Legal AF by MeidasTouch - The Intersection with Michael Popok - 12/30/2025

Episode Date: December 31, 2025

The existence of a secret internal DOJ memo about Tom Homan being the target of a bribe sting operation surfaces. Old emails between the DOJ in DC and local prosecutors are revealed today, which suggest that the DOJ may have lied to a federal judge. The Trump Administration claimed that the Federal Reserve is BROKE, in order to avoid a federal judges injunction not to destroy a federal consumer protection bureau; Chief Judge Boesberg continues to doggedly pursue the lawless Trump Administration. And defense lawyers have figured out how to call out Trump’s use of his favorite judge, Aileen Cannon, to go after his political enemies: Write a letter to the chief judge and call out the corruption. Next, on the Intersection Podcast with Michael Popok. Go to https://EverydayDose.com/LEGALAF for 45% OFF your first order Subscribe:  @LegalAFMTN  Legal AF Substack: https://substack.com/@legalaf Check out The Popok Firm at: https://thepopokfirm.com 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We got, I mean, you couldn't be any more. live than this. I just came off of a legal AF substack live with a couple thousand people. I told them, look, I'm an act like I'm double parked. I'm sorry. I got about 20 minutes. Then I got to head over to the intersection for, you know, the regular show. And I'm glad, there we go. And I'm glad you're all here for it. Here's what we're going to hit in a particular order. I want to talk about the really fascinating and perfectly approaching. yet aggressive posture that certain defense lawyers are taking when their clients who are targets of Donald Trump's retribution campaign, what they're doing to fight back against that,

including writing a 16-page letter to the chief judge of the Southern District of Florida, sitting in Miami, a judge I know, Judge Cecilia Altanaga, saying that the Department of Justice is corrupt, and they are corruptly trying to funnel and try to funnel and try. traffic a case over to a particular judge because they think it'll be beneficial to them. And that judge's name is, you can put it in comments, Aileen Cannon. And that the Department of Justice in Donald Trump is using Aileen Cannon through the U.S. attorney Jason Riding Kenyones in Miami to go after Donald Trump's perceived political enemies or critics like John Brennan, the former CIA director.

his lawyers at Mayor Brown, I've never in 35 years seen a letter written to a chief judge asking the chief judge to exert influence, use their administrative powers to keep a case away from another judge because there's a corrupt judge shopping going on, which we all see. And I had an interview with, along with one of my colleagues on Legal AF, Professor Ray Brescia, with Mark Zade. Mark Zade, you'll see the interview tomorrow, the leading. national security lawyer representing whistleblowers, people inside the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense, the CIA, the intelligence community, whistleblowers and the like, who just successfully fought to get his national security clearance back so he can represent these people. He's also part of this Brennan group along with others that are fighting this fight. There's 37 people in the intelligence community that the Trump administration is going after, Pam Bondi's already admitted it. She said just the other day to a right-wing podcaster, there's a vast conspiracy and we're

going after it and it includes the members of the intelligence community. And they're talking about things in the Obama-Biden era, like including Hillary Clinton, these are so old you can't even prosecute them any longer. You know, the Russia hoax, we did this already with lawsuits. It failed. but that Donald Trump does and Mark Zaid confirm this for me because he's he's on he's a target he's on the he's on the he's on the Donald Trump said he should be sued quote unquote sued for treason he agreed with me Donald Trump doesn't care about indictments or convictions

he just wants to put these people through a process get extract his several pounds of flesh and on top of that a name and shame that's what he cares about That's what we've been watching. So that's very interesting. And then what did, what did Pam Bondi do? Pam Bondi goes after Brennan violates the Department of Justice Manual and ethics codes every which way to Sunday. And in return says that he's a bad actor and so is his lawyers.

