Legal AF by MeidasTouch - The Intersection with Michael Popok Full Episode - 6/24/2025

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

On the latest episode of The Intersection podcast join Michael Popok as he provides urgent analysis at the intersection of law and politics and, on this special "lying" and "f-bomb" edition, takes on: 1) a new bombshell DOJ insider who just ratted out senior leadership at the DOJ, including someone up for a lifetime federal judge position, for instruction DOJ lawyers to not only not comply with federal court orders, but to lie about it, and tell courts to "F' off,"  2) the MAGA majority of the Supreme Court undermining hundreds of years of Due Process and 5th Amendment rights in a 1 paragraph "emergency" order; 3) a Federal Judge calling out Trump for lying about Harvard and trying to lead it to "slaughter" as she rules for Harvard agains Trump for the second time in 2 weeks; 4) a Federal magistrate finds that the Trump Administration has no real evidence other than "double hearsay" to keep Kilmar Abrego in detention until his trial on human smuggling charges, and so much more. Support Our Sponsors: Miracle Made: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://TryMiracle.com/LEGALAF and use the code LEGALAF to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. Fatty 15: Get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription Starter Kit by going to https://fatty15.com/LEGALAF and using code LEGALAF at checkout. 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

No frills delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC Optimum Points on your first five orders. Shop now at nofrills.ca. The Chevrolet employee pricing event is on now. Get a big cash purchase discount of up to $11,300 on the 2025 Chevrolet Silverado LDZR2 and Silverado HDZR2. With a factory-installed lift kit and Multimatic DSSV dampers on both the Silverado LD and HDZR2, you'll have all the capability you need to leave the asphalt behind. Hurry in! Employee pricing is on for a limited time. Visit your local Chevrolet dealer for details. This is Michael Popak and you're on the intersection on the Midas Touch Network. Two big themes for today's show. One, the Trump administration has been caught lying to federal

judges providing phony evidence that doesn't support their positions and federal judges and or whistleblowers insiders at the Department of Justice are fighting back. So lying to federal judges is theme one. Theme two is the F-bomb. F it. F off. F them. They're F-ers. This administration curses up a blue streak. We got Donald Trump doing it in the Rose Garden before he's off to the NATO Summit about Israel of all things. And then you've got the whistleblower report that Amiel Bové, who Donald Trump wants to make a lifetime federal appellate judge, he instructed senior members of DOJ leadership to look federal judges in the eye and his, and in his words, tell them to go F themselves.

Lying to federal judges and using the F bomb here, the intersection, we're at the intersection of the F bomb and lying to judges. And I'm going to piece it all together, including of course, what's happening in Iran, which also goes to lying. Let's start with Iran, some on everybody's mind. I pause it on a recent hot take. Did we just watch Donald Trump,

I mean, I hate to be crass about it, but did we just watch Donald Trump bomb Iran, not to set back or obliterate its nuclear arsenal, but rather to improve Donald Trump's economy, to force the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates? Is that what we just watched? Well, that's a better explanation. Then we took this high-stakes military operation that undermines national security, puts millions of Americans in harm's way,

including 40,000 soldiers, dropped tens of millions of dollars of bombs in inconsistent with our own intelligence assessment that Donald Trump has rejected. And we did it according to new reports to set back the Iranian nuclear program 90 days. Tell me that's not what just happened. How could that even be true?

Well, let's start there. How could it be true? Because there's not just three facilities in Iran that make up their nuclear capacity. There's at least four. Yes, we hit Netan. Yes, we hit Fordo. Yes, we hit Isfahan. But we didn't hit Pickaxe Mountain. What's Pickaxe Mountain, Popak?

It's the fourth site that's under a hardened mountain. That's under a mountain. It's a hardened facility that's double the depth of Fordo and where the missing enriched uranium probably resides right now. And that's all they need. All they need is a truck carrying the equivalent of 16 water heaters

holding 418 kilograms of enriched uranium and a bunch of centrifuges and take it off to another location before the bombing started. And of course there's satellite imagery that shows just those trucks. Marco Rubio can't believe his own eyes. It says that can't be the Israelis

must have blown up those trucks. There's no record of that. There's no record that we, and we certainly did not attack pickaxe mountain. And now you've got the Trump administration. This is how I know I'm right. That this was done as was done for two reasons having nothing to do with national security,

to enhance Donald Trump's legacy as a wartime president, as a coverup for his failings, and secondly, to influence and impact and bomb, if you will, the Federal Reserve to force them to cut rates to lower interest rates, to create cheap money, to fuel Donald Trump's failed economic policies. That makes a lot more sense than we just spent hundreds of millions of dollars and risk an all-out shooting ward with the Arab world over 90 days of setback.

