Legal AF by MeidasTouch - The Intersection with Michael Popok Full Episode - 9/23/2025

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

Trump’s press secretary accidentally admits that Trump’s Border Czar took a $50,000 cash bribe; Trump overplays his hand and makes Kimmel a martyr for first amendment rights instead of Kirk; the Wall Street Journal tells a federal judge that Trump is too vulgar to be defamed, as Trump eyes a way to settle his defamation case with the WSJ by letting Murdoch buy part of Tik Tok; AG Pam Bondi takes a victory lap for a prosecution she was not responsible for as a jury convicts Trump’s would be assassin — a person so insane that he told the judge that he wanted resolve the prosecution by having Trump play a golf match to the death in front of half naked women; and Trump has a Global Meltdown at the UN, while admitting that he cannot control or defeat Putin.  Join Michael Popok at The Intersection podcast for his latest reporting and commentary.   OneSkin: Get started today at https://OneSkin.co and receive 15% Off using code: LEGALAF Check out The Popok Firm at: https://thepopokfirm.com Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@LegalAFMTN?sub_confirmation=1 Legal AF Substack: https://substack.com/@legalaf Follow Legal AF on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/legalafmtn.bsky.social Follow Michael Popok on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mspopok.bsky.social Subscribe to the Legal AF by MeidasTouch podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/legal-af-by-meidastouch/id1580828595 Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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not because they're in favor of supporting the First Amendment or freedom of the press, not after they crumbled instead of protecting the journalist George Stephanopoul, not after what they just did to Jimmy Kimmel. No. it's because content providers and actors and actresses and producers and content writers and agents in Hollywood all said Disney you're going to be a pariah no one's going to come to ABC and Disney we're not going to take our shows to you we're not going to take our talent to you and then we the people did what we did on the consumer side we said we're not going to Disney World or Disneyland this year we're not buying your products we're not we're not watching your who

Lou. And then they woke up as a, huh, maybe what he said about Charlie Kirk wasn't so bad. Maybe we should have supported it. Now, the real test tonight and in the future is if Jimmy Kimmel, and I doubt this, but if Jimmy Kimmel has agreed in any way, shape, or form to be filtered, to be censored, that's what we have to keep an eye on. Not just the return of Jimmy Kimmel, right? But what it means beyond that. Because Jimmy Kimmel is no longer just Jimmy Kimmel. He is now a, a symbol, a symbol for the rest of us about our opposition to Donald Trump and the Trump administration and his attempts to crush free speech and political debate and public dissent and the Democratic Party. So Charlie Kirk and Jimmy Kimmel, yes, will forever be linked together in history. Whenever you talk about Charlie Kirk and his death and the week after it, you always have to now talk about Jimmy Kimmel, but it's not just about Jimmy Kimmel. It's about who stood up for Jimmy Kimball, right? Who protected Jimmy Kimball?

How he handled himself. And those that didn't, the deafening silence of certain segments of our society in support of Jimmy Kimmel, you know? Where were all the other major comedians? Where was Lorne Michael's Saturday Night Live Troop talking about political dissent? You see how institutionalized that group has become.

Where would the rest? I know where 400 actors were because they signed a letter that was prepared by the ACLU. And that was yet another thing, another weight on the scale on top of ABC, Disney, to make their ultimate decision.

It's all about the bottom line. They're not the bastions of the freedom of the press. But I'm glad I'm here tonight. Jimmy Kimmel's here tonight. A sweet and happy New Year La Shana Tova. to those in my audience who observe.

Let's get to it. On the Kimball's side, you had the other late-night host all joining together to support Jimmy Kimball's return. We've always needed court gestures. We've always needed political pundits. We've always needed people in our society who are willing with humor, with sarcasm,

with parody to take on and use as foils our political leaders. And everybody's short of a dictator would laugh at the criticism or laugh off the criticism. They represent a segment of our society where free speech

is one of the most important freedoms that we have. We have freedoms in this country. And free speech being, I don't want to, no pun intended, first among them. If you take away free speech, but you had everything else in America, would you be okay? If we took away your free speech starting now, would you be okay with all the other rights and freedoms filtered through the Trump administration

that are on display? Yes or no, leave me the comment. I'll give you my answer. The answer is no. Without free speech, we have nothing else in this country. now we have moving into the intersection here and I appreciate you being here we had a tremendous audience last week over 400,000 people watched the podcast and 100,000 more have downloaded it and and this is a compliment to you. I want to do it right up here up front we got a lot to look forward to for

the new year but the intersection this show cracked back into the top 100 of all YouTube podcasts I think we hit number 75, that's all you. I mean, I'm doing my side. I'm doing my side of the glass. But without you, that's it. There is nothing else. Now let's turn to, we have yet another scandal in the Trump administration

involving the Department of Justice and the FBI. You know, I've joked, but it's becoming reality that if the Kennedy administration and JFK was referred to as Camelot, this is scamelot or scandal a lot. I mean, one scandal doesn't even die down before the next scandal starts. We're still doing the Epstein scandal. And the fact-finding around that and getting to the bottom of what happened there and Donald Trump's cover up of a child sex trafficking ring, that hasn't died down.

Although Donald Trump, of course, tried to use in a disgusting fashion, tried to exploit the death of Charlie Kirk for his political benefit to try to cover up for what was. was going on with the Epstein scandal. And the fact that his followers, I'm talking about Trump's and MAGA, allow him to do that and don't see the unseemly, the obscenely exploitation of one of their fallen idol's deaths to help out Donald Trump. I just don't get it. I don't get it. But we got a new scandal involving that warm and cuddly, Wilford Brimley-esque Tom

Holman. You know Tom Holman, the borders are, the guy that wants to crush the souls of families, put children, including American children in cages? Yeah, that guy. Tom Holman, how do I put this? Got caught in a bribery scandal where he took $50,000 in a paper bag at a restaurant when he met with people he thought were federal contractors, but were really under cover FBI agents. There, I put it. I said it. And it's on video. And you might be thinking, how is he still in office?

Well, let me tell you this. Gather around. Let me tell you the story. So Tom Holman in September of 2024, before Donald Trump got elected again, was the subject of a sting operation being operated by the FBI. Chris Ray's FBI, Merrick Garland's FBI. Not because he was the target of the investigation as some sort of weaponization of somebody who, what, Biden knew was going to become border czar

three months later, but because the true target of the investigation about bribery and public corruption dropped a dime on Tom Holman. Turned on time homin. Classic case of what aboutism. Sure, you've caught me. me in this. But what about Tom Homan? They were like, what about Tom Homan? Well, he's asking for

bribe money in order to funnel and redirect federal contracts to federal contractors. He is, let's do a sting operation. So they got the authority to do it. Careful not to entrap Tom Homan. They visited with him at a restaurant. I think it was Kava, for those that like the Kava chain. And during the course of the video and audio taped undercover operation, Tom Homan said, in effect, if you give me $50,000, I'll make sure contracts go your way. I'll keep it in my escrow or in my trust account as if that was going to make it any better. I'll hold it there in case we don't get elected. And then I'll hold it until the end of the term so that you can see the fruits of my

labor. Words to that effect. As if holding it in your bank account made it better. Now, here are the facts confirmed by six different corroborating witnesses. The Sting operation used federal tax dollars masquerading as bribe funds of $50,000 and handed it in this meeting in a paper bag from Kava to Tom Holman, who took it home, who to this day still has it. the White House denies it. Let's play Carolyn LeVette, the press secretary, and talk about how she's denying it, but then not really denying it. Watch the clip and see if you can tell what I'm talking about. Thanks, Caroline. So to the woman investigation, I mean, can you just speak to, did the

president ask the Justice Department to close the case? And does Homer have to return the $50,000? Well, Mr. Holman never took the $50,000 that you're referring to. So you should get your fact straight, number one. number two, this was another example of the weaponization of the Biden Department of Justice against one of President Trump's strongest and most vocal supporters in the midst of a presidential campaign. You had FBI agents going undercover to try and entrap one of the president's top allies and supporters, someone who they knew very well would be taking a government position months later. He both did not commit any crime, doesn't have the $50,000, and yet he was entrapped.

Come on, Carolyn, you can do better than that. The reality is she can't do better than that because there is a video, or at least there's one that's been reported by MSNBC. So what happened next? You may be asking. Yes, it blew up in their face after Tom Holman said, bullshit.

And Megan Kelly wrote, we don't care, even if he took the money. And Carol LeVette admitted sort of that he took the money, but he doesn't have the money. then we have what happened today yesterday simultaneously to democratic organizations well democratic leaders in the house led by jamie raskin and jasmine crockett and representative moskowitz and representative goldman made a demand on the trump doj and the fbi you know that that comedy that comedy team the comedy stylings of pam bondi and kent cash patel about all right it's been reporting that there is a bag of money turned over to Tom Holman before he became Borders'ar and that he kept it. Is that true or not? Or as the letter from the House of Representatives Committee of the Judiciary, Ranking Democrats put it, I love the start of this.

Dear Attorney General Bondi and Director Patel, do the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation have a video and audio recording of White House Borders'ar, Tom Homan, $50,000 in cash bribes from undercover FBI agents stuffed into a brown paper takeout bag from the restaurant chain Kava. That sounds very specific. It certainly sounds like you do, the letter says, and we demand it, along with all of the documents and communications about the decision by the Trump Department of Justice to shut down the investigation, kill the grand jury that was operating in the Western District of Texas,

and shut down this investigation. and apparently let Tom Homan keep the money. Note to Tom Homan. Where's the $50,000? Did you declare it on your tax return? I think the guy committed, based on this reporting, committed tax fraud, conspiracy, procurement fraud, and bribery.

All federal crimes, by the way. And according to the reporting, and according to what the House Democrats have written, Emil Bovey, he's back like a bad penny, who had been one of Donald Trump's favorite criminal defense lawyers, he shut it down when he was the acting interim U.S. Attorney General. He said he looked at it, oh, another weaponization of the Department of Justice. Weaponization of the Department of Justice,

I have another word for that, a bribery sting operation where the guy took the bag of money. That's the weaponization. No, I think Carolyn LeVec got it right because they'll never prove entrapment, but he took the money. There's no broom big enough. There's no rug high enough that will allow the Trump administration

to sweep this under the rug. It's not dying. It's not going away. I'm telling you, the Department of Justice and Donald Trump and the FBI, they have this, they operate in the world of magical thinking. like Epstein. It's hear no evil, you know, speak no evil, see no evil, and then just evil, to paraphrase Richard Nixon. It's not going away. Epstein's not going away. Nobody's buying

that in a 400-page birthday album, three volumes of which where everybody submitted a birthday note to Epstein before it was found out he was a child sex trafficker and child rapist, And every page is authentic, except for Donald Trump's signature on a birthday card. Nobody believes that. Wait till I get, wait, wait until I move you to what happened with the Wall Street Journal today. And they're filing in Miami. Get ready. That's a teaser.

So that's not going to happen. Let me play for you now what Jamie Raskin said, one of the signatories here, about this investigation. Play the clip. There was apparently overheard talking about Tom Homan taking money in return for a promise to give people contracts when the new administration began. So then they added an investigative component to look into Tom Homan, and they sent in FBI agents, as I understand it, undercover with $50,000 wrapped up in a restaurant bag. and he accepted the $50,000, apparently in return for a promise to steer them contracts when he got in. Okay. And now you have Democracy Forward, and it's, who has about 80 cases against the Trump administration, right on cue.

They filed and served the DOJ and FBI with a Freedom of Information Act request for you. And you know what they say in their FOIA? We only want one thing. We seek one specific record created during the investigation, a video recording of an exchange between FBI agents and Homeland in 2024. Both those letters and pieces are up on legal AF substacks that you can read them as well. So we got that going for us. Let me turn to, well, how about I do this?

When I come back, we'll talk about the Wall Street Journal. and its new motion to dismiss, where it effectively told the world that Donald Trump is so vulgar, is so disgusting, has a reputation for being obscene and being misogynistic and being abusive of women, that his reputation

can't be defamed. That in a new filing, but then there's that connection between Rupert Murdoch maybe being part of the purchasing group for TikTok. And I'm going to link the two things together and give you my view of what might be going on here as well so that you understand.

all of that. And then I want to talk about what happened at the United Nations today. I guess that's something to talk about that we need to talk about here on the intersection. But I want to take a quick break. People ask, how could we support what you do on this podcast?

How do we become a card-carrying member of the legal AF community, Popak? All right. I'll answer those questions. Thank you for asking. One is we've got all the intersection itself. Now, because of your fervent support and this audience's commitment to what we're doing here at the intersection, this podcast has broke out of the starting blocks and is like already winning its races. To go from zero to top 75 in the world in YouTube podcast is unheard of. To do it in such a short amount of time is

unheard of. I mean, with all due respect to the brothers at Midas, who I'm very close with, you know, their podcast is five years in the making. Legal A.F. is five years in the making. You know, the intersection is seven months old, and look where we are. We started at the bottom. Now we're here. That's all because of you. Watch us here on this Midas Touch YouTube channel. Then go over to the audio podcast platforms like Spotify and Apple and leave a five-star review, a comment, and listen. Listen and watch, watch and listen. That's how we climb up the charts together and you continue to get this kind of programming. That's how you can express your First Amendment rights to watch and get and down, be downloaded by me, be briefed by me on a regular

basis on Tuesday nights at the intersection. And then we've got the things that are in the ecosystem around things that I work on. You know, I curate the legal AF YouTube channel. That's one year old last week, already has close to 900,000 subscribers, 270 million views of the work there, 3,100 videos. That's all to build our community. It's all free. There's no paywall. Now you know why we don't have corporate media getting in our way.

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You got a habit. You're going to find a topic that matches on substack and then find LegalAF substack, where we post lots of videos, content. I do two lives a day. I got one up today. I just did with Michael Cohen. All sorts of things.

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Please support the show and tell them we sent you. Welcome back to the intersection. Thank you for being such fervent supporters of what we do here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. Now we've got to go down to Florida, where I've got a number of stories that are important at the intersection of law in politics. We've got the conviction of the would-be assassin

if that's what you want to call him, of Donald Trump, Ryan Ralph, in, of course, Donald Trump's favorite courthouse and favorite judge, Judge Eileen Cannon up in Fort Pierce, Florida. This guy represented himself. And the Department of Justice is squealing with delight about a prosecution and an investigation. They did not start.

This was before they were in office. This is them trying to take credit again for things the Biden administration did. and then crowing about, we got a victory for Donald Trump and against political violence, Pam Bondi said in a social media post. Today, because of the conviction and Donald Trump taking a victory lap, thank you to the Department of Justice.

Thank you to the judge and thank you to the jury. All right, let's back up a minute, okay? Ryan Routh, how do I put this? As mad as a hatter, okay? Yes, he had an AR-15 sticking out of the bush on the sixth hole of a golf course while Donald Trump was back on the fifth hole, a couple of months after Butler, Pennsylvania.

Okay? I don't know if the gun was loaded or not. I don't want to find out. Secret service guy in a golf cart saw the gun, pulled him out. He ran. Somebody saw his license plate, and the rest is history. Ryan Routh is so crazy. How crazy is he, Popok,

that he actually filed with the federal court a proposal that his criminal case should end, and instead, he should have, a golf match with Donald Trump in which there are female strippers. These are his words, not mine. Female strippers, his words, on the putting green, and that if he loses the Donald Trump, then Donald Trump can execute him by firing squad. That's what he wrote in a federal filing. He's representing himself in the case. He fired his lawyers, even this Department of Justice, Whose reputation is in shambles, who the federal judges don't believe, who appellate judges don't believe, who juries don't believe, who grand juries don't believe.

They, even they, can get a conviction over a guy that thinks strippers should preside over a golf match that ends in his being executed by firing squad, don't you think? Now, what I said was, oh, I left out, in Donald Trump's favorite courthouse, presided over by Eileen Cannon, who I'm sure is on his short list to be the next attorney general or on the Supreme Court. I mean, what else? I mean, this was all gas, no breaks for the Department of Justice. You can't win that case. You should cash in your chips at that point. And then for Pam Bondi, talk about too soon, to tie it back to Charlie Kirk,

political violence will not be tolerated, it'll be prosecuted. Yeah, we got it. You know, I got news for MAGA. Independence and Democrats and non-Maga Republicans don't want other people's heads blown off no matter what their political party. Okay? As I've said before,

I wanted to debate Charlie Kirk in the marketplace of ideas in the public square. We have to win at the ballot box, not with the bullet box. So for her, though, to tie it together in such a neat, two-onlegged, the nose package, and for Donald Trump to celebrate, hooray! This is a guy that I said, if he was smart and not crazy, not mentally ill, he would have tried the case on his own.

He got reprimanded by the federal judge, Judge Eileen Cannon, and cut his opening statement short when he said all sorts of crazy things, including comparing people in the courtroom to Nazis and the rest. I mean, he was trying to get, I guess, a, it's trying to get a mistrap. But at the very least, it demonstrated to the jury, who deliberated for three hours,

that he's crazy. But in order to do that, he had to be non-crazy and sane enough to bring his lawyers back in who were on standby and let them make the insanity defense. But he's too insane

to have thought of, that so he didn't and so they got the conviction the guy should definitely be institutionalized much like john hinkley should he be serving time in jail i doubt it i doubt it but that's the result but it should come as no surprise it's just the grandstanding and the crassness of it all on this full display by pam bondie and here's the irony she could be replaced by eileen cannon Eileen Cannon was on the short list during the transition period when Donald Trump won but wasn't yet president

the list leaked it had her Eileen Cannon as Attorney General Todd Blanche is number two he's number two Emil Bovi is number three he was number three until he got kicked upstairs to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals

the list was right except after it leaked they flipped it and they went to Matt Gates and when that failed, then Pam Bondi. See, she's always been, at best, the second choice. So if Pam Bondi loses her position. And based on what Trump did three days ago in publicly humiliating Pam Bondi

about the Eastern District of Virginia prosecutor, I don't think she's long for that position. You know? And if that happens, Pam, I got bad news for you. That happens. Trump loses. Maga doesn't win in 2028.

There's going to be some prosecutions of you for how you've acted in violation of the rule of law, ethics, and the Department of Justice Manual. Because in the Eastern District of Virginia case, Eric Seibert, as we talked about, had enough courage to say, I'm not going to prosecute Donald Trump's political enemies on no evidence. I'm not going to bring false charges against somebody,

vindictively prosecute them, which, by the way, provides a major defense to people. I think Eric Seibert resigning or being fired provides a major defense to the Democrats who would be prosecuted by Donald Trump. I would bring in that prosecutor to testify. I'm sure that prosecutor, Eric Seibert, is going to be brought in before the House Oversight Committee, the Judiciary Committee to meet with Mr. Raskin and Mr. Goldman and Mr. Moskowitz and Miss Crockett and on the Senate side, Senator Schiff and Senator Booker talk about his resignation. You know that's coming and it should. Donald Trump says, no, I got rid of him because he was supported by Democrats.

He was confirmed in May. This is almost October. That's not the reason you fired him. fired him because he wouldn't bring a case against Letitia James. It's nonsense. And when Pam Bondi didn't move fast enough, Donald Trump went after her in the last 48 hours. Like in all caps, on truth social. Pam! He's calling her name. Pam, we have to act fast. You're moving too slow. You must go after and then he names them. Schiff, James, Cook, and the rest. I'm like, this plays right into the hands of the defense.

If this wasn't Exhibit A, vindictive prosecution dismissal, I don't know what would be. Pam, you got to hurry. Lindsay Halligan. You should, Lindsay's cute and she likes you. Now, I added the cute part, but he actually wrote in the social media post. She likes you, like we're talking about a seventh grade, you know, cafeteria squabble. She really likes you. You should, you know, she's, who is Lindsay Halligan?

You may be not, you wouldn't normally know her if Donald Trump wasn't president. She was a insurance defense lawyer, never been a prosecutor, didn't go to the, you know, didn't graduate with high honors, didn't go to the best places, didn't end up at the best law firms, if you know what I mean. But she looks like she should be on Fox and Friends or Fox News. She's another one of those air-blown, blonde people that Donald Trump collects and looks a little bit like a blonde version of Alina Haba. That seems to be her qualifications, you know, eight years out of law school. And what she'd been doing, well, she was the Mar-a-Lago back to Florida, local counsel, where they pulled her out of the Federalist Society playbook somehow.

And then she got pulled into the White House to rummage around the Smithsonian. and try to figure out how to cancel out facts that Donald Trump did like, like the fact that he was impeached, or that black people were enslaved, or that Jewish people were killed by Germans, you know, little, little sticky little facts like that. And so Donald Trump looked around and said,

you know, you look like Hope Hicks slash Alita Haba slash fill in the blank. You go do this job. And when Pam Bondi had a moment of being her own person and nominated somebody else, I think Meg Cleary, who nobody's ever heard of. He said, no, Lindsay Allegan. And then he put Lindsay Allegan in.

It's all a shit show of Donald Trump's making, all playing into the hands of federal public defenders and defense lawyers and the like. So that happened. And then we have the Wall Street Journal finally got around to filing their motion to dismiss. I thought the timing was interesting. This is the defamation case for several billion.

that Donald Trump filed against the Wall Street Journal because they, about, I don't know, a month and a half before we actually got our hands on the three-volume, leather-bound, birthday scrapbook that Galane Maxwell created with hundreds of Epstein's friends to give him on his 50th, after it already got published after being subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee? I mean, it's so public that we have it on our legal AF substact. where you can read it. And so the Wall Street Journal got a copy of it earlier. I don't know if they got it from the estate of Epstein,

which is where the House Oversight Committee got it, or they got it from somebody in the Department of Justice. I don't know. Maybe Maureen Comey, who knows? But they got it, and they described it. And they described, without publishing it, they described that obscene, I mean, Wall Street Journal calls it bawdy,

but that's being kind, vulgar birthday note that somebody on behalf of Donald Trump prepared for him. I don't think he sat down at a arts and crafts table or at Michaels and made it, but he signed it. Now, by the way, now that I've seen in the new filing, the actual book in its original format and not just copies of photocopies,

it's definitely his signature. I'll just leave it at that from 30 years ago. So they wrote a story corroborated properly, ethically proper. They wrote a story, the Wall Street Journal in July, front page, about Donald Trump was in the birthday book. Why did they write that story? Because Donald Trump continues to deny how close his relationship with the convicted child sex

predator is, Jeffrey Epstein. And every time he denies it, a reporter's got to run another story to remind everybody on how close personal BFFs they really were. and maybe it goes further than that. So they wrote the story. Trump threatens Rupert Murdoch. He threatens the Wall Street Journal. He says, that's not me.

I didn't do it. Right. There's like 500, because this is 237 pages. There's like 500 cards from different submissions. Only yours is false. Only yours is forged from 30 years ago. Okay. They said, see you in court.

He sues. He gets judge for the Wall Street Journal. He gets Judge Daryngales, full disclosure. I know Darren Gales reasonably well, helped him get elected or retained when he was a state court judge in Miami. Great judge, by the way. Federal court judge in Miami. Same judge that presided over Michael Cohen's defamation case, which was famously dismissed by Donald Trump. An early taco moment, Trump always chickens out.

He gets the case, and then it sort of dies. There's a little bit of scuffle when Donald Trump asked for Rupert Murdox. deposition claiming that he's got one foot on a banana peel and one foot in a grave, as my late mother would say, that he's not healthy, he's not well. He may die. We need his deposition. Donald Trump has opened himself up to depositions here. He can't, to answer questions that come up in the comments, he can't not give this deposition because he's president of the United States. Not when he files the lawsuit, not when you're the plaintiff. And so we always thought it was dumb. Donald Trump does many, many dumb things. We thought this was dumb.

as practicing lawyers here, you know, at Legal A-F World. So they solved that problem. They decide motion to dismisses, a motion to dismiss will be filed first by the Wall Street Journal. And then if that doesn't kill the case, we'll do depositions later. Okay. So now I'm waiting patiently for the motion to dismiss. And it comes, yay, with about 14 exhibits. And they didn't have to do this.

But what they said was two things. The mainstream media only picked up on one, which is you can't sue us because it's true. Defamation, the key defense of defamation is truth. We saw the letter. We saw the submission of the birthday book. We reported on it accurately. The book later came out.

It's true. But the second defense was the better one for me, which was, and you can't be defamed because your reputation for being vulgar, precedes you, and we can't make it worse. So, in other words, Donald Trump, your reputation is so bad by your own self-admission that we can't defame you. You're incapable of being defamed, I guess, is the way to put it.

And I was like, that is absolute and complete genius. Now, they attached interviews that Donald Trump gave, a Politico magazine article in which they listed the 99 dumbest things Donald Trump has ever said out loud effectively. And, of course, they focused on the Access Hollywood secret taping from 2005 that hit the 2016 campaign. That's the gift that keeps on giving, right? Where he says to Billy Bush, not knowing he's being recorded, well, when you're a celebrity, Billy, you can do a lot of things. You can grab a woman by her P-word. And they're saying, you can't defame a guy like that.

what publishing that accurately reporting that Donald Trump had a birthday card that was vulgar inside of a book to Epstein three months before it was outed that he was a child sex trafficker and a child rapist that's the that's defamatory against who but I want to read to you hold on one second I want to read to you from some of the exhibits that they use because what they do besides attaching all sorts of articles and of course reminding us of what the vulgar card look like and where it was placed. So in one of the exhibits that they asked the court to take judicial notice of is are statements made by Donald Trump. So you got the access Hollywood, right? A person that says he can grab a woman by her P-word can't be defamed by having a proper report about a letter,

a birthday letter inside of a book. That was the first great argument. And this is similar to what I had actually argued E. Jean Carroll, when Donald Trump sued her, the victim of his sexual abuse. For defamation, I said, she should be arguing that he has a reputation that can't be defamed because it's so gross and vulgar. And just to remind people, he admitted that that that was. was his voice on the Access Hollywood secret recording.

He just said it was locker room banter, which they then used in the Wall Street Journal filing to say, you can't defame this guy. He's already admitted. They cited to a case involving Lenny Dykstra used to play for the Mets that said, people already have an evil thought in their head about you from your own actions. Whatever you're claiming was defamatory certainly didn't put it there. So here's what he said and never denied.

and it's and it's it's uh it's uh there's citations here to where in what fora he said it this is in the political article and it's up on our legal a f substack number 23 oftentimes when i was sleeping with one of the top women in the world i would say to myself thinking about me as a boy from queens can you believe what i'm getting number 24 i've never had any trouble in bed number 27 all of the women on the apprentice flirted with me consciously or unconsciously that's to be expected number 29 when a woman leaves when a man leaves a woman especially when he's when it's perceived that he has left for a piece of ass a good one there are 50% of the population who would love the women who was who was left vanity fair September 90 then we get into disgusting things

about Ivanka. That should be a coffee table book for Donald Trump. Disgusting things he said about Ivanka or a 12-year-old Paris Hilton. Get ready. You know who's one of the great beauties of the world according to everybody and I helped create her? Ivanka. My daughter Ivanka. She's six foot tall. She's got the best body. She made a lot of money as a model a tremendous amount. Howard's, Howard Stern Show, 2003. Every guy, in the country wants to go out with my daughter. See, he doesn't make a personal exception there. New York Magazine, December 13, 2004. She does have a very nice figure. I've said, if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her. ABC's The View. Very interesting, because he's

going after The View these days to try to get them off the air. March 6, 2006, and here is one of the most depraved. Number 33. I've known Paris Hilton from the time she's 12. Now put this against the backdrop of his association with Jeffrey Epstein, will you? Her parents are friends of mine. You know, the first time I saw her, she walked into the room and I said, who the hell is that? Well, at 12, I wasn't interested. Good to know. I've never been into that. That sort of always, I've always sort of stuck around 25 category. Howard Stern Show, 2003. That's 2003.

He then goes into New York Magazine, and he participates in an interview about Jeffrey Epstein, in which he says, Great guy, loves to party, likes women as much as me, almost as much as me, on the young side. And then three months later, the birthday book. So you see, his reputation was already in the trash

before we even get to the birthday book, let alone the reporting by the Wall of, Street Journal. So the Wall Street Journal asked the judge to dismiss and award sanctions immediately. What the little tricky TikToky part here that I wanted to at least put on your radar is that Donald Trump is brokering a deal for the sale of TikTok from the Chinese, right, for tens of billions of dollars. On the other side of the transactions are friends of his, like Larry Ellison, who owns Oracle and Apollo investors. and now we hear potentially Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch.

Rupert Murdoch was also at the same dinner in London hosted by the Royals for Donald Trump last week. So here's my working theory. Even though they just filed an aggressive motion to dismiss and put a lot of things in there they didn't have to, what if there's a settlement? But instead of the money going from the Wall Street Journal, to Donald Trump's pocket or his presidential library? What if the settlement is Donald Trump will settle the case if Rupert Murdoch invests X amount of dollars

to own a piece of TikTok? So now Donald Trump is using his own personal lawsuit to extort and coerce maybe a billion-dollar purchase price out of Rupert Murdoch for him to take control of a plastic, platform with 170 million Americans on it and give that cash to the Chinese. Do you see the scandal? Now, TikTok, I get 170 million people. I'm not really on TikTok. I get that 170 million people are on TikTok. I understand that. But are you going to want to be on TikTok when it's controlled by oracles Larry Ellison, a Trump supporter, and Rupert Murdoch of

Fox? Think about that. Now, let's, let's turn from there to the New York Times, because it's all in Florida. In Tampa, Donald Trump filed, I guess to handpick his own judge, filed a defamation case against the New York Times for like 10 times their net worth. They're worth about $9 billion. And he avoids Florida, Southern District of Florida. He avoids Eileen Cannon getting her as a judge. He avoids Miami. He files in Tampa. He gets the chief judge, Judge Meridae.

He files a hundred page, you know, like 300 paragraph complaint against the New York Times, which is all just a political ranting, having nothing to do with defamation law, really little to do with the New York Times. You know, except he listed like 20. areas where he didn't like the reporting about, no, I have more money than they say. No, my father wasn't corrupt. No, I was big on the apprentice. You know, stupid crap that the judge had, as he's put it, the reader has to wade through all of these allegations having no place in a federal lawsuit. And I said at the time, I did my own reporting as a federal

practitioner who's a member of that bar, that court, that that should be dismissed automatically for a violation of Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure because it's not a clear and concise statement. It's a political screen masquerading as a lawsuit, to paraphrase Judge Middlebrooks. And the judge gets it within three days without even asking for the New York Times to respond. He dismisses the lawsuit

and warns the lawyer, Alejandro Brito, for Donald Trump, effectively that he's going to be subject. to sanctions. He invited sanctions for the New York Times. He also gave Trump one more shot, 28 days to file a proper pleading. I know the Trump side was like, well, it's logistics, not logistics. You just got your head handed to you. And your lawyer, there's now an invitation for the New York Times to seek sanctions against Donald Trump and the lawyer for having filed this, you know what. And it's happened before Judge Middlebrooks awarded a whole group of people, including the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton over a million dollars as a sanction against Alina Haba and Donald Trump.

Judge Middlebrooks did it because he brought a case for defamation against that group. He's a serial liar and a serial litigate that files worthless cases and federal judges are on to him. And now we turn, I've kept you in suspense long enough, to Donald Trump's appearance at the General Assembly of the United Nations. today in New York, the hollowed grounds of the United Nations, where he rambled for an hour and a half attacking his allies, telling all of his allies that they need to close their borders and effectively impose U.S. immigration policy because their countries are in the trash can if they don't. Let me play you a clip so you know what I'm talking about. Let's run the clip. But, you know, we have a border strong, and we have a shape, and that shape doesn't just go straight up.

That shape is amorphous when it comes to the atmosphere. And if we had the most clean air, and I think we do, we have very clean air. We have the cleanest air we've had in many, many years. But the problem is that other countries, like China, which has air that's a little bit rough, it blows. And no matter what you're doing down here, the air up here tends to get very dirty because it comes in from other countries where their air isn't so clean. And the environmentalists refused to acknowledge that. And then he had a series of meetings, you know, one where he tried to prop up another Trump-like, Trump-Lite dictator,

Miley, not Cyrus, the president of Brazil, sorry, the president of Argentina, whose economy is going down the drain. The peso is so devalued that Scott Bessett, the Treasury Secretary, had to step in with a social media post to try to stop the bleeding and say, don't worry, we'll do everything we can to prop up the failed dictatorship of Miley. And then Donald Trump had to put his, literally put his arm around him at the, at the UN today. We're going to support you. It's not that they care about our, by the way, I love Argentinian people. I'm not talking about the people. talking about the government. It's not that they love from a trading, a global economy perspective, Argentina, Mexico and Canada are much more important than Argentina. But it's a geopolitical thing.

Donald Trump needs to try to prop up these dictators throughout Latin America to make himself look good. And he's going to spend every last American dollar from our taxpayer dollars in order to do it. And when he wasn't doing that, he then reversed course as if nobody would notice and said that he believes that after meeting with Zelensky in New York, that the Ukrainians can get back all of the territory that it's been ceded to the Russians during the war with, and then I was letting it go, okay, great, we're going to get off the sidelines to give more help. on the ground? No. With the help of NATO and the NATO government and the NATO funding, I'm like, so NATO is going to pay to win the war, the war that you effed up because you undermined Zelensky in front of his arch enemy and our arch enemy, Russia, because you didn't fund him, because you cut off funding to Zelensky, because you said he had to be realistic and that Russia would never have to give back any of the land.

You said that before you met with Putin at that failed summit in Alaska where you kissed Putin's ass and then he kicked yours? What are we watching with Russia right now? They know that Trump is not going to support Zelensky any further. They've calculated and baked into their calculus that Trump is not going to send any more troops there or send troops there, is not going to do really ramp up his aid. He's going to try to rely on the, on the NATO instead.

And Trump's not going to make good on any of his economic sanctions. He sits today in the United Nations and bangs his foot, bangs his shoe on the podium about, you must stop buying oil and gas from the Russians. What are we doing to sanction the Russians? Nata, nothing. Go after Putin's assets. like Biden did.

Go after Putin's oligarch friends and go after their yachts again. Go get the cash. Sanction, sanction, sanction. Trump says, I think Russia's about the fall. They're a paper tiger. You know, in the meantime, what do we have? Putin bombing Kiev.

Putin killing Ukrainians. It'd be better if you said nothing than what you're doing to undermine the Ukrainian people and their military strategy. But that's our president for us. Thank God that General Assembly is once a year. I'm sure people were trying to sit through it and get through it in the room like it was, you know,

like Root Canal. You got to do it, but you can't wait for it to be over. You know, I was hoping with the teleprompter failed that he wouldn't be able to come up with much. But, you know, those are speeches that are written by like Stephen Miller, you know, the American carnage on full display. you know, the Europeans and the other 150, 160 countries that are in there, they know that what's going on right now with this season of America is not good,

economically, politically, geopolitically, national security-wise. It's terrible. And Donald Trump just stands there as a petty dictator, bangs the podium and says, everything's great, we're great, America's great, you suck. which just continues to turn countries away from the democracies of the West and towards the East and their unconditional money. China building bridges and infrastructure all over the world, stepping into the breach.

You know, every time somebody turns away from America, like they turn to another ally, they turn to Canada, they turn to Brazil, They turn to China. Yes, they even turn to Russia and India. And that's all because of Donald Trump. Now, the best thing we can do is stay here and join together. We are bigger than our opposition.

We, we are bigger than MAGA. We are bigger than MAGA. We're just a sleeping giant that needs to be woken up. And if you're still asleep, it's time to get up. we are at this throwing up the window sill throwing up the sash and saying we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore but we are bigger than them

and if we go to the polls and vote together we will win at the midterms we will hold them accountable will run the bastards out on a rail and the Pam Bondys and the Cash Patels will not only be a distant memory along with the rest of the cabinet, they will be the subject of impeachment proceedings and convictions in the Senate or

criminal prosecutions when this administration is over. I can't assure you of many things. Death and taxes, for sure. But this will happen as we join together. And we have to tune out the noise of the vindictive Christian nationalist Bible thumping revival that just went on with being hosted effectively by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. All right. During Charlie Kirk's Memorial. I want to make this clear. I am fine, as should you be,

with giving fellow Americans a safe space to grieve for what they consider to be a fallen idol. Okay? I'm not here to debate all of the disgusting, racist, hateful things inconsistent with the gospel that Charlie Kirk would say on a regular basis. But I am fine with giving a safe space for grieving for people in America who don't believe

what I believe who think he is a fallen hero. I am not okay with holding him up and venerating him and making him into a martyr or a saint. And that's the difference. And that's okay. And that's part of being a country within the confines of having a first amendment and having proper political dialogue and debate. And I'm happy to debate and have the dialogue with anybody who's on the opposite side of the spectrum. Come on, legal AF. Come and have a conversation with me.

Come and have a debate with me. That's what I wanted with Charlie Kirk. I didn't want that dialogue to have ended the way that it did. So anybody out there, come on, drop me a note, DM me, tell me you want to come on. I'm talking about somebody, you know, in that world. And we'll have a conversation and a dialogue in front of an audience who will be in rapt attention, I assure you. But I'm glad you're here. And I'm glad you're supporting what we're doing on the intersection and making it a top 75 of all podcasts in America type of event.

And that's all because of you. Support us here on our audio platforms. Look for the intersection. On the Midas platform, on Tuesday nights, the intersection. And then if you want to become a card-carrying member of the legal AF community, which I'm one of the founders of and curators of, Legal AF YouTube, it's free. No corporate parent, nobody tells us what to say.

Become a member and a subscriber. Legal AF substack, that's a great place to join. got live reporting there. I just did a live today with Michael Cohen. I think you'll find fascinating. And you can also become a paid member, and that's what helps keep legal AF in everything in its world, you know, kind of up and running.

And so I really appreciate what everybody says and does here. I take it seriously, as you know. I'm really glad that you've become part of this new community on the intersection. Until next Tuesday, I'm Michael Popak. And again, Lashana Tova, to those that observe. I'm Michael Popak, 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 Legal AF YouTube channel, or as a 35-year national trial lawyer. Now, building a what we started together on Legal A.F, I've launched a new law firm, the Popak firm,

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