Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump DOJ Makes Urgent Move Before Losing All Licenses

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

The Trump Administration and especially AG Pam Bondi, especially after Kristie Noem’s firing, are trying to prevent state bar regulators from taking away the law licenses of Trump lawyers, like Bondi, and have secretly published a new proposed rule that would allow the DOJ to investigate its OWN lawyers and sideline bar regulators from going after their licenses, perhaps indefinitely. Popok reports on The Florida Bar opening an investigation against a senior former DOJ Trump prosecutor—Lindsey Halligan— and why this is keeping Pam Bondi, a fellow Florida bar member, up at night. Smart Credit: Go to https://SmartCredit.com/legalaf and start your 7-day trial for just $1 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 Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum with Dr. Steve Hassan: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show The Ken Harbaugh Show: https://meidasnews.com/tag/the-ken-harbaugh-show Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every family tree holds extraordinary stories, especially those of the women who shaped who we are. In honor of International Women's Month, Ancestry invites you to shine a light on their legacy. Until March 10th, enjoy free access to over 4 billion family history records and discover where they lived, the journeys they took and the legacy they left behind. Start with just a name or place and let our intuitive tools guide you. Visit Ancestry.ca to start today. No credit card required. Term supply. Well, Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, head of the Department of Justice, obviously watching with rapt attention what just happened to her friend, Christy Nome, who is fired as the head of Homeland Security. And Pam Bondi is up at night worrying about two major things, one, that she's going to be fired, which is likely and obvious. And secondly, that she is going to lose her bar license to practice law when she leaves federal service.

And we've got two responses by a very upset. administration about all of the state bar regulators who are looking at and investigating Department of Justice attorneys and others that work for the Trump administration and deciding whether they should lose their bar licenses to practice, whether they should be disciplined, whether they should be censured. And we've got two examples in the last 48 hours. One, Lindsay Halligan, the former federal prosecutor, Eastern District of Virginia for about two months, who had a resign and disgrace, who multiple federal judges observed that she had violated the ethics rules. She is now the subject and the target of a Florida bar investigation. We'll talk about what

that means. The Florida bar took the position that while federal attorneys are still in the government, they can't be disciplined by the state bar. I don't think that was right. But now that Lindsay Halligan is out of government, it's open season. Pam Bondi, Donald Trump, has always been worried about the law licenses of Donald Trump's lawyers. The Department of Justice is nothing more than his private law firm. Most of the lawyers in the Department of Justice senior leadership are his former private lawyers. And look what happened to the first round of private lawyers that worked for Donald Trump. Many of them, censured, sanctioned, disciplined, had their bar-like.

license is taken away, indicted and or convicted, you know, or fined by federal judges. I'm talking about Ken Chesboro, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, right? I'm talking about John Eastman and Alina Haba in her own way. And of course, the people that are in the government now that are being forced to take unethical positions to be defiant of federal judges, to violate ethical rules are worried that by following the orders of Pambandi, they themselves will be subject to discipline and maybe lose their bar licenses, and they should be. I'm a member of a bar in two states. I'm a member of multiple federal bars. I'm a member of the Florida bar the way that Pambandi is. And then you've got the lawyers who are worried about bar licenses that they have that will be

subject to disciplinary proceedings as soon as they step out of the administration. And so Pambandi did a second thing in the last 48 hours. She has published in the Federal Register a proposed new rule. New rules, everybody. The Department of Justice and its Office of Ethics will regulate itself, will investigate itself, will stop state bars from doing their own investigation as to the lawyers that they regulate. And those bars will have to sit on the sidelines until the Department of Justice is done. investigating and or regulating or and or disciplining its own lawyers.

Who's going to discipline Pam Bondi? Who's going to investigate her? The Department of Justice? Talk about an ethical conflict. The creation of the rule is an ethical conflict. By the way, you're on the Midas Touch Network. I'm back. I was on holiday with my family, but I am back.

