Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Blindsided by Judge He Pissed Off in New Lawsuit

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

First, we had the hearings, and now we have the first federal suit filed against Trump’s bungling top Security and Defense officials and the Vice President, for using a communications platform (Signal) that makes their communications “disappear” all in violation of the Federal Records Act and obligations under the Freedom of information Act, and guess who the case has been assigned to? You guessed it, Trump’s favorite “lunatic, corrupt judge” Chief Judge of the DC District Court Jeb Boasberg. Popok takes up cosmic justice and explains the case and why its going to move on a very fast track. Head to https://zbiotics.com/LegalAF to get 15% off your first order when you use LEGALAF at checkout. 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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that you can pick up in the app store to do top secret high level communications about war plans against the Yemeni-based group called the Houthis backed by the Iranians. That was so yesterday. Today, a new lawsuit's been filed in federal court about it against all the participants from the National Intelligence Director to the CIA director, the vice president,

the secretary of state, the head of the Department of Defense. All of it, they've all been sued in their official capacities. And guess what? Judge got assigned. Judge Jeb Boesberg, the favorite judge of Donald Trump, the one they're continuing to bash left and right because he blocked them on their use of war powers, phony war powers in the Alien Enemies Act,

deportation of undocumented Venezuelans to a dank, dark, death-producing jails in El Salvador. Boasberg, he's back, so is Popak, you're on Midas Touch and Legal AF. Let's get down to the filing. I got it in my hot little hands right here. What's the basis of the case? It's simple, it's so simple, it is a thing of beauty.

It's arguing that the use of the Signal app, they don't even have to touch whether it's classified, top secret, was Pete Hegseth responsible, was that something that Tulsi Gabbard was responsible for? They don't even have to get into any of all of that. They just focus on the Federal Records Act. Ah, it's always the Federal Records Act that gets you.

They always screw you in the drive-through. It's the Federal Records Act that gets you. They always screw you in the drive-through. It's the Federal Records Act, which requires, as you would expect, that official records and communications among and between departments, within departments, are properly preserved so that their successors have it, historians have it, the administration have it, things are done not in secret ultimately.

So if you read the Federal Records Act, it says that records are all recorded information regardless of form or characteristic made or received by a federal agency in connection with a transaction of public business and preserved or appropriate for preservation by that agency. You got to preserve your data.

And the archivist who apparently, I've learned something new today based on the filing or I had forgotten it, Marco Rubio, when he's not busy being the secretary of state day job or fighting with Elon Musk or shrinking from his responsibilities when Zelinsky gets fileted in front of the American people on a visit. He's the acting National Archivist.

He's the acting Archivist. So weird, welcome, you screwed this up. So the focus of the lawsuit is again, not on classification, complicated. It's on simple. You need to preserve your records and the Signal app, which you can get from the app store with slightly better encryption than WhatsApp

has auto delete functions. And because Jeffrey Goldberg, who is the editor in chief of the Atlantic, had been added to the Signal chat, that's the breach, by accident apparently by Mike Waltz, our fearless national security advisor for Donald Trump, probably fat fingered trying to add JD for JD Vance or JV for JD Vance and ended up doing JG

for Jonathan Goldberg. You know, that's how that happened. He, you know, he, because Goldberg was inside the tent, right? He was a fly on the wall. He saw the auto-delete happen. So we have a record of evidence of violation of the Federal Records Act because of the use of this auto-deleting,

surreptitious, scrambling platform, communication platform. I mean, I joked, why don't they just cut out the middleman? Why don't they just use Chinese WeChat? Just use WeChat to communicate, cut out the middleman. The Chinese are peering in, we know that. Certainly when you're using Signal or as Signal's CEO, beleaguered CEO had to come out with yesterday,

it's the gold standard for private communications, right? But we're not looking for the gold standard for private communications, right? But we're not looking for the gold standard for private communications. We're looking for the platinum, Pentagon level encryption standard, and you can't have auto delete functions because that violates the Federal Records Act. So they go through, let me just read to you from page five,

paragraph 19 of the suit that's been filed in front of Judge Boesberg. To comply with the statute the agency head shall make and preserve records, shall make and preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation related to policies, decisions, and procedures, and essential transactions of the agency

and decide to furnish the information necessary to protect the legal and financial rights of the governments and a person's directly affected by the agency's activities. So they have to have a record management system that has safeguards to prevent loss of records, i.e. deletions. On page six, paragraph 21, when records are handled in a manner

that contravenes the Federal Records Act or a parallel agency record-keeping policy, the FRA obligates the agency head to notify the archivist. So all the people on that chat, from the Department of Defense to the vice president and all the others, they needed to tell Marco Rubio, who's the archivist, of any actual impending

or threatened unlawful removal, defacing alteration, corruption, deletion, or erasure, or destruction of a document. They were doing it in real time with the archivist on the phone. I love that part. Page seven, they go through the facts, paragraph 28 of the complaint, upon information and belief from March 11th

through March 15th, so four full days, senior Trump administration officials, we call them the breach brigade, including all agency head defendants, use the signal messaging application to discuss and coordinate imminent US military strikes in Yemen. Look, let me tell you, if there's a surefire way to wake up feeling fresh after a night of drinking, it's with pre-alcohol. Zbiotics pre-alcohol, probiotic drink,

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So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money. No questions asked. Remember to head to zbiotics.com slash legal AF and use the code legalAF at checkout for 15% off. Yeah, that's the war plans that Pete Hegseth said, no war plans. Those, yeah, target packages are not war plans really. Signal is an open-sourced encrypted messaging service that allows users to send text, audio, video

and picture messages to other users. Signal includes a function that allows users to send text, audio, video, and picture messages to other users. Signal includes a function that allows users to set time limits by which their sent messages will disappear. Remember old Snapchat? It's like Snapchat, but apparently for military strikes. Upon information and belief, Signal messages, paragraph 31, are stored only on an individual's device with no copy or backup retained on the system

or its servers. And that's why people use it because they want their messages to disappear. And once deleted, they can't be recovered. Paragraph 32 on page eight, reporter Jeffrey Goldberg, well, he's actually the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, was inadvertently included on that chain. He was included in highly sensitive,

potentially classified information, although that doesn't really matter here. Goldberg reported in the Atlantic that 18 individuals were listed in the signal chat, including the acting archivist Marco Rubio, Secretary of State. Because he's inside, Goldberg was able to see the auto deletion.

Defendant Waltz set at least some messages to disappear after one week and at some messages to disappear after four weeks. Paragraph 39, the enabled disappearing function of Waltz's messages was known or reasonably should have been known to all members of the Signal Chat. Paragraph 40, page nine. Upon information and belief, one or more messages in the Signal Chat

regarding the transaction of public business sent on March 17th has been deleted. That's not a proper way to use federal records. It violates the Freedom of Information Act. So what they're seeking is an injunction to stop this and to get to the bottom of it. Let me just read to you what their prayer for relief is

on page 17. They want Judge Boesberg, of all people, the one they've been trying to get rid of to have reassigned, to paraphrase Donald Trump, he's a lunatic, he's corrupt. Well, lunatic corrupt, Jeff Boesberg is gonna have to decide the following in his prayer for relief brought by the plaintiffs.

Declare that the messages and communications sent through a signal application are agency records subject to the Federal Records Act. Declare that the failure to ensure such messages are preserved comprises or consists of an unlawful removal of federal records in violation of the Federal Records Act. Declare that the defendants have violated their respective duties under the Federal Records Act.

Issue an emergency injunctive relief and permanent injunction ordering defendants to comply with their respective duties under the Federal Records Act and the Administrative Procedures Act to preserve all those records, preserve all those records as part of the injunction and award attorneys fees and costs

and any other appropriate remedies. This is gonna be a fast moving story, not just from the fact finding standpoint at Congress and the calls for the heads of all of these people to resign. But now the added pressure, it's in the court system and not just any court system, the DC district court and not just any DC district court, DC District Court, and not just any DC District Court, Jeb Boesberg, you can hear it now. I'm sure

my my colleague and partner, Ben Mycelis will have fun doing a lot of hot takes about Donald Trump's afternoon midnight 6am rant against Jeb Boesberg. He's criminal. He's a lunatic. He's he's corrupt. He's none of those things. We've done a full evaluation of Jeb Boesberg and we know him well. Chief Judge of the DC District Court, appointed by a Republican to be a state court judge or the equivalent, appointed by Obama to be a federal judge,

appointed by Chief Justice Roberts to be a head of many national security courts. He is a moderate, down the middle, not liberal Democrat, and always has been at best, but he's an independent judge. He presided over, where he got into the thicket with Trump, is he presided over aspects of Trump's criminal prosecution, including Mar-a-Lago and the DC election interference case. He didn't like that much. But there's nothing in his record that suggests that he's not a fair and impartial jurist.

Yet the Trump administration bashed him mercilessly from the press secretary standpoint, the attorney general's standpoint, Donald Trump in an interview with Laura Ingraham's standpoint. It got so bad that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who's effectively Boasberg's boss and friend, had to bail him out and say, stop calling for his impeachment. You got a problem with a judge? You

appeal. You don't impeach. You appeal. You don't abuse. That was a statement that the Supreme Court had to come out with to protect not only Boasberg, but all the other judges. Yeah, and he's not gonna get impeached, even though articles of impeachment were drawn up. He's not going anywhere. The DC Circuit Court is not going to remove him as a judge on these cases. Neither is the United States Supreme Court.

He's done nothing wrong. There's nothing in his record. He's the opposite of corrupt. And yet this is what we have with Donald Trump because he learned this. He got a taste for this when he was candidate Trump, criminal defendant Trump, convict Trump, and how to bash federal courts and judges and state court judges. So this is gonna go fast. There's gonna be a briefing schedule, a hearing schedule. I think within three to five days I'm

gonna be reporting back on multiple events that happen here at the intersection of law and politics. So until my next reporting here on the Midas Touch Network and over on Legal AF, the YouTube channel Legal AF MTN, come on over and hit the subscribe button. You can see why it's important. I'm Michael Popock and I'm reporting. 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 Legal AF MTN.

That's at Legal AF MTN.