Legal AF by MeidasTouch - The Intersection with Michael Popok Full Episode - 12/16/2025

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

A federal judge is not pleased with Trump’s ballroom but may have to wait longer to do something about it. A federal judge is not pleased with the DOJ, and does something about it. Trump’s Chief of Staff isn’t pleased with a lot of people in the Administration, and does something about it. Trump pulls the plug on fighting over his phony US Attorneys. Another bad news cycle, another phony defamation case filing for Trump. All at the Intersection with host Michael Popok only on the Meidas Touch Network. Sundays for Dogs: Get 40% off your first order of Sundays. Go to https://sundaysfordogs.com/legalaf or use code LEGALAF at checkout. Aura Frames: Exclusive $35 off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/legalaf Promo Code LEGALAF 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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You are on the intersection with Michael Popock. Speaking of mumbling, I joke with my production team before we got on, I'm going to be reporting soon from the Trump home for the criminally insane. He likes to name everything after himself. How about that? Because I'm trying to figure out what is the demographic? What is the audience he is pandering to with how he's acted in the last, well, I don't know, 10 months plus another 40 years? But in particular, you've got his inability to be the consular-in-chief about gun violence with 16-17 people dying on Bondi Beach in Australia and him not figuring out how to console people and acknowledge that a Muslim, local Australian resident was the one that stopped the shooting and not what Maga,

Laura Lumber said, which was, he was Christian, he was Christian. Yeah, he wasn't. He was a Muslim citizen, American, I mean, a human that stopped more carnage, along with a Jewish family, a Russian Jewish family that were the first two to be killed because they tried to do the exact same thing. But Trump yet can't figure out how to come up with the right words. Same thing with Brown University and their tragedy in Rhode Island. To the nine that got shot, sorry, to the two that they're dead from our deepest, I mean, the guy can't even put a coherent sentence together when it comes. to trying to be that thing, which is the consular in chief.

I'm trying to figure out what is his audience when he celebrates the death of a American citizen and icon in Rob Reiner and his wife. If somebody wants to write it, and I'll answer to it, what is the demo that he is going for? I just don't get the group within his electorate that thinks it's okay to celebrate the death of somebody on the political spectrum that may not be your own, and to do a lousy job, frankly, of putting his arm around America, not that I want his arm around me, but his arm around the American people to comfort them in the time of loss. What is the electorate? What is he going for? I don't understand the maga base if this is the base, and I don't want to be part of it.

You know, these are human tragedies. And as we came on the air, Donald Trump's decided again to conjure up a war with Venezuela because it's politically convenient. We're going to do a blockade of Venezuelan oil tankers. I disagree with everything about the Venezuelan regime. And I believe just as many unfortunate dictators within Central and South America that Maduro has a hand in the drug trade, not so much fentanyl, but in the drug trade, and in other acts of related violence that spills over into America. But the Honduras, Honduran president that

was let out the front door of a prison was worse. And we didn't declare a war on Honduras. You know, all Donald Trump wants is regime change in Venezuela, and he's going to use this false narrative that we're at war or they're at war with us and enemy combatants and all this other vocabulary in order to expand his rogue lawless powers. And so far, the Supreme Court has let him get away with it. But the American people aren't. And the American people and people that are here and thank you for being here on the intersection. Because of you, we hit our highest ranking last week on YouTube's, we hit number 26 or so on YouTube's Top 100 podcast. That's a little to do with me and a lot to do with the commitment of our audience. But we've got a president who, for now,

the Supreme Court isn't reigning in. District courts are trying to. Appellate courts are trying to. But the American people still have a major, major ability to, to, through crowds, through public reproach, public criticism to stop Donald Trump in his tracks. I mean, his family just walked away from a land deal, a hotel deal, led by Jared Kushner because of so much backlash. And we're very good at backlash, you know, the American people. people, 10 million people in the streets for the various marches says we are. And we've got to believe that collectively our voice matters because it does. And the more that we do what we do on legal a F of might as touch and hear on the intersection, which is speak truth to each other,

but then take that into action in the streets, the more and train our sights on it, the more we can rein in this rogue and lawless presidency. And then I wake up this morning, a big fan of Vanity Fair magazine, been reading it since I was, I don't know, in college. Vanity Fair, for those that don't know, has tremendous journalism, despite some fashion pages. When I was in college, I was a little embarrassed sometimes

by the cover of Vanity Fair, because sometimes it would look like Cosmo or, you know, like L Magazine, and I'd be like, so I'd rip the cover off and just carry the magazine around without the cover, because the writing was so amazing. And for whatever reason, pardon me, folks, for whatever reason, Susie Wiles, the chief of staff for Donald Trump, who prior chiefs of staff about this time in their careers already got fired, decided to give not one interview. People are reporting it like,

it was an interview and they caught her. Forget all that. Susie Wiles does not wipe her backside without Donald Trump's permission. Susie Wiles is politically calculating. She is sober. She grew up in the rough and tumble world of Florida politics.

She is conservative. And I don't mean that as a political ideology. I mean, as a person, she is quiet. powerful but quiet and people are like oh look at her free wheel in it this was several interviews some of them started back in March of this year this what's been published is a culmination of many interviews and micro interviews with Susie Wiles and if anybody out there you can put it in comments if anybody out there believes that Susie Wiles attack on Pam Bondi and we'll go into it in detail. J.D. Vance, Russell Vote, the head of the Congressional Budget Office and

the architect of Project 2025, Musk, and even Donald Trump, with admissions that will only be helpful to defense lawyers everywhere in cases against Donald Trump and its DOJ. Do you think she did that without his permission or knowledge? You are not. tethered to reality. Susie Wiles doesn't cross the street without Donald Trump's approval. So this is the hatchet job that Trump wanted Susie Wiles to make. That's why people are like wringing their hands. Why would she talk to Vanity Fair? And why so many times and my, it's not like they put like the Wonder Woman truth lasso around her. They, she spoke freely because that was her, she was told to speak freely. Look, she didn't just let, you know, the boss didn't wake

up one day and see it on the newsstand. He knew that she was going to be giving this interview. Pam Bondi, your days are numbered. Your days are numbered. Just as I said a couple of weeks ago, that Miranda Devine, who's a podcaster slash journalist of some sort at the New York Post, which is Donald Trump's favorite outlet of choice for gossip, when she broke the story that, you know, a dozen or more FBI, pardon me. FBI agents had criticized Cash Patel in a scathing report, and it was broken on Miranda Devine's headline, you know, under her byline. I was like, oh, this is has, this is Donald Trump.

This is Donald Trump trying to get rid of Cash Patel to try to destabilize him. And he just used Susie Wows to destabilize Pam Bondi, who he watched her during the, the Oversight Committee hearings in the House of the Senate. She did terrible. I mean, they weren't high-fiving in the White House over her performance. And now Susie Wiles spent a fair amount of time talking about the Epstein files. And about Bondi, she said, I was a swing and a miss. That's her words.

I was a swing and a miss. She said they were on her. They said she had them. She was going to release them. They were on her desk. And then Susie Wiles says, I saw. I read the Epstein files, hundreds of thousands of pages. Now we know one person in the administration that admits to having read the Epstein files,

and that's Susie Wiles. And she admitted, it's like the first time we ever heard. It's getting lost in a lot of reporting about this. I know some people were, I put up a video about this today on LegalAF, and somebody wrote, I love the Midas Touch Network, but this is like the eighth video on this particular issue. And I wrote, I don't know, it's my first one. I don't know.

I can just, that's all I can do. But there's so much in there that some of it's getting lost. She's like the first one to ever admit that Donald Trump's name is in the Epstein files. She said, oh, there's nothing really bad about what he's in. Well, let us be the judge of that. How about that, Susie? How about you release all the files the next couple of days? And, you know, we'll meet you for a beer and we'll go over them together.

And we'll determine if we ever get to see since they're going to have to either unredact his name because that's what the FBI was doing back in March and April or, they're going to finally let us see it. And then she said that, you know, the files might have been somewhere, but they certainly weren't on on Bondi's desk and sort of rolled her eyes about Pam Bondi. Pam Bondi, your days are numbered.

Laura Lumber, the right-wing, looney activist and social media influencer, she's had it out for Pam Bondi for a long time, coupled now with Susie Wiles on behalf of Donald Trump. Tom Blanche is going to be your and my attorney general, probably in the beginning of the new year. Put it in the time capsule. Popok said it on the intersection.

That's what I believe, or somebody else that they're going to bring in. She also said about probably my favorite, the one that made me spit my coffee was her comments about Elon Musk on ketamine. Now, he's been on special, him being on special K, it was part of a New York Times article, and he barely denied it or didn't deny it at all. So I wasn't that chucked. But the fact that Susie Wiles used the word ketamine and microdose in the same sentence

when they said, what about when Elon Musk said that it was public workers that were responsible for the deaths of six million Jews and Nazi Germany during the Holocaust? And she just looked at the reporter and said, he must have been microdosing at that point. But the fact, you know, that he's a weird, odd duck, another comment by Susie Wiles. And that apparently he broke free of his chain at some point. It was cutting budgets and cutting departments and programs that Donald Trump himself didn't want to see cut. See, we were right.

For a time, Elon Musk was the president of the United States. As to Russ vote, who is, I mean, he is effectively the president of the United States when it comes to domestic policy, maybe even foreign policy. He's controlling the budget. He's cutting all that funding. He's cutting all those departments. He's just, you know, cutting the fuel line between the federal government and the states. That's Russ Vote, who nobody, no pun intended, voted for.

And he was the architect of 2025 and self-admitted. She said he is a partisan zealot. Right? He is MAGA beyond MAGA. It sounds like she was a little scared of him. And that's what happens when you have somebody that's not accountable to the people making major policy decisions that affect our lives. J.D. Vandt, she just called it the way she saw it the way we all see it. He's an opportunist. She said that J.D. Vance got on the MAGA bandwagon in order to win his Senate campaign and for no other reason.

It was very politically calculating. Seriously, if you look at political calculation in the dictionary, isn't it a picture of J.D. Vance? don't we all agree with that so that that's uh that's about half of what's this part one my other favorite comment that i spit my coffee on is when she said that donald trump's effectively like an alcoholic i was like i leaned in on that one i said go on because he famously doesn't drink but her comment was he's like an alcoholic because if if you give him a little alcohol you know he's all kind of loses it for him the alcohol is public attention obviously it's the rallies you know they brag about it because they think it's a good thing like caroline levit in the press corps press secretary donald trump's the most accessible president we've ever had

nobody in the press could ever complain because he's yeah he's driving everybody crazy in the white house because he's so accessible and he's so accessible because he needs public agglation all the time. He needs constant attention. What you're diagnosing, Caroline, without recognizing it, is that he is a narcissistic megalomaniac. That doesn't fit on a bumper sticker. And that's what you're recognizing. And he's manic. So you have that going on. But again, let me just, the Susie Wilde segment here. She did not do it. She did not speak out of turn. She's not in trouble. She's not going to get fired. They're not going to throw her under the bus. She did Donald Trump's bidding and keep everybody on their toes and

keep everybody unstabilized. And that's his goal. And she accomplished it. And I'm waiting patiently for part two. And we'll try not to do 10 videos on it on Midas and on legal AF, I promise you. Ballroom, time for our ballroom segment. We should have music. You know, I remember when Letterman used to have music. And I'm also looking at, I want to try to answer your questions tonight,

which is sort of fun. Got about 5,000 people that joined us. Thank you for doing that. Let me just check my list of questions. Let's see if there's anything fun so far. All right, let's see. Callie Girl 58, do you think Trump's address tomorrow night is a declaration of war?

It's going to come close. I mean, he can't declare war. Only Congress can, but he is pushing us into a war with Venezuela because it gives him so many superpowers, militaristically, domestically, foreign policy-wise. I'm surprised he didn't use our military blockade of Venezuela as an excuse to build the ballroom or demolish the East Wing. I mean, seriously, it's certainly getting like that.

DPD 5844, that rolls off the tongue. That asks, can we file a class action lawsuit against the government for violating our constitutional rights because government is supposed to help, but citizens not harm them. I completely agree with everything you just wrote, but we're never going to get a class action over that, you know. And we're never going to get a judge to award us whatever our award is, which would be the eviction of the Trump administration from the White House. what would be the remedy, so to speak. We always have to look at remedy.

Somebody asked maybe the same person about the Vanity Fair article we just talked about, or no, Celizond did. What is the goal of that article, a distraction? Well, everything has to be interpreted by Donald Trump world as a distraction, a way to step on a news cycle or a micro-new cycle or to make a new news cycle. Now, I don't think they knew when that article was going to be coming out per se. but he certainly gave permission to Susie Wiles to give it and sure because now we sit around playing the parlor game like clue like who stabbed Mr. Vance in the library, you know, with the

butter knife instead of continuing to focus the way we always do religiously on legal a affidavit on the depravity, immorality, unconstitutionality, unconstitutional aspects of the Trump administration, which is what we should be talking about every minute of every day until we are able to vote. I just had Eric Holder, the former attorney general under Barack Obama, a couple days ago, up on Legal IF, the interview, you can find it there. And he said, he agreed with me. I made a comment about there's so much, there's so much pent-up demand to vote that we are chomping at the bit, champing at the bit, champing at the bit, got the phrase right, to vote. To vote. You know, polling is great.

Who doesn't like a good march? But we want to vote. You see it on the election night a month ago. You see it on the election night two weeks ago. You see how desperate we are to get in and exercise our fundamental right to vote. That's the thing. They've tried to suppress it.

They've tried to undermine it. They've tried to limit it through all sorts of rules and regulations about registration and mail-in and absentee and early voting and the hours for early voting and getting rid of all the mail, the drop boxes and all these hurdles. Only a party that doesn't want to leave and doesn't want everybody to vote

tries to suppress and limit the vote. Remember that. People think, Republicans got nothing to hide. They're willing to meet Democrats any day, any place. No, they're not. They're only willing to do that if they redraw the lines on the game board the congressional districts, try to steal 10, 12 or 15 seats before the election to get an

advantage, limit the ability for black and brown people, and fair-minded people to vote. If they weren't scared by the outpouring of voting, they would make voting a month long in every way possible. You're at the ATM, you vote. You're at the Super Bowl. You're at the Super Bowl. and checkout, you vote. Dropbox, you vote. I just interviewed the Attorney General for the state of Washington. They only have mail-in drop box voting. That's it over a week-long period. I was like, what? Right. And other countries that are models for democracy, they figured out away from a technology standpoint to have fair elections, but extend them over a period of time to capture the vote because they want maximum voter participation. They don't

want 42% of registered voters voted. Boo. They want 92% of the people in this country voted. Yay. Then we can say the results are what the people wanted. You know, we had, you can fill in the blank on this number in the chat tonight. We had anywhere between seven and 20 million people not vote in the last election, general election for a president, just sat on the sidelines with democracy. Now, I'm not blaming them. I mean, obviously what the parties were putting out was not attractive, at least not for the Democrats. And I think we're working hard,

and the Democrats are working hard to change that. But that's where we are with the pent-up demand for voting. When I come back, I want to talk about the ballroom hearing today. There's something misreporting about it. What did Judge Leon do today? Did he agree to the ballroom? did he not agree? It has to do with the temporary restraining order and the difference between a TRO and a preliminary injunction. And we've talked a lot about it on legal a F, but there's

going to be a teachable moment. And what happened in the hearing today and the result is what I feared is that the National Trust dragged its feet and waited too long, that I should have been reporting on this on the October edition of the intersection, not the December edition of the intersection. But I think at the end, Judge Leon is going to get there. And I want to talk about, I want to clear up some misconceptions about the ballroom hearing, including that if the Trump administration screws up, this could be the judge that orders portions or all of the ballroom to be torn down. But to manage expectations, no judge is ever going to order that they rebuild the East Wing.

It's just, you know, the middle of the night demolition. is over. Now the question is how do we mitigate the damage? How big is this thing going to be? But we're going to be getting a ballroom. Twice the size of the White House itself, hopefully not. But it's coming. And then the next president's going to have to decide what to do with all these things. And we're just going to spend an inordinate amount of taxpayer dollars trying to fix not just policy after Donald Trump leaves. not just laws, but like all the programs and things that he changed the name of. You know, the future, sit down for this one,

Trump Center for the Performing Arts, we have to change it back to Kennedy. You know, the Reagan International Airport, now Trump International one day, gonna have to change it back. The Trump Peace Institute, God, I was threw up on that one, change it back. The Department of War, we don't have to worry about that.