I'm Michael Popock. Thanks for being here. Hit the free subscribe button over on Legal A.F. YouTube as well. This is unheard of in the history. of the Department of Justice and federal administration to try to usurp the power, the authority, the right of Bar Association, state court courts of appeal and or Supreme Courts to regulate their lawyers. Let me give you a quick tutorial, teach out about bar licenses, having had a couple for the last 35 years. Every state has its own regulator.

You need to be a member of at least one bar of one state in order to get admitted separately into the federal bar to be able to practice in federal court. When you pass the bar and you're admitted into the bar, two different things, you pass the bar by taking a test, you're admitted into the bar by having background check and being found to have the right character in fitness to practice law. You get references, they do full background check, proctologist style, if you know what I mean, and then they admit you, you get sworn in, you take an oath. Now, that ticket allows you to practice in that state, not in the federal courts at that state,

in the state court. You then have to take a separate test or a different admission procedure to become a federal bar practitioner, okay? And you can't skip it. You can't say, well, I don't want to be a member of any state bar. I'll just go into the federal bar. No, you have to have at least a state bar regulation, meaning, 99.99% of the time come out of an accredited law school after a three-year program or such.

You take the bar exam, which consists of a multi-state bar, sort of general law throughout the country, usually multiple choice, essays, and some state-specific law section. The bar regulator, whoever that is for each state, sets the pass rate, sets the past score. If you get that score above, boom, you're in. You also have to take an ethics section. Your credit score? It may have taken a big hit over the holidays, and you may not even know it.

Sure, a late payment hurts, but so does opening a store credit card just to get a discount. And transferring a balance from one card to another that can drop your score fast. So if you're thinking about refinancing, buying a new car, renting an apartment, anything that requires credit,

you need your best possible score. You need it fast. You need smart credit. the new science in credit scoring. Smart credits data experts understand how the credit bureaus operate. They build a personalized strategy designed to take action

and maximize your score, not by a few points in a few months, but potentially see a real upward change to secure better rates on everything you finance. Better scores could mean faster approvals, lower payments, and more money in your pocket. Don't let holidays spending traps derail your entire year. Get ahead of it now with smart credit.

Go to smartcredit.com slash legal a.f and start your seven-day trial for just $1. Your results will depend on your unique credit profile, but I think you'll be excited to see how many points smart credit estimates you can gain. Results not guaranteed cancel any time. That's smartcredit.com slash legal a.F. smartcredit.com. Now, every state has a different, most states have a different bar regulator. Falls into a few categories. There's either a state bar, integrated bar, like Florida.

Florida's regulator is the Florida bar. Okay. Sits in Tallahassee. Handles discipline, education, you know, rules, promotion of the bar's interest, lawyers, the attorney-client relationship, that kind of thing. That's in Florida. In New York, you are regulated by the Appellate Division under the highest court of New York that you were admitted into. So I'm a member of the first Appellate Division. It sits on Madison Avenue in New York. That's where I was admitted. That's who regulates me for the life of my license.

Other states do it differently. Some states, the highest court, the Supreme Court, regulates. So it falls into an integrated bar, an appellate division, a state Supreme Court. This new rule, which I'm going to read to you from, wants to turn that upside down. And anytime a federal in-government Department of Justice lawyer or former lawyer is investigated for things that they did that were unethical while they were working for Pam Bondi, including Pam Bondi, Pam Bondi gets to investigate first. It says that on page one, the Department of Justice proposes to establish a process for reviewing bar complaints and allegations against its attorneys. Under the proposed rule before a current or former department lawyer may participate in any investigative steps initiated by the bar disciplinary authority of a state, in response to allegations that a current or former department attorney violated an ethics rule while engaging in the attorney's federal duties, the department will have the right to review the allegations in the first instance

and shall request that the bar authorities suspend any parallel investigation until the completion of the department's review. Sometimes these reviews take up to a year. They're going to be blocked under this rule if it passes for the duration of the investigation. And then you know what's going to happen. They're going to, the federal disciplinary investigators are going to clear the law or, oh, you didn't do anything wrong.

And the states are going to be left with that record, and then they're going to come up with their own record. And then the Department of Justice is going to jump back in and try to argue, you know, something happened wrong in the state. States regulate for a reason. They're the closest to the lawyer holding the bar license. So what they're worried about is just what's happened and what's been announced about Lindsay Halligan.

Lindsay Halligan, remember, had been the Eastern District of Virginia, U.S. Attorney completely unqualified, never been a prosecutor before, had only been a lawyer for about eight years, certainly not a prosecutor leading the top five U.S. Attorney's Office in the United States, home of the Rocket Docket, and she got chastised, and I don't want to say censured, but pretty close, by a series of judges in the Eastern District of Virginia after she was terminated for being illegally appointed by a judge in that district, or for that district, she continued to practice and hold herself out as the U.S. attorney. And so there were a number of judges, including Judge Novak and Judge Fitzgerald, who said,

why are you holding yourself out as a U.S. attorney when you've been fired from that job? They actually said impersonating it, and they had a list of ethical rules that she could have violated by doing so. She eventually resigned and disgraced and left the government. That opened the door for the Florida Bar. You know, they had already had complaints against her, but they had taken the position a year ago in Pam Bondi's case that while any lawyer was still in the federal service, they were not going to do their investigation.

Sort of open the door for this rule. Well, she's out of government now. So now, of course, Pam Bondi stepped forward and said, oh, I got a new rule. New rules, everybody. Nothing like having the wolf investigate the chicken house. So we're going to continue to follow it, but this shows how desperate Pam Bondi is.

I mean, there's a lot of weird stories coming out about the Department of Justice. You know, Donald Trump's got a close friend that he went to military academy with for high school. Peter Tickerton, who represents a lot of Jan Sixers and election deniers and all that. And he went on a podcast recently and attacked violent, you know, just viciously. Todd Blanche, the number two in the Department of Justice, says he can't be trusted, that he's undermining Pam Bondi. It's like he was sent out to promote Pam Bondi and tear down Todd Blanche, which is weird

because if Bondi loses her job, and of course she's been called before the House of the Senate again about her handling of the Epstein files, if she ends up getting canned, the way that Christie Nome got canned, you know, you think Todd Blanche would have been the number two. Maybe Donald Trump has another number two in mind. He just brought in a,

a senator in outside of government so far to be the head of Homeland Security, could do it again. Donald Trump does have a habit of keeping his administration on its toes by being erratic, if you know what I mean. So I'm Michael Popak. I'm glad you're here. We're going to cover all this because public pressure and public outrage, and as we channel it and focus it through Midas Touch and legal AF works against the Trump administration. That's why he folds frequently. Maybe not on every matter, maybe not as frequently as we'd like or as quickly as we'd like, but it does work. Christy Noem found out that she could be incompetent. People, dozens and dozens of people could die, and many of them Americans, because of her

malfeasance. But the thing that will tick off Donald Trump faster than anything else is if you waste money or look like you're lining your own pocket instead of the Trump family pocket with money. Christy Gry Gnome came down because of an ad campaign that she authorized for a couple hundred million dollars some part of the money of which went into the pocket of somebody close to her. And Trump was like, well, that's it, she's gone.

All the other things, the dead Americans, Trump had no interest in. But steal money from Trump or make it look like you're stealing money from Trump? You know, you're doing a scheme that he's not in on, you're out. That's the only thing probably Pam Bondi is keeping her in her chair is that she's stupid, but she's not stealing money directly from Donald Trump while she's in office. She's done it in the past. So I'm glad you're here.

Hit the free subscribe button. I'm Michael Popok. Can't get your fill of legal AF. Me neither. That's why we form the legal AF substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call,

wait for it, morning a. What else? All the other contributors from LegalAF are there as well. We got some new reporting. We got interviews. We got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes. Where Legal A-F on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe.