Legal AF by MeidasTouch - The Intersection with Michael Popok - 12/23/2025

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

The Supreme Court finally issues a devastating set back to Trump’s National Guard takeover plot, and Popok is joined by special guest California Attorney General Rob Bonta, to brief. The first federal lawsuit to stop Trump’s take over of Washington monuments like the Kennedy Center is out of the gate. We now know why Trump has spent 11 months covering up for the fact his name is all over the Epstein Files with the release of a new batch and secret handwritten letters and fbi reports; Federal judges rule against Trump and his mass deportation policies in back to back orders. And Popok’s top rated Intersection Podcast is here for it all. INDACLOUD: If you’re 21 or older, get 25% OFF your first order + free shipping @IndaCloud with code LEGALAF at https://inda.shop/LEGALAF! #indacloudpod MOINK: Keep American farming going by signing up at https://MoinkBox.com/LEGALAF RIGHT NOW and listeners of this show get FREE BACON for a year! Check out The Popok Firm at: https://thepopokfirm.com Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@LegalAFMTN?sub_confirmation=1 Legal AF Substack: https://substack.com/@legalaf Follow Legal AF on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/legalafmtn.bsky.social Follow Michael Popok on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mspopok.bsky.social Subscribe to the Legal AF by MeidasTouch podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/legal-af-by-meidastouch/id1580828595 Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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with Golden Nugget Online Casino. Gambling problem call ConEx Ontario at 1-866-531-2600. 19 and over. Physically present in Ontario. Eligibility restrictions apply. See Golden Nuggett Casino.com for details. Please play responsibly. It is the intersection. It must be, because I'm at it. I'm Michael Popak, and I'm glad that you're here and our audience is revved up and ready to go. Forget Christmas Eve, Eve, forget the holidays, you know, holding the Trump administration accountable. It's a full-time job. Doesn't take a vacation, doesn't take a holiday. And we certainly are in our audience. Is it first, let me express my gratitude, humble gratitude, for those in the audience at the intersection that helped us cross over the one million subscriber milestone on LegalAF, the YouTube

channel in just about a year, certainly well before our target date of the end of the month. And it's just so rewarding from our side of the camera, but we've got a lot of work to do. and we're glad we're going to do it together, that people have found our message, our reporting, without blowing smoke or sunshine, to give you what you need at the intersection of law and politics to be a rewarding experience. I am honored to meet people in our audience on the street in real life, IRL, as kids like to say, just had a couple that I met two days ago with my wife where we live. And it always starts the same way, which is, you give us hope. I don't mean me particularly. Legal AF might as touch. But we do. Gives them hope, makes it better,

makes them understand and comprehend what is going on around them, you know, that they're not delusional, that they're not paranoid, that something bad is really happening, but that there's a light at the end of the tunnel. And we're working hard to short. the tunnel together, you know, we're 10 months or so to the midterm election. Who here would trade places with Donald Trump and his team versus a random Democrat at the midterms? If you'd ask me that question three months ago, I don't know. But now, you know, now that it's all fully baked. And I think the four things I'm going to talk about tonight on the intersection, including with a special guest, I'm not going to tease you much longer, when I

to the segment on the Supreme Court dealing a major blow to Donald Trump's efforts to create national police force by way of taking over the National Guard. Of course, I'm going to be joined by California's favorite attorney general, our favorite attorney general, Rob Bonta, is going to join us at that segment to talk about it from his perspective, because that decision, six to three, no less, although with one wild card, one one, one, one, one, one, one, one, Brett Kavanaugh trolling us about Jan 6th, if you can believe it. I'll get to that in a minute. But that decision that Donald Trump cannot do what he has done in every state where he's

taken over the National Guard will have a cascading impact to all the other states, the Illinois, the Oregon, the California. And Rob Banta is a great, Attorney General Bontas, a great person for us to be together to brief our audience. Epstein, yeah, there is a new tranche of documents, I guess, is the right way to put it, coming out of the Epstein Library. What a misnomer. Who came up with that?

The Epstein Library is what the Department of Justice calling it. This one must have been sub-labeled all the stuff that undermines Donald Trump in one place, but we know it's not just in one place. Now we know why. He's been trying so hard. to hide from the American people what's in the quote-unquote Epstein files because his name is lousy throughout all of it. We now know why, and it's all backfired, the cover-up led by Donald Trump and this Department of Justice, the cover-up of the cover-up is all backfired. Now we've got,

I'm just going to give you four pieces of paper from today, not the 30,000 documents. We'll talk about a, is it a handwritten memo? Is it a handwritten memo? a handwritten letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nasser, the disgraced pedophile sex abuser doctor for the Olympic team, the women's Olympic gymnastics team, or is it not? Well, the Department of Justice is expending an enormous amount of energy trying to argue that it could, it is not, may not, I don't know, there's handwriting analysis, the postmark who,

All I know is the New York Post, which is generally a propaganda newspaper, propaganda platform for Donald Trump, came out with already Department of Justice is already exonerating Trump without doing any investigation just based on any paper that has Trump's name on it. Oh, that's an unfounded accusant. We'll talk about that when we get there. That's one piece of paper. There's three more I want to use to show you why Donald Trump is not getting. away from this scandal. It is sucking him and his administration down the drain. If we look back

in history as to what was the straw that broke Donald Trump's administration's back? It may well be the Epstein scandal and his handling of it. Why shouldn't it be? We've never ever in our history seen a person occupying the Oval Office use his considerable power to protect and defend. not the Constitution, but child sex traffickers that are in his life. You've got nothing to hide, you're transparent, right? If you've got everything to hide and everything to lose, you continue to troll the American people and spoonfeed them and redact them to death in document production.

And that's what we're watching. And the American people are doing a big thumbs down on Donald Trump and his phallonious ways, let's put it that way. Then I want to talk about the Kennedy Center has a new lawsuit. It also has a new name. But does it have a new name? I mean, it has a new name. There it is, for those that are watching us tonight.