Doesn't file a letter with the judge responding point by point to their allegations. Just goes on a right. wing podcaster who's associated with the Charlie Kirk Show, of course, and says they're all bad actors trying to name and shame John Brennan. I got an update in Abrago Garcia that's, you're going to have to sit down for this one. New emails have come out, shows the Department of Justice has been lying to a federal judge. That's my interpretation. We've got a new filing about Judge Bozberg's decision to, among other things, to conduct a criminal contempt fact-finding mission to find out if the Trump administration has been in contempt of his

orders or not. That got blocked. It's up at the D.C. Court of Appeals or the Circuit Court of appeals for DC. We got a Trump panel, Trump-led panel, but some arguments now made in front of that panel as Judge Bozberg moves forward to grant summary judgment in favor of due process and habeas corpus rights. I'll tie it all together. Speaking of lying, new reporting, another secret thing that just came out besides the emails in the Abrago-Garcia case, Tom Holman back in the news, you know, he's that the guy that's the border czar. Whereas Saturday night live, I'm sure would say, if you ever saw a picture of Tom Holman smiling or laughing, that's Tom Holman, watching an orphanage burn down. He's the guy that separates families, makes people disappear, if you know what

I mean. He also made $50,000 of taxpayer dollars disappear, and there's a new internal memo that just got leaked that isn't, it is not good news for the administration, nor for Emil Bovi. Amel Bovi is at the heart of two of my stories tonight. He's a current federal judge, appellate no less. But I have a prediction. You can put it in the time capsule. Amel Bovi should be at the top of the list to be impeached and removed for the actions he took for the three or four months that he was in the Department of Justice as Donald Trump's former and current criminal defense lawyer. We'll walk through that all during the intersection tonight.

And then I want to talk about the latest efforts by the Trump administration to destroy a congressionally created bureau or agency. And this one, this one being the one that protects people from predatory lending practices and creditor practices, protects consumers, you know, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created by Barack Obama in 2016, once headed by Senator Elizabeth Warren, has saved people billions and billions of dollars. Donald Trump's trying to kill it, along with the Department of Education. And when he couldn't kill it, and Judge Amy Berman-Jackson issued an injunction in March,

he figured out a new way, tell the judge that the Federal Reserve is broke. Right. In order to win this case, Donald Trump told the world that the Federal Reserve can't pay its bills. That and so much more on the intersection. I'm glad you're here. Before I jump into each of these items, We have a couple of questions from today. DESEA 78 asked, are state's attorneys general actively working on state charges for Trump's gang that will make presidential pardons meaningless?

I mean, not as of yet, but there's plenty of time. The statute of limitations will not have run. It's just hard for the states to bring criminal cases unless those officials did something in their states that hooked into their criminal law. And there's enough federal officer type case law that would probably require that case to be brought in federal court in any event. I just don't, at the moment, I don't see that hook, but you're right about something else. The immunity for Donald Trump does not extend to protect everybody else under him, right? It's one, it's superpower only he holds. And we got plenty of time on the clock under a statute of limitations to bring criminal.

charges against, we can make the, why don't we make the list tonight? I'll kick it off. Steven Miller, Russ Vote, Christy Nome, Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche, Steve, Emil Bovey,

let's go to the press secretary, whatever her name is, that one, and others. There were six people in the Nixon administration, at least, that were indicted and convicted, including the Attorney General. So these people that walk around thinking they have impunity are likely targets for the next Department of Justice.

And that's sweet music to most of our audience's ears for when we start talking about the next Department of Justice, which we hope will be and should be a Democratic president and a Democratic Attorney General. So there's that. Let me answer one more question before we keep going. going. Peter Finn asked if a president pardon someone, can they still be charged later if there's

new information? Well, not for those crimes. And it depends on the scope of the pardon. You know, some of them were like, get out of free jail cards for like, he could he could even figure out what most of these people did wrong that Donald Trump pardoned. So he had very broad pardon. So did Biden about his family, by the way. But like, it's not a unlimited diplomatic immunity.

You know, you can't kill somebody. So future crimes could be charged that are not the subject matter of the actual pardon if we can figure out what the subject matter is. But I'm glad you're all here tonight and taking time out of, you know, at this point, you're taking time out of time with loved ones. And we've got 5,000 people that said, oh, Popock's doing the intersection. Let me jump on. Let me say one thing before we get into it all.

Thank you. That's the best I can do at the moment. I'd hug each of you if I could. We crossed our one million subscriber threshold milestone on legal AF YouTube channel in about a year, rocket time, one of the fastest growing YouTube channels. We just got ranked, blew away a lot of our quote-unquote competition. And that's all because of you. We're building it brick-by-brick with you.