It was never properly changed anyway. But we're just, you know, we're going to have to do something with that ballroom. Next president's going to have to do something with it. I don't know. Make it into a museum for the American people dedicated to the rogue gallery that ran the Trump administration. Make it like, you know, make it like a hall of infamy. Something like something's got, something's got to be done with that. And we'll deal with that in due time.

So we'll talk about the ballroom hearing. Trump's looks like he's walking away from his continued. fights about the U.S. attorneys and getting his political hacks appointed. And then we've got some more libel suits because Donald Trump is bored in his day job of crushing the hopes and dreams of the American people. So he has to file lawsuits about every three months against New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and now the BBC. And it will, I'm going to give you my approach to what I think just happened and what will happen. And then a judge, Judge Kolarkateli made a ruling that is going to help out James Comey, the FBI director,

in any attempts to reindite him. And I will give you the update on that. I'm glad you're here on the intersection with Michael Popak. If you just stumbled in, it's a podcast, just me. Sometimes I bring it a guest. And you and I, you know, we have our dialogue. And I try to check the chat where I can. I'm waiting for my assistant Alan to send me some more questions. I'll do that after the break. But thank you for supporting us. us because it's hard to get a new podcast up and running. It's not easy. 99.9% of podcasts are like three people watch it. It's like, so the fact that we're top 30 of all podcasts on YouTube is just gives me chills down my spine, but also is a reflection that we're doing the right, that we're doing

the right thing that, you know, the effort and time and sweat that we put into all things Midas, the legal AF, the intersection, matters, and it's important, and I'm glad you're, I'm glad you're here for it. There's different ways to support what we do and keep this particular podcast up and running. Audio versions just put in intersection

on Apple and Spotify and all of that good stuff and leave a five-star review and comments. That helps. I think we've got about 500 reviews so far. I think we're trailing at about 4.9. I appreciate all that. YouTube, let other people know and bring them here.

And then we've got the Legal A.F. YouTube channel, which we're showing a little version of here. 10, 11 videos a day. I've got 12 different commentators. We just brought on the American Civil Liberties Union to be a regular contributor. Democracy Forward and all their 50, 60 cases with Sky Paramen has a regular playlist. We've got court accountability action. We've got Cindy Blumenthal and Sean Walentz, who are our resident historians. It's just an amazing one-stop shop under one paint of glass place for all things, law and politics. And interviews, I think you'll find very, very rewarding. We've had just this week, Eric Holder, the Attorney General. I'm going to have Rob Bonta, the AG, for California, and rumored to be a governor candidate, maybe. Maybe I'll ask him that question.

Coming on with me on Friday, we've got the heads of lawyers for American democracy. that were just on with me today. It's just an amazing assemblage. I think you'll enjoy. But we're this close. We're on the two-yard line of getting one million subscribers, mainly free,

at LegalAF YouTube channel. And that's a rarefied world there. I think we're going to make it in about two weeks. We'll hit our deadline of Christmas-ish with your help. So check the notes below. Go over to Legal AF YouTube channel and hit the free subscribe button.

We don't have outside investors. We don't have paywall. That's the way to support us. And also, finally, we've also got our sponsors. Let me do legally off substack first because we're really trying to give some love there as well. So substack. If you don't know what substack is, check it out.

Anything that you're interested in, a hobby, interest, they have somebody writing and doing amazing things and probably more than one on substack. And we're there. We've got about 120,000 subscribers, which is substantial. And we do quality, quality work for you there. We do lives, live reporting, written work, the videos, different things. Come over to Legal AF Substack.

Help us get to, or try to get to $200,000 in the next couple of months. We can do it with your help. And if you can swing a paid subscription, I think it's like, I don't know, $6.7. 77 cents per month. And that goes for production and our editors and keeps the lights on and make sure that you get the independent media analysis that you're looking for. And then we've got our sponsors, some of which have been with us for a long time. There's one in particular tonight that's going to be shown that that's been with us since almost like day one. And then some more

recent sponsors. We love them all because they know what we're all about on intersection and on might as touch, First Amendment speech. They like our audience. They want to support the show and keep us on the air. And here's a word from our sponsors. When it comes to dog food, it seems like you have to make a choice. You can either have, well, fresh and healthy, or you can have easy to store and serve, but never both. But you don't have to choose anymore, thanks to Sundays. Sundays was founded by a veterinarian and mom, Dr. Torrey Waxman, who got tired of seeing so-called premium dog food full of fillers and synthetics. So she designed Sundays, air-dried, real food made in a human-grade kitchen using the same

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And he decided to hold an emergency temporary restraining order today. And I'll just, I'm just going to bottom line it. Because the National Trust moved too late, you know, they should have done it when we were all up in arms watching bulldozers, bulldoze the East Wing. Donald Trump told the American people, no, we're not going to really touch the East Wing. No, I've seen, that was a lie to the American people because attached to the Trump administration, Department of Justice filings today before the hearing, were environmental impact reports prepared by, you know, federal offices way back when that said this is going to be a complete deconstruction of the East Wing and a replacement with a ballroom.

So the new East Wing is the ballroom. It always was going to be. And certainly, you know, I love the euphemism, the deconstruction of the East Wing. Sure, we'll salvage some historically important architectural features. Yeah, okay. Yeah, where are they going to be stored? So when we saw the bulldozers, that's, I mean, I'm a trial lawyer.

That's when you run into court and ask for an emergency injunction because a bad thing's happening. You want it to stop? You don't watch it, wait two months. You know, I read the spokesperson, the head of the National Historic Trust, and she was like, this was not our first option. We tried many other different, yeah, no shit. The problem is you should have moved quicker because it made it easy for Judge Leon to say,

well, the damage is done, folks. See, injunctions are to stop future harm. So demo is over. Now, they're working below ground to do all of the pile driving and foundation work and piping and all of that. And what Judge Leon said is they haven't started vertical construction. And I don't know what the vertical, and they haven't even gotten the plans approved, let alone finalized. And I don't know what the dimensional issues of these are if it violates any law. There's meetings in December. There's meetings in January.

I've been told by the Trump administration that vertical construction meeting the above ground is not going to start until April. We seem to be a little premature. Why don't we all get back together in January? And he also, though, pointed the finger to the Trump administration. And he said, if you miss any of these meetings,

I'm not going to be happy, these planning meetings. And if ultimately it is determined that the golden ballroom is too big, it violates, it didn't pass these, these committees and congressional authority, you're going to be tearing part of it down. And that's happened before. For those who think that's never going to happen, I've been involved in cases or I know of cases where buildings have been built higher than they were supposed to be built. And judges have ordered that parts get lopped off of buildings and it's happened. Tear down the, you know, the 42nd through 59th floor.

they have that power because there's no other relief it can't just be damages what do you do you know give money to people on the street because the building's too high it's got to be some sort of remedy and so we could have a tear-down situation on the on the grounds of the white house but i loved the justification in the papers that the and we have them up on legal a f substack another reason to go to legal a f substack is that we've got for paid members all the legal all the pleadings, all the motions and the briefing and the orders, so you can read them for yourself. Everything that I use to prepare for my hot takes, I give you the toolbox. And hopefully with that and AI, I won't be replaced. Who knows? Put it in any event, if AI starts wearing

cool glasses, I'm dead. I think that's what I'm trying to say. So in their papers, they can't file a paper without reminding us that he's the commander in chief and in charge of foreign policy. I'm like, okay. And therefore you get to tear down the ballroom in the middle of the east wing in the middle of the night. Oh, yes, the ballroom's got to be a secure location for all the diplomatic state dinners that he's going to be conducting. How many more state dinners? He's going to be out of office. You know, come to midterms, he's going to be a dead, not lame duck, dead duck. And then he's out. So how many like state, you know, and Melania hates state dinners. Ivanka won't come back to the White House. So how many states?

eight dinners is you really going to have? No, he's going to stick it to us that we're going to have to use this thing. And then there are papers besides saying, well, he's got the foreign affairs power, everybody. That's pretty powerful. They then went on to say, he just did what other presidents have done. And they gave this whole list, this fraudulent list of what other presidents have done. Jefferson built, I think, first of all, all, all, we stop. That was before all the laws that you've now violated were even here. You violated those laws. Jefferson didn't violate the laws in 1801. He built this portico and that portico and this. And then the and then they always have to have the line. And it was a, and the public was upset. And the press was

upset. Just like now. Yeah. When Truman redecorated, oh, the press. When they pulled out the bowling alley. Or as Caroline LeVette, like to say, during the press, press her recently, there's been a lot of renovations to the White House that were allowed by other presidents. Like, the room we're in right now. This used to be a swimming pool. I just, I find it, she's so insufferable. I find her very, very difficult to listen to because she's so smarmy and too smart by half. And, but Dollar Drop loves her. We know that. Oh, those machine gun lips on on Carolyn Levet. Yep. That's how you know, she's lying because her lips are moving when she talks, right? So a ballroom hearing, that's what happened there. Let's move on to Trump and U.S. attorneys, because he's starting to give up the fight.

But I'll tell you what that really means. Let's see if we have any more now. I just went back and forth with my assistant. I said, hey, send me more questions. He says, yeah, okay, good. I'm like, now. this would be a good while the show is still on, that would be a really good, really good idea. Let me see if I can grab some on the fly here. It's harder for me. So we all know that in at least five or six different locations in New Jersey, in the Northern District of New York, in Virginia, in Vegas, in Nevada, in California. Donald Trump has tried to put his political hacks in who have no prosecutorial, experience maga maga to do his bidding who would never be able to get confirmed in the Senate even by these senators but that's not Donald Trump's intention he doesn't want to get

any of them confirmed he just wants them to do his political retribution while he's while he's in office that's one thing from the Susie Wiles Vanity Fair article I left out she admitted that he's using political retribution to go after James Comey and Letitia James. I mean, the lawyers for Tish James and Comey are probably popping champagne quarks after reading the Vanity Fair article because it plays right into their argument of vindictive prosecution. What do you think political retribution is? It's another word for vindictive prosecution, which is a concept of the law that gets

indictments dismissed. But she said, oh, but he, like he was a bad little boy. but he promised me he would only do it in the first 90 days of the administration. How's that going, Susie? You thought you could control him? And the other revelation is there's some sort of ticker board that has all of his truth social posts running by the fireplace like on a screen. So I guess they can react in real time.

Like when he announced today that he's going to be, he's going to war with Venezuela by social media posts. They probably saw it for the first time. and then they've got to react. Yeah, that's what we learned from Susie Wild. So Trump have been putting all these people in. Alina Haba, John Sarkone, Lindsey Halligan, this crazy person in Nevada, another one in California.

But now they're all resigning after a number of court losses, three that I can count. So Alina Haba resigned. This other one in Virginia resigned. Nevada is probably going to resign. And Donald Trump's now moving to try to try to convince John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader, to get rid of the blue slips. I mean, this is a tradition dating back 200 years that you can't get a candidate through without the support of both

senators from that state, if it's something, you know, if that person's tied to a state, like a state U.S. attorney or judge. And you've got to have both U.S. you've got to have both senators. It's a check, a check on the process. And they either turn in their blue slip, we approve, or they withhold their blue slips. So when you hear about blue slips, that's what they're talking about. And one's not good enough. You need two, it's like Willie Wonka, but you need two golden tickets to get whatever position you want.

Donald Trump hates that. Why do we have to? And so he's trying to get rid of the blue slip process, which is a terrible undermining of Senate tradition that we've relied on to kind of stop Donald Trump and other presidents from putting partisan acts into positions. that they're not qualified to do. So that seems to be his new tactic,

and we're going to continue to follow that very, very, very closely. And because Donald Trump is bored with his day job, as I said earlier, of wrecking hopes and dreams of Americans and crushing them economically, morally, socially, from a reproductive right standpoint, or as I like to say now, who voted for this? I say, this is my new catchphrase. You know, I'm at the airport, I'm watching ice chase after somebody,

in the airport. While I'm about to board a plane, I turn to people I don't even know. And I go, who voted for this? That's my new catchphrase. Let me know in chat whether I should use that on a regular basis. And everybody laughed in the airport. They were like, none of us voted for this. There's so much pent up anger at Donald Trump, which is starting, of course, to be reflected in the polls, which I appreciate, hopefully in the polling, which I appreciate, and I hope will end up being his demise. So let's turn to the libel suits and defamation suits, which are effectively the same thing,

except libel is in writing and defamation is in, it can be done orally. Look, I've got some new questions from my assistant. Titiana Foley asked, can the Senate remove a cabinet official like Pete Hegseth? He can be impeached. He can be impeached like a president. So he can be indicted, if you will, impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate and removed.

Yes, yes, he can. And at the rate he's going, like today, he did a confidential briefing about that Venezuelan the first boat blow up in September the 2nd blowing people out of the water with their backs turned, including a couple of guys hanging off the shipwreck and now they're refusing to show the video. Does anybody think he's refusing

to show the video because the video would be good for him or it would be war crime for him. Put it in the chat. And yes, so to answer your question,

that's how you remove a cabinet official. Domingo 2390. Proud boys are trying to sue the U.S. for millions. Yep. but since they accepted the pardon and therefore admitted guilt, can they really sue? Sure. Sure. Absolutely. They're going to say, you know, whatever. They were railroaded, pardon, you know, trust me. They're going to sue.

And you don't even have to worry about ever seeing a court have to decide your issue, which is interesting, because the Trump administration is just going to use the phony lawsuit as cover to settle. And that's what groups like Democracy Forward and American Oversight and other public interest groups that we have on legal layoff regularly, that's why they're filing their Freedom of Information Act requests because they want to know what's going on with the Ashley Babbitt settlement with her family. What's going on with this phony settlement or lawsuit in order to give cover to the Department of Justice? Donald Trump sue in his own country. Donald Trump has a case right now making its way through the federal tort claims. Act, where he wants to sue the Department of Justice for his attorney's fees totaling like $100 million for what he was put through because he's a criminal.

And we reported on it. It just hasn't popped out yet as a lawsuit. Wait till that's filed as a lawsuit. People forgot about that. I didn't. We didn't. So, yes, the guy that's suing his own government and his own American people, yes, we'll find a way to pay the proud voice.

The only thing that stops Donald Trump from doing stuff like this is his political calculus that it's not going to help him. Although, we're back to how I started the podcast tonight. What is the constituency that is in favor of celebrating the stabbing death of an American icon who happens to be a Democrat in Rob Ryder? Who? What is it? There's some MAGA group that's, woo!

Yeah, he deserved it. This is the guy that stopped America for several days because Charlie Kirk was killed. Literally stopped American government business, flew the entire cabinet to Arizona. Let a podcast be led by the vice president of the United States with Stephen Miller in the White House. And Rob Reiner, I'm not saying he's to Charlie Kirk of the other side, but. certainly a celebrated American and somebody whose foundation has been doing some amazing work, including cases that we count on, like the Defense of Marriage Act, you goolishly celebrate his death and blame him for his own death as the president of the United States.

See, there's just people, and I see it in my own interactions with people, because I'm, you know, I'm outside, I'm out in the world. and people that like a year ago were like, well, we're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Well, he's better than Kamala, you know, all those kind of phrases. Well, he'll be good for the economy at least. And now, a year later, I literally got stopped by somebody who was in that first camp. It was kind of more independent than MAGA. And he said, quote, Trump is an effing a-hole.

Go, you're just waking up to that now? But people are just waking up to it. now and the polling shows it it's not it's not the trump derangement syndrome it's that trump is deranged and everybody is starting to recognize it especially voters i think i think call me a cockyed optimist i think midterms are going to be a historic bloodbath for the republicans and they know it because they can't get on that affordability train fast enough because a we're not letting them on We're like kicking them off as they, they're not, you can't, this, this, we're the party of affordability. Really?

You can be the party of billionaires and trillionaires, but you can't be the party at golden ballrooms and marble bathrooms, which can't be the party of affordability. All right. You got to pick a lane and the American people that put you in your place. So that's, that's where we are with that. Liable suits where I started, Donald Trump filed a new one. New York Times fired back in one. Where are we? Donald Trump didn't like the fact that in a documentary run on the BBC somewhere, I didn't see it, somebody watched it, a week before the election about his second coming or a second chance, they spliced together some clips from Jan 6th and the ellipse speech. Okay. In which over the course of a rambling, you think he rambles now? Well, he rambled then too.

the course of this 53 minute speech he said at one point and I'm going to go down to the Capitol with you so remember what we learned from the Jan 6th Committee this was an angry armed mob okay that he was whipping up and fomenting that he then like a weapon

turned them pivoted them and aimed them like a missile at the Capitol. That's what we're going to go down to the Capitol and I'm going to be there with you. That's what that was, folks. And that's what happened. How do I know?

