Legal AF by MeidasTouch - The Intersection with Michael Popok Full Episode 6/3/2025

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

Join Michael Popok for his weekly new podcast "The Intersection" exclusively on the MeidasTouch Network, where he calls out the corruption and dismantles the spin, all with a signature blend of legal insight, zero tolerance for BS and just the right dose of courtroom fire and levity. Tonight, Popok drills down on: Trump's latest unbelievable crypto scandal; Trump's "break up" with the Federalist Society and what it means; Trump's coordinated attack on women and their right to choose, this time by reversing a Biden policy to allow federally-funded doctors to provide abortions as part of emergency care; the growing pardon scandal, and Trump wiping out over $1 billion dollars in money owed to Americans with a stroke of a pen; the Democrats fighting to stop Trump's efforts to block federal judges from finding his Administration in contempt, and more at the Intersection. Support Our Sponsors: Laundry Sauce: For 20% off your order head to https://LaundrySauce.com/LEGALAF20 and use code LEGALAF20 Magic Spoon: Get this exclusive offer when you use promo code LEGALAF at https://MagicSpoon.com/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

What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver.

Discover the magic of Bad MGM Casino, where the excitement is always on deck. Pull up a seat and check out a wide variety of table games with a live dealer. From roulette to blackjack, watch as a dealer hosts your table game and live chat with them throughout your experience to feel like you're actually at the casino. The excitement doesn't stop there with over 3,000 games to choose from including fan favorites like Cash Eruption, UFC Gold Blitz and more. Make deposits instantly to jump in on the fun and make same-day withdrawals if you win. Download the BetMGM Ontario app today. You don't want to miss out.

Visit betmgm.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario.

Offer valid on standard browsers, US only. When I heard about Date My Age, I thought, I gotta check that out. I mean, I'm getting older, sure, but I don't feel like I'm done with, you know, the fun parts of life, like connection and desire, excitement. You don't really find those things at the grocery store or the doctor's office, so I went online. Date My Age made dating an adventure. It gave me a chance to feel like a teenager again. The thrill of seeing someone new and saying, wow! I could send a spicy gift, start a video chat, or just message my compliments to a beautiful woman.

Whether you love love or just like to look, the fun is waiting for you at Date My Age. I am done. I'm done with Popak Live. singles worldwide, datemyage.com. I am done. I'm done with Popak Live. No more Popak Live. It's now the intersection with Michael Popak. Yes, we're launching a brand new podcast on the back of Popak Live. I'm back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm dedicating the new podcast to my beloved mom

who passed away a couple of weeks ago. We had this in the works for a while. She knew about it and I think she'd be oh so proud of what we've built here together on Legal AF and on the Midas Touch Network. PO-POK, the intersection, guess what I'll be talking about at the intersection of law and politics. You're here for the inaugural podcast. It's on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. only on the Midas Touch Network. We do a little bit of free broadcasting or simulcasting on Legal AF, the YouTube channel. Let's kick it off. Glad to have you here with us all tonight.

Well, the new Trump portrait is out. And when you compare it to 2016, boy, time has not been kind to Donald Trump. When I first saw the new Trump portrait, I thought he had actually used one of his mugshots from one of his arrests. Then I got confused, then I thought it was Senator Palpatine from Star Wars

in the various episodes until the very end. But no, no, this is the portrait that Donald Trump has gone with. We're gonna put it up here in a moment. And look at the difference. I know that presidents age while in office, but what is this dark, ominous Sith Lord thing going on with Donald Trump?

You know, like, try me, or you talking to me, or I'm not sure what he's trying to do there. That facial expression probably matches his reaction to Elon Musk now freed of being a special government worker and having gone back to screw up all of his companies. He had this to say about the new big, beautiful bill that's languishing right now in the Senate, the House having already passed it.

He said that the bill, the budget bill, which adds $3 trillion to the national debt, despite the fact that it cuts $1 trillion from food programs for the poor and impoverished and money from Medicare and Medicaid. Despite that, Elon Musk said it's an abomination because of how much it increases the deficit and ultimately the national debt.

That pissed off Donald Trump. Carolyn LeVette, the press secretary said, well, we all know Elon Musk and Donald Trump was well aware of his opinion, but he supports the big, beautiful bill. There's a big debate going on about that big, beautiful bill. I'm gonna talk about here at the intersection,

which is about a passage that's buried on pages, I think, 556 and 557, somewhere like that, where they've tried to give Donald Trump complete protection from being held in contempt along with the rest of his administration for violating injunctions. They don't like nationwide injunctions issued by federal judges.

You keep hearing the Trump administration lackeys coming out and saying an unelected federal judge today who was a liberal Marxist radicalist just decided to oppose Donald Trump's policies. I got another way of putting it. A federal court whose article three powers are properly put to the test by an out of control and rogue president has been trying hard to do some sort of checks and balance

and preserve the separation of powers that is part of our constitution. Of course, they're unelected, that's our federal court system. To continue to call that out shows you have a complete misunderstanding of our checks and balance system. So I'm going to talk about the bill,

what's happening in the Senate and that as well. Then I want to talk about this crypto scandal. Yes, yet another one. It's a crypto scandal du jour with Donald Trump. We know that he's using it along with his family to line his pockets with hundreds of billions of dollars before this whole thing is over. And I'm not talking about planet earth,

I'm talking about his administration. And he just, we thought he had just launched a new meme wallet, an electronic wallet to hold all of that cryptocurrency and meme coins that he is using to peddle influence and sell off parts of the presidency and turn the White House into a personal money printing press. And we said, oh, he's launched a wallet.

Well, that's legitimate. That, I mean, that's can par for the course, I should say. And then right on cue, the two Fredos of the Trump crime family, I think there's three of them, Don Jr. and Eric Trump said, no, no, we don't know anything about that. I love that he had, and Eric Trump particularly,

we'll put it up when I get to that point, in his social media post had to start with, I run the Trump organization, but I don't know what you think about this. Just to remind people what he does for a living, in case you didn't know and you thought Daddy Trump was really running everything. He had actually put that in a social media post.

Then Don Jr. right on cue said, this is not approved by the Trump, this is unauthorized. We're working on our own meme coin wallet. So you mean some other fraudsters within the cryptocurrency world are ripping off the Trump family? Shocking. We'll talk more about that as well.

And Trump, speaking of attacks, we've got Trump attacking women all over again. Just today, as I was about to hit the air, Trump has unraveled and issued new guidance to hospitals that take federal funds under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. We call it EMTALA. That was the way that the Biden administration,

when they were scrambling after the Dobbs decision in 2023, which ripped away a woman's right to choose, ripped it out of the constitution. First time a constitutionally protected right once granted by the Supreme Court found in the constitution was taken away. Reversing Roe versus Wade. That led the Biden administration and Kamala Harris

to start scrambling and look at all different federal agencies and statutes and guidance to see what they could do. And one of the primary ways to give a woman any type of reproductive rights after the DOP's decision was to use MTALA to give guidance to doctors that said if women's health or life was at risk, you should consider abortion as an option. Trump has now come out today and said

that that is against federal law, that doctors will be effectively prosecuted and that it will be against constitutional principles of the way the Trump administration interprets law, scaring the crap out of doctors, making them think twice or not do it at all to give a woman an abortion, even when her life and the health of her and her life is at risk. And so it was a coordinated attack.

I'll cover it later because at the very same time, a kind of a phony right- wing group decided to dismiss a lawsuit that they had started to attack Antalla because they knew they got the gift from the Trump administration. It smells to high heaven. And we're going to talk about it here on Popak, the intersection. I almost said Popak Live. I got to get used to my own new podcast name, the intersection with Popak. Then we got a pardon scandal.

I just had on the, we just interviewed Liz, Liz Oyer, Oyer lawyer, lawyer Oyer, as she likes to call herself on social media, who was the person in the office of the pardon attorney who independently, nonpartisan, guided various administrations on a pardons. And she got fired by the Trump administration because she wouldn't recommend that Mel Gibson get his gun rights back.

And now she's out in social media and she's detailed that not only is Trump's abuse of the pardon power need to be addressed by constitutional amendment or by the Supreme court to the extent that it can't, but that he's wiped out over $1 billion worth of restitution, money owed to the American taxpayer, that Donald Trump, along with the partners

of these various people, just in the case of about six or seven entities, has also wiped out $1 billion at a time when he's trying to find a way to balance his budget, just got rid of with a magic wand $ billion dollars that was going to cover that as well. Great interview with Liz Oyer that you should follow. Speaking of interviews coming up this week I'm going to be interviewing representative Richie Torres out of the 15th of New York and he's one of the sponsors of a bill to try to reign in

Donald Trump and future presidents and their abuse of cryptocurrency and crypto schemes and scandals. And we'll be having Representative Torres on later in the week on Legal AF. Then I wanna touch on Elon Musk. Sorry, I wanna touch on federal courts and something that's buried in that big, beautiful bill

that Elon Musk is calling an abomination, that they're debating right now, led by a number of former lawyers that are in the House and in the Senate, because that's where Donald Trump is trying to force people to pay to play in the court system. That in order to get an injunction under Donald Trump, even if it's a constitutional violation,

even if it's going after an abuse of power by the president, this aspect of the bill buried in there, because he's such a coward, would take away a federal judge's ability to find the Trump administration effectively in contempt of court for violating an order, violating an injunction, if that injunction isn't supported by a bond.

Now, most people that bring, and most entities that bring cases like this one, you know, to a challenge, the Trump administration don't have the money to put up a major bond. And, but to this new bill, a federal judge can't use federal funds, which means operating his courtroom to find a president, in this case, Donald Trump,

in an administration in contempt, unless there's a bond that's been posted to support the injunction. I'll talk about why that's a violation on the separation of powers, of the Article III powers of the federal judiciary. And then lastly, as I was coming on the air, we also know that in addition to the pardon attorney who got fired,

we just had a resignation of the chief prosecutor concerning Jan Six, I was surprised he was still around, but he but he was and he's now decided, Greg Rosen that he can no longer work in the Department of Justice. He was in charge of the capital siege section of the Department of Justice. He was in charge of the capital siege section of the Department of Justice. And he's now left, is going into private practice in a noisy way.

He's also criticizing the Trump administration. We've got a lot to talk about here. I'm so pleased that you're here on Popak the intersection. Let's dive in and talk about the crypto scandal. There are so many ways that Donald Trump is using crypto, cryptocurrency, various forms including meme currency, in order to line his pockets and those of his family.

Let me count the ways. One, his family owns a leading Bitcoin mining company, right? Cryptocurrency has to be created. It's created through algorithms, complicated math formulas that are, that unlock at the end a cryptocurrency or a meme coin. They use a tremendous amount of computing power. Picture server farms that are the size of a small city and the power that's required for that and the water to cool and the rest.