That's free. no paywall. And we're now, we're 10,000 or 20,000 into our next million, which we hope to hit in 2026. And now we're focused on legal AF substack. There it is. Thank you, Ben. Not that Ben. Thank you, Mr. Perry, for helping us. Legally off substack. We've added about 30,000 subscribers in the last month. We've added a thousand subscribers paid because I'm running a sale until tomorrow night. 30% off on legal AF paid substack membership brings it down to about $6 and, I don't know, $0.20 a month, $0.50 a month. And that's what pays the bills. That's what keeps 18 hours of content on a legal AF. That's what keeps me on the air, pays for the editors,

keeps the lights on, business model, all that. No outside investors. No, no paywall. This is the way we do it. All right, let's dive in. Abrago Garcia. Look what I got in my hot little hands. I've got emails, or at least summaries of emails we never saw before tonight. Yes, hot off the presses. Now, this order for Judge Crenshaw, the criminal judge, federal court, Tennessee, middle district. It's been on the docket, there he is. It's been on the docket since the 3rd of December, but all of what I'm showing you here, and maybe Ben can put up page 5 or page 6 or page 7, there it is.

That was all black. I couldn't see it. Judge Crenshaw saw it. And that's why we wondered a couple days ago, when Judge Crenshaw issued an order, canceling for now the criminal trial against the Brago Garcia for that human trafficking, and instead saying, why don't we have a hearing in a couple of weeks about whether the government can carry its burden as to whether it vindictively is prosecuting him as a payback because he's winning his cases in front of Judge Zinnis in Maryland on due process. Why don't we do that first? yeah do we all agree and he got he got pissed off you can tell now that we've seen the emails i'm going to read them to you at a minute or the summaries of them that he put in there he got pissed off because the government said oh we could have an evidentiary hearing but you don't need to hear from anybody in washington department of justice in washington did not make the decision to indict

that was that came out of the fevered imagination of the prosecutors in tennessee sure yeah mr mcguire acting interim U.S. attorney just on his own decided to go back to a four-year-old traffic stop. Stop me if you've heard this before and indict Abrago Garcia. And Department of Justice had no role in it. See, the connectivity between the Department of Justice, what we call Maine, M-I-N, Maine Justice in Washington, and the prosecutor's office in Tennessee. If there's no link, it's hard to prove vindictive prosecution. Because who's being vindictive?

McGuire? But if you link it together, it's true. Trump telling Todd Blanche to tell Akash Singh, to tell Emil Bovi, to tell McGuire to indict Abrago Garcia, just as we saw from a interview that Todd Blanche gave on Laura Ingramham, there's Todd Blanche, in which he basically confessed when she asked them, you know, well, we had a judge in Maryland who ruled against us, so we indicted the guy. I'm like, well, that sounds like vindictive prosecution to me. So let me start reading to you now from the, from our emails.

Get ready for this one. You're going to love this one. And it's a timeline starting on page five. Remember, Department of Justice, told Crenshaw to his face. We are not directing traffic on the indictment from Washington. It's just McGuire. Okay. April 27th, 2025, McGuire in Tennessee, receives a file in Abrago.

Akash Singh, that's the number five of the Department of Justice that's responsible for administering or administrating the 93 U.S. attorneys. He's a 32-year-old guy, recently convicted of a DUI. I'm not making it up. That there's an email requesting time to discuss a cooperating witness against Abrago. being led by main justice in Washington, okay? April 28th, Akash Singh, sitting in D.C., receives the Tennessee Highway Patrol report on Abrago. April 30th, two days later, this is the one that puts the nail on the cough. It improves for me that the Trump, the Department of Justice is lying to Judge Crenshaw.

Remember, he saw these on December 3rd. We just see him tonight. Emails between Akash Singh, McGuire, and Jacob Wrenshaw. Warren, who works from McGuire in Tennessee. Regarding criminal charges arising from the November 2020, Abrago Traffic Stop, they're talking about indicting Abrago for the traffic stop and the conversations being led by McGuire's boss in D.C., Mr. Singh.

There's no other way to read this. Singh writes, it's a top priority of who? Of Trump? Of his boss, Todd Blanche. McGuire writes, we want the high command looped in. I-I, Captain, follow-in orders. Let's go to May 15th. We can take down the screen, Ben.

May 15th, Robert McGuire writes regarding a possible Abrago indictment. Ultimately, this is the Tennessee guy writing to D.C. I would hope to have O'Dag, oh damn, they should be writing, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, ODAG. Eyes on it, the indictment, as we move towards a decision, while ultimately the office's decision to charge will land on me, I think it makes sense to get the benefit of all your brains and talent. I've not received specific direction from O'Dag,

other than I've heard anecdotally that the Deputy Attorney General and the principal Deputy Attorney General, Emil Bovi, would like Garcia charged sooner rather than later. You just told Crenshaw that there is no link between main justice and the indictment. May 18th, Akash Singh receives an email and an update about the indictment. We're working on the weekend to finalize it. We'll get you a copy tomorrow or first thing Monday.

All right, two days later, May 20th, Akash Singh, request a memo from McGuire about the case. And May 21st, he's, Brago Garcia, is indicted. You don't think the judge is about to dismiss this case for a vindictive prosecution and not allow it to ever be brought again. I've got a bridge of Brooklyn to sell you. We are close to the first vindictive prosecution ruling by a federal judge

against this corrupt Department of Justice. And I am here for it. And I know you are too, for example. But that just happened. And that's not the only thing in the case that's happened. We've got Bozberg. Bozberg.

I joked recently in a hot take. He's like, he must go to Le Miz and think he's like, he's like, Javert chasing after Jean Valjean. Because he's trying to bring to heal a lawless Department of Justice in President Trump about issues like Brigo Garcia and others going to El Salvador in being tortured in a prison. And it keeps getting stymied by a couple of Trumpers on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. But he moved forward. He said, you want to hold up my criminal contempt proceedings?

All right. We'll keep litigating that. In the meantime, I'm still the judge in the case. And I'm going to find on summary judgment that other people, 137 of them, not named to Brigo Garcia, who also got sent to El Salvador, but now got prisoner exchanged with Venezuela. I thought we were at war with Venezuela by Trump, still have due process rights, still have habeas corpus rights.

Now, they're represented by the. American Civil Liberties Union. And you guys all know, or you should know, starting in January, ACLU is joining LAF, Legal A-F, for regular reporting and commentary about their cases. I'm so honored for you, I'm taking the honor from our audience, that they're joining us. And it's because of what we now represent in the community, in the marketplace of ideas, a safe space for law and politics to be discussed among adults, without blowing truth or something. sunshine. So Boseberg's up at the D.C. There's an appellate brief by the American Civil Liberties Union about trying to get the contempt proceedings back up and running while he

issues summary judgment. And once in the next couple of days, wants a description from the government, a proposal about how to give those rights of due process to people sitting in Venezuela. He's all ears. And so am I. That brings you up to speed in Brago Garcia and Bozberg. And then I've got to talk about Tom Holman and the new internal memo that leaked today, along with Trump claiming that the Federal Reserve is broke. He already said there's a fool running it in front of Netanyahu during a press conference, referring to Jay Powell, still trying to fire the guy.

It's not helping the economy. It's not cutting rates faster. It's just this abusive, bullying nature of Donald Trump. and J. Powell is a bigger person. And J. Powell, the person that Donald Trump appointed to be the Federal Reserve chairman. You may not remember that as much as Donald Trump. This is like a bad divorce, right? Except J. Powell is the loving husband.

And Donald Trump is the cheating wife or the cheating whatever, you know, and abusive, no less. So we're going to follow all of that. Two ways to help what we do on the intersection. a number of ways. One is the podcast. The podcast is booming. I'm so glad I decided to tell the brothers I need my own show. I was like, I love doing it with Ben and Karen, but can I have my own show? In any event, all adjusting aside, the intersection is doing great. Top 50 in new YouTube rankings. I think we're 56th or so. That's all because of you. I'm doing my part, but you guys are here for it, and I do appreciate it. And bring more people on. That's what.

One of the things I've learned about this YouTube community and substack community, how many of you bring on other people and are influencers in your own lives to expose people? Because, you know, there's so much content out there. You know, it's like when it's back of the old days when somebody would say, are you watching Game of Thrones that you see Breaking Bad? Oh, my God, the Sopranos, you know, right? You know, and you'd be like, oh, must watch TV. I must binge this.

What should I binge today? You know, but those days are over. And there's just so much content that's with somebody that you trust says to you, hey, intersection with Popok, legal AF, YouTube, substack. It's amazing how many people will thank you for giving them direction and helping them cut through the jungle of content that's out there and find like-minded people, fellow travelers, as we like to say. So I appreciate you doing that for us very, very much. Find us on podcasts, like audio podcast. Just put in the intersection. Go to YouTube.