They're so livid at the Trump administration about the revelation of this top secret information that we only set it back about 90 days that Carolyn LeVette during a press conference, I guess she doesn't know what these words mean. She said that it was top secret and it was false and leaked to hurt Donald Trump. Well, which is it Carolyn? Is it top secret or is it false? And

if it's top secret and false, what's going on over there with intelligence gathering? No wonder the Trump administration is doing so poorly. It's relying on top secret, false and phony information. The major problem Donald Trump has is he doesn't trust in or believe in the US intelligence community. Tulsi Gabbard's on her way out. She was not in the situation room. She wasn't at the podium when they announced the bombing. She's been replaced effectively by John Ratcliffe of the CIA as the as the spy master. And instead, Donald Trump is relying

on Israel's intelligence. But Israel's intelligence has been saying the same thing for like the last 10 years, that they're three months away, nine months away, less than a year away from making a bomb. And they are now. I think Donald Trump just created a self-fulfilling prophecy. If he doesn't think they are going to speed up the enrichment of the uranium to get to 90% enrichment and then shove it into a bunch of missile supply to them by Russia, using centrifuges that were not nailed in the last bombing, then he's got another thing coming. That's why we're watching not only a mentally impaired, diminished president,

but now he's moved into the next stage completely erratic. That's why he's cursing up a storm. Let's talk about the F bombs. He says that that Iran and Israel are both equally at fault for breaching the ceasefire. What ceasefire? The phony ceasefire that he declared in order to manipulate the financial markets again. The end of the 12-day war. Who said it was a 12-day war? Donald Trump. This is like mission accomplished. When George Bush said mission Accomplished on that battleship and we knew the mission was not accomplished. It's the same thing 12-day war everybody and Then a whole bunch of all caps threats against Iran and Israel for making Trump look bad

Don't do it turn your pleads around and then drop in the F bomb on Israel. You know, they're fuckers, pardon me. But what does that show you? It's not a strategy to be erratic. It's not a strategy to start cursing up a blue streak on your way to NATO. The other reason I believe that it's that they didn't do this bombing around the US in order to set

back or obliterate the nuclear capacity of Iran is because I really think the other reason besides influencing the Federal Reserve was to influence NATO Donald Trump was in charge of the timing of the bombing and he did it just before he got on a plane to NATO where he's gonna try to convince the NATO countries to increase their contribution to military spending up to 5% of their gross domestic product? I think they're more inclined now, aren't they? They're now more inclined by Donald Trump's mismanagement

of how Ukraine is being attacked by Russia. Zelensky said out loud, NATO, you're next. Within the next five years, Putin is gonna go after you. That, Donald Trump's undermining of NATO, undermining of Ukraine, that's also encouraged them to spend more on their national defense and on NATO defense. So these are all the reasons,

because it can't possibly be that we did this and entered a possible shooting war with the Arab world in order to set back Iran 90 days. Look for the money, follow the money when you're talking about Donald Trump, that's one. So we've got all of that, Tulsi Gabbard's out. We've got the cancellation of the briefing that the executive branch, the presidency was supposed to give

to the Iranian, to Congress about Iran. Why? Because he doesn't want to be challenged about his declaration that the 12-day war is over and there's a ceasefire when there isn't. Or that they've completely obliterated the nuclear capacity of of Iran when they haven't. So that's why they've done that. Let's continue with the theme here on today's intersection. Well now let's turn to lying. We've got I've been talking about Erez Rufeni for a long, long time. He is a part of the Department of Justice

in charge of immigration affairs. And he was fired for telling the truth to Judge Zinnis about the Abrego Garcia case. We had two major cases going on at the same time, right? You had Judge Zinnis handling the Abrego Garcia case about this guy sent with 200 other people in the middle of the night without due process to El Salvador.

But he had an order in his pocket to stop him from doing that. And then you had Judge Boesberg looking at why the planes were going to El Salvador in this first place. And this attorney for the Department of Justice told the truth to Judge Zinnis. And she said that Arbrego Garcia was illegally sent over an order that prevented his removal to El Salvador.

And the Trump administration knew it and did it anyway. And he was promptly fired by Pam Bondi and by Drew Ensign, I'll talk about in a minute, and by the Department of Justice and Todd Blanch. They said he wasn't a zealous advocate because he refused to lie to a federal judge. At the time I was like, are you kidding me? They ordered him to lie to a federal judge?

That alone should take away their bar license. That's a violation of the code of professional responsibility and ethics. So I didn't think we heard the last of that Department of Justice lawyer. And now he's gotten lawyers and he's prepared a 30 page whistleblower letter that he sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Why? Because he says that, and he's the insider, that Emil Bové, who is the number three lawyer in the Department of Justice, who was Donald Trump's criminal defense lawyer, who's effectively the bad cop within the Department of Justice, who that he on March 15th, ordered this Department of Justice lawyer, Drew Ensign and everybody else that was in attendance to lie to federal judges to allow Donald Trump to use the Alien Enemies Act at night

under the cover of darkness to ship human beings without due process to El Salvador before anybody would notice. And if he, and that this lawyer was told by Emil Bove that they are to lie to federal judges, they are to violate federal orders and tell federal judges to go fuck off. Yeah.

That is in his whistleblower letter. And that knowing that there would be an order that night, yeah, with Judge Boesberg, the Department of Justice lawyers, including Drew Ensign, lied to Judge Boesberg about whether those planes were being fueled and sent to El Salvador to avoid his injunction. That's a pretty scandalous allegation that seems to have a lot of merit.

So he's going to testify in her oath now, and the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are going to have a field day with it about what Emil Bové told him in terms of violating a federal judge's orders. It should lead to the disbarment of Emil Bove, to Drew Ensign, the lead lawyer who's been advocating these positions in court. This whistleblower says that Drew Ensign lied to the face of Judge Boesberg. He's also lied to the face of Judge Zinnis in Maryland

about Abrigo Garcia and his involvement in MS-13. of Judge Zinnis in Maryland about Abrigo Garcia and his involvement in MS-13. If I'm the federal judges, I call immediate hearings because they, Boesberg already found the administration in criminal contempt or probable cause for criminal contempt. It's been stayed by an appellate court, but now he's got the goods, now he's got the evidence. Zinnis does too.

If I'm them, I hold immediate hearings using their inerrant authority to find contempt against the Department of Justice and the Trump administration based on this new evidence. I call this whistleblower in for sworn testimony to the judge in an evidentiary hearing. I then make a referral to the bar associations where these people have bar licenses

and I get their bar licenses pulled. That's what I would do. That's what I think is going to happen. Judge Zinnis is on the cusp of finding them, the Trump administration, in contempt related to Abrego Garcia. Sure, they've asked to have the case dismissed. We brought Abrego Garcia back, Judge, finally.

Supreme Court told us to do it in April. We did it two weeks ago, you know, because we have an indictment now in Tennessee about human smuggling. I'll talk about that case in a minute and the lies there related to that. So Zinnis and Boasberg now have the goods, now have the receipts, have the evidence

to find the Trump administration in contempt and start throwing people in jail. So we got the DOJ insider whistleblower, another example of inside resistance to the Trump administration. We knew what would happen eventually. We've heard from people who have been interviewed here on legal AF, the YouTube channel and Amitas Tatch,

who have said there is a resistance that finds that Donald Trump is doing rogue criminal lawless things. They just don't know what they should do next. This whistleblower did. And he should get commended for this. Sure, he's gonna sue for money related to it. He had his 15-year career.

He was a nonpartisan prosecutor. He was given an award in 2020 for the top person in the civil division of the Department of Justice. The day of the secret meeting in which Emil Bove told him the lie to federal judges and tell him to go F off, he got promoted to a new job. And then he got promptly fired because he was telling everybody internally,

have you told them, have you told the Department of Justice and Homeland Security about the judge's injunction? Why are you lying to courts? Why are you lying in filings? And they got rid of him and fired him. So we're gonna hear a lot about him. It's funny, his only picture that's online, including on his LinkedIn and full admission,

he is a LinkedIn contact of mine, is a artist contact of mine, is a artist rendering of him in court. There's no known picture of him. You can find it, let me know and send it to me. Then we have, let me move into, before we take our first break, let me move into Judge Holmes in Tennessee

about Abrego Garcia. Now we're into our second theme, the lying theme. We have the F-bombs. Now we got the lying to magistrate judges. Magistrate judges in federal court handle a lot of the day-to-day when it comes to criminal matters. They handle bond and bail and conditions of release

and discovery disputes between the government and privilege issues between the government and privilege issues through the government and the defense, that type of thing. The judge in the case, Judge Crenshaw sort of does the trial, but the day-to-day work Judge Holmes in a very well-respected magistrate judge. People wanna be magistrate judges because they eventually wanna become

federal lifetime appointed judges and it is a feeder program for that. She held about two weeks ago a full day hearing in which an agent for Homeland Security testified they brought in all the records from a 2022 traffic stop involving Abrego Garcia. Apparently by the way he likes to be called Kilmer Abrego. I'm just so used to calling him Abrego Garcia but let me call him Mr. Abrego for the duration. So Mr. Abrego's lawyers are there because, you know, and he's able, you know,

he's there, but he doesn't testify. And the judge hears from the transcripts, doesn't really have the witnesses, hears from the transcripts of a bunch of confidential informants who are in the human smuggling business, not trafficking, smuggling. The difference, as the judge pointed out,

smuggling is sort of consensual. Hey, can you take me across the border, Mr. Mule? And I'll pay you for it. Trafficking is, you know, against their will, exploitation. He's charged with smuggling, that he had nine guys in a car, that the car was owned by a human smuggler, by a smuggler, and that he didn't have a good story when he got stopped by the Tennessee Highway Patrol about where he was going.

Say he was going to a job site or coming back from St. Louis, may or may not be true. In order to, the issue only for Judge Holmes is whether on the charges that have been brought against him, the two charges of human smuggling, and by the way, that's the only charges, not all the other things that Pam Bollandee, in violation of the Department of Justice manual, has thrown the kitchen sink at Mr. Abrego.

Not child pornography, not child endangerment, not abuse of women, not rape, not drug smuggling, not whatever else, just the two charges in the indictment. I'm funny that way. I like to rely on an indictment that went through a grand jury. And the judge said, okay, first of all, to in order for me to hold him pre-trial, meaning there's a presumption of innocence in our criminal justice system, even under the Trump world. And there's only three grounds I can use to hold somebody in pretrial in detention before their trial because they should be allowed out. That is the presumption.

It's if they're going to obstruct justice and I have evidence that they will. If they were involved, if there's charge with a crime involving a minor, hold that thought for a minute, or they're a flight risk and she went through methodically all the witness testimony, which she said charged with a crime involving a minor, hold that thought for a minute, or they're a flight risk. And she went through methodically all the witness testimony, which she said was double hearsay because no witnesses were in her courtroom.

And she can't rely on the agent who's reading a transcript of somebody, of what somebody else said. It's almost, it's almost quite, it's almost triple hearsay, which is not, doesn't have a lot of credibility in a courtroom. She said, look, your first confidential informant

has been convicted of a couple of felonies and has been deported five times. And you're about to let him out for cooperating. So he had every incentive to lie against Mr. Abrego. The cooperating witness number two is his brother and three is his sister. And you can't even get your story straight about whether he is an MS-13 or not. The gang. And he said, and your grounds to try to keep him in is that there was a 15-year-old in the car.

But that's based on a piece of paper with somebody's date scribbled on it for birthdate, which I can barely read and the witness is not here. And I don't even think that's what the statute means when it says a crime involving a minor. Really means like human trafficking for sex, that kind of thing. She said, I don't see any grounds for obstruction of justice

or that he's in MS-13 or for a flight risk. Because even if he's convicted, I looked at the stats, he'll get 12 months. That's not enough for somebody to generate a flight risk. So she is not gonna hold him, Mr. Abrego, in pretrial detention concerning his criminal case. But she also acknowledged that he's also the subject of a parallel immigration proceeding

to remove him to a country not named El Salvador. And she has no control over that one. So the good news is he's not gonna be detained pre-trial. Bad news is he's just gonna be shifted over in another government van to an immigration facility where he's gonna be held subject to what Judge Zinnis does in her courtroom back to Judge Zinnis because she's been lied to about Mr. Abrego.