That's how you make cryptocurrency. Doesn't have any intrinsic value other than the value that the marketplace is on it on the buy and the sell. So you have to have a mine, you have to make cryptocurrency. And so they bought the Trump family a crypto miner, American BTC.

That's one aspect, one of the part of the ecosystem of how you make money in cryptocurrency when you're at the Trump level. And how he's made billions of dollars since January doing it. He also can do it by creating meme, M-E-M-E coins, which have no intrinsic value. A fart coin, I'm not making it up,

it's actually out there. Shibu Inu is out there, Dogecoin, which is where Elon Musk got the name for his entity. It's a play on his cryptocurrency. These are the worst kind of, they're the lowest form of cryptocurrency. They're sort of non-fungible tokens, like those trading cards that Donald Trump loved to,

you know, cosplay when he dressed up as an astronaut and a cowboy and a fireman. It was like a bizarre village people for Donald Trump loved to, you know, cosplay when he dressed up as an astronaut and a cowboy and a fireman. It was like a bizarre village people for Donald Trump. Really weird, but they sold because they have value because somebody else wants to buy it. It's like little pieces of art. They had digital signatures and that was, so a lot of the NFT people got into cryptocurrency

because it's very, very similar. It's a sucker's bet. So Trump created a meme coin, then he created the trading platform for the meme coin. He provided the liquidity pool for the meme coin, and then he pushed the volume of it sort of as a pump and dump scheme, except he never really has to dump.

He just needs to pump. It's a pump and pump scheme, because he owns the platform. He makes money regardless of the price of the meme stock, sorry, the meme coin on the buy and the sell. So he wants volume, he wants trading. So he promotes it by having with your and my taxpayer dollars hosting dinners that he attends with the great seal

of the president of the United States in front of it in which he brings together 250 of the leading holders of his meme coin in a meme coin wallet. And he pats them on the back. And half of those people, as we know, are foreign investors because they want to buy a piece of the president. They can't do it without violating a federal campaign regulation.

So they do it by buying his meme coins. And he promotes it because he makes a lot of money on the meme coin, the value of the meme coin, on the buy and sell of the meme coin. And then as we came on the air, we all saw this morning, this announcement, dollar sign Trump meme coin wallet for sale, join the waiting list now with a picture of him

at Butler, Pennsylvania with his fist up. And I thought, well, that's legit. I had heard there was something in the works at World Liberty Financial, which Donald Trump owns with his fist up. And I thought, well, that's legit. I had heard there was something in the works at World Liberty Financial, which Donald Trump owns with his sons, but apparently not his daughters. And along with Steve Witkoff, who's the de facto secretary of state,

he's the guy that runs around Iran and cuts the nuclear deal. He's the one that dealt with Putin and got his lunch eaten in front of him. That he's not Secretary of State. It's Steve Witkoff, golf buddy developer of a friend of Donald Trump. And Witkoff got the Trump family into cryptocurrency heavy, including introducing them to a couple of crypto bros, one of which went to jail. And that's what our president of the United States, that's who he's in business with. So they, I knew that this World Liberty Financial, owned in part by Witkoff and the sons, Donald Trump,

was about to launch a wallet. That's an electronic holder for your electronic money, for lack of a better term. You have to hold it in an account. The account is called a wallet. So they were gonna launch some branded wallet. And I said, well, here it is. It's got a dollar sign Trump in it.

Otherwise kind of an evasion of privacy and a copyright violation. And I looked at the who sponsored it. And it was something called Magic Eden, which is a company that was in business with Donald Trump for his NFTs. But I don't know, well, that sounds legit. Until Eric Jr. posted a social media post,

followed on the heels by Don Jr., which said, we don't know anything about this, this is not sanctioned. I run the Trump organization, I don't know anything about this. And Don Jr. said the same thing, it's not sanctioned, we're working on our own, we're working feverishly on it. It's not launched yet.

This is an example, apparently, of one of three things happened-ish. Magic Eden had a business deal, at least a handshake, with somebody in Trump world and felt like they could use the likeness and the dollar sign Trump. That's just the way I like my American presidents who spell their name with a dollar sign. Yeah, like Cash Patel also who puts an S dollar sign in all of his, when he was selling all his crap before he became FBI director. So I think Magic Eden had a deal in principle

and they mocked up this wallet announcement and they put the Butler, Pennsylvania photo there and with the Trump name and the waiting list and they launched. Except either the Trump person, including Donald Trump, that gave him the green light, didn't clear it with Don Jr. and Eric, who were about to launch their own wallet,

because you're gonna have more than one wallet. And that led them to have to scramble, so that's one example. Second is, they just ripped off the Trump family. That could happen. This is the wild, wild, unregulated west of cryptocurrency. It is possible that the Trump family just got ripped off, which is cosmic justice that that would happen.

That you got ripped off in this unregulated world. It's unregulated because Donald Trump doesn't wanna regulate it. He's removed all the Department of Justice protections. He's got rid of all the laws. He got the Securities and Exchange Commission out of the business of Justice Protections. He's got rid of all the laws. He got the Securities and Exchange Commission out of the business of regulating cryptocurrency. He never stood up a cryptocurrency regulator

because he doesn't want one. He packed his cabinet, including his Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, with cryptocurrency acolytes. I mean, Cantor Fitzgerald, the company owned by the Commerce commerce secretary now by his two sons who were like under 30 and never worked a hard day in their life.

But in any event, they're heavy into cryptocurrency in every way, shape or form, tether, ether, platforms, they're cutting new deals, they're mining, they're holding, whatever they're doing. So when you surround yourself with a bunch of cryptocurrency acolytes who themselves go together with JD Vance to a Las Vegas convention this week or last week

in order to promote cryptocurrency, who go to Abu Dhabi to do the same thing, who say this is gonna be the golden era of Bitcoin and none of it's regulated, it's all gas, no breaks. What do you think's gonna happen? Many of the people that are in this business are unscrupulous. I know that's shocking to people. I know a of the people that are in this business are unscrupulous. I know that's shocking to people.

I know a lot of people that are heavily invested in cryptocurrency. I know a lot of people who wanna believe that it's going to be their ticket out and they'll make billions of dollars. I know people that went to the New York cryptocurrency convention around the same time as the Vegas one, where they were rubbing elbows

with Eric Adams, the mayor that should be in jail in New York, you know, and all of that, except he got the Trump administration to dismiss with prejudice his indictment. So I get it, okay? I invested a couple of shekels in cryptocurrency early on. I have family members that worked in cryptocurrency until their company went completely belly up

and went and went and got defrauded a couple of times and put out a business. And I know the types of people that are involved in this industry. So it's no shock to me that either Trump screwed the sons and didn't tell him he cut a deal with Magic Garden, which is my first thought, or Magic Garden is ripping off the Trump family.

Either way, we'll continue to follow it. You know where, there's a number of places you could follow what I do and things related to the intersection of law and politics. First of all, Legal AF, the YouTube channel, is up and running for over eight months. We've got 12 amazing contributors there. I just added Renato and Asha and their show,

It's Complicated. They make it so not complicated. It's a great podcast. Former FBI agents, former federal prosecutors, amazing legal commentators and national security experts. It's complicated. Before that, I added onto the channel Sean Wilentz and Sydney Blumenthal, sorry Sydney, in a podcast, in a playlist they call the Court of History, the highest court in the land, where they as historians and journalists and researchers put into historical context all that we're watching

with the Trump administration and it's important. Court accountability action and their leaders, Alex Aronson, Mike Sachs, and Lisa Graves looking at corruption, the federal court system and influence there all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. We've got Dina Dahl, a regular contributor who joins me every week for it's show called

Unprecedented about the United States Supreme Court. Melba Pearson, former prosecutor and an ACLU lawyer does regular pot takes as does, former prosecutor and an ACLU lawyer does regular pot hot takes, as does the former prosecutor and state attorney, Dave Arenberg. And then we got Shan Wu, who was formerly a general counsel to the attorney general of the United States and a federal prosecutor contributing there as well. Joining me, I do about four or five hot takes every day. We do every two hours a video at the intersection of law and

politics that matters. Legal AF, the YouTube channel in collaboration with the Midas Touch Network. Legal AF, the substack. Now one of the things I want to tell you about, PO-POK, the intersection and how we're sort of supporting this. We may have an ad or two. We'll have some ads with us today, but on the full complete launch, and once we have the RSS feed, the audio feed of the intersection up and running, it's really gonna be user supported, sort of like public broadcasting, PBS.

And Substack is one way to support what we do here. So I'm gonna encourage you to go over to the Legal AF Substack, it's free for now. We've got some amazing things we do every day, six, seven postings a day, including all the filings that I talk about and that our contributors talk about at the Supreme court under SCOTUS AF filings and orders coming out of courts under filings AF, a morning roundup called, wait for it, morning AF that I do every day.

And then all the other contributors like Leah Litman, Karen Freeman-Iknifilo, and the whole group that we have over on Legal AF, the YouTube channel as well. The other ways of course to support what we do is through the Legal AF, the podcast, every Wednesday and Saturday at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, only on the Midas Touch Network. We are the number one law and politics podcast on YouTube's podcast rankings, week after week. That's a testament to the fervent support of our audience, including you.

So we're a little bit light on the audio though. I'd like a little more audio downloads. It helps us in the rankings, the ratings, keeps us on the air for Legal AF, the podcast that I do with Ben Mycelis on Saturdays and Karen Freed, the Nick Nifilo. And then we've got, at least for now, our pro-democracy sponsors that we handpick

through Jordy Mycelis over on the brothers side and all come together to support my new launch of the intersection. And here's a word from them now. As a kid, I loved eating cereal, but as an adult, I don't want all that sugar. And most cereals don't give me the protein I need. Then I found Magic Spoon, a nostalgically delicious cereal

that tastes just like my childhood favorites, but without the sugar and with a ton of protein. And if you're already a Magic Spoon fan, I've got big news. Magic Spoon has turned their super popular cereal into high protein treats that are light, crispy, and taste just like those classic crunchy cereal bars. Magic Spoon's brand new treats are so delicious and have already become my favorite before or after Jim's snack. Magic Spoon has literally changed the way we view our pantry in my family.

Now when my wife and I are looking for a quick high protein snack that makes us instantly nostalgic with that warm and fuzzy comfort food feeling, we reach for Magic Spoon's new cereal bars. Every serving of Magic Spoon cereal has 13 grams of protein, zero grams of sugar, and four grams of net carbs, so you can feel good about what you're eating. The most popular flavors are fruity and cocoa, and there's so many more. Magic Spoon's brand new treats are crispy, crunchy, airy,

and an easy way to get 12 grams of protein on the go. And for the first time ever, Magic Spoon Treats are available in grocery stores with delicious flavors like marshmallow and chocolatey peanut butter. Magic Spoon Treats have replaced all my other bars. Just the right balance of delicious flavor, great mouthfeel and texture, and the best part, they are high in protein and low in carbs. Don't tell my wife, but after a long day

of Legal AF video recording and research, Magic Spoon has become my occasional midnight snack treat. Honey, we're out of Magic Spoon again, a common refrain in my household. Get $5 off your next order at magic spoon.com slash legal AF or look for magic spoon on Amazon or in your nearest grocery store. That's magic spoon.com slash legal AF for $5 off magic spoon. Hold on to the dream. Before our next sponsor, Laundry Sauce, I thought, well, I don't really have a choice other than ocean breeze or meadow spraying laundry detergent for my clothes. And let's be real guys, doing laundry, well, sucks. But what doesn't have to suck is your laundry detergent. That's why Laundry

Sauce has created the world's best smelling laundry pods. So your clothes don't have to smell like your grandmother's perfume anymore. Imagine stepping into a room smelling like Australian sandalwood. This rugged, warm, earthy scent is guaranteed to get you compliments with every hug. And warning, using laundry sauce will cause you to be known as the guy who always smells amazing.

And I hope that's okay with you. Don't stress about remembering to put on cologne because everything you run through the wash will now have a cologne quality scent. Each laundry sauce pot is highly concentrated with more advanced cleaning power than traditional liquid laundry detergents and is enriched with bioenzymes.

They don't just smell incredible, they tackle the toughest stains while also reviving fabrics. For a limited time only, our listeners get 20% off your entire order. When you use code LEGALAF20 at laundriesauce.com, that's 20% off your order at laundriesauce.com with promo code LEGALAF20.

It's time to get saucy. Laundry Sauce's jumbo-sized laundry pods are ultra-concentrated with more cleaning power per ounce than typical watered-down laundry detergents. They don't just smell incredible, they also tackle the toughest stains without harsh chemicals that degrade your fabrics.

Look, Laundry Sauce just launched their newest expertly crafted scent, Oregon Mint. The Oregon Mint is sourced ethically, sustainably, and transparently through Essex Mint Farms in Oregon. One of the largest mint farms on earth. Feel transported to an herb garden by the sea and have distinctly clean and refreshing laundry like never before with this one of the kind

limited release scent. Put your new luxury laundry obsession on autopilot and save an extra 15 to 20% off every order when you subscribe. Maybe the best part about Laundry Sauce, they offer a full money back guarantee if you don't get better smelling cleaner laundry, you get a full refund, no questions asked.

For a limited time, our listeners get 20% off your entire order when you use code LegalAF20 at LaundrySauce.com. That's 20% off your order at LaundrySauce.com with promo code LegalAF20. After you purchase, they're gonna ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show.

Tell them we sent you. Smell good, look good, feel good. Quit laundry sauce. Welcome back to the intersection with Michael Popock. I appreciate you being here as we build our audience for this new podcast here on the Midas Touch Network. Trump attacks. Let's dive into Trump attacks.

Earlier in the week, or late last week, we get word that there's been a falling out with Trump and Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society, which is shocking because the Federalist Society and all of its tentacles, and there's dozens of shadowy organizations run by Leonard Leo, who is one of the co-founders of the Federalist Society, runs it with a couple of billion dollars at at stake is the reason that we have such a right wing federal judiciary up to the United States Supreme Court. He worked hand in glove with Donald Trump,

who basically outsourced federal judges to him. And along with Mitch McConnell, got all these people involved, got all these people nominated and confirmed. Now, on the flip side of that, the real conservatives are at odds with MAGA and there's a falling out that's broken out in public. And real conservatives have attacked Donald Trump

and his latest decision, for instance, to put Emil Bove, his former criminal defense lawyer, into a plum appellate court position on the Third Circuit, which covers New Jersey and Pennsylvania. And they're not shy about it. They said he's unqualified, he's a political hack, and he has no place being on the court. That pissed off Donald Trump,

who went after Leonard Leo and the rest, and it broke out into the open. What does that mean? It means that MAGA is not monolithic and there are ways to defeat it. To continue the Star Wars theme, there's a way to destroy the Death Star. And using this division and this split,

this schism between MAGA and the Federalist Society is one way we can do it and exploit Star. And using this division and this split, this schism between MAGA and the Federalist Society is one way we can do it and exploit that. So now it looks like for the 45 or so judges that Biden couldn't fill that Trump is gonna be filling over the next several months, plus another couple of hundred before the Trump administration is over with senior status judges opening up new spots for Donald Trump to appoint federal

judges. It looks like this is going to be handled by Stephen Miller who's not a lawyer but plays one in the White House. He's the leading manipulator and consultant and advisor for Donald Trump in the White House. He came up with all of the immigration plan first time around putting kids in cages. Came up with the using the Alien Enemies Act, the deportation, the putting people in gulags, foreign gulags. That's all out of the fevered mind and the weird stew of Stephen Miller. So he's gonna be the one I'm sure with some other MAGA MAGA who are gonna be the one I'm sure with some other maga, maga who are gonna be providing advice if that's the right word to Donald Trump

about federal court appointees. And they're gonna be more extreme. They're gonna, there's gonna be litmus tests because Donald Trump has complained. We have new reporting internally that he's very disappointed with the Supreme Court because the ones that he put on are not adequately

protecting his policies. That's his view. So we have that attack. And the second attack is we have the attack on women by Donald Trump once again. Wasn't enough that he takes complete credit for getting Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett onto the court, finally getting the numbers

in order to defeat Roe versus Wade and rip away a constitutional right of a woman to choose. That wasn't enough. He and his groups want to make sure that even in the states where he said, well, we'll just leave it to the states, but they don't want to leave it to the states. They want to manipulate that playing field as well.

They want to go after state court justices, Supreme court justices at the state level. They want to try to state court justices, Supreme Court justices at the state level. They want to try to monkey around with the election process for those judges. You already had Elon Musk spend $20 million to try to buy a Supreme Court justice seat in Wisconsin. They tried to interfere in North Carolina with the North Carolina Supreme Court seat.

And so the fight is going on at the state level and the state constitution level, but that's not all. He's now Trump today announced that he's reversing the policy of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris that interpreted EMTALA, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which is the major bulwark that Biden used to protect women after the DAP's decision in 2023.

That EMTALA, according to Trump, in giving guidance to hospitals that have taken federal funds, that they will not be able, they should not consider using an abortion, even if the life of the mother is at risk. Let me let that land on the table. Donald Trump is paying off his debts to the Christian right and other anti-abortion groups by now reversing the guidance for EMTALA, putting doctors under the gun and under the sword of Damocles. If they decide under their Hippocratic oath

that they have to do no harm and they have to support women and make sure they don't die by giving them an abortion, they could be facing prosecution. They could be facing cutoff of federal funding. And this is because at the Supreme Court a year ago, almost today, they sent back to lower courts in Iowa and other places rather than make a decision about MTALA

and whether it is proper statutory guidance or not by the then president. That's still making its way up back to the United States Supreme Court about whether a woman has a right to expect that a doctor to save her life is going to give her abortion or not. And this was an orchestrated attack because Trump also knew that there was a phony Catholic group. I don't mean phony Catholics. I mean a group that's phony.

That was created just to bring a lawsuit. Catholic doctors bring a suit in the middle district of Tennessee, challenging the italic guidance of Biden. And as soon as the guidance changed under Trump, and as soon as the American Civil Liberties Union intervened in the case, right? Then they got what they wanted, they dismissed the case,

because they didn't want to risk making bad law, a bad law for them, I mean. And so it's unceasing, it's unending. So if you're a woman or a person like me who supports women and you can get right with the MAGA Republican continued assault on women to make them second class citizens in 22 states in this country, okay. Well, then you have to justify that at the time

that you go and vote at the polls. But if you can't abide that, then you know what to that at the time that you go and vote at the polls. But if you can abide that, then you know what to do with the midterm elections. We're talking about action here. What can you do? That's what you can do. Work on your mail-in registration now. So in states, including red states,

that you can make sure that you can vote the way you wanna vote. Do it now so you're not under the gun at the time of the election. Work on voter registration in your state so that we don't sit out the midterms. Midterms are usually low turnout affairs. Only the super voters vote.

And we don't want to, you know, if we're not motivated to win back the House and the Senate when it's up for grabs the midterms and do a referendum of a down thumb on Trump, of you know if we're not motivated to win back the House and the Senate when it's up for grabs the midterms and do a referendum of a down thumb on Trump at this midterm I don't know what will ever motivate us and of course that also sets up not only the return of checks and balance by giving the Democrats the Senate and the House which is looking good and looking at the polling because independents that got Donald Trump elected

are abandoning him with abandon, with reckless abandon, if that's the right phrase, that's gonna help. If we can't win this midterm, we should put ourselves out of business as a party and as an American Constitution Republic. So that we got bad attack on women and the attack on the Federalist Society that's broken out in plain sight.

Then we got the pardon scandal. We had Liz Oyer on a lawyer, Oyer, Oyer, lawyer in her social media, who I told her only half jokingly during our recent hot take that's up now on Legal AF, the YouTube channel. I could have gone my whole life without knowing who the pardon attorney was. It's an independent bipartisan position.

It's not supposed to be political. And it wasn't, especially when Liz was in that office. But she got canned for doing her job by the Trump administration. And she's now gone public, not in a political way, but to call out the corruption of the pardon process by Donald Trump. The problem is that one of the lessons

that Donald Trump learned from the immunity decision in the summer of 2023 is that he can do anything when it relates to pardons. He can sell pardons. There's no limit in the constitution at all. There's an unfettered right to clemency and pardon by a president. Even if he literally sold them at an auction

or took a bag of money in return. And he's not gonna be prosecuted for that either based on the immunity decision. And that's the lesson that Donald Trump learned. They can do whatever he wants. He's Superman when it comes to pardons. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't cover it. And that shouldn't mean we shouldn't be calling

for a constitutional amendment to limit that power. Cause you see what happens when a felon in chief gets control of that superpower. Here's just a tiny list compiled by Liz Weier and others about not the pardons per se, although I'll talk about them just in the recently in the last two months, three months, but in the amount of money owed to the American people that Donald Trump also

wiped out. It's one bill. It's over $1 billion with a B. That crazy $1 billion owed to the American people or the taxpayers was just wiped away by Donald Trump by giving these people part. It starts with Trevor Milton who owned a company called Nicola. Six hundred ninety five million dollars was owed back to the American people pursuant to a restitution order of a federal judge for fraud, securities fraud, and the like related to that company. And now because he was absolved by Donald Trump

and given a pardon, the restitution goes away too. That's $700 million right there. Then you got a company called Bitnex which ran a cryptocurrency platform, trading platform called Bitnex Crypto. And there they were ordered to pay a $100 million fine under violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, right? Nobody knew who was trading.

