Legal AF by MeidasTouch - The Intersection with Michael Popok Full Episode - 8/26/2025

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

We are at war to protect democracy; to throw off the yokes of Trump’s dictatorship; to resist the occupation by Trump forces; and to reclaim our freedom. Popok is at the Intersection to outline the war and the resistance and discusses Trump’s major losses this week in federal court; and how Trump follows the dictators playbook to attack his enemies on bad news days for him. Fast Growing Trees :Head to https://www.fast-growing-trees.com/collections/sale?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=legalaf right now to get 15% off your entire order with code LegalAF! Ethos: Ethos: Get your FREE quote at https://ethos.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

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Light the path to a brighter future with stellar lenses for myopia control. Learn more at SLOR.com. And ask your family eye care professional for SLR Stellist lenses at your child's next visit. We are at war. We are at war with the Trump administration, with his dictator policies, with his attempt to occupy democratic cities and states, his raids of political opponents through the FBI, his going after the independence of the Federal Reserve Bank, he's trying to destabilize everything around him in order for him to be the strongman dictator. He said it out loud during his own pressers, where he mused. to try to groom America into accepting a dictatorship by saying, I don't think all Americans think dictatorship is bad.

We are at war. We're not just at war because Donald Trump is thinking about renaming the Department of Defense, the Department of War. I don't like defense. It sounds weak. We should go back to Department of War. We are at war. Well, you're on the intersection with Michael Popok on the Midas Dutch Network.

But on today's episode, we're at war. And I think the sooner we reorient our approach and reorganize our brain to that position of offense, not defense, and recognize that we are at war to save our democracy, the better off we're going to be. And things will fall into place a lot better for us. Let's start with what I've said on my substack live for legal AF, just the other. day, which I'm now developing more as my working theory, that Donald Trump is obviously grooming America for a number of things. Predators groom, and he is grooming America and trying to socialize things like dictatorship is okay. It's okay to use the D word. The D word for us is not

dictatorship, it's democracy, to have a president of the United States that occupies the Oval Office, who so casually throws around the term I'm not a dictator but I'd like to be or I'd be one on day one or this is you know there's some polling out there that shows not everybody's upset about dictatorships while he hosts in the Oval Office

the president of South Korea at the same time in front of the guy compliments the strong man dictator of North Korea and at the same time here's my working theory he's grooming America for a possible coup or takeover.

See, you have to take over that which you do not currently occupy. So a president, we don't normally talk about a president having to occupy anything because that person is by definition the most powerful person in the world and the leader of our democracy and the leader of the free world, generally. So he doesn't have to worry about taking over states. the states all pledge allegiance to our constitutional republic and the leader of that being the president of the United States. That's not the world that we find ourselves in with Donald Trump.

He has split the country right down the middle. Not quite down the middle. 23 blue states or so, 27 red. I'm not talking population now. I'm just talking headcount. And because the Democrats and the independence and the fair-minded people, occupy one sphere that he's not in. He sees it as a threat. And so his number one goal is to

destabilize the, not only democracy, but the Democrats brand, trying to move to a one-party system, which is a playbook page out of a playbook of dictatorship. And my working theory is that's the reason he needs to occupy with armed forces and our U.S. military states and cities. And I don't mean just any. I mean blue states and blue cities. It's occupation forces and threats of occupation forces, plain and simple. And he's being supported by what I refer to as the Red Army. The Red Army is the National Guard from Red States being sent in to reinforce Donald Trump's assault on liberty, assault on state's rights, assault on sovereignty of the states and the 10th Amendment.