And this is continuing the theme of lying to federal judges or bringing bad or phony evidence to them. When I come back from my first break here on the intersection, I'm gonna talk about the new and gut wrenching Supreme Court decision about deportation and the dissent by Justice Sotomayor. I'm gonna talk about Harvard's big win and why that should

change their calculus of trying to settle with Donald Trump. And we'll do it all here on the intersection. So many different ways to support what we do. I am primarily in two places. I'm on the Midas Touch Network and have been since day one. We joke that I am badge employing badge number four on the Midas Touch Network. Three brothers and then me. Doing Legal AF the podcast, doing Legal AF hot takes about 15, 16 times a week on the Midas Touch Network.

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Thank you MiracleMade for sponsoring this episode. And we're back. It's not a quiz, but the thematics for tonight's The Intersection are the F-bomb and the Trump administration and Department of Justice intentionally and willfully lying in courts and making unbelievable arguments. Which brings us to Harvard.

And I'll end with the Supreme Court decision about immigration. Harvard, Harvard's doing great in the courtroom. It's got a judge, Judge Burroughs in Massachusetts. And she just for the second time in about 10 days issued her second preliminary injunction in favor of Harvard and against the Trump administration. She found effectively that Trump using his own words on social media posts has been hell-bent on animus on attacking and retaliating against Harvard because they won't bend the knee to him. That they won't allow the administration to take over the fundamental freedoms of academia.

Who's on their faculty, who tried to take them out of the game of having foreign students at all, which is a very lucrative proposition for universities. They make a lot of money out of foreign students. They do, because they pay top dollar on tuition and Americans get a lot of student aid and grants and tuition. It's a dirty little secret of academia. It not only improves their teaching environment,

their student life to have a a balanced diverse student body. I certainly went to a school that that had exactly that and I came out better for it. But it's also a you know when you have 20-25% of your faculty paying top dollar the rack rate of your students. I'm sorry international students. It helps even though you know Harvard has a huge, the number one endowment, just millions of tens, hundreds of millions of dollars that they can invest,

they still need to bring in revenue each year. And Donald Trump decided to go after him and hit him where they live. Cut off their flow of foreign students under the false flag of rooting out anti-Semitism on campus. I'm all for that. This is not what's happening though. And the judge went through all of Donald Trump's

social media posts and said, this is you attacking Harvard and its faculty and its students having nothing to do with national security. See, Donald Trump's lawyers came to court and lied. And the judge said, it doesn't even pass the straight face test. It strains credulity. It is beyond the bounds. It's absurd, is what she said. To have the Trump administration argued to her face, so another lie, that the only reason

that they're cracking down on Harvard admitting certain visa types, doing it two ways, right? One, they're trying to cancel Harvard's participation in the student exchange program on the government side. And then on the immigration side, they're trying to cancel the visas for people who had Harvard as a sponsor. That's the newest preliminary injunction. And the judge says this is completely based on animus, not national security. Look at the timing of the social media posts by Donald Trump and the Department of Justice and the Trump administration says, no, no, no.

There are days apart, these postings by Trump and the retaliatory conduct. There's no causal link. The judge said, that is borderline, bordering on the absurd and I don't believe it. She said, this is all animated by animus. This is all animated by Donald Trump being upset and the Trump administration being upset

because Harvard is fighting back. This violates the first amendment, the fifth amendment. It violates the Administrative Procedures Act. And then she ends her decision, quoting George Washington and his farewell address to the officers, in which she said, "'The First Amendment is so important "'that if we don't have it,

"'then we will just be silently led to the slaughter.'" She's not gonna let Harvard be silently led to the slaughter. She's not gonna let America's democracy be slaughtered by the Trump administration over her dead body. So she's granted another preliminary injunction. Now I know there's reporting, including coming out of the New York Times,

that seems to suggest that Harvard is on the cusp of cutting a deal. And I have said this more times than I care to repeat, but I'll do it one more time. Don't settle. It sets a terrible precedent. You're in the driver's seat. You're winning in federal court.

You'll win at the first circuit as well, the appellate court. You'll probably win at the United States Supreme Court, but given their peculiar rulemaking, I can't guarantee it, but it is worth the fight, just like the big law firms have to fight back. Anybody that's been picked on and retaliated against from this presidency has to fight back. Now the reporting in the New York Times is like,

well, Harvard is sort of squeamish because they know what it looks like optically and they don't want to look like they're appeasing. They are appeasing, don't appease. You can't cut a deal. It's like cutting a deal with Hitler. squeamish because they know what it looks like optically and they don't want to look like they're appeasing. They are appeasing. Don't appease. You can't cut a deal. It's like cutting a deal with Hitler. And we know what happened next. Yeah. Don't be Poland at the time. Don't be Neville Chamberlain in the UK. Be Harvard. Stand for the principles, the bedrock of your principles. Stand up on them. You are standing on the shoulders of ghosts of

Harvard that would be turning over in their grave if they knew that you were thrown in the towel against the Trump administration, especially when you're winning. Don't do it. You got Judge Burroughs on your side. I was saying your back pocket, sorry. That suggests corruption. But you have her on your side. And all the things I've been talking about tonight, the whistleblower letter, Judge Burroughs order,

all up on the legal AF sub stack. You can take a look for yourself that I'm accurately reporting everything. So let me turn now to the Supreme Court's decision. We're waiting on a number of Supreme Court decisions. In fact, there's at least about eight or nine left. We're still waiting for birthright citizenship to be ruled upon.

We're waiting for things related, if you can believe it, to Obamacare and preventative health. We're waiting on things related to censorship in public school, related to the LGBTQ plus community. I can tell you how that one's going to turn out. And we just got this one. Now this one floored me. It was really a punch to the solar plexus. Why? Not because I trust the Supreme Court, I don't, but in a six to three decision, and you can guess the six, the MAGA six, they've decided that it's okay for Donald Trump without any notice or really any due process

to remove people and deport them to third countries they don't even live in or nor did they come from. And that are dangerously, empirically dangerous countries. We are now offloading to countries that don't share our values, accepting deportees without due process. And the Supreme Court says that's okay. And the most terrible thing about it

is they did it like cowardly in a one paragraph decision. Now, technically they'll say, well, we didn't rule on the merits. The merits will be for another day. We just said we're gonna block the injunction of the lower court that was affirmed by the First Circuit that would have stopped these types of deportations and removals to third countries until there's a full briefing and a year from now maybe we'll take a

look at it. In the meantime they're allowed to do it and Justice Sotomayor in her 20 page plus dissent said effectively this is an abuse of power by the United States Supreme Court I've never seen before. There should be no stay because the Supreme Court is not giving proper weight to the irreparable harm, including life or death and torture, to be suffered by these human beings if the Supreme Court is wrong. and that they should err on the side of protecting an irreparable harm and allow the injunction to stand because what is the big difference? What's the big deal? These people stay in America under Sotomayor's theory,

they're not tortured in in South Sudan or Libya, where they're not from. They're not tortured there South Sudan or Libya, where they're not from. They're not tortured there in countries that don't share our values, but want our money in relationship with Donald Trump and are willing to take these people. They stay here, we do the appeal, and then if it turns out that they were,

they're not entitled to, where they got too much due process or not enough due process, that'll get cleaned up a year from now. What is the big deal? That we house them in the United States in the meantime? Once we send them to South Sudan, we're never gonna see them again or hear from them again. And that's what the Supreme Court effectively just ruled. But they can sleep at night or they try to sleep at night by saying, well we haven't ruled on the merits. And Sotomayor said two things, effectively.

This is an abuse of power by the Supreme Court, who's exercising their equitable authority to grant a stay when they shouldn't grant it under these circumstances, and they are burying their head in the sand about the human suffering and toll by this order blocking the injunction. Her other argument is the Trump administration has unclean hands. Now we're back to round out this episode with lying in court. She cataloged from the record at least three

or four different instances where the Trump administration and the Department of Justice has told a lie to the federal judge in Massachusetts about many of these people and they got caught telling a lie or submitting improper or false evidence. The guy who was raped and tortured in Mexico who was sent to Mexico and when they said well we have evidence judge that he wanted to go to Mexico. She says, let me see that evidence. And then they had it after he was already sent to Mexico. They had it with me, oh no, no, that was, that evidence wasn't true.

We didn't have the statement that we thought we had. What? And then they violated, and this goes back to the top of the intersection, the orders of Emil Boves up for the third circuit to lie to federal judges, don't tell them the truth and tell them to go F off. Same thing happened to this judge in Massachusetts.

They didn't give a guy due process or notice. They sent them to Sudan, South Sudan, over the judge's order, right? They're not even asking for forgiveness instead of permission they're just doing it they don't care pound sand judge taunting the judge and what Sotomayor said we have a we have a concept in the law it's called unclean hands it's what it sounds like you can't come to the court and ask for their equitable powers to be used, in this case, to issue a stay of an injunction.

That's a court sitting in equity as opposed to law. You can't ask for equitable powers if you yourself have unclean hands. And who has the dirtiest hands we can think of, especially when it comes to court proceedings? Donald Trump. And she pointed to the series of unclean hands and said, how did we exercise our jurisdiction? That's part of the abuse of power. And so I regretfully dissent. We're gonna have to put together in a coffee table book all the dissents beautifully written by Sotomayor, by Kataji Brown Jackson, by Kagan during this era.

Because they're going to be found to be in the right on the arc of history, because they're on the right side of the angels in their decisions. And I've been around long enough to see when a Supreme Court today is criticized by the Supreme Court in the future. It may be 10, 15, 20 years in the future,

where they say, what were they thinking? They were under some sort of spell or cult of Donald Trump. They are warped. How did they make these decisions in violation of due process, fifth amendment fundamental rights? I thought at least based on the rulings,

all emergency applications from the summer, I thought that I understood where the Supreme Court's majority stood, six to three, about Fifth Amendment. That at least there needed to be a minimum of notice, due process, maybe by writ of habeas corpus to get people before a federal judge before you send them to a prison or a deportation center or remove them from the country. But this decision is completely internally inconsistent with all the other prior decisions.

Another example of reverse engineering. They wanted to give the Trump administration a win to allow them to continue their depraved deportation program and emboldened and already drunk with power Donald Trump in this area. And they reversed course from their own precedent from the last 90 days to do so. And got called out by Justice Sotomayor. And what we're also watching is the Trump administration,

but with the complicity of the United States Supreme Court, abusing and exploiting the shadow docket emergency application process to get their way at the United States Supreme Court. It's why they're winning like eight out of 12 at the Supreme Court. Because they are not allowing the Supreme Court, which is a deliberative body to deliberate, they're giving them no time. By its very nature, an emergency application has limited briefing, two briefs,

two written legal documents, not three. No oral argument. There is absolutely no oral argument. All the oral arguments that I put up on Legal AF for you to listen to are non-existent in the emergency application world. The courts could hold oral argument, they just choose not to, the majority.

So no oral argument, short one brief, a record, which is the facts developed by the trial court, below that scan, skeletal, right, on a short fuse. The judge didn't have time below. So it's on an incomplete record, limited briefing, no oral argument, and then no real time for deliberation. That's what the the Supreme Court, when it excels, excels at that. Months go by between oral argument. Maybe additional briefing is requested. Then there's the circulation of opinions, long 50 to 100 page opinions back and forth, trying to convince hearts and minds.

Picture law clerks over pizza boxes, you know, circulating their justice's opinion. What will be the majority opinion? What will be a concurrence? What will be a dissent? Months go by. Draft opinions. Finally, there's a vote. The senior judge or the chief judge picks who's gonna write the opinion or whose opinion is gonna be the majority. And we have a ruling. None of that happens in the emergency world and Donald Trump knows it.

Bring the emergency application, claim a phony emergency. The Supreme Court has already said they don't care about irreparable harm. They don't care anymore if the lower court, the appellate court, ruled to refuse the stay or not. That used to be a factor. Oh, did the appellate court below grant the stay or deny the stay? Oh, they denied the stay? Oh, well then for us to overturn that. No, everything's being done de novo. Everything's being done from scratch as if they are a trial court instead of an appellate court.

And Donald Trump knows it because he knows in that environment of stampeding them, but with their complicity and their assent, the majority, the MAGA, it'll just break down along political lines. He'll get his five votes at least, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, probably Roberts, probably Amy Coney Barrett when it counts.