Because that's what happened. As they didn't march on the Capitol, like Donald Trump likes to say like Martin Luther King, they attacked the Capitol and assaulted the Capitol like the War of 1812 and try to burn it to the ground and kill everybody inside. That's historical facts, everybody. Sorry. Sorry, it's not a, not to our audience, but sorry, it's not a love fest, but that's where we are. So you've got that comment. And then later on, he talks about, but of course I mean peacefully. And, but we got to fight. We got to fight. Got to fight for our country. We've got to fight. We don't fight. We're going to lose it. So they put the two things together. We're going to go down to the Capitol. We're going to fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. Donald Trump said, oh, you left out that whole part.

that half a sentence when I said, be peaceful. Okay. And, you know, this is the same guy that couldn't bring himself. He was seething. But his family and advisors in the Trump administration the first time pushed him out the White House and told him to go give a statement to tell the people to stop burning down the Capitol. And he couldn't, you saw it.

We've all seen the clip. It's up on a video of mine on Legal AF, you know, which he said, well, the election was stolen. That's how he started it. The election was stolen, everybody, stolen election. We're all very, very upset. Nobody more than me. But you know, but you need to go home.

We love you. We love you. They're burning down the Capitol and chasing Nancy Pelosi through the halls of the Capitol. We love you. So that's the same guy. It's very hard to defame that. See, to defame that guy, he's got to have a certain character.

This is what I liked about the recent filing by the Wall Street Journal. in their defense of the libel case brought against them because they published the Epstein birthday book with page 233 of the obscene birthday card drawn by or on behalf of Donald Trump and inserted and pasted into a book from 30 years ago, right? They argued, and they're right, Donald Trump can't be defamed. He's incapable of being defamed because his personal reputation

is so poor, you can't even defame it. That's what they're all arguing now, using his own words and his own actions. How can you defame somebody that just celebrated the stabbing death of Rob Reiner and barely acknowledged the death of students at Brown University and try to make a political hay out of the Bondi Beach massacre?

How do you defame that person? I've said that from the beginning. I said E. Gene Carroll should argue. There's no way to defame him. He's incapable. There's just some people on planet Earth that can't be defamed. You can't defame Hitler. You can't defame Charlie Manson.

See where I'm going? Okay. So he files a case against the British Broadcasting Corporation for this. And then he uses all sorts of other. Oh, they've always had it out for me. You know, they once said that I wanted my political rival, Liz Cheney, shot in the face. I didn't say that.

What I said was she's a hawk for war, and wouldn't it be great if there were nine barrels pointed out her face and she got shot in the face? I'm sorry, that seems to be splitting hairs, don't you think? I didn't ask for her to be shot in the face. I just said, wouldn't it be a shame if she was? And he thinks this helps him. So he gets the same lawyer in this little firm in Coral Gables, Florida, Alejandro Brito, who files all these cases, right down the street from his office in Miami, hoping he doesn't get Judge Gale again

because he's gotten Judge Gail twice for the Michael Cohen defamation case that went nowhere and now for the Wall Street Journal case that was brought and hope he gets another judge. And when I didn't get a chance to see what judge was actually a sign. I'll know better because I know the judge as well in Miami. But it's up being another motion to dismiss. One, I think it's in the wrong country.

I think that case needs to be brought in England in the U.K. under the laws of England and Wales, as they like to say, for defamation or liable under the laws there, not here. That's the first argument. The second one will be motion to dismiss, First Amendment right, freedom with the press, no actual malice, can't defame him, you know, like that. On the same day that he filed that, again, to distract, step on the micro cycle, news cycle,

the New York Times in middle district of Florida up in Sarasota in front of Judge Meriwether filed their motion to dismiss the liable case against the New York Times because all New York Times is mean to him about his finances and his daddy and the fraud they probably perpetrated as the New York Times reported in how they handled affordable housing and some other development. And you may remember, Meridae took one look at the first complaint that was filed by the same lawyer I just told you about, Alejandro Brito, and said, I got this. I'm dismissing this. She didn't even wait for the New York Times. He said, I'm dismissing this. This is a political rant masquerading as a lawsuit effectively, and I'll give you another chance. And they filed

and got better. But now the New York Times today, filed their motion to dismiss. And, you know, it'll be probably in January, February before we find out. But I read the motion to dismiss is very, very strong. I'm sure they're going to win that case. And the motion to dismiss hearing on the motion to dismiss about the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch in the birthday book was heard last week. And we're waiting for Judge Gales to make a ruling there. So Donald Trump probably knowing he's going to lose the New York Times case. Going to lose the Wall Street Journal case about the birthday book. Everybody who hasn't seen the birthday book? We have it. It's up on LegalAF substack with a link. You can read all 233 pages

of this Epstein birthday card. She's going to lose those two. So he's got to open up a new front, a new war, a new battle. Hurry up. File the case. We need the one against the BBC for $5 billion. It's always the number. So that's been filed. And I'll report back on legal A.F and on Substack Live when I get the update about who the judge is, but it's going to take the same course. Could be the similar law firms. There's a couple of law firms, like, I think it's right, Tremaine, or Tremaine, right? It says a couple of First Amendment law firms out of New York that do an amazing job in this area. They know the law, like the back of their hand. And they usually join forces. Like one local law firm here, just a little inside baseball, that I know well,