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You're here now. The best time to do it was yesterday or right now. So let's do it. Let's do it right now. And then we've got our, besides our substack, which I talked about, with our 30% off sale going on until the end of this, until the end of tomorrow. We've got pro-democracy sponsors that support really everything that I do, whether it's legal A.F or on the intersection.

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or entering legal a.f at checkout that's everyday dose.com slash legal a.f or 45% off your first order. Let's talk about our last two topics today. Let's do the internal memo which puts a lie to everything Carolyn Levitt. There's her name, as ever said, about Tom Holman and bribery. For those joining late to the story, Tom Homan, yes, your borders are, as took a $50,000 bribe of U.S. taxpayer dollars by the Biden administration's FBI. What happened is they were targeting somebody else in a public corruption scandal investigation. That person who was close to Tom Homan said,

You think I'm, you think I'm taking bribes? You know he'll take a bribe. Tom Holman, offer him a million, and he'll offer to channel contracts, federal contracts. You know, like much of our immigration and detention apparatus is privately owned, meaning contracts and need private security forces. Private detention centers, yes, for ICE. There's one in New York. It's called Delaney Hall, among others.

Private prisons, private fill in the blank. You need charter. You need planes. There's one company in Miami that basically is ice air. And all these contracts need to be procured. So they went in September of 2024, two months before the end of the Biden administration, to a Kava restaurant in CAVA, in Texas.

And at some point, they pushed across a bag, a big orange or yellow bag in Kava, stuff with $50,000 and gave it to Tom Oman, who took it? Now, I'd like to know how he reported that on his tax returns. Because he claims he didn't take a bribe. So what happened to the bribe sting money? Where'd that go?

And now with the new reporting that just came out today with MS now, I feel like I have to shout their new name. MS now. The reporting is that there was an internal memo, one page, that was prepared by the Department of Justice who ran into the room in the middle of January, before the inauguration and pushed it in an envelope across to Emil Bovey. Let's put up a picture of Amel Bovey, if we can find it.

Amel Bovey, then the principal deputy attorney general, well, going to be. This is transition time. He's the guy that's now on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. So Abel Bovey gets it, and according to people in the room, grimaced, although looking at Amel Bovey, I know if we can find the photo, looking at A. Mabovi, it's hard to tell if he's grimacing or not, but he grimaced and rolled his eyes and knowing that he had a problem. He said, outlined the bribery sting that was going on.

So what did they do about it? Well, they killed the bribery investigation. I'm talking about Todd Blanche and all the lawyers for the Department of Justice. And then they, the Department of Justice told Bovi, there's no way this guy gets a security clearance with this sting operation on his resume. And so what they do, they had, obviously they had Donald Trump just grant them security clearance, which he's empowered to do. And if you remember back in December of before the inauguration, there was a big hullabaloo, we covered it, about the transition team led by the incoming Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik and incoming chief of staff, Susie Wiles. They were not signing the presidential transition agreements, dozens of them.

They needed to file a sign under a statute, an act of Congress in order to transition for the government. And one of them was the authorization for the FBI to do background checks. They didn't want to do FBI background checks. They wanted to use private investigators, which we'd never see the light of day. Now we know why. we're supposed to know whether somebody's a Russian asset, a Chinese asset, is corrupt besides the president coming into government. Put two and two together, you see the connections.

Now, the internal memo and the existence of the internal memo and who else saw that internal memo puts a lie to things like Carolyn Levitt said during a press conference, which she defended Tom Holman. Let's play that clip. Thank you, Caroline. So to the woman investigation, I mean, can you just speak to, did the president ask the Justice Department to close the case, and does Homa have to return the $50,000? Well, Mr. Homan never took the $50,000 that you're referring to, so you should get your

facts straight, number one. Number two, this was another example of the weaponization of the Biden Department of Justice against one of President Trump's strongest in most. vocal supporters in the midst of a presidential campaign. You had FBI agents going undercover to try and trap one of the president's top allies and supporters, someone who they knew very well, would be taking a government position months later. Mr. Homan did absolutely nothing wrong. And even the president's Department of Justice, even Cash Patel's FBI looked into this just to make sure they had a number of different prosecutors and FBI agents who looked into this.