Look at that. One day after his Donald Trump's board of synchof-fants and boot-lickers, who he all installed, including Howard Lutnik's wife, Commerce Secretary and Maria Bartaromo and Laura Ingram and Usha Vance. They all got together at a just your typical Palm Beach mansion and decided that they were going to, you know, they were like the mean girls and they weren't going to invite the ex officio trustee who happens to be a congresswoman from the fighting third of Ohio, Congresswoman Beatty. They were going to put her on mute when she told.

everybody, this is unconstitutional. You can't violate an act of Congress to memorialize and the only memorial dedicated to JFK after his assassination or otherwise in the nation's capital. You can't scar it and put graffiti on it with Donald Trump's name on mute. Hit the mute button. All right. And now there's a lawsuit. Guess who the plaintiff is? I'll give you one guess. You can leave it in comments. We'll talk about it. We'll talk about it more. ballroom lawsuits got another one in the ballroom the golden ballroom lawsuit that's up Kennedy Center we're all just trying to prevent the inevitable

the get ready sit down you may throw up a little in your mouth the Trump Lincoln Memorial the Trump Jefferson Memorial you know he's got his eye on Reagan International Airport the scene of the air crash of American Airlines the Black Hawk helicopter just that if anything was an omen you know not that I believe in this, but if anything was an omen for the bad things to come in the Trump administration, how about an army helicopter crashing into a passenger jet and 67 people dying within days of the inauguration? Seriously, if this was the movie, the omen, we'd be like,

that sort of makes sense. And so get ready, because he'll have another one of those slips where he happens to say out loud, oh, Trump Reagan Airport, you know. And then I'm I'm going to put two things together. I'm going to do a weave. We call it a weave in the Midas world. I'm going to weave two things together. I'm going to knit them together. But they're linked.

A ruling today in the last or the last 24 hours from Judge Zinnis in Maryland about Armando Obrango Garcia, who's won again. The guy is on an epic winning streak. He hasn't lost. He's like the Tom Brady of litigants. You know, he wins everywhere. United States Supreme Court 9-0. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals twice. Judge Crenshaw in Tennessee. Judge Holmes in Tennessee. Judge Zinnis, I don't know, half a dozen times. The guy's undefeated. Except in the crazy world of Donald Trump, who continues to go after him and go on television and violate gag orders and call him an MS-13 gang member, no proof. A gangbanger. I don't even know what that is. A child sex. trafficker, you know where I'm going.

Takes one to no one. A no proof, no proof, no proof. And any proof that's ever been provided, federal judges wearing black robes have denounced or rejected. Got a new ruling from Judge Zinnis. And then we got a new ruling from Judge Bozberg. Some people might be thinking, Judge Bozberg, he just got shot down by the appellate court three days ago.

Didn't he Popak? He did. Guess what he did today? he granted summary judgment in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of their clients, 250 Venezuelans who were put in that dark torture chamber. I'm using the 60 Minutes lost episode now. Seekot Torture Chamber in El Salvador, where he, and according to papers he filed, he was immediately tortured. There's a new ruling about everybody not named Abrago Garcia.

about the Seacot by Judge Bozberg, which links back and he cites back to Judge Zinnis and the Supreme Court's decision and Abrago-Garcia. All that and so much more on the... I'm like giddy. Why am I so giddy? Because I'll tell you why I'm giddy.

Because time is up for Donald Trump. It's not up quick enough for us, soon enough for us. Even he knows his time is up. Even he knows. The only person that would start slapping their name on money and ballrooms and memorials and performing arts centers is somebody he knows he's a short timer. He also knows we're going to change it all back, maybe not the ballroom, when he's out of office. But this is what you do when you know that your time on earth

in the president's office, the Oval Office, is short. And at the same time, when the history books write it, it's also the moment we see the immolation, the self-destruction, this implosion of the movement that he created called whatever that's MAGA. MAGA is in shambles, never to be resuscitated. You've got leaders of MAGA leaving Congress, denouncing the president on the way out. You've got Turning Point USA sitting there where Erica Kirk brings everybody. together. It became like a feeding frenzy. It looked like piranhas on a stage. Tucker Carlson goes after Ben Shapiro, who goes after Candice Owen, who goes after this podcaster I never heard of, you know, and Erica Kirk's trying to preside over all.

And then, and then J.D. Vance, as he is wont to do, because he was born, as Anne Richards once famously said, the Texas governor, he was born with a silver foot in his mouth. He gets up, and instead of tamping down things, he's like, he basically said, America's for white people. How am I doing, everybody? Not great, J.D. Not great. I know you think you're the heir apparent,

but Donald Trump doesn't think that because he let his own chief of staff go on Vanity Fair interviews and say that you're an opportunist and you're late to the program. So I got one more treat for us besides Rob Bonta. We're going to do something that people seem to like last week, which is stump the Popok. No, questions to Michael Popak during the show. So put up your

questions, and Alan, who works with me, is going to grab those questions and send them to me at intervals during the show, and hopefully I will be able to read them and respond. How's that? How's that sound? Okay. So let's get into the Kennedy Center. Again, hang around, of course, for the next segment, because we're going to have Rob Bonta, the Attorney General, join us. Kennedy Center, December the 17th or 18th? Well, let's back up. Early December, Donald Trump lets slip at another event. He calls it the Trump Kennedy Center.

And then shrugs it off, like, oh, sorry, is that so terrible? Yeah, because the decision was made when he fired the board. and he put all of his people on it, made himself chairman of the board several months ago that they were going to rename this thing. Because on the 17th or 18th, they get together at Richard Grinnell's house in Palm Beach. And the ex-officio member who is the congresswoman,

she phones in. And this goose is cooked. They're going to vote to change the name. Now, this was created, the Performing Arts Center was created in the night. late 1950s. But in 1964, after the, and the country is in, after the assassination of JFK, is in, there's a pall that comes over the country. This was a beloved president and an American family, Camelot, that was just snatched from us. And they want to do something. So they do a

memorial to a patron of the arts, unlike Donald Trump, who has, who is, is a destroyer of the arts, right? He's a Neanderthal. According to people, he can barely read, let alone enjoy any of the performing arts or other visual arts. He's cut all the funding for NPR, PPS, things that bring culture to the hinterlands, to America. He cuts funding to state programs and state entities and public interest entities that are in the arts as part of Doge otherwise. And so his name on that building alone is disgusting and depraved. But it was an act of Congress that named it as the living, as the memorial to,

and the only memorial to JFK, now scarred with these letters. So they have this meeting on the 17th or 18th of December. The very next day, after they vote, they're already putting the letters up on the building. Now, does anybody believe they went down to Home Depot and have them fabricate these aluminum letters to shove on the building in one day's time? No, that was in the works for months so that it was ready.