Gunster Yokely, that has good offices. up and down the east coast of Florida, and I think on Tampa also, they've been local council, because you need a local council, to work with these New York firms against Donald Trump, personally. And they join forces, they share notes and all that good stuff. But the best argument is the one I just laid out, which is Donald Trump is incapable, literally, of being defamed because of his lack of character. Let me do some final questions here. You guys like this question answering thing? Because I like doing it. Henry Rosenbush wrote, do you think any fellow journalists will stand up for their female colleagues when Trump says misogynist and cruel

remarks to their questions? That is such a great question. And you may have caught Henry or others. I did a whole piece on that about a week ago. When Donald Trump's busy saying, quiet piggy, hush piggy, you know, I'm smarter than you and all these other ridiculous, misogynistic, sexist things that he says out loud, I want two things to happen. I'd like the female reporter to look the president in the eye, backed by her colleagues and say a version of, Mr. President, that is beneath you, your office and me, certainly. That is undignified and uncalled for. I'm doing my job under the First Amendment, Freedom of the Press. you're apparently doing your job

and every answer to every question should not start off with a personal attack, especially one that's often sexist. Somebody's got to say that. And I would like, now the problem is a lot of these reporters are young and they don't want to shut off the access and be banished from the White House.

But then I want a man, then I was just noted there by one of our watchers, then I want a male colleague to stand up and say, Mr. President, it is in a, appropriate for you to do what you are doing to my female colleagues. And I'm going to now ask the question that you refuse to ask because, apparently, of her gender. And then, and my other thing is, how about the entire press corps, except for MAGA, when Carolyn Levick enters the room, is they're either not in the room, they have a sick day or more, or they turn their back on her?

trust me, they can do their reporting without being in the room. You know, it's like six people get to ask a question. You can watch the live feed. They can do it without you. And then you can do all your other reporting. It'll free you up to go running around Washington to try to do some investigative reporting instead of sitting around listening to the propaganda coming out of the North Korean press secretary and Carolyn Levitt.

Somebody's got to do something. But, you know, Donald Trump early on, know, Associated Press, you won't say Gulf of Trump or Gulf of America, whatever it is, banished. And then they got to like, you know, spend hundreds of millions, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars to try to get their press credentials back. Jim Acosta, this one, that one, you know, the Pentagon is effectively banned everybody who's a legitimate news organization from the room. And it's now just filled with Maga Maga, including Laura Lumer, is in Pentagon briefings in which they came out.

know where they get these this press corps this uh uh communications officers or press secretaries for these different departments they're all like mid 20s coming out of the you know the fact the maga factory trained by stephen chung and caroline levitt and they all well it's good to look around and finally see an impartial group instead of the liberal media that's always bashing the Department of War. I'm like, I'm sorry, is this, is this, is this, you know, communist China? Is this North Korea? Where are we? And yet, now, now I, I do credit the New York Times and Washington Post, because they said, they threw the credentials in. They said, forget it. Forget it. We'd rather not report from inside the Pentagon if that's what we have to do.

I'd like to see the regular press corps try some version of that. Gilbert Goodman asked, why haven't they called Hegsteth in for a public hearing? It's coming. It's coming. He's doing these closed-door briefings now, but he's not going to be able to avoid it. He's not, the Armed Services Committee is going to be calling him in, and Democrats are going to be asking questions. No doubt. My team tells me there's overwhelming yeses in the chat about the Q&A, so I will continue to do them. I'm so glad you're here with us on the intersection,

Legal A.F. Of course, the grand pappy of them all, Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on the Midas Touch Network. Intersection, a newer show that I do here on my own on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. in Eastern Time, invite your friends. But you're obviously doing it. I mean, the fact that we're in the top 30 in all YouTube podcasts, regardless of the type, it's just, like, amazing to me. I just as goose. I have goosebumps. And then Legal AF, the YouTube channel. Have I mentioned that we're really close to one million subscribers recently?

Even that's out of date. I think we just posted. We're about 13,000 away, which is like two, three weeks away from hitting our one million subscribers in about a year's time. And I know it. That's what keeps me energized and... getting up in the morning full of vim and vigor and hitting the microphone

and doing the work that we do and continuing to build. And the bigger that we are, the more street credibility that we have. It's not just like, it's not ego. Like, oh, I get the YouTube trophy. I never got the YouTube trophy for 100,000 subscribers. It's still in the mail. I never got the hardware. It's not that.

It's the bigger we are, the more street credibility that we have. when we'd speak to an attorney's attorney general or a former judge or a politician, a senator. You know, last week we had Sheldon White House on this week, Eric Holder, the American Civil Liberties Union. You know, when we were like 25,000 subs a year ago, I'm not getting the American Civil Liberties Union to join forces with us or democracy forward. I'm just not. And I am now because of you. And that is the benefit. Sure, it keeps the lights on and lets us expand,

bring in more editors, bringing more content, bringing in more people. I'm speaking to another major, major talent to join us on a regular basis. I can't reveal it yet because I'm not there yet. But I think you guys will be blown away with this particular voice and their viewpoint. And I'm working hard for that to get it on board by January. But that's, we're building this channel,

this network, this ecosystem together with our bare hands. And I really appreciate all that you do. And I'm glad you're here on the intersection. I'm Michael Popok. Shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal AFers. 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 in 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 out for there as well we got some new reporting we got interviews we got ad free versions of the podcast and hot takes where legal a f on substack come over now to free subscribe