And that'll be the six against the three. And Donald Trump is exploiting this over and over and over again. And the MAGA right wing is allowing it because they believe in a unitary, all powerful, all knowing president, almost an omnipotent, omniscient president, and they support that. So they are as guilty as Donald Trump is. I'm telling you how it

happened, but it's done with the Supreme Court's complete consent. And there's nothing other than writing eloquent opinions that hopefully will be the majority decision one day in the future. There's nothing for the other three, the moderates, the democratically, the democratic wing of the Supreme Court that they can do. I've been outnumbered before from my politics. As I've said, in more than 50 years, I've never known a Supreme Court that's ever been dominated by moderates, Democrats or liberals, ever. It's always been Republican dominated. Sometimes it's five to four, sometimes it's six to three,

but it was always moderate versions of Republicans. And as I've said before, back in the old timey times, you know, somebody who's a Reagan, Goldwater Republican, and somebody that's a Clinton, Obama Democrat, Kennedy Democrat, were always very, very close. I mean, there were some key issues on social issues where we differed, reproductive rights and women's rights being first among them. So I don't wanna minimize it. But on the majority of the 60 or 70 cases

that a Supreme Court would take, there was a lot of unity. It was hard. It was hard to tell each other's positions apart, but that's over. That's over. The Trump administration, MAGA, has yanked the court so far to the right,

the alt-right, that even those that we say are sort of in the center are still all right and so far right compared to their contemporaries that were the center of the court in past courts. Roberts is way to the right of somebody like Kennedy who was the swing vote for much of his time on the court because he was a moderate Republican appointee. Sandra Day O'Connor. Amy Coney Barrett is so far to the right of, even though she's considered the centrist vote on some level,

she's so far to the right of somebody like Sandra Day O'Connor that this is like apples and bowling balls in the comparison. So there's going to be a lot more reporting, I might as touch on a Legal AF YouTube channel, about the last gasp of opinions to be dropped, mainly from the full-blown appeals, what we call the writ of certiorari appeals, which have the three briefs,

the oral argument, the liberation I described, but there's still a couple of emergency applications still floating around. Once the gate shuts at the end of June with the last opinion to drop birthright citizenship and the rest, nationwide injunctions and the rest, we're not done. It used to be like a year ago, two years ago. It used to be the summer was relatively quiet in the world of Supreme Court practice because the new term didn't open until the first Monday in October. There were emergency applications occasionally,

but not a lot, especially during the Biden administration. But now they've had more than 20 emergency applications. There'll be at least another five or 10 before the summer is over. So stay close to home to Supreme Court because you're gonna be ruling on many, many of these things. And because at the trial court level, Trump is losing

because he deserves to, 90% plus. Same thing at the appeals level, but he's winning. He's winning at about a 70% level at the United States Supreme Court. And I've just described why. I'm glad you're here on The Intersection. It started as a PO-POC Live. Now it's a full blown podcast we call The Intersection.

There's many ways to support what we do here. First of all, help me get this intersection up and running. Leave a comment here in the live recording. That's great. Hit subscribe for Legal Aid after YouTube. But come on over to the audio podcast version of The Intersection. Just plug in The intersection, you know,

where do you get on an Apple pod or anywhere else? Download it. We need more downloads, more audio listens, and then there's a comment section. I don't know. We got about 75 comments. Doing great, by the way. I'm not I'm not bemoaning those that took the time. We just need more.

So leave. Take a moment. Leave a five star review. Leave comments. I just need more. So leave take a moment, leave a five star review, leave comments. I do read them and until the next recording of the intersection on Tuesday, by the way, I do daily updates of the intersection at the intersection of law and politics also on audio just to keep it fresh and keep it and keep it lively in between the shows. Wednesday and Saturday at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, legal AF of the Midas Touch Network. Tuesday's the intersection with Michael and keep it lively in between the shows. Wednesday and Saturday at 8 p.m. Eastern time,

Legal AF on the Midas Touch Network. Tuesdays, The Intersection with Michael Popok on the Midas Touch Network. All, and then of course on all the audio podcast platforms of your choice. Thank you for supporting us. You've been there since the very beginning. Some of you just joined, but we have such a fervent audience

that it makes us proud, it makes us get up every day, makes Ben Mycelis sit in a chair like me every day, seven, eight hours a day, bringing truth to you so that you have it and we can speak truth to power. So until my next report, I'm Michael Popok. I'm Michael Popok, and I got some big news for our audience. Most of you know me as the co-founder

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