They found zero evidence of illegal activity or criminal wrongdoing in the White House and the president stand by Tom Homan 100% because he did absolutely nothing wrong. And he is a brave public servant who has done a phenomenal job in helping the president shut down the border. All right. Let me unpack some of that. First of all, it's a series of lies. The sting operation was after the election, not before. So it wasn't in the middle of the campaign. that's first thing, because they're doing their job, even with an election or without an election,

the FBI, the Department of Justice, when they have credible evidence from a confidential informant that somebody's on the take going into the Trump administration, they have an obligation to follow it. So it took him a year to get approval and everything, but it was after the election, not before. Now, the reason they needed to arrest him on the scene is they wanted, this was their mistake. They wanted to wait, thinking that I think Kamla was going to win, that, oh, no, I guess not. They wanted to wait, even if Trump got in, sorry, that Holman would take a bribe, would pay off on the bribe and start sending contracts towards these undercover federal contractors, and boom, then they would arrest him. They didn't anticipate the Department of Justice and FBI would be so corrupt that they would deny the existence of the investigation and, quote, unquote, clear him. Does anybody think Cash Patel couldn't clear a clogged toilet, right?

He's going to clear, Mr. Conspiracy Theory? They didn't clear it. And this internal memo indicates they didn't clear it. They had credible evidence that the guy, why do you think, Emil Bovi, we got a photo of Abel Bovi. Why do you think Amel Bovi, there he is? You can't even tell if he's grimacing now, his resting face is a grimace. He grimaced and rolled his eyes because.

because it was good news in the envelope, right? But again, if you want to remember, some of you will have been thinking, which guy's Tom Holman again? Yeah, he's the guy that makes people disappear and separates families and then laughs about it. Here's a clip of him half-heartedly defending

the bribe that he took, sort of play the clip. I know George Stephanopoulos is one of your best friends. He convicted you on television of a $50,000. bribe. I didn't take $50,000 from anybody. How did that get into the mainstream, do you think? I have no idea. Look, I've been, there's been hit pieces on me since I came back to this administration. There's got to be 30, 40 hit pieces on me about how I'm involved with the contract and government contracts when in fact, day one I came back. I recused myself from any

discussions on any contract or any monetary decisions like that because I used to have a company that did consulting. So I cleared myself day one. What people don't talk about is I took a significant, huge pay cut to come back and serve my nation. And I'm not enriching myself doing this job. Does this make you angry that they're coming ash in this way? I don't care what people think about me and never have. No, because I know who I am. I work for the greatest president of history of this nation in my opinion.

And we're doing the right thing every day. Okay. When you're all in jail together, that's your, that's what you can, that's what you can chant together. He's a liar. You can tell the tell from that was when Tom Holman said, I don't, I didn't, I took a pay cut. Sounds like you took a pay cut and then you put $50,000 and a promise of more in your back pocket. I mean, I don't know why you're talking about how much you made and the pay cut that you took. That actually enforces, reinforces that you took a bribe.

Well, I'm so wealthy. I couldn't afford a bribe. I wouldn't take a bribe. No, I was on, I was financially insecure. So I took a bribe. That's what that sounded like. So what's going to happen? Nothing now because the Trump administration will never admit defeat or never admit wrongdoing.

We know that. Tom Holman will stay where he is. But he's another person you put on the list of future soon to be indicted, impeached, and removed. So the power of the American people, unified as citizens. is greater than any one corrupt administration. As corrupt as this Department of Justice is, and it's the most corrupt in my lifetime and in history, we can remove these people.

We can impeach and remove everybody that I've talked about tonight and more. And the future Department of Justice, again, the sweetest words ever known to humankind, the future Department of Justice led by an adult who is honest, and independent from whatever the president that's elected, we'll investigate and prosecute these people for obstruction of justice, for theft of honest service,

for lots of different things. I don't know about the winter is coming, like Game of Thrones, but justice is coming. The wheels of justice, it's a giant wheel. The wheels of justice turn slowly, but they crush finally. And we're going to see the result of that. It's not moving at the speed that we'd like.

It's not moving at the velocity we'd like. But look where we are today. A year ago, we were crying into our fill in the blank, beer, bourbon, coffee, water, about the results of the election. Donald Trump's first week in office with 207 executive orders and how far away that tunnel, how long that tunnel was with very little light at the end of it.