So let's play the clip. So you'll know who the plaintiff is in this case of the Congresswoman, Joyce Beatty. We have a clip of her talking about what happened at that meeting and what happened to her. Let's play the clip. At the end of the meeting, there was the announcement that there was going to be the renaming of the Kennedy Center to the Trump Center.

At that point, I said, I have something to say, and I was muted. And as I continued to try to unmute to ask questions and voice my opposition to this, I received a note saying that I would not be unmuted. So to be clear, you were cut off. I was cut off. And then it was said, then now the vote is unanimous. As an ex officio, member, we do have a vote. I was not allowed to vote because I was.

was muted. I would not have supported this. I would have asked several questions about this. And in traditional fashion, we would have had someone talk about why they were doing this, that they had researched this. In my opinion, it is not legal for them to do this. So we oversee their finances, and we believe this is also, we also believe this is illegal. This is our living monument to JFK. We didn't build him another statue on the mall. This is something that was built for him because of his dedication. education to the arts and creativity and free speech. So we are currently looking for any way we can push back as members of Congress as a subcommittee

that controls their finances. But we have found them very non-transparent in terms of explaining exactly how they're spending the money. They've gotten the big ugly bill or what ticket sales are or anything else going on there right now. As we know, they fired the entire board except the ex officio members, which they couldn't, replace them with people who just went along with the president. But I think members of Congress are going to be outraged.

I know we are. We're doing a sign-on letter to ask our colleagues to say, this is not legal, you can't do this. And it's a real insult to the Kennedy family and to JFK. In fact, Rory Kennedy, who's RFK Jr.'s sister, she said, as soon as the administration is over, she is going up on the building with a pickaxe, and she's going to pick the letters off the building.

But first, we have the lawsuit. So the lawsuit is what you would think would be. It's been filed in the District of Columbia Federal Court. It's suing every member of the board, all the people that I named at the beginning. I'm looking at you, Maria Bardo and the other ones. And it is asking the court to declare a mandamus to force the name to be changed back, to force another vote to stop this type of ultra-varray's act from happening because only an act of Congress can change an act of Congress. And what's to stop Donald Trump? This is a slippery slope, right? We let him get away with this. And what happens next? It's going to be the Trump Lincoln Memorial

or fill in the blank. He's already building an arc to triumph or arc to Trump. So I'll continue to follow. There's going to be a temporary restraining order hearing on that soon. We will follow up with all of that. Let me answer a few questions, and then we're going to bring in my special guest in just a few moments. But I think these are right on target from Lori asking me, how confident are you that Trump will abide by the Supreme Court rulings that we're going to talk about? Because I also think the National Guard ruling is a good harbinger for the ruling against Trump on tariffs. And we'll talk about that when we get in more of the segment, and I want to get A.G. Bontas

view on that because he was also in the room for the oral argument on tariffs. He'll abide by Supreme Court rulings. I mean, as is crazy and insane as Donald Trump is an axe, at the end of the day, he knows the end of the road, the end of the last stop on the train, is the Supreme Court. And he's not going to, he'll denounce them. He'll do midnight screeds about them. He'll try to influence them in other ways, but he will not, I don't think, my personal opinion, I don't think that he will defy a Supreme Court ruling or the people in his administration. Can federal judge, Sherry asked, can federal judges unite against the Supreme Court's unconstitutional rulings? No. I mean, what we're watching is a battlefield

between district court judges and the United States Supreme Court acting out right now. We're watching appellate courts and the Supreme Court having a battle in a way that I've never seen in my lifetime. And I've asked people that are even been around longer or more historians, and they said the same thing. This is an open warfare right now. But the best that courts can do is just keep their heads down and continue to chop wood, do their job.

They're going to have to apply the precedent as they see fit, you know, as it comes down from on high, but they, no, they're not going to be able to ban together and kind of create their own precedent and say, well, I don't agree with what the Supreme Court just said on X, Y, and Z. If their case is on all fours or something similar, they're going to have to be, they're going to have to be bound by it. And then lastly, M. Mack I-1-N asked, what are the rules for Supreme Court justice when they write their dissents or their concurrences? There are no rules. they completely dictate their own rules. The reason we've been waiting, and I'll ask A.G. Bonta, who's about to join us,

the reason we've been waiting so long, five, six weeks for this ruling on the National Guard, which went against Donald Trump in a big way, is apparently we were waiting around for the 10 or 12 pages of Sam Alito to cry and whine about why his position that Donald Trump should be able to create a national police force didn't hold sway over the other, why he wasn't able to get to five votes. And then you have, so he had to write that, and then Kavanaugh had to write his thing, which when I first read it looked like a dissent,

not a concurrence, including a trolling about Jan 6th, we'll talk about when A.G. Bonta joins us. And so that has to happen. But no, there are no rules. There are no rules about anything. Everything that we talk about a legal AF about procedure and customs. Sure, there's a procedural book, but most of it is the United States.

Supreme Court making its own rules. They want an extra brief. They get an extra brief. They don't want to roll argument. They don't get oral argument. They want to do this on the shadow docket. They do it on a shadow docket. They want to do it on Saturday. They do it on Saturday. But like most federal judges, there are no other rules. So let's use this as an opportunity now to switch into our segment on the National Guard case and its serious implications and import by bringing in our special guest tonight, Attorney General of California, Rob Banta. Hi, Michael. Good to see you.

Hi, Senator Banta. Thanks. As soon as I saw the ruling, the opinion that popped out for the United States Supreme Court, you know, you and I just had a conversation with our audience a couple of days ago. I said, oh, I've got to see if I can get A.G. Bontza back here to talk about it. So let me frame it for our audience,

because some of them may not have, may not know what have happened. But in a six to three decision, yes, even though Kavanaugh, it looked like a dissent he finally sided with the majority, including Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett and the liberal moderate wing to stop Donald Trump from doing what he has been doing, his recipe, they've said his recipe for taking over the state militia is wrong because the way they define what are the regular forces that he needs to be able to use under some limited circumstances before you can call for the backup and cross over state sovereignty and grab the state militia and federalize it. But because the debate had people, some people said to me,

Popok, this thing's but on the books, this 10 U.S.C. Section 12406 for like 150 years. The definition of regular forces, this is just coming up now? Yes. And so there was a battle, right? You had the Trump administration saying, oh, the regular forces, that just means the federal security forces and maybe local law enforcement, and the states like yours were saying, no, it's historically been the armed forces. And you can only use the armed forces under limited circumstances on a delegation from Congress. So you have all of that. So with that, and you being in the room for a lot of these things, tell me how you interpret how the ruling and its impact on Ninth Circuit, the Ninth Circuit cases like in Oregon and in New York, California.