Nobody, they didn't know their customer. They didn't comply with any money laundering in the Patriot Act to make sure that foreign bad guys weren't using the cryptocurrency platform. And they were sanctioned as a result. Donald Trump wiped away that $100 million sanction. That would have went to the American taxpayer and to the general treasury.

How about Michelle Fiore, an elected official in Las Vegas, Nevada, who stole $70,000 from a charity that was supposed to go for a police memorial, and she used it for cosmetic surgery among other things. She got a get out of jail free card and so did the $70,000 that she owed in restitution related to that.

Paul Walczak, his mother, who was a healthcare executive who defrauded the company and his own employees to the tune of $4 million. His own mother went to Mar-a-Lago, paid a million dollars to get in the door, you know, that went to Donald Trump and his organizations and walked out with a pardon for her son and the wipeout of the $4 million that she owed. That's pretty good.

Paid a million dollars, wiped out $4 million worth of debt and got her son out of jail. Same thing with Nicola, Trevor Milton donated to Donald Trump and the hundreds of thousands of dollars and turned that into a $700 million savings. I haven't even gotten to the Chrisleys yet. Remember them growing up Chrisley, Chrisley knows best, all that other BS?

Well, before they became reality TV stars and all of the trappings of being super rich and super wealthy was all a sham, was all a fraud, was all a Potemkin village. They stole $30 million from banks in a bank swindle, in mortgage and loan fraud. Not anymore, because Savannah Chrisley gave a speech, and she's pretty, I guess, at the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump waved the magic wand, gave her parents a pardon,

and then wiped out the money they owed to the banks, the $30 million. Then you've got the Jan 6th Interactionists. If you add up all the fines there, they owed a million and a half to the American Treasury. Do the math, it's over a billion dollars. So we talk a lot about corruption and pardons, but talk about the money that Donald Trump just made disappear. Remember that while you're voting because his big beautiful budget is trying to cut a couple of trillion dollars out of Medicare,

Medicaid, and food programs for the impoverished. That's why even Elon Musk was like this is an abomination. I'm sure he had another word in mind. So that's the pardon scandal. You're here in case you just wandered in to Popak the intersection, a new podcast here on the Minus Touch Network. I appreciate you being in here as part of our audience. This is just another contribution,

but it's one that I can do sort of solo to cover all the topics that I want. I love doing my work with my co-anchors. I wouldn't trade it for the world. Ben Misalas on Saturdays on Legal AF, Karen Friedman at Nifilo on Wednesdays, and other work collaboratively that I do on the Legal AF YouTube channel.

But I do like to kind of like no holds barred, not blow and smoke or sunshine, Michael Popok version here on the intersection as well. Let's talk about federal courts and injunctions as we round out the intersection for this Tuesday. And there as I reported a couple of days ago, buried on the 500th page of a thousand page bill was this attempt, and it got past the House already, to benefit Donald Trump and all of his problems he's

having with courts, federal courts trying to hold his feet to the fire and try to stop his abuse of power. At the recording here, as of this live recording, Donald Trump has over 200 lawsuits against him, the Trump Organization, sorry, the Trump administration I mean, with more than almost 70 injunctions, preliminary injunctions, temporary restraining orders and the like, and of course Supreme Court rulings against him. way that the Supreme Court has been in the same way that the Supreme Court has been in the same way that the Supreme Court has been in the same way that the Supreme Court has been in the same way that the Supreme Court has been

in the same way that the Supreme Court has been in the same way that the Supreme Court has been in the same way that the Supreme Court has been in the same way that the Supreme Court has been in the same way that the Supreme Court has been in the same way that the Supreme Court has been in the same way that the Supreme Court has been in the same way that the Supreme Court has been Boesberg that was put on ice by an appellate court and then you've got right now as we speak Judge Zinnis in Maryland in the Abrego Garcia case

getting pretty close to finding the Trump administration in contempt for failing to either both advise her as ordered by the United States Supreme Court about what they're doing which is nothing to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia from the jails of El Salvador, and in violation of that order. Now, what this bill that's been passed in the House and gone off to the Senate, and is the subject of these cross-examination hearings

by the Democrats in the Senate and the Senate Judiciary Committee where the bill sits for now, is whether MAGA can benefit Donald Trump by making it harder for federal judges to find the Trump administration in contempt because they violated injunction if the injunction is not supported by a bond.

Let me break that down for you. In order to get an injunction, temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction, in normal situations when constitutional rights and presidential power is not at issue. If I was just a civil litigant, trying to get an injunction against another commercial entity,

I would likely have to post a bond. What's the bond for? It's supposed to be the amount, it is supposed to be the amount of calculated potential damages. If it turns out at the end of the case that the judge was wrong about issuing the injunction, what we call an improvidently issued injunction,

they're in to compensate that party for the damage they incurred for the year or more that the injunction was against them. And it could be a dollar, it could be a hundred million dollars or more, it depends on the injunction and how much money is at risk. That's in a normal civil case.

But judges have generally interpreted that when a party comes in, and it may be a party that doesn't have a lot of money, but has a very good argument about a constitutional violation by a branch of government, in this case, the president, they don't need to post a bond. You know, and that's consistent with state court practice,

which I practice as well, where you don't need to get a bond against a government. That is sort of standard play here in America. Donald Trump doesn't like that. So they figured out since Congress has a lot of intersection, to use the podcast title for today, with the federal courts in their article one position intersecting with the article three powers

of federal judges, how? They fund it, right? Because they're the purse Congress. So Congress funds the federal courts, that's one. Congress can change laws. Federal courts by and large, besides the constitution, interpret the laws made by Congress. That's the second way they intersect.

The third way they intersect is that the Congress can pass with guidance from judges, rules of civil procedure and criminal procedure. They can also react to Supreme Court decisions and pass laws to limit federal judges in certain areas. They create laws about class actions, the Congress does, about collective actions, about other things.

They can set statute of limitations that courts have to apply for when you can, the timing to bring a case, a federal case. They can do all that. What I don't believe that they can do is limit the ability of an Article III judge to issue an injunction. And then if that injunction doesn't have a bond,

this new bill would say, well, no bond? Well, then a violation of it doesn't matter and you can't get us in contempt. If a judge can't find a party in contempt for violating a contempt, sorry, for violating an injunction that is completely toothless. But you might as well get rid of injunctions.

Now it doesn't try to set the amount of the bond, but the fact that they're even interfering with the judge's ability to set a bond or not set a bond in order to support an injunction, which would be the basis for a violation in a contempt order is a violation of my view of the Article III powers of a judge and the separation of powers.

There are limits to what a Congress can do to tell a judge how to rule and how to set up his or her toolbox of remedies. Judges have inherent authority, even if there wasn't, that's the other thing that they're missing. Judges have inherent authority under other statutes to issue orders of contempt. We call it either, I call it contumacious conduct.

Sometimes you hear it as contemptuous conduct, but in law it's usually contumacious. Judges have inherent authority to regulate and administer their own courtrooms, even if there isn't a statute that says that, or a law that says that. And so I think they still have that power, because you can't have,

well, let's play this out in a thought experiment. You can't have like a Pam Bondi, or somebody from the Department of Justice like Todd Blanch sit in the back of the room and start heckling the judge, you know, oh no, I don't like that ruling, rule this way. You can't force their hand. They have to be independent.

You can't undermine the independence of the federal judiciary. And that's what I believe this does. And this has been hotly debated in the Senate, hotly debated in the Senate right through the time of this recording. Where I think it comes out is I think it gets struck from the bill in order for the Senate to approve it.

And then reconcile it with the House bill and then send it to Donald Trump, the big, beautiful bill that he's waiting on. I don't think he's going, if he gets resistance, which he's getting already and headwinds in the Senate, I don't think Donald Trump is going to walk away from any other aspect of his big, beautiful budget bill, just because of this.

He's not gonna let the tail back that dog, I don't think. But we'll cover it all right here. Look, you've come to the right place. I'm glad you're here for the, really the first episode of this reskinned podcast we're now calling the intersection. Many ways to support what we do as you already know, follow us on Legal AF, the YouTube channel,

a dozen or so hot takes every day with 12 different contributors. I do a lot of the work, but I curate the rest at the intersection of law and politics along with the Midas Touch Network. Legal AF, the YouTube channel, Legal AF, MTN. Come on over there, hit the subscribe button. Legal AF, the sub stack, yep.

You like all of our things we talk about at the intersection of law and politics, come over there. We've got written work, we've got videos, we've got ad-free versions of things. We've got the morning briefing by me called Morning AF. We got court filings, all, because we want to be the clearinghouse. We've got the morning briefing by me called Morning AF. We got court filings all, because we want to be the clearinghouse. We want to be one stop shopping for all things,

law and politics and legal AF. Substack helps us do that. And then of course we've got Legal AF, the podcast at the intersection of law and politics, Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern time, right here on the Midas Touch Network. So those are the ways to support us. I appreciate you being here.

And until my next hot take, until my next Legal AF midweek on Wednesday and Saturday with Ben Mycelis and all the work we do on Legal AF, the YouTube. I'm Michael Popok and I'm reporting. I'm Michael Popok and I got some big news for our audience. Most of you know me as the co-founder of Midas Touch's

Legal AF and the Legal AF YouTube channel, or as a 35-year national trial lawyer. Now building on what we started together on Legal AF, I've launched a new law firm, the Popak Firm, dedicated to obtaining justice through compassionate and zealous legal representation. At the Popak Firm, we are focused on obtaining justice for those who have been injured or damaged by a life altering event, by securing the highest dollar recoveries. I've been tirelessly fighting for justice

for the last 35 years. So my own law firm organically building on my legal AF work just feels right. And I've handpicked a team of top tier trial fighters and settlement experts throughout all 50 states known as Big Auto Injury Attorneys, who have the know-how to beat heartless insurance companies, corporations, government entities,

and their attorneys. Big Auto's attorneys working with my firm are rock stars in their respective states and collectively responsible for billions of dollars in recoveries. So if you were a loved one but on the wrong side of a catastrophic auto, motor vehicle, ride share, or truck accident, suffered a personal injury, or been the victim of medical malpractice, employment harassment, or discrimination, or suffered a violation of your civil and constitutional rights, then contact the Popak Firm today at 1-877-POPAK-AF or by visiting

my website at www.thepopakfirm.com and fill out a free case evaluation form. And if we determine that you have a case and you signed with us, we don't get paid unless you do. The Popak Firm, fighting for your justice every step of the way.