Now we're counting down to the midterms. It's funny how time works. running in one direction. So let me, I've asked, let me see, is any more questions that looked interesting today? Still looking, let's see. Anne Lettamaki asks, if an executive order is not legal,

is it automatically void or is there a process? If the illegal executive order is implemented and funded, who's responsible for the initial cost, like renaming the Kennedy Center and placing the letters. Well, executive orders can be challenged, which they are. That's part of the 500 lawsuits or so that have been brought by the attorneys general, the public interest groups, the democracy forwards, the American Civil Liberties Union. At the basis of that is usually an executive order.

You have 270 executive orders. You have 500 cases or some overlap. That's really where it's coming from. and other arbitrary capricious, ultra-varrays, rogue, unconstitutional conduct. In terms of like clawbacking the money, I mean, I don't think that's happening, could be restitution in a criminal case. But, you know, Trump has, Trump's not going to get indicted for anything he's doing at present. As insufferable, heartless, and depraved, even lining his own pockets while he's in the presidency.

and that of his family and of his friends. He's not going to jail for any of this. Now, it doesn't mean when he gets out, you know, Mr. Larsonie-in-chief isn't going to do something bad again and get indicted. But that's just him. An administration is not just one person despite what the Supreme Court thinks.

It's not just the unitary executive branch that's occupied by one person. Really? We're paying for a lot of other people to hang around the president, if that's true. All those other people you know, all those other people, like in the Nixon administration, and deeper can be indicted in a future Department of Justice.

Let me end tonight with a new order that just came out today by Amy Berman-Jackson, one of my favorite judges in the federal district court and the federal court in D.C. in favor of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That's the entity formed in 2016 by Barack Obama, President Obama, headed at first by Elizabeth Warren to protect average American consumers and otherwise from predatory lending practices, credit card practices, bank practices, things like that, saving the American people and returning to them tens of millions,

tens of billions of dollars. It has been a thorn in the side for no reason I really can understand of MAGA and the Federalist Society since it was formed. Let me just put this in context. Under Donald Trump, the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is supposed to regulate the financial markets, has had its budget cut by about two-thirds. Its enforcement actions are almost not existent. The Commodities and Futures Commission, same thing. Federal Trade Commission, same thing. So there is no regulatory framework. There's nobody regulating cryptocurrency. You know, and the only ones left that get money and get funding are just tools of Donald Trump and his retribution campaign like the Federal Communications Commission, going after media

properties and threatening them to take away their licenses. We know where your kids, you know, we know what the playground is, your kids go to. If you don't play ball with us, you know, things like that with Brendan Carr, that's the only way he sees utility and value. I'm talking about Trump now, to the use of these congressionally created agencies. So the only one that is out there to protect literally the consumer is the CFPB. Because it's associated with Barack Obama, oh, we got to get rid of it. So first in March or April, Amy Berman Jackson issued an injunction, there she is, to prevent the destruction of that bureau while the parties litigated up through an appeal maybe

to the Supreme Court. Because once destroyed, it's not going to be put back together again. You're not putting Humpty Dumpty Agency back together again. just like the Department of Education. So they found another way to violate her injunction. And they've been up and down with the appellate courts. And now there's a hearing on the underlying substance, a question of whether Donald Trump,

the Trump administration, can chloroform the CFPB once and for all. Yes or no? Then up to the Supreme Court. In the meantime, let's keep it running, you know? So they figured out another way to undermine the injunction. They said the Federal Reserve was bankrupt. No, the Federal Reserve was out of money. Why does that matter?

Because the way that the Consumer Financial Protection Board operates, the way that Congress wanted and funded, it said that the Federal Reserve has to send some of its excess money to the CFPB tied together. Because, you know, banks, regulatory. And Trump basically had his Office of Legal Counsel under the Department of Justice issue a phony legal memo that recalculated how much money the Fed had

and said they were out of money. Oh, we don't have money. The Federal Reserve of the United States doesn't have money. So Amy Berman-Jackson pulled everybody together in her new order. And she said, look, it's been obvious that, there it is, that Russ vote, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, the architect of Project 2025, those are my words,

has wanted to get rid of the, CFPB for a long time. He went on right wing Charlie Kirk Show podcast in October and said we're two or three months away from putting it out of business successfully, but she quoted at the top of her first page. And this is what she says in her order. I'll read it to you. Put it up on legal AF substack for you all to read. She said the court clarifies that the claimed lapse in funding, we don't have the money, which was manufactured by the defendants based solely on the Office of Legal Counsel Memo is not a valid justification. It's on page 31 for the agency's unilateral decision to abandon its obligations under my or the injunction. Combined earnings, which is the

definition, is not the way you're portraying it in order to create a deficit in order to make it so the CFPB has no money. In other words, don't come into my court and tell me the Federal Reserve is belly up. And that's why you can't fund the CFPB. She said, that's not an understanding that anybody's ever taken in the past. And it's yet another attempt, she says,

on the bottom of page of 31, it appears that the defendant's new understanding of what combined earnings means is an unsupported and transparent attempt to starve the CFPB. of funding and yet another attempt to achieve the very end the court's injunction was put in place to prevent. So she clarifies, this ruling construes the scope of the existing order to clarify that the defendant's unilateral decision to decline to request money based on an unsupported

interpretation of this law contravenes their preliminary injunction. So ordered today, Amy Berman Jackson. The appellate court's going to hear this case in February. Now, whether Trump in the meantime goes running off to go complain to the appellate court again, oh, Judge Jackson's being mean to me or take some sort of emergency shadow docket appeal through John Roberts to the United States Supreme Court again, which they may, that will be left for another intersection or legal A.F or Legal A.F. Substack Live or LegalAF YouTube. And that's our night before New Year's Eve. I'm so glad we're here together. Ben, Micellis, and me, we put together Legal A.F as a concept in March of 2020. It'll be six years this coming March. We did not at that moment, I'm going to

be a little wistful here. We did not at that moment believe that we would have a community, that we'd be able to build an audience, that people would vibrate on our frequency the way that they have, that there would be, you know, so many different parts of the legal AF ecosystem, that we'd have a YouTube channel by itself, you know, with a million subscribers in a year,

that we'd have a spinoff show like the intersection, that the podcast itself, legal AF itself, would be in the top 50 of all podcasts and top law and politics, that we'd have a substack. that there be a substack, that there is a thing called a substack. We never envisioned any of that. We were just two people that was worried and scared about Trump and a possible return of Trump.

And I'm so honored to have been with you and our mutual commitment to each other over the last six years, almost six years. It's heartwarming. It's heartwarming. It's It is eye watering, and I appreciate each and every one of you. Our audience is like no other. I mean, if you want to look, yeah, we get an occasional troll. That's why God created moderators. Thank you, Cheryl, and others tonight. But we, if you look at other, especially moderate or left of center type,

progressive type channels, they get trolled mercilessly. There's just something about our audience that keeps the bad people away and yet allows a safe space for people to freely express themselves on a channel, on a substack live that I do twice a day now, on YouTube comments, and that's a beautiful thing. And that will propel us, that energy, that commitment as citizens, the greatest title, greater than Commander-in-Chief, greater than, than President of the United States, Senator, Congressperson, whatever. O-Dag, P-Dag, citizen is the greatest title that you can hold in the United States. And together, and the fact that we're banded together, we can do great things. It starts now. It starts with voter registration.

It starts with campaigning in the streets to convert the hearts and minds of those people that haven't figured out that Donald Trump is corrupt. There's still a group out there. Even though the new polling says 65 to 70% of America reject Donald Trump, I can't even believe 30% still accept them. So we just have to keep chopping wood, stay focused, keep our hands on the controls, bring this plane down for a smooth landing at the midterms,

and then another launch and takeoff to get us ready for 2028, when the most beautiful sound of the English language to date, the new Department of Justice, you know, when that becomes a reality. So I'll be here next Tuesday with you. We're going to do the, we're going to do a early Christmas Eve or Christmas Eve version of Legal A.F. I'll do it with Karen Freeman, McNiflo. Join us tomorrow night for that.

Saturday with Ben Mysalis, and of course you know where to find me. Until my next report, I'm Michael Popak. Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal AFers. Can't get your fill of legal A.F. Me neither. That's why we formed the legal A.F. Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, morning A.F. What else? All the other contributors from legal A.F are there as well. We got some new reporting. We got interviews. We got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes. Wear Legal A.F. on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe.