Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Advisor Sues Chief Justice As Everything Goes Wrong

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

Is Trump, using his proxy, Stephen Miller and his “AF Legal Foundation” to sue Chief Justice Roberts in a new federal suit to send a message back to the Supreme Court to get Roberts back in line and under his thumb, and will it be successful? Michael Popok looks at a little-covered new lawsuit and how Trump and Miller are using it to violate the separation of powers and get control over the Judicial Conference used to administer courts and judges by the Judicial Branch. See if your company qualifies at https://Oracle.com/LEGALAF 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

Are you sitting down for this one? The Trump administration by proxy has effectively sued the chief justice of the United States, John Roberts. Yes, you heard me right. Stephen Miller, who is the head of all domestic policy, apparently for Donald Trump as the deputy White House chief of staff, founded and runs another organization called America First Legal Foundation, AF Legal of all things, and they have filed a lawsuit

against Chief Justice Roberts in his capacity as the presiding officer over the Judicial Conference of the United States, which is the policymaking body used by the courts to set policy for all courts, administer the budget for all courts, set codes of conduct for all courts. But for Stephen Miller and ultimately for Donald Trump, they want to get Chief Justice Roberts under their thumb. They want to have that entity declared to be not part of the judiciary, but part of

the executive branch because what else? They want to be able to hire and fire off that executive branch agency. Now they're doing it through a Freedom of Information Act request, a FOIA request, but don't be fooled by the title. They're not trying to get documents necessarily about the interaction between this conference and the Democratic senators like Sheldon Whitehouse, they want

a court, in this case, a Trump-appointed judge in D.C., Trevor McFadden, to ultimately declare this as an executive agency, not a judicial agency, despite its name and its role created by Congress, and therefore Donald Trump can take it over like it was the Kennedy Center or any other agency that Donald Trump has tried to destroy. Michael Popok, we're not gonna let him destroy us here on Midas Touch Network and Legal AF. This didn't get a lot of headlines. This was filed about three or four days ago by American First Legal. American First, even though we probably should have sued him over Legal AF, AF Legal was founded by Stephen Miller

while he was running the shadow government in exile before Donald Trump returned to power. In those three or four years, he created this organization, staffed it full with a bunch of MAGA lawyers, and then they spent the next four years trying to drive the Biden administration crazy with FOIA, Freedom of Information Act request,

suing over white discrimination, suing over immigration policy, because as we know now, Stephen Miller is the architect of the Alien Enemies Act, deportation and removal of people to Gulags in El Salvador. He was the architect of separating families and putting kids in cages the first time around. And so what he had nothing better to do, he's not a lawyer by the way, but he formed this this law firm effectively to do the bidding of the Heritage Foundation, MAGA, Donald Trump, while they were out of power. And now what they're planning to do while they're in power is you think they fold up the shop, right? Well we won,

we're in power, What do we need? America First Legal Foundation, because it's being used obviously as a proxy by Donald Trump to send a message back to John Roberts, who he's in a battle with. Now, this seems to be pressing a losing hand, because Donald Trump needs as many votes as the Supreme Court as he can get.

He at least needs five every time he wants one of his policies to be affirmed. And to keep kind of roasting John Roberts and squeezing John Roberts and suing the Chief Justice to try to send a message that you're under my greasy thumb, Chief Justice Roberts, I think it's a bad look, especially while they're still trying to figure out at the Supreme Court as they fight for the ex-existentially for our democracy and trying to figure out their own role. They're trying to figure out, you know, get their footing against the lawless president.

Now would not be my time to press my luck by literally suing John Roberts. Now he's gonna have to go off and get counsel to represent him in this. Normally he would go to the executive branch for counsel, but I don't think he's gonna be using the Department of Justice for this one. He's gonna have to go retain his own counsel

through the judicial branch. Now why does this matter? What is he trying to do? The Judicial Conference of the U.S. was founded in 1922 as the Conference of Senior Circuit Court Judges. It's comprised of the Chief Judge of each of the 13 appellate courts federal, one judge from each, one district court judge, a trial judge from each of the 13 appellate courts and a judge from the US Court of Trade. They all sit together presided over by the Chief Judge, the Chief Justice Roberts, and

they set policy, they administer the courts, they handle personnel matters, they handle policies, recommendations, budgeting, recommendations to Congress, code of conduct for everybody below the United States Supreme Court, and what Donald Trump and Stephen Miller don't like and the rest of MAGA is that the Democrats use that conference as a conduit to lobby, if you will, Roberts, and that's all disclosed. Even if you think it's a bit overhyped,

AI is suddenly everywhere, from self-driving cars to molecular medicine to business efficiency. If it's not in your industry yet, it's coming fast, but AI needs a lot of speed and computing power. So how do you compete without cost spiraling out of control? Time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI. OCI is a blazing fast and secure platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, plus all your AI and machine learning

workloads. OCI costs 50% less for compute and 80% less for networking. So you're saving a pile of money. Thousands of businesses have already upgraded to OCI, including Vodafone, Thomson Reuters, and Suno AI. Right now, Oracle is offering to cut your current cloud bill in half if you move to OCI for new U.S. customers with a minimum financial commitment.

Offer ends March 31st. See if your company qualifies for this special offer at oracle.com slash legal AF. That's oracle.com slash legal AF. So when they wanted to know America First, what information are, what's the communication level between the Senate and this conference? They said it's not subject to FOIA and we're not an agency. You can't get Freedom of Information Act information public records. Well, they didn't like that. So they filed this case, which has now been set before Trevor McFadden.

What they're saying is on page two, paragraph three of their complaint in suing Roberts again, let me repeat it one more time. Donald Trump through his proxy, Stephen and America First has sued the Chief Justice of the United States. Did we get that? Okay, here we go. Not stopping there, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Representative Hank Johnson zealously accused

Justice Thomas of acting willfully to violate the Ethics in Government Act. Well, didn't he? Didn't he by taking all the gifts, the millions of dollars of free travel with people including the air to travel, crows, real estate fortune? Didn't he by having his nephew's tuition paid for? Didn't he by having undisclosed gifts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Didn't he in selling his house to somebody who has business before the court? Didn't he, I could continue. It says, Senator Whitehouse filed an ethics complaint against Justice Alito, accusing him of violating several counts of judicial ethics. I could think of a few. How about flying a flag of insurrection while Jan six cases were pending

before the United States Supreme Court. Numerous reviews by the conference's committee, they continue on page four, on financial disclosure have all led to the same result. They've all issued determinations about Justice Thomas. So this is basically an action against Chief Justice Roberts in order to have them to be declared an executive branch so they can take so that Trump can do a takeover.

And then put it out of its misery and it won't have any oversight over any of the Supreme Court justices that that the Democrats have have concerns about and all of that. So here's what they want in their last page of their complaint. They want it declared that the records sought by the request, the communications with Sheldon Whitehouse and others, it must be disclosed under FOIA, that it's an independent agency of the executive branch,

and the rest. Once a judge like McFadden declares that that entity is an executive branch, then we're gonna have to, then Donald Trump is just gonna fire Chief Justice Roberts and whatever board's involved in personnel and stick his own doge people in there to try to get control of the federal courts from the inside.

That's the way it's gonna go. So McFadden, listen up, that's the goal here. So you stand in the way of that. It then would go to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals where I don't think it would be successful. And then it goes to the United States Supreme Court. The question is, is Chief Justice Roberts gonna recuse himself since he's a name defendant?

Probably, leading us to an eight to eight result. And if the Supreme Court doesn't see this as an attack on the judiciary, and all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, I don't know what would. Now Alito and Thomas, of course, love it because this is a way to get back at all of their enemies. But for the rest of the Supreme Court, even Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, I would think this is a bridge too far even for them. But we'll continue to follow it. I'll update you about what happens on these turn of events with Judge McFadden and if Donald Trump is successful in getting his greedy little mitts on a judicial conference, a proud judicial conference that's responsible for ensuring the integrity of our court

system. I'm Michael Popak. We're here to ensure the integrity of the law and politics analysis like no other here on the Midas Touch Network. Many ways to support what I do and what we do here on Legal AF. One, here. Two, Legal AF, the YouTube channel. Legal AF MTN to reflect our collaboration with the brothers on the Midas Touch Network. Come on over there. We're going to roll the 700,000 in about a week or two of free subscribers. We want you to be a part of that. Get the reminders about our hourly hot takes at the intersection of law and politics. Brand new Legal AF substack, Legal AF substack, all these things like the lawsuits and the filings are all going to be there with my commentary and a morning update by me, I call of what else? Morning AF. So until my next report, I'm Michael Popock.

In collaboration with the Midas Touch Network, we just launched the Legal AF YouTube channel. Help us build this pro-democracy channel where I'll be curating the top stories, the intersection of law and politics. Go to YouTube now and free subscribe at LegalAFMTN. That's at LegalAFMTN.