That's what we're watching. DC and LA, a dress rehearsal. Dress rehearsal for a potential coup in the future. We are at war. And I don't say that either cavalierly or as if that's a bad thing. Because this war, this dispute has been brought to our shores by Donald Trump

and not the other way around. We didn't ask for it. But now that we're here, here, we need to fight our way through it. I mean, one of the things I teach or had taught lawyers that worked for me about how to practice law, I would tell them, we are not going to be the first litigation team or the first side to drag a case into the gutter or the sewer. But by God, if we are dragged into the sewer or to the gutter, we are going to brass

knuckle our way out. we're at the brass knuckle our way out moment everybody uh you've got occupation forces in dc reinforced in l a threat against chicago a threat against philadelphia four major cities are run by black americans they are under assault it's a war he's he he he donald trump is not like going after the democratic brand but he's going after the democratic leadership it's icons its idols and a fair amount of black leadership and black female leadership. Does anybody think it's a shock that he's opened up federal probes as the chief law enforcement officer against Letitia James, the black New York Attorney General, who took him down a number

of times, including for civil fraud, or that he's going after Lisa Cook now. I'll talk about that in the next segment. The Federal Reserve Governor, who has her chair until 2038, also black, or Mayor Bauer Bowser in D.C., also black, the Atlanta mayor, black, Chicago, black, Los Angeles, black. And as I just outlined, many of them women. Which is, hopefully is a wake-up call for that particular community who doubled their turnout for Donald Trump. I mean, I'm not blaming anybody. There's many reasons that Cabal Harris did not win that election.

We could do a whole show on it. We could do a whole seminar on it. But it didn't help that the black vote went 8% to 16% in favor of Donald Trump. I hope now seeing the attacks on these communities of color by Donald Trump, by his occupying forces and otherwise, will be that wake-up call, which will help us at the midterms. So you have the working theory that we are at war, that Donald Trump is trying through occupation forces

reinforced by the Red Army of the National Guard of Red States doing a test run in Democratic strongholds that he's aimed at Chicago next on the list as a test case, as a dress rehearsal. It's a dry run to see how much in terms of authoritarian abuse and how much of America he can put under his heat, before he is stopped. We are at war. And again, I don't say that to be, to make you feel bad, to make you feel like we're the victims. This is a war we can win, but this is a war we have to win.

And I don't mean by taking up arms. I'm not, I'm not talking about a Second Amendment solution. I'm talking about at the ballot box, in the streets, in the marketplace of ideas, in the public square in our resistance in every way, shape, or form. We shall overcome this administration, but we have to do it working together. The socializing of dictatorship

and normalizing of it has to stop as well. Mainstream media plays right into Donald Trump's hands because in the middle of this long news feed, You just see, you know, that CNN or MSNBC or any of our competitors, I guess they're called. They'll, you know, it'll be like, well, this happened and this happened and this happened. And Donald Trump said a lot of Americans are okay with dictatorship and this happened and this happened. Like, stop, can we go back a few? That's how you report it.

So they leave it to us on Legal A.F and I might as touch to say our hair is on fire. say that we are at war, and these were declarations of war by Donald Trump. I'm not saying he's a dictator, although I am, but I am saying that other dictators thinks he's a dictator. That's why Donald Trump's closest relationships are not with Europe, not with our allies, not with the president of Europe, as Donald Trump likes to call the head of the EU. It's with dictatorships.

It's the Orbanes of the world. it's the North Koreans of the world it's the China of the world and the Russia of the world I mean could he have boot licked Putin any harder during his last stop here

in the United States from the military being forced to the U.S. military being forced to bend to the knee in front of Putin as Donald Trump like a four-year-old applauded apologies to four-year-olds applauded for his enemy, his adversary, before a big meeting. Okay.

You know, what did Trump think? He was going to PowerPoint Putin to death? Is that how that was going to work? He was going to kiss his ass enough that Putin would say, okay, I'll stop bombing. I mean, a couple of days after the meeting, Putin bombed an American interest in Ukraine. Also, on the way into Alaska, killed 11 Ukrainians in a bombing in Kiev, including a child. That's who we're dealing with.

We're now two weeks out from the big meeting with Zelensky in the White House. Everybody, kumbaya, we're going to, where is it? Where's the ceasefire? There's no ceasefire. Where's the peace deal? There's no peace deal. As Donald Trump muses about being put on Mount Rushmore.

Not kidding. By the way, that's never happening. I know we're at war, but that's not one of it. That's not happening. Chisel his features. his fat, jolly face into Mount Rushmore, not happening, not happening. But he muses about it, you know, among other weird, weird ticks that Donald Trump has developed over the years that he says out loud. So we then watch, my other working theory as I move down the chain here, is that Donald Trump has on his shelf a whole bunch of things that he wants to release, but only at the right moment.

If he loses something big during the day, by the afternoon, he will take that thing off the shelf, and he will announce it. So when he loses a Brago-Garcia's hearing, we'll talk about that, and is forced to keep Abrago Garcia in America so that the case, Judge Zinnis, can conduct a petition for rid of habeas corpus hearing, and that's seen as a big loser, and he gets bad press about saying that Americans, Americans are okay with dictatorship and complimenting dictators in front of the South Korean President all in the same day while he's hugging and almost French kissing the World Cup, the solid gold World Cup. Again, you know, this is a weird stew of a brain and that's putting it mildly. What does he do in the late afternoon? He drops the bomb on firing Lisa Cook, Federal Reserve, even though he can't do it the way he can't, certainly can't do it the way he's trying to do it.

and that sucks the air out of the room on all the bad media reporting and the rest of it is a full frontal assault on the independence of the Federal Reserve. But he times these things. You watch it. If a bad news cycle hurts him, you know, he'll try to change the news cycle with something on his shelf, his bag of dirty tricks. It's just a bag filled with monkey wrenches. He just pulls another monkey wrench out and throws it.

That's all. It's all he's got. The Galane Maxwell release of the recordings of her interview is another prime example of my other working theory that Donald Trump times the release of new information or new executive orders or new lawsuits or new federal probes to step on stories that are bad for him. Galane Maxwell gave that interview more than three weeks ago to Todd Blanche, you know, about the Epstein child sex trafficking crimes. I won't go over the details. We did it on legal AF this past Saturday, and I've done it in Substack Live. I encourage you to come over to Legal AF Substack Live as

well. Great way to support what we're doing on Legal AF. We have about 80,000 people there now in less than a couple of months. And I'm doing these lives, sort of like this, but I can do it at the minute, at the moment, at the market, pull everybody together, do a huddle, get two, three thousand, thousand people together and we talk about an issue and then I put the video up for everybody to see during the day I'm doing that two to three times a day a day and and bringing on guests as well and we did a good I think an analysis of having read the 300 pages of what it showed so I won't bore you the details here other than to say what's 300 pages long and filled with crap and that would

be the the Galane Maxwell lies upon lies upon lies and denials upon denials. Not only does she not take responsibility for what she did. She said there was nothing to take responsibility for. Nothing happened. So how do you explain the thousands of victims, including that were girls that were raped at the time by you and Epstein? How do you explain their existence?

You can't. It's a inconvenient fact that she can't explain away. And, but that transcript was available the night of, I do this for a living. the court reporter will turn that over to you the night of that was three weeks ago they just dropped it two days ago yeah they dropped it two days ago because they didn't like what was coming out of the oversight committee in congress and bad news reports there against the trump administration with them going after the epstein files in the department of justice and the hearings and all of that and they needed a step on that story hence galane maxwell's transcript gets gets announced so we're at war and the that we're going to win this war is to be together in community, in fellowship, because only together will we be able to defeat the Trump administration and overcome the Trump administration. It's the only way.

And Trump knows that. And that's why he tries to tear us apart and put each of us at each other's throats in America because he needs a seething cauldron of people upset with. there are neighbors in order to succeed as president. He's not the great unifier. He's the great divider. His entire power grab and power network is based on division and the frision that's created by that and the energy that is created by that, right?

The heat that, no light, but heat that is created by that. He needs it to fuel his dictatorial. dictator-like conduct, plain and simple. We are at war. We're going to talk about his striking out against the Federal Reserve in a way that even shocked Wall Street. They thought he got off the kick of trying to get rid of Jay Powell. They didn't realize he was going to go after Lisa Cook and try to get rid of her and try to fire her and cause another constitutional crisis. And the markets responded. I'm going to cover that. The Abrago-Garcia developments, which are all bad for Donald Trump.

A couple of other orders that we just got out, including kind of concerning Abrago-Garcia, two more losses for the Trump administration, this time by a Trump-appointed judge and a Republican-appointed judge. I'll do all that when we come back from our first break, but let me just say this before we take the break. It's just an honor to be here with you on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. on the Midas-Touch Network on the show called The Intersection. I can't think of a finer group of people for me to spend my time with, to do my work for. I was out today for lunch, got a lunch break, went to a restaurant, local restaurant, and one of the managers there kept kind of looking over at me. I kept looking over at him, smiling.

I thought he was just welcoming like a guest. Came over, he said, are you that guy that does that commentary on YouTube? I said, I am. And then he just had this warm embrace, warm handshake. He said, keep it up, man. keep up what you do. And that fuels, in our audience, fuels what we do. I mean, from the time that the brothers get up and I get up, Katie Fang, we all get up in the morning, you know, say goodbye to our families, brush our teeth, start our day. All we're thinking about is the war and defending our

democracy and putting and being the first responders with you into the burning building of our democracy and to save it from Donald Trump. That's all literally I think about all day. And this gentleman was a Canadian of Jamaican descent living in this country for years and is scared. I can see it in his eyes. And I appreciate it. I understand it. But we got to do this together. And the way to support us is let's keep the intersection moving up the charts, leave a comment here, pass this along to other people, ask them to watch it for views on YouTube. Then we're on audio. Yeah, some people don't know that. We're on audio podcast platforms. Just plug in the intersection. boom, and my smiling, where's that come from?

My smiling face will pop up and download that. We could use more download love, as they say in the business. And then we've got a couple of different ways to consume and join and become a part of our audience for Legal A.F, which is where I do my day job. And LegalAF, the YouTube channel is growing by leaps and bounds. We're going to hit a million before the new year. We've only been around for less than a year. But you come over there. Hit the subscribe button, 12 amazing contributors, 10 videos a day, all about law and politics.

And now more than ever, that's the break the glass place to be, right? And then we've got this new thing. We started, I don't say it's not a new thing to us, but it's called Substack. And we're on LegalAF Substack. And we've only been there for two months. We've already got, we're pushing 100,000 subscribers now on that. I figured out where the live plus button was and I'm hitting that live plus button

two, three times a day and doing a huddle with two or three thousand people without any notice. I mean, I'm trying to keep them around 11 o'clock, maybe 8 or 9 o'clock at night, 11 o'clock in the morning kind of thing, Eastern time. But it's just so immediate.

There's such an energy about bringing the audience together on LegalAF Substack. We've got other content up there as well. No doubt. But the lives, man, I'm living in the lives right now. And that's where, that's headquarters. That's HQ for the war, the war to save our democracy.

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the case about Donald Trump. Did you hear the one about Donald Trump suing all 12? federal judges in Maryland to disqualify them because he didn't like the chief judge's rule that he had to keep human beings in America for 48 hours and not send them to the torture prisons abroad while a federal judge provided oversight over whether due process was being properly preserved. Did you hear that one? Well, we've got the ruling. Donald Trump had a number of ways to challenge the chief judge of Maryland's decision. I call it the Abrago-Garcia rule. to require that of a writ of habeas corpus petition is filed, to get somebody sprung from jail or incarceration,

and bring them before a federal judge to make sure due process and habeas corpus rights were being preserved. There's a reason that the judge entered a local rule for all judges in Maryland. First of all, Judge Zinnis sits in Maryland. She was already handling the Abrago-Garcia case, where he got set illegally to El Salvador door where upon arrival he was tortured and then took months to bring him back and even then

brought back in a manufactured indictment in Tennessee for human trafficking and thrown back into another hole. So a pardon me if the chief judge looked at that and said, well, I don't want that to happen again with this Trump administration. So he already had a Brago Garcia. He also obviously had eyes and ears and could read and saw that in the case involving Judge Bosberg in D.C., 200 people not named Abrago Garcia, were sent to El Salvador without any due process rights at all. So he said, taking a page from the appeals court, how about this? How about nobody goes anywhere for the first 48 hours while a federal judge determines whether the writ of habeas corpus petition is properly filed, has merit, makes a decision about due process.

How about that? And Donald Trump didn't want that. No, no, no. Donald Trump doesn't want that on a hot take. I did about this a couple, uh, earlier today. I used my Willie Wonka, Varuka salt voice. No! Daddy wants it now! They must be removed immediately. No due process. How was that? So, you see I'm a frustrated actor. So, uh, Donald Trump, if he didn't like that local rule in federal court issued by a federal judge, a chief judge, there's a way around it. In the fourth circuit,

which sits over Maryland, you file an objection with the counsel of the judicial counsel for the Fourth Circuit, and they can strike it under a statute. They can strike a local rule if it somehow violates like immigration law or some other law. He doesn't do that. He files a motion, a complaint, and a petition to disqualify the entirety of the 12 members of the federal bench in Maryland. Okay. Once you do that, those 12 members can't hear your case because you're challenging them, including Judge Zinnis. So the Fourth Circuit Chief Judge sends the case to Virginia, and it ends up in the lap of Judge Cullen.

You could say he drew this short straw, but he is a Trump appointee from the first term. But I knew this was not going to go well for the Trump administration, because at the oral argument, Colin was like, this sounds like lawlessness. This sounds like a constitutional catch-me if you can. How can you possibly, if you don't like the rule, how can you possibly suit or disqualify all 12 members of the bench? It's just not the right way to do it.

And now we got the ruling. And Judge Cullen said point blank A, because he could have just said, petition dismissed. You know, two lines be done with it. No, no. He spent 39 pages excoriating the Trump administration in a scorching opinion. but very diplomatic. I mean, you know, he's a good writer. He's more of a country club Republican than a MAGA, the way I'm reading it.

But he dropped a footnote early on and he said, this is an administration that has unfortunately and wrongfully gone after and attacked members of the federal judiciary, creating an interbranch, you know, the three branches, interbranch conflict and crisis that's unnecessary. He's called, and then he listed it. He's called federal judges, leftists, liberals, criminals, Marxists, and the rest, and then he said, and worse. He also quoted Harvey Wilkerson, the judge from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals,

who's very well respected in Republican circles, as saying we can't have, while some friction and tension between the branches is one thing, but we can't have out-and-out war, here we go, there's that theme for me today, out-and-out warfare, waged by the executive branch against the judicial branch.

And so the judge dismissed the petition. And in doing so, he also said, and you want me to, you want me to dismiss this petition, Trump, effectively. Because if you don't, it's going to open the door to depositions being taken against your Department of Justice,

Pam Bondi, against Christy Nome, Homeland Security, and all the emails, and all the information in letter-writing, correspondence between everybody and your executive branch is going to come flying out and we're going to have a fight over privilege. But is that what you want? If you don't like the rule, the judge reminded them, then take it up with the Fourth Circuit Judicial Council. That's your path.

And if you don't like this ruling, the judge says you can appeal it. But I am dismissing your case. Now, by the way, in the meantime, the judges have been ruling and presiding over Trump cases. in Maryland. It hasn't affected that. But if this judge had ruled, oh, you're all disqualified, then we'd have to bring in judges from Virginia and other places in the Fourth Circuit to handle these matters. And that would be a disaster. But that's not going to happen because this judge, sitting by designation in Maryland, has just made that ruling. Now, Trump's made the appeal already. Who cares? I said he's going to take an appeal. It'll be, it'll go up to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

no friend of Donald Trump, they'll make their ruling, and if he doesn't like it, he can try to take it to the U.S. Supreme Court about whether over a rule, which I am sure that the majority on even this Supreme Court, is going to find it completely appropriate to keep people here in America and not deported and removed away from federal jurisdiction and oversight. And it's very similar, what we just watched with this judge from Virginia's presiding over a Maryland case, very similar to what just happened with Alina Haba. up on that, right? Alina Haba gets a bad ruling, as does the Trump administration, by a judge, Judge Brand from the Middle District of Pennsylvania sitting by designation in New Jersey because a

criminal defendant brought a motion to disqualify Alina Haba because she wasn't constitutionally and she was unlawfully appointed to the job of U.S. attorney through a backdoor process that violates the Federal Vacancy Act and violates the Constitution. and the separation of powers and the role of the Senate to confirm a U.S. attorney. And so Judge Brand said, yeah, it's unlegal, it's unlawful. Now, he's sitting by designation

because 21 judges in New Jersey, one of the biggest districts, had to disqualify themselves because they all voted in unison against Alina Haba getting an extension of time to be the U.S. attorney there. And now she's on her media tour. Has anybody caught that?

You know, on Hannity, on this right-wing podcast, on this one. Oh, Donald Trump won and everybody else lost and I've got his full support and it's a liberal activist judge and Corey Booker and Senator Booker and Kim never even met me and yet they're blocking my nomination and all this other, you know, whining. It's just when did, when did Maga and Trump become such, and Republicans become such whiners? They're intolerable and sufferable to listen to. Really, they are. But we are at war. But we are, these are the battles that were winning, which is why I wanted to bring it to your attention.

So that's Judge Cullen and about the Maryland case, Judge Brand, about the Alina Haba case. And then we also got a great ruling out of Judge Zinnis in the Abrago-Garcia case. Just popped out, really, literally just popped out off of Friday and into today. and actually off of Monday afternoon. So Abrago Garcia swept off the streets

illegally without due process sent to El Salvador where he's tortured. These are all indisputable facts. He is ordered to return by Judge Zinnis, the Trump administration, to bring him back since he had an order of non-removal related to El Salvador.

Trump administration ignores it, lies to federal judges like Zinnis, keeps him in the jails of El Salvador where he's tortured, and the Supreme Court rules for Judge Zinnis 9-0, as does the two Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals panels. They finally bring him back, but not because of those orders. They're defiant. They bring him back a few months later to Tennessee because they've manufactured charges there

on a criminal indictment. The criminal indictment is so weak that a federal magistrate judge, Judge Holmes, on Friday releases him from pretrial detention. There's a separate motion to dismiss permanently the indictment for prosecutorial misconduct, including vindictive prosecution. And they added, as grounds for vindictive prosecution, that the Trump administration is trying to extort Abrago Garcia and his lawyers. They said, don't, you got to release order from Judge Holmes, but stay in. Hear me out. Here's our deal. I'm sure the lawyers, and I know one of them, Sean Hacker, was like, okay, we're all here. What's the, what's the, what's the proposal? The plea deal.

All right, he'll plead guilty to the two counts that are in the indictment. You mean the, I'll just do my own narrative. You mean the indictment that we have a motion to dismiss for vindictive prosecution that's pending with Judge Crenshaw? Yeah, that one. Okay. So we plead guilty to that. And then what? We send you to Costa Rica. We send your client to Costa Rica. they're like no how about we go through a process we fight the charges in tennessee we fight the removal process and we see where we end up then and they said fine then you're going to uganda i'm not making this up this is the perverse depraved nation that we're that with Donald trump is leading that we're at war with we're at war with the trump-led united states i guess that's the way to say it so it ends up in

front of Judge Zinnis because, no shock, when he went to, they called him in for an interview on Monday at ICE in Baltimore, and they took him, and they whisked them away into custody. But the lawyers were ready for it. They knew it was a ruse. And so they filed a new petition for writ of habeas corpus. See, we are at war. We're using writs of habeas corpus. In front of Judge Zinnis, who held an emergency hearing, and she issued the following order.

And I'm barely paraphrasing. You, the Department of Justice, you, the United States of America, you are absolutely forbidden to remove him, Arbrego Garcia, from the United States while I'm working out the petition for rid of habeas corpus and the briefing and the hearing and the evidentiary hearing around that. Do you understand that? And Drew Ensign, who's notorious for lying to Judge Zinnis said, yes, it takes a while to send somebody to Uganda, Your Honor, or some version like that. poppingly bad comment. She said, well, I don't know about all that. But I'm troubled by what appears to be the evidence that the United States is trying to get him to forfeit his constitutional rights in exchange for pleading guilty, or you'll send him to Uganda.

That's not a trade that you're allowed to make. That abuses our constitutional system. So she's already kind of laid it out where she's going to end up on this particular thing. In the meantime, he's in a, Urbago Garcia is in a very. Virginia Detention Center, well-crafted by his lawyers. He got to have a few minutes to address his supporters, which is now most of America, came off as a very honorable, a well-spoken person for what it's worth, and then was whisked the way into custody. So we're going to continue to follow in the briefing schedule that is going to be laid out over the next week or two,

and what is the final result related to all of that in the Abrago-Garcia case? And then finally, another loss for the Trump administration brought to you by, sounds like an ad campaign, brought to you by Democracy Forward. I love Democracy Forward. Come over to Legal A.F. Substac. You'll find them on a playlist. That's the public interest group law firm that brings lawsuits against Donald Trump. She has Sky Perryman founded it.

Her group has 80 lawsuits against the Trump administration. 80 and they're all doing great. And we just got a ruling from Judge Ross Lampert, who's also a Republican appointed judge in D.C., where he's about this close to finding the Trump administration and Carrie Lake in contempt and holding a contempt trial over the voice of America. Remember voice of America? Yeah, they tried to mothball it, take it in the back and shoot it. That's the way that we promoted our brand of democracy around the world. There were many ways we did that, all eliminated by Donald Trump. U.S. aid, U.S.A.I.D. $50 billion. Give it to people. Say, hey, this is, this is a democracy great? Here, use this for your water treatment plant. Use this for your

sewer system. Use this, you know, for your roads and bridges. Think of America. We got rid of that. Now it's China built, Russia built, because we've left a power vacuum, and they've stepped into it. So that was USA. That was an extension of the State Department. and humanitarian aid. And then we used media, you know, no crap, newspapers and old school media and online media to promote American values so that people understood and would turn themselves towards our democracy and understood our brand of democracy and not the propaganda being promoted by our adversaries.

It was a counterweight to the propaganda machine of the North Koreans, the Iranians, the Russians and the Chinese, and Donald Trump got rid of it. But Ross Lampert argued and issued an order in April that voice of America be reinstituted, along with a bunch of other voices of America in different places, including refunded, give the funding back, get the people back, have a plan to get it up and running again. But it hasn't been running again. We're in August. So after getting a report from the plaintiffs, Lamp Berth called Carrie Lake and her lawyers on the carpet and said, here's a long list of things I want answered on an order to show cause right now.

What have you done to comply with the preliminary injunction? How have you restarted Voice of America? How have you refunded it? How have you made it a viable news source again? Tell me all of that. And they did. And the judge took a look at it and said, this is crap. This is not answering my question.

So we're going to try one more time. This is the judge in his order. We're going to try one more time. You, Carrie Lake and two others, sit for deposition by the 17th of or the 15th of September. These are seven hour long questions and answers under oath. And when you're done, I'll take a look at the transcript. And we'll see if you're in compliance or not. But this is the last stop before a contempt trial.

See, Donald Trump loses 90% of the time in these kind of courts. And these appeals that he take, like the one I just talked about, the one about disqualifying all the federal judges are ridiculous. But he's got to act tough. So this is what he does. But remember, we are at war. And so your whole aspect and your whole approach to defending this democracy

and this Constitutional Republic with us has to change. It has to change now. And we'll continue to do it right here on the intersection every Tuesday night at 8 p.m. Join me on all things LegalAF. I co-founded the podcast, LegalAF, the podcast. That's on the Midas Touch Network.

I co-founded and curate the LegalAF YouTube channel. That's its own independent thing. I do it in collaboration with Midas Touch. Ten new videos a day. Join us there. And then we've got the Legal AF Substack. Legal AF Substack is in a community where I can do instant live reporting, instant interviews, along with other written commentary and approaches.

I think you're really going to enjoy what we've built on LegalAF Substack. Come join us and find out. So until my next report, until my next report, until my next intersection, download it, five-star review, leave a comment, all that great stuff. This is Michael Popak 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 A-F and the LegalAF YouTube channel, or as a 35-year national trial lawyer.

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