Well, first, this case is a huge win for the rule of law, for America and Americans, the Constitution, and for common sense, frankly, and a huge defeat for Trump who was betting, you know, all his marbles for his multiple deployments on 10 U.S.C. 12406, with the minor exception of D.C., which has some different rules. And, you know, he was banking all of his federalizations and deployments on 10 U.S.C. 12406. And they always believed that if they went to the U.S. Supreme Court, especially on the emergency docket, they would prevail. Like, that was always their salvation. If they lost in the trial court below and they lost in the intermediate appellate court, there's always the Supreme Court quickly on the emergency docket. And up to now, they have had a very high rate of success. But the order today, the ruling today could not have been more favorable for the states, for Illinois and the 23 Democratic states that supported their position. It was a complete rejection, a slap down, a complete failure to accept any of the arguments from the Trump administration because they're not acceptable.

They just don't make sense. And there's this ongoing idea from the Trump administration that they can deploy the National Guard where they want, when they want for as long as they want, for whatever reason they want. And that the courts can't review it. The courts, the U.S. Supreme Court definitely reviewed their position and rejected it. And so more than we could have hoped for based on the sort of shadow docket, emergency docket record of the Supreme Court, And I think really important, really, I think exciting for what might come next. I know this might have surprised a lot of people. I think a lot of people were resigned to the belief that the U.S. Supreme Court and the shadow docket

was always going to side with Trump. I didn't believe that, but I didn't have a lot of data points until now. But I'm grateful that the six justices who looked at this, looked at it the way they did, they found that the regular forces in 10 U.S.C. 12406 are the military forces. that you have to have under the posse comitatis act some law that allows you to marshal the military forces and that trump failed on both counts they failed to show that the regular military forces were unable to get the job done here in chicago and they failed to show that there was any exception to posse comitatis that allowed the military forces to even be deployed and they finally rejected

one more thing which is the trump administration's belief that they have inherent authority to protect federal personnel and property with the National Guard and they looked at the word execute the laws, the phrase execute the laws, which appears both in Posse Comitatis Act and 10 U.S.C. 12406, and they kind of hoisted the Trump administration on its own batard there and said if protecting personnel and property is not executing the laws under the Posse Comitatis Act, then there's no justification under 10 U.S.C. 12406 for executing the laws, the inability to execute the laws with the regular forces. So a really good majority opinion, Kavanaugh wanted to find the same way on narrower grounds. And one thing I thought was really interesting, there was a lot of lamenting

by the justices of the use of the emergency docket. And yeah, I lamented too. Stop using it. A lot of us have been lamenting it for a long time. They seem to be fine with it at times when the outcome was one that they supported and could live with. But now then it's when it's not, and they're lamenting it. And these are really important issues. They should be fully briefed, have amicus insight, input. They should have a full oral argument and a full vetting and analysis. So maybe this will slow down the use of the emergency docket in the future.

One could only help. Yeah, the way that I, now in retrospect, what are the reasons, again, this is only 2020 hindsight. One of the reasons why you and I were scratching our head with what's taking them so long. And look at all the rulings that are coming out, like at the Ninth Circuit for you and your favor, that they seem to be just sitting and allowing to happen. It's a lot of things to have to unscramble. So maybe in retrospect, they knew they knew they had the numbers. They were okay with the Ninth Circuit's ruling in your favor and some of these other courts because they knew they may not have had the opinions written, but they knew it was going to be about a five to four, six to three decision. that was going to be supportive of these other rulings. That's one observation. Let me read to the audience, to our audience tonight, the key paragraph in the majority opinion. Again, we don't know who wrote it.

We just know who joined it. And that would be Sotomayor, Kagan, Katanji Brown Jackson, Chief Justice Roberts, and Amy Coney Barrett, and Kavanaugh. And here's the statement, because the statute requires an assessment of the military's ability to execute the laws. It is likely applies only where the military could legally execute the laws. Such circumstances are exceptional, talking to you, Trump. Under the Possecombatatus Act, the military is prohibited from executing the laws except in cases and under circumstances

expressly authorized by the Constitution or an act of Congress. So, before the president can federalize the Guard under 12406.3, he likely must have statute. or constitutional authority to execute the laws with the regular military and must be unable with those forces to perform that function. Now, Sam Alito in his dissent made it into a circular logic. He said, 124063 is the congressional delegation of authority. I'm like, what? I mean, his argument made absolutely no sense. But they were very clear. The only problem before I turned to Kavanaugh with you, and then I want to talk about, I want to do a little tea leaf reading about the tariffs having taken this position. The only problem I have with this, it sort of invites

Donald Trump to try to use the Insurrection Act. Yeah. Right? Because the Insurrection Act, which Donald Trump has threatened and flirted with it for a long time, including in the first administration, like, let's take the voting machines under the Insurrection Act. Or I don't want to do the Insurrection Act. I've heard him say before. But if he does the Insurrection Act, which is one of those limited exceptions if the grounds are proper to use the military, the armed forces on U.S. soil. I mean, are you troubled by the fact that they've sort of invited potentially or debated him to do the insurrection act?

Yeah, there's a couple odd and not desired potential outcomes here. If the regular forces means the military forces, and you need to exhaust the use of the military, military's regular forces first before you bring in the National Guard, then assuming there's a justification for military to be deployed on American soil in the first place, then that means you're likely to see military, you know, Army, Marines, before you see National Guard.

And probably that's not preferred. I think people would rather see National Guard if they're going to see anyone before they see Marines and members of the Army. So there's that. And then there's also, you know, the point that you're making that if they, you know, I can imagine Trump huddling with his team responding to this Supreme Court ruling and saying, we want the same outcome. I want National Guard in blue cities, in Democratic cities that didn't

vote for me. How do we get them there? And the one logical response is the Insurrection Act. And he's kind of bandied it out there and kind of threatened to deploy it and to apply it but never has. He kind of says, it's there. I can use it if I want, but I don't want to. And maybe he will now. And it still has a high threshold, a high factual underpinning and predicate and basis that's required to use it. You need to have, you know, essentially that the equivalent. of an invasion or a rebellion and, you know, an armed attempt to overthrow the government

is what an insurrection is, essentially. So he's very unlikely to have that, hasn't had that in D.C., L.A., Portland, or Chicago. But it does kind of have kind of push him towards the Insurrection Act if his desire is to legally in the eyes of the U.S. Supreme Court deploy National Guard. Even the Biden prosecutors didn't use the Insurrection Act against the insurrectionist on Jan 6th, right? They used sedition, seditious conspiracy. Even they didn't do, even they didn't use the I word, but listen to this in Kavanaugh. You know, because Kavanaugh, like, it's almost like, oh, well, I'm going to side with them to, you know, to block Trump on this, but, you know, let me, let me troll while I'm doing it. So in footnote two in his dissent, his dissent, his

concurrence, Kavanaugh says, as I read it, the court's opinion does not address the president's authority under the Insurrection Act. Yeah, okay, we got it, Brett. We know where your head's out. Right? Wait, wink, maybe you want to consider that. Then the part that really called me is in the way I read it. Let me just read it to our audience is the hypothetical that he used, which is right out, it's a Jan 6th hypothetical, but rewrites history to make a president actually send in the National Guard and or the armed forces to protect the Capitol when we know that's exactly the opposite of what Donald Trump, his patron, did. So here's what he says. He says the court's this on page five, the court's legal interpretation, as I understand it, could lead to

potentially significant implications for future crises that we cannot foresee. Consider a hypothetical. I'm like, okay, go ahead. Suppose a mob rapidly gathers outside the U.S. courthouse in Philadelphia in response to an unpopular decision or to influence an outcome of a pending matter. Oh, you mean like the mob outside of the Capitol to try to stop the certification? Okay, you got me. Keep going. Suppose the mob is threatening to storm the courthouse and attack the federal judges, prosecutors, and others inside. Oh, like the legislators and their staff and the damage or burn down the building, thereby preventing the execution of federal law. Does anybody think this sounds familiar? Suppose further, the U.S. military forces cannot readily mobilize to deploy to the

site, or the president doesn't call him because he's busy fuming in the dining room. that the local police and federal court security officers are outnumbered. Oh, like the metro police and the Capitol and the Capitol Police who can't hold the line. Under the court's order today, even under those circumstances, the president presumably could not federalize the National Guard. Donald Trump famously, as the Jan 6th Committee determined, never called the National Guard, never called out the military to protect the cradle of our democracy. But look how Kavanaugh subtly, subtly says to the Democrats,

It's that what you want for the next Jan 6th? Right, right. And rewrites Trump as the savior here, the white hat in the revision. And the revisionist history here. Yeah, interesting. I thought Kavanaugh's concurrence, you know, definitely read like a descendant at times. I thought his footnotes were really interesting. And, you know, in particular, the one that you just read and the very, you know, the strong

calling out and illumination of the insurrection act in case the trump administration had missed that pathway um and you know you had asked earlier what do i think the implication is of these cases on our yeah of this case on our cases i think it ends them uh you know every every case is based on uh the very expansive authority that the federal government thought they had under 10 usc 12406 supreme court just said that you don't have it and um so i think every maybe they go back and you know with this guidance they try to show that all the military locally in L.A. or in Portland or, you know, everyone's stationed in the different bases where we're unable to address the, you know, the dancing dinosaurs in Portland or whatever

it is. But they try to make a factual argument consistent with the military not being able to execute the laws, but I just don't see it. I think this, this, I think they're going to, they're going to pivot away from 10 U.S.C. 12 or 406. I like the headline that A.G. Bonta, you just made. I think it ends the cases in every way, shape. inform. Let me pivot for one moment while, and I'll just, if you'll indulge us first for a few more minutes with our audience. We've got a great crowd tonight. We've got it was 11,000 people here, just in the live chat alone, which is a really heartwarming to see. And if people taking time out of their holidays and holiday shopping and all that good stuff, you were in the room,

literally, where it happened, the oral argument on the tariffs. You got Donald Trump, which he was increasingly getting very, very anxious about, I'm sure he's been brief that he's got to a very, very good chance of losing, which is why we're seeing these midnight screeds. I just picture him with like a sleeve of Oreo cookies or a box, a gallon of whatever, and he's just like sitting in the bathroom, hitting it. And everything is like, God bless the Supreme Court and the tariffs are making our country great. Don't let them go away. You know, it's hard to go from one case to another, but they just did a very hard thing,

and six to three, the Supreme Court, in ruling against Donald Trump, with a number of the right, right wing moving over to the other side. It would have been five to four, even if Kavanaugh had stayed with Gorsuch and Alito and Thomas. Do you think there, what do you think this means, if anything, for a likely outcome for Trump that's not, it's not good, like a ruling against him on tariffs? I think he's going to get a ruling against him on tariffs. And, and, and, and, you know, having been in the courtroom, seen the, you know, read the briefs and seen the oral argument, saw the engagement from the bench. It was a hot bench. They were active. They were very dubious of and suspicious of and of the arguments of the federal government. And, you know,

the right was very engaged. Barrett was engaged and Gorsets was engaged. In addition to you know, so to Mayor and Jackson and Kagan. So I thought that could, I thought I saw a clear 5-4 just from my own observation. Maybe I'm, you know, biased. Of course, I have a position on this. So maybe I didn't see it the way others did, but it could even be 6-3. And I think that when it's quick justice on the emergency docket and, you know, there's a lot of deference to the federal government and there's some discretion, some wiggle room, then maybe there's a bigger likelihood, a greater likelihood that they side with the Trump administration. But when they're in deep, when they're looking at the cases and doing the analysis and looking at the core authority of Congress vis-a-vis the executive branch and looking at separation of powers,

I know that this is an important case for the future and they have their own precedent that they've been a part of when it comes to the major questions doctrine. I don't see how they don't find for, you know, the states and the private plaintiffs here that the tariffs are unlawful. So, you know, I think Trump sees it coming. He is getting more desperate. He is getting more concerned. His polling is in the tank. He's losing major cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court at the place where he thought he would never lose and hoped he would never lose. And so he's getting more desperate. And that's not necessarily a good thing. You know, his desperation could mean more extreme actions. I think the actions are already extreme in many ways

and we're able to bat them down and block them and stop them in court. But maybe he does invoke the Insurrection Act. Maybe he does pivot and try to impose additional terrorists under other authority. But a desperate Trump is not good for the United States of America. A non-desperate Trump is not good for the United States of America. But I think he's going to lose the tariffs case, and that'll be another U.S. Supreme Court case that it kind of aligns with my hardwired, hardwired hopeful position.

You know, I think if they just engage the law and the facts and just stick to that, let the chips fall where they may, the people, you know, the states, those that are holding the federal government accountable are going to win most of the time. Yeah. And thank you for being there. You were on with me the other day, and we were celebrating, although it celebrates the wrong word, we were acknowledging the milestone that the Democratic Attorney General had filed their 50th case this year in 10 months, 11 months against Trump administration with an amazing historic winning percentage against the Trump administration. And you said something that we circulated through social media, which made everybody feel a lot better.

And I don't want to paraphrase it. You said something about being ready for the next 50. I'll leave it to you. We've got a full tank of gas, full of energy, ready to roll. Whatever comes next. It's up to pump. How many times he wants to get sued? Price a week, fine.

If he wants to stop breaking the law, we can live with that too. But no passes. Each and every time he breaks the law, hurts our states. We sue him. We're ready to go. Yeah, absolutely. And we're so glad that you're ready to go. And you're always so kind with your time and generous with your time here to brief our audience,

whether it's legal AF or on the interest. Intersection, Attorney General Rob Bonta of the great state of California, who has joined the intersection to talk about the results of the United States Supreme Court decision against Donald Trump on the National Guard. And also, congratulations on getting the National Guard through your efforts and the work of your team off the streets of Los Angeles and other places in California with a recent win at the Ninth Circuit. Thank you, Michael. An honor to fight for the people of the state and this nation. I'm going to keep doing it and grateful for all you're doing. Thanks for having me and tell your entire audience. holidays, everybody. Thank you, you as well, to your family as well, A.G. Rob Banta.

Thank you. Well, we're going to take a quick break, sort of the word from our sponsors. We've got a great audience tonight, some questions that are accumulating. I'm going to answer them when we come back from the break. First, again, heartfelt, heartfelt love here to all of our audience that also overlap with the legal AF YouTube channel. We got to our 1 million subscribers this past weekend. We were all watching it very real. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? We're there. Okay. Great. And now, as we like to say in the world of Midas, we're on our way to two million. So take a moment and come over to Legal AF YouTube channel. It's all free. No outside investors.

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channel and of course we've got this new thing relatively new six seven months a new community extension of our community at legal a f substack so substack amazing we've already got about 120,000 people and i got a great announcement starting today for the rest of the holidays until the 31st of december we're putting our monthly subscription paid subscription on sale 30% off should be about $6.50 a month and for that you'll get eight nine 10 postings a day commentary, analysis, articles, lives, live reports from me and from others, you can get access to all the rulings and orders and opinions and filings, all in one place under one paint of glass, legal AF substack. But now we've got a word from our pro-democracy sponsors.

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as enjoyable and fun as we possibly can. All right, let's turn to Epstein. It's going to be a daily story. This has been a story about the whole administration. We're watching the corrupt intent of the Trump administration through its Department of Justice cover up and cover up the cover up of child sex traffickers. Now we know why the first tranche of documents that came out the other day.

Everybody's talking about the Bill Clinton in a hot tub photo because Donald Trump wanted to distract from the tranche that was dropped today. There's just, there's, there's, there's three or four pieces of paper in there alone. That would be enough to scuttle any presidency and, and should this one. Let me, let me take it in no particular order. They're all important. Maria Farmer, who is the sister of Annie Farmer, one of the survivors of the Epstein Child Sex Trafficking Ring, and it's a ring. I just interviewed Lisa Phillips, who's going to be a regular with us on Legal A.F., who's also a survivor. This is a ring that involved 1,200 girls and young women who were being trafficked by

dozens of men, including Jeffrey Epstein, by way of Galane Maxwell and others. That's what's been, that's what we want to, we want to get justice over and what we want to prevent from happening in the future. And we'll talk about the different ways that happens. So Annie Farmer's sister, Maria Farmer. We'd always heard, and she said that she filed a report back in 1996, 10 years before Jeffrey Epstein was finally investigated by the Southern District of Florida, a U.S. Attorney's Office at FBI. I'm talking 1,000 victims between 1996 and the opening of that investigation. 96, she said she went to the FBI and reported that she worked for Epstein, that he had stolen photographs that she had taken,

including the negatives, so old school photographs, of her 14 and 12-year-old sisters, including Annie Farmer, and that he had taken those photos, had hired her to take photos at a local pool of young girls, and that he had sold the photos,

and she went to the FBI on a claim of pornography and illegal activity. Okay? And you know what's in the batch that just came out today? Maria Farmer's FBI report. Okay. That was intake in Miami and was sent to New York. And then nothing happened for 10 years because Donald Trump,

because Epstein had friends named Donald Trump and Bill Clinton and others. And that 10 years isn't just a passage of time. That is victim, thousand victims. that could have been saved that the FBI had done their job. In fact, the House Oversight Committee and the Democrats on it have sent the letter to the Inspector General

for the Department of Justice said, where's the justice? What happened? Why wasn't this investigated? Who is responsible for not investigating it? And the rest, to try to get justice for the victims. And Maria Farmer has, you know,

the way we know it's hers, I think we have a copy of it somewhere. We can put it up on the screen while I'm talking about it. The way we know it's hers is that it's got redactions, but it is, she has outed it with her lawyer and said, yeah, that's my FBI report about my sister's photos, my kid's sister's photos being taken. Think about it that.

Even then he was taking, there it is, he was taking, is that the one that unclassified? No, that's a different one. Keep looking. I said, that's 2020. This is 1996. But you get the point. The fact that he was selling or giving these photos to others in the ring, in the traffic ring, is just really disgusting. Now, there's also a handwritten note that's getting a lot of publicity and set in the Trump administration's hair on fire. There it is. Leave it up on. the screen. So this is allegedly from Jeffrey Epstein, written several days before he hanged himself, written to Larry Nassar, who was the disgraced doctor who was a rapist and a child sex

molester of the young girl abuser of the women's Olympic gymnastics team. Yes, they're friends. That's a stated fact that they were friends. And in it, he makes references to Donald Trump, liking young, nubile women that he could grab by their genitalia. And while that's going on, he and Larry are grabbing crub in the prison commissary, and life is unfortunate. Death, dead man's confession? Now, you can see the Department of Justice without any time on the clock has already come out and called it an unfounded. Oh, there's handwriting analysis that needs to be done.

Oh, the postmark on the envelope says Virginia, and maybe it's not Virginia, and it's really supposed to be New York and humna, humna, humna, humna, and all that may be true, but they're in no position to make a statement that things that are in the release are somehow unfounded. It went so far that even the New York Post was like, they're already clearing Donald Trump. How could that possibly be? So quickly, related to this.

So the Department of Justice is not supposed to be defending Donald Trump, right? Except they are just a law firm devoted to Donald Trump's criminal defense and a political arm of the Trump administration. They're not an independent justice system, justice agency. No independent justice. You think Merrick Garland, say what you want about him. think he posts something that says here are some documents that we posted but we're just letting you know they're unfounded and baseless how do you know that i mean it's just it's just remarkable the the lengths at which donald trump makes this department of justice jump and and yet they still

somehow sleep at night i'm talking about pan bondi and todd blanche they still think they're officers of the court that are complying with ethics that are that are that have sworn to uphold the Constitution. I just don't understand it. Then there's a email from 2020, obviously from a U.S. attorney, Assistant U.S. Attorney in New York working on the Maxwell prosecution. Least we forget that she was prosecuted. There it is. She was prosecuted by James Comey's daughter, Maureen, a lifelong prosecutor in that office, convicted five felony counts, sentenced to 20 years for child sex trafficking and you can tell this is part of that investigation because here's what it says i'll just round it out for you don't trump was on the plane a lot more with epstein than first

thought because they stumbled into a lot of the flight logs and photos when they were getting ready to try the maxwell case so it says for your situational awareness i'm not sure who he's writing to or she's writing to we wanted to let you know that the flight records we received yesterday reflected Donald Trump traveled on Epstein's private jet many more times than had previously been reported or that we were aware, including during the period we would expect to charge in a Maxwell case. So this is pre-indictment of Galane Maxwell and a prosecutor talking to somebody, I assume in his office or at the FBI. In particular, he goes on, or she goes on, he is listed as a passenger on at least eight flights

between 93 and 96, including at least four flights on which Maxwell was present. It gets better, folks. He's listed as having traveled with, among others, and at various times, Marla Maples, all right, that was his future wife, or wife, his daughter, and his son, Eric. Well, nothing like putting your young daughter and your young son on an airplane with a child sex trafficker. On one flight in 1993, he and Epstein are the only two listed passengers. On another, the only three passengers are Epstein, Trump, and a then 20-year-old name blacked out.

But the prosecutor thought enough of putting in the age. On the other two flights, two of the passengers, respectively, were women who could be possible witnesses in a Maxwell case. That sounds like young girls to me. We've just finished reviewing the full records more than 100 pages of very small script. and didn't want any of this to be a surprise down the road. Thank you, Assistant U.S. Attorney, Southern District of New York, whoever you are. So we got that going on. Remember, this is against the backdrop of Donald Trump,

constantly rewriting and revising history to say, I never liked a guy. He was a creep. He was a Trump. I threw him out of Morrowago. He's like collapsing like 10 years of relationship down to the final how the friendship ended. You know, we've all had friendships that end. but you can't point to the end of the friendship to say, oh, that thing in the bar in Vegas also didn't happen five years earlier. You know, that doesn't work that way. Time doesn't

run backwards that way. So you've got that. And then I didn't know and nobody knew until we saw it. Maybe we knew it. But it was good to see in the pile that the Mara Lago Club was subpoenaed for the Maxwell trial to appear in November of 2021. and bring with it all employment records related to blank. All right, let's fill in the blank without name and names. Why are you subpoenaing records for Mar-a-Lago? We know from other reporting that Mar-Lago was the happy hunting ground for Galane Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein to look for young girls,

including ones that worked in the club or in the spa for Donald Trump, and then bring them into the web of Jeffrey Epsley. steam and sex traffic them. So somebody employed there is important to the prosecution about Galane Maxwell and Mara Lago and the link between the two. Look, we've got another one. This is one of the ones I guess the Department of Justice was talking about when they said there were a whole bunch of baseless accusations around the time of the election that all came in. We got this one from 2020, where a woman claims that Galane Maxwell solicited prostitution and drug use at Moralago. Now, do I know if this is true or not? No. But neither does the Department of Justice.

And that's the point. I'm just Michael Popak. I'm not stating that this is true or not true. Department of Justice is saying emphatically, this cannot be true. Why? Because our boss is standing right behind us. Right, exactly. So that's the, this is not going to be the last of the Epstein follow-ups. You're going to see an interview that I just conducted today of Lisa Phillips because there's something we haven't really talked about, which is what happens when the 1,200 victims, who have all sort of, many of them have gotten together and compared notes,

and I mean literally, decide that the pace of the disclosures and the pace of the Trump administration is too slow for their liking. And they want justice, not just in the release of the files, but a justice that only a civil lawsuit against the perpetrators can bring. So forget Donald Trump for now, although you can bring a civil suit against Donald Trump. You can prosecute that civil suit. He brings civil suits all the time while he's president. He's not too busy playing, you know, between his golf game and his and his Kennedy Center

and his casino visits. You know, he's got time to file lawsuits against. the New York Times, against the Washington Post, against the Wall Street Journal, against the BBC. So we call it the goose gander doctrine. It's good for the goose is good for the gander. So wait for these victims to start suing, not just Trump potentially, but Epstein's estate and others. Prince Andrew, former Prince, the Andrew formerly known as Prince, I guess is the right way to put it. he's going i mean now you see why they kicked him out of the house uh recently because uh things that have come out now are like worse for him he's still he still can be sued he's settled with

with people they and and we uh we're working with a team at the popock firm legal a f we're working with a team called survivor strategies led by senator joe dunn former senator joe dunn and sam maloney and lisa phillips uh to help bring justice to these people with the filing of civil lawsuits, many states, including blue states like California, recently have opened a window to allow adult survivors, who are now adults, but were children then or otherwise, to bring, or adult survivors or survivors of child molestation or rape,

to bring civil cases in a two-year window period of time with a look back as far back as possible. In other words, lifting the statute of limitations and allowing for these filings. And Joe Dunn lobbied and successfully obtained, along with Lisa Phillips, just as they had in New York, a reopening of a opening of a window in California. So start January 1. Boy, that's right around the corner. Get ready.

I can't reveal it. I don't have exactly, I'm just telling you, it's coming. There's going to be a handful of lawsuits filed on Jan 1 coming out of the Epstein documents and the victims and survivors of Epstein in California. Not saying it's against Donald Trump. I'm just saying cases are coming. Just like they did in the hashtag Me Too era, they're coming out of this Epstein thing.

That's the next thing that happens in the pursuit of justice for the survivors. And I talk about it more in an interview you'll see you in the next day or two with Lisa Phillips. So that's where we are with Epstein. Now I want to just round out our show with quickly on Abrago Garcia and Judge Zinnis and Judge Bozberg in a case we call JGG because they're linked.

Rago Garcia has been breathing free air for the last couple of weeks, and he got to go to court and sit without shackles, without handcuffs, with his family, in a courtroom yesterday, anyway, with Judge Zinnis about whether her order blocking him from being picked up again by ICE and thrown into detention while she makes decisions about his habeas corpus petition should be extended. And the judge was pretty jocular and friendly to that side of the table. In fact, she joked, Judge Zinnis joked when she saw Abrago Garcia there and his 10 lawyers that he had enough lawyers to field a baseball team. She then looked over at poor Mr. Molina by himself for the Department of justice, with others listening on the phone, she was not too pleased with the Department of

Justice. She scolded the Department of Justice for effectively lying to her for misrepresenting facts to her, to misrepresenting documents to her. And she said it out loud. She said, why should I trust anything that you say? You say that this document is new and it was a mistake or a clerical error. Why should I do that? And I have another bone to pick with you. This is the judge. She said that you referred to my order in the middle of the month, granting a temporary restraining order to block Mr. Abrago Garcia had been picked up again by ICE as an ex parte order. Ex parte means that there's only one party there. It's you and the judge. It happens in rare circumstances. I think in my entire 35 years career, 35 year career, I've done it five times, maybe five times.

You get a restraining order. It's usually if you think, like a boat, a plane, big money is about to leave or something's going to happen. You don't even have time to tell the other side. Or if you tell the other side, they're going to secrete the asset or hide it or this or that. So you're running to get a temporary restraining order without notice. Judge says fine, but now give them notice of the temporary restraining order and we'll bring everybody together in three days or four days and they can move to dissolve it. That's the backstop to that.

That's ex parte. That's not what this was when she issued her order. That was on full briefing. That was on an emergency briefing, but on full briefing. That wasn't an ex parte. And she said, I'm not happy that you wrote ex parte. And I want a declaration to tell me who made the decision of the four lawyers that signed this piece of paper, who didn't catch or who made the decision to call it ex parte.

So she's pissed about a lot of things. She said, I'm keeping you out, Mr. Obrigo or Garcia, until after the holidays. We'll full brief everything in the meantime. And then she issued another order. I don't want, nobody records me. She said, I don't want smart watches, smartphones, smart glasses, recording devices, nothing in my courtroom. Something happened. I just don't know quite what it was that led her to issue that order.

Somebody in the Department of Justice side did something wrong. And, of course, another series of bumbling errors by the Department of Justice. And she's Braygo Garcia's judge, Judge Zinnis, she's a rock star. You know, they like to call her a Marxist leftist. I don't know about all that. All I know is a 90 United States Supreme Court supported her decision to order Abrago Garcia to have his return facilitated by the U.S. government. And the reason I mention that is that Judge Bozberg in District of Columbia, Chief Judge Bozberg, he just issued an order today as we were coming on the air. Summary judgment concerning the 250 people disappeared in the middle of the night without due process. who they branded Trenda-Iragua Venezuelan gang members most of them are not by the way

violent criminals, 92% of them are not and then just whisked them away during a hearing without federal oversight or due process and put them in the torture prison of El Salvador in Seacot. And Bozberg

has not been happy since he's the one that started the criminal contempt proceedings that have been blocked by an appellate court, led by Trumpers, and different things. The Supreme Court told Bozberg, we like your process, but you're in the wrong court potentially, because you've got to do it by rid of habeas corpus, and that has to be where the people were last incarcerated, and that wasn't Washington. That was like Texas or this or that.

Now they've been sent to El Salvador, but they're not even in El Salvador. Walker. Pardon me, folks. There was traded a prisoner exchange with Venezuela to send them back to Venezuela. I thought we're at war with Venezuela. I thought there are enemy combatants that we just gave back to the enemy. See how there's no consistency because it's all lies by the Trump administration. So the judge Boseberg said, if I determined, then he did, that the prison of El Salvador is under the custodial control of the Trump administration. then that's the last place they were. That's federal soil, and that gives me my jurisdiction for habeas corpus. And under the Abrago-Garcia ruling that Judge Zinnis obtained through the

Supreme Court, that he cited Abrago-Garcia, I'm going to order that the government give those 250 people now sitting in Venezuela a habeas corpus to process mechanism that they can use. That's his ruling. Summary judgment, case closed. They're going to have to take the appeal. They'll take it up to D.C. Hopefully they won't get to Trump judges at the Court of Appeal. We'll see what the United States Supreme Court does. They're a wily bunch at the Supreme Court. You don't know what they're going to do in any given time. Look what they just did today with the National Guard troops. And I'm hoping that as we head into the New Year and the first quarter, Donald Trump gets on a little bit of a losing streak at the U.S. Supreme Court. National Guard case against him, hopefully the tariff case against him. And then we got birthright citizenship. We're going to have to see what that's going to be all about on the 14th Amendment. You got Lisa Cook at the Federal Reserve. Does she stay or does she go? Got a lot of big issues about presidential power. And more importantly, the ability of the federal

Judiciary and Congress to control and out-of-control lawless president. But we do it here. I'm so happy that we had such an amazing audience tonight for our special guest, Rob Banta. Holidays are upon us. We're going to be doing regular programming on LegalAF, the YouTube channel, right through the holidays of all new videos, pardon me, straight out until the new year. And we're celebrating our one millionth subscriber on the YouTube channel. for Legal A.F. in record time, join us, help us get to our next million. It's that important.

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for those who have Christmas and Orthodox Christmas coming up and the New Year and Kwanza and whatever else is your holiday or no holiday at all. Just love your family, bring your friends and family even closer at this moment because together, together, we're going to shorten that tunnel and the light is on the other side. I promise you. I'm Michael Popock until my next report. Can't get your fill of legal AF me neither. That's why we form the legal AF substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or an oral argument, come over to the substack. You'll find the court filing. the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, morning A.F.

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