have to get as many documents as I can get.

I have no option. I have to dot all of my eyes across all my T's as a lawyer, but I want to fundamentally respect the privacy rights of the children and the families and I get it, but I have to fundamentally respect the privacy rights of the children and the families. And I get it, but I have to see it. I'd be potentially not doing all my due diligence if I didn't ask for it. So here's what I would do. Why don't we enter into a confidentiality order, a protective order, which by the way, was already in place to protect the proprietary information of the gun

manufacturer. I thought I'd corrupt gun manufacturer. So and they would say, Hey, we know that this one, that this order that we asked for to protect the gun confidentiality. Let's just build in that we'll protect the confidentiality of the kids, you know, and of the families. Let's just build it in there. If the parents can voluntarily, as you as the lawyer can voluntarily turn over these records,

we'll make it as simple and as painless as possible, but we just have to do our jobs here. I think that's how if you were to go about it, it would still be absurd request. That's what you would do. But here, the Remington just subpoenas the records of first graders causing additional trauma. It's absurd, Popo. Yeah, meaning that the parents lawyer now have to move to quash the subpoena, arguing that it's a heartless, callous attack on the sanctity of the memories

of the 26 people, including 20 children between six and seven who were slaughtered by an AR-15 made by Remington. So this case, and it's good that that procedural things happen because it falls off the continuum and people sort of forget it. You don't forget Sandy Hook, but you forget that there are families that are in battle in lit, that's the wrong term, who are in litigation with Remington to, to in the, in the honor and the memories of their children and teachers who were killed. And that Remington has gone bankrupt. You commented earlier in our water pollution segment about these companies.

What were they thinking? They make whatever money I guess they can while they can, but then they should know they're going to be embroiled in these kind of suits. And the suit is very novel, and I give a lot of credit to the lawyers who designed it, to get around some of these bands by Republican legislations against that help the gun manufacturers by taking away liability. They said, aha, we have a civil case against them for unfair trade practices

because they marketed and advertised and promoted their product, this case, the AR-15, which is a military grade weapon, which ended up in the hands of the shooter, the mass serial killer, who he would not have had it had he not been influenced by all the sexy ads showing the AR-15 in action and how dare you. That's the basis of the case. And it has survived a motion to dismiss twice. And it is going to proceed and it has been proceeding through discovery

and then they're gonna get to a jury. Now there is a, it's already been publicly noted that Remington has offered $30 million to the families of the victims here, which is not enough. They're in bankruptcy, frankly, I'm not sure how much more they have left in there. I assume there's more money in the tank, otherwise the plaintiffs' lawyers wouldn't be progressing.

But the way you described what you would do was missing one observation, which I'll make for you because you can't make it for yourself. You are an aggressive, successful trial lawyer. How do I know that? Because I work with you and I've worked against you. But you're also a human being. You're also a moral person. And you also think about what your decisions in cases, what impact they will have on other people, including how it will be perceived by a judge.

And you and I are the same that way. And we make decisions that way. And these lawyers for Remington, I don't know, it was like a third year lawyer behind a keyboard, but some partner approved that going out, that callous set of discovery requests that's hurtful should never have happened. But, but they're not approaching it the way the UNI are. And I want to say one last thing about about Democrat policy, democratic policies and the second amendment. I agree with you in your analysis. I have been a a a handgun owner when I lived in Florida and I live in New York now where you really can't be, but I lived

in Florida for self protection. I lived in a single family home that wasn't like gated. I had, now I went through all the proper background checks. I frequently went to the range with friends so that I was careful with with weaponry. And I had it locked behind a fingerprint safe so that no one could ever get access to it other than me. That's okay. I'm okay with that. And so are most Democrats. We are not trying to take away legitimate hunting rifles and legitimate handguns from society. We're not. But there is no, there is no constitutional justification or excuse for using military grade weapons and magazines that can hold hundreds of guns and kits that can be acquired on the internet that convert semi-automatic weapons to automatic weapons, allowing for long belts of bullets to be fired simultaneously, or for ghost guns to be produced through 3D printing mechanisms

that are not serial numbered that are created literally in somebody's basement or home. This is not the second amendment that the founding fathers created nor envisioned. Think George Washington envisioned an eight and a are 15. There were no mass shootings. We have historical records going back hundreds and hundreds of years in this country. There were no mass shootings in revolutionary war times. Nobody walked in with a musket and like reloaded it and started fighting. First of all, they wouldn't be able to.

It took so long to reload a musket. Everybody would be able to run away after the first shot. But that didn't happen. That only happened with the advent of automatic and semi-automatic weaponry that was produced for the military ended up in civilian hands. I go back to the plain text of the Constitution. You have these right wing justices who are we are strict we strictly interpret every word has its meaning and they read away well regulated is always one of the most kind of fundamental pieces to me that basically explain that the that we could be educated on the law, but the law isn't a science. The law is a tool.

The law is something that's evolved over time, and we in the United States have done the best you can with human systems to create the most equality, to create the better situations for ourselves. But it's under attack. We are not the norm internationally. We are a shining beacon internationally because our laws protected people, not always the right way, but the arc was tended to move in the right direction. And our Supreme Court protected us and the Supreme Court protected us. And over time, that arc was going in the right direction.

And now there is a complete assault by particularly a white supremacist, hateful, GQP, QAnon, cultish kind of strange American Taliban going back to your point earlier, Popok, that wants to take it from us. And that's an international thing that happens a lot when people enjoy all of these rights, some crazy group of fuckers who represent 10 to 20% of the population. In this case, shockingly, somewhere in that 30% range are fucking crazy. They're loud and they're nut cases and they go to school board meetings and they protest in front of school board meetings and they wind and they go in your department stores and they scream in Victoria's secrets and all of us are like, Hey, I just want to go shopping. I just want to buy some lingerie. I just want to buy some basketball sneakers today. I just want to go see a movie.

I just want why are you going crazy, but we have to use our voices because they're out there screaming. They're out there. Wacos every day. Let me ask our live chat people. How many people are now picturing Ben and Victoria secrets? Anyone? Hey, I was giving examples generally, but you know what, it's all good. But you know, at the end of the day for the, you know, for the GQP them preventing our way

of life. They're so loud about it. And one of the things about those vocal small groups is that we just want to go about our, our day, which is why here at legal AF, it's important that we educate you on those facts. Pope, maybe, maybe back to your point about the Taliban. And I've saw political cartoons that sort of struck this chord. Maybe Biden should send C-130s to a Texas federal air base and give the option of having Texas women who want to exercise their reproductive rights,

board the C-130 and be evacuated to states where they can actually have an abortion and make a decision with their family and with their doctors. Maybe we should do that. Maybe there should be an airlift out of Texas for people that want to do that. Is that where, but is that, is that, this is rhetorical, but back to you Ben, is this the country that we're supposed to be living in where there is a competition over constitutional rights between those that live in the urban centers, like where I live, where you live, and those that live in the great swath of the rest of

the Sun Belt, the Rust Belt of America. That's what it's become. We're going back to the Civil War, where there was a fight over agrarian society and slavery. Now we're going to have a fight over what whose interpretation is proper under the US Constitution and all those rights is that where we are? And I would take you one step further, Popak. I mean, it isn't even for me an area of interpretation, you know, which is that, you know, we live in a democracy and what these other individuals want to do is Take the democracy and step by step whether it's on reproductive rights whether it is on guns Whether it is on water when you go look at

Raka right when you look at like where I says what that area looked like a death cult. And that is little by little, you take away our water, you take away our ability to be safe. You have people walking around with guns everywhere. And you are having a society where a small group of people are able to control the country, control reproductive rights, men controlling reproductive rights and controlling all these other things in a small oligarchical society. And it's scary, but Popeye, we're deviating from the law. I'm giving you a deviating. That's our podcast.

Our podcast is about deviating. I am, but I'm going to give you your second. Yeah, you get three yellow cards equals a red card. I'm the brightest touch podcast. So you got your second yellow card. What happens when I hit red? There's like, Jordi come in and take over my, my seat, no comment there. You know, one day we will find out, but PoPock, before we go to everybody's favorite part of legal a F We do want to remind everyone of I guess some good news, which is that legal a F has merch You wanted it you asked for it Popeyes can design the merch himself

It says legal analysis, friends, podcast, our corporate suits basically told us if we had people walking around with shirts that said legal AF that that could be problematic. I never saw that, but that's what this day. Hey, Brett and Jordy were very adamant that people walking around with shirts that say legal a f could call wait a minute wait a minute okay that's three guys opinions we have a we have a live chat going on so put it to them should we have available for people to buy up to them market the market and our followers decide should we have our standard legal a F logo, the album cover that we use for the podcast on shirts, sweatshirts and other material, or the modified one that we came

up with, which says legal analysis friends, I put it and we'll see the chat results. Let's look at the chat results as they come in, but would you walk around with a shirt that says legal a F? Would you give family members shirts that say legal a F would love to hear it? Second quick plug. If you have a legal case, whether that is a negligence case or a sexual harassment case or a corporate case, if you have a case that you think is a big case or a friend that has a big case reach out to Popak or my cellist, my email is Ben at MidasTouch.com. Ben at MEIDASTOUCH.com. Popaks is M-POPACMPOP. Okay. Okay, at zp law dot com that's mpopak at zp law dot com.

Let me tie it. Let me tie it to our podcast. That includes constitutional challenges. And I love doing constitutional litigation. Constitutional challenges to things that are important to you or you're a victim of. And you know, things we talked about like polluting, a product's liability type case or a case that involves some big corporation that has harmed you or your family or somebody that you know, that's something that we want to know about.

Updates, updates, we have the updates, updates, we have the updates, your legal updates. That is the jingle that everybody loves and waits for on legal a F brought to you by Ben, my cell is first legal update. First legal update is one of the reviews also pop up. That wasn't a review. It was just someone on Twitter's like, I cannot tolerate Ben's or something like that. It was like Ben is too much. I'm like too much too good. And they're like, no, but we know there was another one though, which I liked. I'll give you two things I love that our followers and listeners do. Shout out to the latest mighty one is there is a, there is a follower who runs a jingle company

who wrote me or put on the Twitter feed and said, you guys need a real jingle. We're happy to do it for you. That was I like that. I like the entrepreneurial spirit. And the second is I posted a photo of my makeshift podcast studio from the side and a little table that I use here off to the to my right where I keep stuff for the show. They noticed that my water glass was not on a coaster and there was a whole breakout of why are you using a coaster. And then some one of our followers who's a woodworker

said, I make really beautiful handmade wooden coasters. I'm going to send them to you. Love that. Look, and I think it's a great observation because if there was anyone who would use a coaster, it would be Popock. Like Popock would have not just a coaster, but Popock is the kind of person who would create like a little, like a little moat around the coaster in case there's any dripage that then like leads into another device, like Popock's that good and that diligent. But just so everybody knows, I got the coaster. I got a coaster. Okay.

So let's talk about the update. So the GQP led by GQP Kevin McCarthy, who's out in Bakersfield, California. That's the district that he represent has threatened telecommunication companies who received preservation requests by the January 6th bipartisan select committee that's being led by Congressman Benny Thompson out of Mississippi. We talked last week about the select committee sending informal discovery requests to United States governmental departments, the National Archives, the FBI, other groups that are part of the government. But they also sent what's called preservation requests to telecommunications company. And a preservation request is when it's usually a lawyer or a law firm sends a letter to someone who is potentially involved in the litigation.

That means they could potentially be someone who's going to be sued or just somebody who has documents and evidence. So it's not always someone who's going to be sued. It can be, for example, if there is some injury that takes place around a shop and you see that there's a surveillance camera on top of the shop. You can send a preservation request to the shop and say preserve your surveillance footage. I'm not going to sue you. Just I need you to preserve those records because it may be relevant.

After you receive a preservation request, it triggers certain obligations. And there are sometimes, if you don't receive a preservation request, but if litigation is reasonably foreseeable for other reasons, and you start deleting documents or destroying evidence, that could definitely be obstruction. There could be what's called spoliation in the civil context, but there could be serious legal ramifications for destroying those types of records when there is a preservation request, depending on the type of specific context.

But when someone gets a preservation letter, it puts them on a certain level of notice so that they can never say, oh, I never knew that I was supposed to preserve this specific set of documents. But here, these telecommunications companies have the records, they have the phone records that these select committees looking for that relate to whether members of Congress and others, but members of Congress were communicating with Trump and other insurrectionist groups coordinating the attack on January 6. These aren't text messages, though, that will actually show the very specific communications. What's being sought here are very specific, narrowly tailored information from January 6th

to determine if there were calls going to and from the White House, to and from Trump, and what level of coordination and communication was taking place. But the preservation request sent is not a subpoena. It's not actually compelling the documents. It's just saying to these telecommunication companies, please preserve the records. We will likely need them at a future date to which case the GQP went entirely bananas over from Kevin McCarthy saying, you know, if you turn over records, we will not forget this, implying that the Republicans will retaliate to Marjorie Taylor Green saying, we will shut you down if you comply with the subpoenas. Popo, this sounds like obstruction to me.

Yeah, this is, this is bad stuff. So you hit the nail right on the head, the committee, the select committee that's investigating Jan 6, which is now vice-shared by Republican Liz Cheney. I sent out these preservation notices. They haven't, they may ask for them through Sipina or otherwise, but they have the right to do that. McCarthy, that's a great name for him, by the way, because it is McCarthyism. McCarthy stands up, literally stands up and threatens the communications companies and threatens their livelihood

by suggesting that they're gonna lose their licenses which are regulated by the FCC, hold that point because there's a McCarthy connection to the FCC that we're going to talk about in a minute. And if they comply with a duly authorized request or subpoena in the future, that they are violating some unknown law that he says or a right of privacy that people have, not to have their phone records explored. First of all, in every civilization I've ever been in, at some point I have asked for and

received phone records. I've asked for and received the physical phone to have it forensically evaluated and to have all the text messages on it downloaded for analysis in the suit. Have you ever been involved with a civil litigation where you haven't gotten, you haven't asked for and ultimately gotten that type of evidence? No, you always, you will get it. You have to, I can't ask for phone records that aren't relevant, right? It's not underlying inquiry, but assuming it's relevant, assuming it's narrowly tailored, you generally get that. Right.

So McCarthy's comment about a law being violated is wrong. What is, what, what the law that has been violated is he has violated the law in a number of ways. First of all, and I want to show you the connection. One member of the Federal Communications Commission, one member of the FCC, Brendan Carr, came out in favor of McCarthy's position and said it is or well-in, it is a violation of right of privacy, it is a violation of law

if the communications companies comply with the House, which is the exact opposite, talk about Orwellian, it is the exact opposite of their legal duties in response to a properly subpoenaed or requested information for a house investigation. Why does Brendan Carr matter? Cause he's one of five votes. He matters because he's married to a person

who is a lawyer, who is McCarthy's general counsel. His general counsel is married to Brendan Carr. So everything that he says is paraded by a member, he basically has his own seat on the FCC through his wife, through through the through the members wife, who works for McCarthy, not disclosed, of course, by McCarthy. The media might as touch and others had to suss that out and get that out in the public record because McCarthy is too much of a coward to tell people that he's got this person on his staff that's connected to the FCC.

That's one. Secondly, there is IC, one violation that you and I talked about offline, which is obstruction. And we'll talk about that. And the other one is a house ethics violation. The house has rules. I know people don't think the house has rules because it doesn't doesn't appear that they do. But they do. And when they take out Marjorie Taylor, Greenin, and Denyher, the right to be sit on any committee, the parliamentarian process, which is policed by the speaker of the house, in this case, Nancy Pelosi, and there is a parliamentarian position who is all they do is make sure that the rules of the house are being complied with. So under clause one rule 23 of the House

rules, one member, I just like you taking out rules like that. I'm dropping knowledge, right? That's a pokey in right there. Clause 1 rule 23 of the house rules. She says that I'm. Merch Merch alert. Clothes 1 rule 23. A cheese. You cannot impune the integrity of another member of the house. You cannot do something that, quote, reflects creditably. You have to only behave in a way that reflects creditably. It's an interesting word, creditably, on the house. You can't impune the integrity. That's everything that McCarthy has just done.

He's impugned and undermined the integrity of a house properly formed select committee investigating the Gen 6 insurrection. I want rules like that for this podcast. What? I made it. Yeah. From yellow card, I went to I impugned your integrity because I know I'm just saying that I think that we should establish house rules and that we can enforce like, okay, you keep going. Okay. Okay. Fine. rules and that we can enforce like, okay, okay, fine. Now that we're doing live video,

you're wearing a proper shirt. But when you wear sleeveless, I'm willing, I'm pulling out the red card. I'm not even going yellow. I'm going right to red. Uh oh, this could be the third one. Is this the third card? No, you just, how did you get to be the referee and the player? How do you get to be both? We need a third person. Might as well. Might as well. Pointed me. I don't know how. It's kind of like having a sibling on the FCC, but might as touched. That's right. Pointed me to be the rulekeeper here.

Here's what I want in the future. You and I'll talk about this offline. I want a third box here in the live, in the live recording. It could be, well, George, he's probably the best. And we'll put George, like a floating George, and he gets to be the referee, like, you know, and they have like sign language, that little bubble with the sign language. And to my younger brother being our judge. All right. All right. We'll put it to the minus mighty. So, George, be the umpire and the referee between Ben and me on legal AF. Yes or no?

All right. Okay. Now, let me go back to the really criminal charge against McCarthy. You and I talked about in the past obstruction as a, as a concept. There is actually a federal law in the books about obstruction committed by a, by a member of the house or the Senate. And it's 18 USC 1505. You can look it up. And it says that anyone, anyone who obstructs the proper exercise of the power of inquiry by the house has committed a criminal act, anyone. Now,

let's get into the esoteric. Here's the battle. Anyone is the public, but it doesn't say that the members of the house themselves are excluded from the definition of anyone committing a crime. But then you have the speech and debate clause, Ben. So what's going to happen when a federal judge, hopefully an Obama appointee or a Biden appointee has to figure out the speech and debate. First amendment right of a House member to say really anything they want on the, on the floor of the House. That's why McCarthy doesn't do it on the front steps of the, of the House chamber. And the criminal law that says you cannot obstruct the proper exercise

of the power of inquiry of the house, which is what he's doing. He's threatening the communications companies and even threatening pulling their license. You will pull your license. You won't be able to operate your wireless character, your wireless company AT&T. If you give over the documents to the house, how is that not a crime under the obstruction definition, even with the speech and debate clause? But what do you think? Well, my favorite part about that,

Popak, is when you threw in like the subtle Ben, Ben, it just reminded me of like a law professor, you know, just trying to root me back into. Mr. Micellus, have you done your research? And are you listening to what I am saying? Popak, we talked about the speech and debate clause that basically immunizes members of Congress, members of the House, members of the Senate

for our statements that they make, you know, in the course and scope of their jobs on the respective floors of the house and the Senate. We spoke in the last podcast that that's not limitless. We spoke to that, we spoke about the Pentagon papers case where the speech and debate clause was cited for the dissemination of confidential information that was viewed as a crime,

that was not subject to the speech and debate clause. The intricacies here really relating to these are members of Congress who aided and abetted the insurrection, pulling all of our kind of legal AF knowledge together. The Department of Justice has made it clear in their memorandums that they view any of that insurrection-related conduct as political, as related to Trump's attempts to unlawfully overturn the election, that would not be given a level of immunity that it otherwise would as a political function as a as a function of their jobs as government officials. And so I think you will have this tension there. We talked about on past legal

AFs, the attempts at getting Trump's bank records. We talked about that case for the Supreme Court basically said Congress can get access to Trump's bank records. We talked about that case for the Supreme Court basically said Congress can get access to Trump's bank records, but that involved executive privilege claims and not congressional privilege claims. And so the reality is, Popok, with this Supreme Court will have to wait and see. I tend to think if I were to predict this Supreme Court strikes me as a pro insurrection bunch. And it strikes me as a five four that falls along the same lines as the cases that we discussed earlier. It's that same five four, I think Justice Roberts joins the pro-democracy side of things.

But I tend to think that the ultimately, as this gets appealed to the Supreme Court, that the insurrectionists will not have to turn over their records. I know that's not what the Midas mighty want to hear, but I think you got five insurrection supporting people on the Supreme Court. So I am just being real speaking about insurrection people. We've got updates and lots of updates. Popo, DeSantis blowing off the mask ruling. We talked about the ruling

from the, as that the Leon County judge in last week. Judge Cooper, Popock, what is going on in your home state of Florida here? And, you know, I thought with what the Leon County judge was saying is that these school boards can have mask mandates if they believe it's for the health and safety of the kids in their community. And I thought that the judge was saying that Governor death Santis and his GQP bunch in Florida can't take away money and penalize these school boards for trying to protect children, but we saw just recently the education commissioner, I think his name is Richard Corcoran.

He announced that the Department of Education was withholding funds from Broward County, other counties that had mass mandates, taking away the monthly salaries or the equivalent of monthly salaries from board members. Yeah, so last podcast, we talked about Judge Cooper's decision, which found that the parent bill of rights that was on the books in Florida that DeSantis had passed did not give the governor the right in a public health crisis to ban masks from being used in schools, especially schools. We're back to what you and I talked about with the cruises cruise ship industry.

Schools are begging to have masks on their students. School has already started and opened in Florida. So, you know, in the North, it usually doesn't start until after Labor Day, but it already started in Florida. Every major school district, the one in Miami, the one in West Palm Beach, the one in Fort Lauderdale, the one in Orlando, the one in Tampa, which represents most of the children in West Palm Beach, the one in Fort Lauderdale, the one in Orlando, the one in Tampa,

which represents most of the children in Florida. How about this? What the people want? I know what this regulation. And pop up on it. For example, that you were thinking about either this coming week or in the future, trying to go see the US, you know, going to the US open. And remember, they did not have like any type of like vaccine procedures or anything. And the people went crazy

about that people people like, Hey, I'm not going to this thing. If you don't have some common sense solutions, this people want this stuff. Yeah, that's exact. By the way, that's exactly when they announced the US open, which is sort of a big deal in New York. And they last year was no fans at all. I was like, Oh, I'd like to go back. It's been a number of years that the organizer said, no vaccine requirement, no mess. I literally said, I'm not going. And then I wasn't the only one, obviously. And three days later, they reverse course and said vaccination cards are now required. So the school districts want this. So Cooper, Judge Cooper, his infinite wisdom, rules that the, even the Bill of Rights, the parent Bill of Rights, not the real Bill of Rights, has an exception for public health crisis

and the governor has violated his own Bill of Rights. For about a three day period, you and I thought we were going to be talking on this podcast about DeSantis flouting the rule and still enforcing the fines against superintendents that enforce this rule. But now it's become something else. This is updates of updates. Last yesterday, his lawyers, DeS the Santos lawyers appealed to the first district court of appeal, which sits above Leon County in Florida, for a appeal of John Cooper, you know, at appeal of

John Cooper's judge Cooper's ruling. In Florida under procedure, an automatic stay of the trial judge's order is in place unless the appellate court lifts the stay on an emergency application. So the school districts that I just talked about have all filed and will update everyone next week have just filed an emergency application to have the appellate court lift the automatic stay so that today school districts in school starting on Tuesday after Labor Day

could have masked and not worry about superintendents having to pay substantial fines. So we're going to have to, you know, but this is again, an example of DeSantis tripling down and quadrupling down on killing children and his poll numbers be damned. He is going down the drain. If he had any presidential aspirations, he should start reading the writing on the wall and say, I was wrong. We should do everything to protect our children. You know, I don't care if it's a, if it's a rabbit's foot, a sham rock in your pocket or a mask, whatever gets it done to protect children, do it. No, the good thing about Trump and Trump is him and everyone's like the good thing.

The good thing about Trump and Trump is him is that he's a fucking loser. His entire life, he has lost every issue that he takes on any business fouls. His ideas are pathetic because he is a disgusting pathetic sick fucking human being who can con people though into following him and that's his entire life. And then he screws over the people who do it. So why am I mentioning it now these ideas, this idea of being anti-vax these ideas of killing children for political gain. These people are idiots. Deathsantis is an idiot. And it's very easy to avoid nuance, to avoid science and just say dumb shit. Like I want the kids to smile.

I want to see the kids faces because they die because you can't articulate the actual science because you're a fucking idiot. And so those ideas though, the vast majority of people, Popuck like the US open, they're like, well, guess what? Then I'm not going. Okay, then I'm not sending my kids to the school. Then, then, then, then you, I'm not doing, I'm not going on the cruise ship. And you're right, Popeye, it's doubling and tripling down on killing children. You said it there will keep our legal AF supporters followers listeners updated on these stays on stays on stays and updated. by the way, when we say stay, stay just means like stopping temporarily the enforcement of something. So when Popeye said stays, it's stopping the enforcement of something. And and that's, you know, where were you impressed?

Were you impressed that I did not do a popock interceptive? What was the thing you invented last week? When you're on a good roll? And I just said, I think the easiest way to describe it is that just a pop-up interception when you tip the mic during a great rant. I stay quiet. I have a pop-up interception. One final update, I will just touch on it super quickly because I want to talk about one more great topic, one more interesting topic, is the shaman plea deal.

QAnon shaman, I bring this up because I think we've declared popok as the popokian shaman, the popok shaman, but the QAnon shaman is pleading guilty. One of the funniest parts about the Q Anan Shaman is his lawyer. I think his lawyer's done press conferences where he's literally called his client a fucking idiot and he's like, have you seen this guy? Of course, he's fucking mentally ill.

And he's been very, you know, I think uniquely honest about his client being, you know, being totally brainwashed by this QAnon rhetoric. I mean, he faces real prison time, Popoq. We've talked in past legal AAPs that a lot of these insurrectionists are not getting the time they deserve, but he faces potentially like 20 years in prison. He says that he does not want to be called the QAnon Shaman, but I think he's okay with the name Shaman. He's renouncing QAnonism or so I'm told in the are so they're climbing. But that's the, that I miss anything

on the Q and on show. No, no, just to remind people, it's the one that looked like the cross between Chubaka and a Viking. He's the guy with a hairy helmet and like a loincloth screaming at the top of his lungs and beating his chest when he got into the house. But he was not responsible other than being an idiot. He was not responsible for any of the violent acts on police officers and others that we saw. And it looks like he's probably going to cut this plea. Although does anybody really believe that he's completely renounced QAnon? I love how they all come to Jesus or whatever the QAnon equivalent of that is, when they're sitting in jail, pre-trial detention,

and they all say, oh, I was totally wrong. What was I thinking? Yeah, sitting in an isolated confinement in a federal detention center will do that to you, but they bought it, I guess the prosecutors are trying to clear of the 600 arrests and 600 cases that they need to prosecute, you know, they're trying to move their way through it. So it looks like he's going to get time served, which could be four or five months, something like that. What do we

January? Yeah, we're like six, seven months time served. And they're going to let him out. I'm hoping that they're saving the prosecutors are saving the best for last. And that the ones that picked up arms in the military, fire extinguishers, flagpoles, bike racks, led the charge, called out for the hanging and lynching of elected officials, that they're the ones that they do trials for and put them in jail for a long, long time, as they make their way through the 600 and sorting it out almost like a long, long time as they make their way through the, the 600 and sorting it out almost like a triage as to who are the real bad people and who are the ones that are right. We'll give them a speeding ticket and let it move on.

Popoq, that is right. You are a popoqy and shaman despite yellow cards. You will maintain this shaman title. But we have explained a lot of great issues on legal, a lot of great legal issues, um, broken them down ways that I think you can understand and, you know, and, and help empower you to challenge some of these horrible laws that are being passed. Then, you know, in some of these horrible, you know, the horrible direction that the legal pendulum is swinging because in those four years, someone like Trump can cause a lot of damage. And you now know what is at stake. Popoq, we are approaching the twelfth. Halfway mark. No, not the halfway mark where we are approach. We are, we are almost done

with this legal AF. But I want to talk about a legal doctrine called sovereign immunity. And I want to talk about it in the context of 9-11 in a recent decision by President Biden who told the FBI to release files on 9-11. And particularly, these are documents that have been requested by the families of victims on 9-11, particularly findings of what's

called Operation Encore, which is a FBI investigation into possible Saudi Arabian complicity, particularly with contacts between Saudi officials and 9-11 hijackers who lived in the United States months before the attack. Joe Biden has issued an executive order as the 20th anniversary of 9-11 approaches. The American people deserve to have a fuller picture of what the government knows about those attacks. This executive order said, these documents will be particularly important, one, in helping victims' families know fuller amounts of information about what

took place and what led to 9-11. But there are cases that have been going through our court system with lawsuits against Saudi Arabia. And there's a doctrine in the law called sovereign immunity, sovereign immunity. And sovereign immunity usually protects governments from lawsuits unless there are exceptions to foreign sovereign immunity. In the past, there were certain exceptions and one of those exceptions related to certain outside actors who engaged in terrorism. That was one of the exceptions, but there were very specific designated state sponsors of terrorism,

which included, it was a very limited list, which include in North Korea, Iran, Sudan, and Syria. So any lawsuit against Saudi Arabia would not be permitted normally to take place or against any other foreign government. There's also another exception called the non-commercial tort exception, which states that foreign states and governments are not immune from jurisdiction to be sued in the United States where, and this has to be very specific, where money damages are sought against a foreign state for personal injury or death or damage to property occurring in the United States caused by the Torsches Act of that foreign state.

So there were very specific requirements there. Each one of those words have a, you know, have an important meaning and if it didn't fit into that sentence that I just said, money damages, injury in the United States, personal injury death, two property occurring in the United States caused by the Torsches Act. But 15 years after 9-11 in 2016, Congress unanimously passed a bill called the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. JASTA was the acronym and the law made a small but important change to federal laws relating to terrorism and foreign sovereign immunity, which basically allows the cases of 9-11 families against Saudi Arabia to be decided on the merits and that you couldn't invoke sovereign immunity. Saudi Arabia couldn't, its agents couldn't,

as a means of not being sued here in the United States. These lawsuits have been going on. It seems popock for decades, since the incident. And once they were allowed to sue in 2016, the cases have been going on in full effect because they were families were giving the ability to bring these lawsuits.

And so these documents will be important for discovery pop-up. I know you have both kind of legal connections here and personal connections here, so we'll let you talk about that. Yeah. So on the eve of 9-11 and so I think we take a moment to reflect back on that and never to forget what happened on 9-11. The two personal connections, for me, are one, as we've talked about in the past, my law firm, Zampano Patricius has one of the few anti-terrorism practices in the country. So we represent victims of primarily state-sponsored terrorism under Justin and other laws in trying

to recover compensation from those governmental entities or from those terrorist organizations to compensate the victims. And we're doing it. We've done that historically, and we're terrorist organizations to compensate the victims. And we're doing it. We've done that historically and we're doing that all over the country. Very unique practice area. I mean, yeah, and some people mount on your hands and number of firms who do that at a high level. It's that many.

Maybe, maybe. But and people might think for our listeners at three. I forgot we're not just live video. We're also we drop every Sunday morning. You so deserve it. The yellow card. But if I give you the, if I give you the yellow card, we got to shut down the pod. So all right. Come on. Come on. All right. So that's the first connection. And some people might be thinking, well, how do you terrorist organizations? How do you go against assets in America? They have assets in America, and yes, they do. And they've hidden them. And one of the processes is to try to find your way

and pick your way through the different places where these assets reside to recover on behalf of the victims. But the second connection is a very personal one. I was, and this is what I met Ben, I was the global head of litigation for a well-known Wall Street firm, Canter Fitzgerald, who lost 658 people in a 12-minute span on 9-11. I joined them many years later, but many of my colleagues survived.

Some of them survived that particular day. And that event, that tragedy, is part of the fiber of that organization and you think about it as a executive there every day. Every day, it was part of the makeup of the company. So it's something that resonates with me. Jasta, as you said, changed the law and allowed Saudi Arabia, particularly,

to be sued by victims and their families for 9-11 attacked. And what is the connection? Because now we're 20 years away from the event. And some people might have forgotten. 15 out of the 19 hijackers were Saudi Arabian citizens. And the FBI conducted a deep investigation called Operation Encore into determining the links between the Saudi government and the hijackers, financial support and planning support

for the attack. And so those files are really important to the families in the civil lawsuit that's in the Southern District of New York federal court on behalf of those families. And there's, you know, there's 1,500 victims who actually survived in one way or another on 9-11, whether it was the Pentagon, Pennsylvania, or at the World Trade Center, and 850 families of people who didn't survive, who are plaintiffs in that lawsuit. And they have been begging every administration, demanding every administration, including Obama, to release the records.

And it is Joe Biden, as of today, who is the first president to issue an executive order requiring the FBI to review the files and declassify them as soon as possible. Not all of them. Some of the files are gonna be withheld on national security interest grounds. But many of the files that these families desperately need

to make their case that the Saudi government is responsible in part or in whole for what happened on 9-11. They need those documents. And I think the families should be satisfied. They even took the position. I don't know if you read this, Ben. They actually told Biden, they did not want him at any 9-11 commemorative events

on 9-11 unless he did the release of the classified documents. And finally, there please have been heard, and that's gonna happen. But you raised a very interesting legal point that we've talked about before. Generally, foreign governments are immune, cannot be sued in federal court or state court for their actions because the sovereign

that King can't be sued. But a government can either for itself wave sovereign immunity. Federal government does something really bad. It can elect through a congressional act to wave sovereign immunity and allow itself to be sued because if it doesn't do that, you're at a luck. You're shit at a luck if your loved one was injured because of a bad act by the military or the US government in some other way. But if they rate, if they lift sovereign immunity, which sometimes they do, there's a bill that's passed in Congress and it happens.

A state can do the same thing. They can do a special bill in each state to waive sovereign immunity for injury and otherwise. And that's happened in California, Florida, New York places where you and I operate on a regular basis. Foreign governments enjoy sovereign immunity unless the U.S. buy legislation, which is what JASTA is, removes the sovereign immunity and takes away that protective barrier to suit and civil suit because in this case, they are, they acted in promotion of state-sponsored terrorism. So that development is not only a good one and a patriotic one to help heal the suffering of those families, but will help them in their civil suit against Saudi Arabia.

And it's something at you and I, that case will now propel itself down the track at a much faster rate. And you and I will probably be updating that on a regular basis from here forward. And you think why would we have this doctrine of sovereign immunity, right? And ultimately, it is this idea of international comedy, not comedy, comedy, with the tea of nations realizing that if nations consume other nations, it will be kind of ever evolving litigation within national courts, as opposed to certain international tribunals

where nations try to have arbitrations and deal with those issues. And we should probably discuss on future podcasts those types of international forums where disputes come in. And so one of the issues when Jasta was raised in 2016 though was, well, if we pass a law like this, will other nations start passing their own versions of laws that, you know, you can sue the United States of America.

And do you have this domino effect? And ultimately here, that's not the case because you have this domino effect and ultimately here? That's not the case because you have, if in fact Saudi Arabia was involved in state sponsor terrorism that led to 9-11, they should be held accountable for that. But I wanted to flag those issues about why you have these underpinnings to be. And to explain process to our followers and listeners, you may be thinking like scratching their head. Well, why weren't the sat why wasn't that law passed earlier? Because there is a go-look at pictures of presidents holding hands literally with Saudi leaders in the White House literally

holding hands. Bush one, Bush two, Obama, everyone holding hands because there are tremendous and vital national security interests generally with the Saudis, not just oil, although that has always been a primary driver, but also having a Air Force base in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia to allow the U.S. to have some sway over military operations in that Middle Eastern region. But that doesn't mean that we're going gonna look the other way. Although, and we'll talk about this in other podcasts, we just had a situation where the current head

of Saudi Arabia probably had a journalist chopped into pieces during a interrogation and killed. And so we've looked the other way a lot on Saudi Arabia. So yes, it was great. They passed Jasta in 2016, but it was against. There were people that voted against it. You talk about a Supreme Court justice is in the minority like the Democratic ones and they're basically being called criminals by their by the brethren because they're on the other side of the issue. There are people that voted against Jasta, which means they voted in favor of Saudi lobbying and being sponsors of state terrorism.

Again, things you would think, how is this political? But it is. There's never a roll call vote that results in, you know, 537 to zero. No doubt about it. Popok. And so we've covered it all in this episode of legal AF. We talked about Texas and their abortion ban and the Supreme Court's response to it. We've talked about the Clean Water Act.

We've talked about Remington's subpoenaing the records of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre. We gave you updates, updates and more updates. We've talked about the GQP threats to telecom companies. We talked about DeSantis blowing off mask mandates and its current status with those updates on top of updates. We talked about the shaman plea deal, not the papoki in shaman, the QAnon shaman, and we've talked about Biden directing the FBI through discussed on today's legal AF touched on some of the darker areas of where the law is going. So to start thinking about what we can do to challenge it, what we can do to be smarter, more informed citizens, to help make our country more democratic, to bring democracy back to the United States of America, and to ensure that people like the QAnon Shaman who is a caricature, but nonetheless part of the same viral strand as death, Santas, and Trump are not the faces of American democracy. And so we appreciate your support of legal AF.

We appreciate everybody, and I'm so impressed looking at the chat right now of everybody who's stuck with it and who's listened to some of these very complex areas of the law. I get tribute it to Popock being great. And we appreciate you. We will see you next week. Same time. If it's Saturday, it's legal AF live. If it's Sunday, it is legal AF. Popok. Last words. I can't believe we build an audience that stays with us for an hour and a half on these topics. And the numbers go up, not down. It's really fantastic. I'm glad we're doing it live. It's good to see you live every live every Saturday when we're doing this. So I appreciate it.

Popoq, you make me smarter, the mightest mighty make me smarter. And we appreciate you. We'll see you next time on Legal AF. You got Popoq. You got my cell. If it's Sunday, it is legal, AF.