Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump FACES LAWSUIT TSUNAMI to Stop Agenda

Episode Date: November 10, 2024

Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok are back for an important Post Election Litigation Strategy episode of the top-rated Legal AF podcast. On tap? 1. the action plan Democratic Attorney Generals and States are ready to employ on Day 1 of the new administration to obtain nationwide injunctions to oppose Trump MAGA policies and executive orders; 2. how the Attorney Generals and other public interest groups will develop their 1000s of new lawsuits against the incoming Trump Administration in part using a gift handed to them inadvertently by the MAGA Supreme Court; 3. how the federal prosecutors and state court judges will handle this month and early next month the remaining Trump criminal cases, and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Subscribe to the new Legal AF channel: https://youtube.com/@LegalAFMTN Subscribe to Meidas+ at https://meidasplus.com Thanks to our sponsors: Manukora: Head to https://manukora.com/legalaf to receive $25 off your starter kit today! Oracle: Take a free test drive of OCl at https://Oracle.com/LEGALAF Zbitotics: Head to https://zbiotics.com/LegalAF to get 15% off your first order when you use LEGALAF at checkout. DeleteME: Go to https://joindeleteme.com/LEGALAF and use promo code LEGALAF for 20% off. Draft Kings: New players can get $50 INSTANTLY in DRAFT CASINO SITE CREDITS, Just sign up with code: LEGALAF and deposit just $5 to get $50 in CASINO SITE CREDITS. Make Any Moment Golden! 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 Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson 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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as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert, as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals, be careful along our tracks, and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. Michael Popok, let me start with a quote from Lord of the Rings. I wish it need not have happened in my time, said Frodo, so do I,

said Gandalf, and so do all who live to see such times but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us and I choose to fight. I choose to stand up, not just resist, to stand up in difficult times and move forward and talk about what we can do both as a legal AF community and as a nation that still values democracy despite the election results to fight back. I want to highlight what's happening in the states and some of the ultimate irony right here is right that the

Republicans and MAGA Republicans worked so hard to break down the federal government and try to empower states. Well bet. Guess what? States like California and Illinois and States across the country are saying, guess what? Federalism, the United States of America involves the states. So do not tread on us.

It's interesting, right? Republicans kind of broke down the powers, the levers in the federal government, and now they wanna try to centralize that again. And I think that's gonna be where a lot of the legal battles are going to be. Also, Michael Popock, you did a hot take on this. And for those who remember what we were talking about in legal

AF and the import of this, there used to be a doctrine for 40 years that the Supreme Court was pushing called Chevron deference and Chevron deference was when the Republicans wanted the agencies to take power. They basically said, well, guess what? You just have to let the agencies make decisions. You really can't challenge them. Federal courts can't challenge the agency decisions because Ronald Reagan and people like that wanted the agencies to deregulate things.

But now the Magas broke the Chevron deference doctrine and basically say in the first instance, it's got to be Congress either passing a law, and by the way, the filibuster still exists in the Senate, so it's not like there's going to be a lot of legal action that's going to be able to take place to override the filibuster, but we'll talk about that. And also in the first instance, it's federal judges, not the agencies that are making often these decisions. And there is no more deference to the agencies and what the agencies are doing.

So the MAGA Republicans broke agencies that now they're going to want to use to try to enact their agenda. What does this mean, Michael Popak? It means that there's going to be quite literally tens of thousands of legal fights every day to protect this country if we all want to protect our country. So that's what we're going to do here. I'll leave you all before turning it over to Popak who I know you all wanna hear from.

With this reflection as well, look as civil litigators, Michael Popak and I are ready for this moment. Despite being, I think prepared and ready to go in all of my cases, any civil litigator who has been on the front lines and isn't lying to you, has to admit that you've lost cases in your career. Especially cases that you think that you should have won that case.

You may think, man, why did that judge decide that? Or, hey, I was never going to get a fair shot in front of this judge to begin with, but I gave everything I got. Sometimes, as a civil litigator, after a bad loss, you have to look a client in the face or a family in the face and let them know and explain to them that it didn't go as planned for whatever the reason is. It's a hard thing to do, but that's life. That's what it's like to be a litigator. And that's what you have to do sometimes, but you don't end the fight.

The fight continues. The fight continues to grow. And I am not discouraged at all. I'm upset. I was certainly upset for a day or two, but if you're looking for the sulking, depressed, sad, whiny channel, you're not going to get that here. Okay? Go elsewhere. This is the channel where we move forward together. Michael Popock. Absolutely. Resignation and abandonment is not a strategy. It is not, and we're not going to do it.

I'm a Star Wars fan. It took the Rebel Alliance a full millennium to take down the Empire. It's not going to take us that long. We're going to talk about on this podcast about how the blue states and the blue state governors and attorney generals, you might as well go get their posters and put them up in your bedrooms because they're going to be really, really important and rock stars moving forward to check the impulses of Donald Trump and make sure that almost nothing of project 2025 and his perverse agenda get passed. They're going to challenge it the way they challenged him we have the playbook. Not only do we have

their playbook, because they're so obvious and they're in their immediate power, power drunk utterances off a Tuesday of saying it was project 2025, we are going to use it great. I have the other side's playbook. It's like if if I was in football team and somebody left the playbook in the bathroom and I picked it up for Sunday's game, I know what they're going to do. So we already know what they're going to do. And we know how successful attorney generals in states like New York and California, New Jersey, Illinois, in the 17 states that have the holy trifecta where the governor,

the two chambers of their legislature controlled by Democrats, led by California, led by New York, led by Illinois, led by Pennsylvania and places like that. So in 2016 to 2020, Ben, just to, I don't want to say remind people, but to bring it out here on this podcast, hundreds and hundreds, almost 1,000 lawsuits were filed against the Trump administration the first go around and they were successful more than 80% of the time. As much as the federal courts and mainly the Supreme Court has understandably taken a hit during the criminal justice process, you started off this podcast by saying we're civil litigators

and that's a major distinction in the civil courts of the federal, when a federal judge is sitting in a civil, not criminal matter, then how to deal with the Donald Trump policy or law or executive order. Blue won 80% of the time the last time. And to remind people to make them feel better about this, as much as they keep hitting the one or two federal judges when they're the plaintiffs trying to oppose a Biden administration policy running to Amarillo, Texas for Cosmarec, running to Louisiana for whoever that guy's name is running to Florida if they can try to get in that one district, try to get alien cannon at the time. 81% of the federal judiciary was nominated and confirmed by somebody other than Donald

Trump. 80, I know it seems larger than that, but 81% were by other people, including Biden, Obama, Clinton, Reagan, who are not MAGA people. So those, we've got our chasmatics, we've got our Louisiana's, we've got our circuits like the Second Circuit over New York, the Ninth Circuit over your home state of California, right, the DC Circuit, the Federal Circuit for administrative issues, that all lean left center or moderate. And then once we get there, and

now we're on the offensive because now we, these attorney generals like Letitia James, who is very successful, who currently rents space inside of Donald Trump's head for free, the New York attorney general, who successfully opposed his policies the last time, is geared up and ready with press conferences to do it again. California holding a special session of its assembly and its legislature for December the 9th to not only just sit around and talk about, well, what do you think we should do? Action plans, funding, money that's necessary from the budgets and California's top five economy in the world, top six economy in the world, to fund the lawsuits that are necessary to hire

the private law firms to assist the attorney generals to do it. And our goal on this network, on this channel, and with our community, our goal starting not in 72 days, less now, drafting the lawsuits, having the judges picked out that we want to use and the circuits we want to use our goal is to make Donald Trump and everybody that comes in with him lame duck on day one tie him up in Congress I'll leave it to you to talk more about that tie him up in Congress even if we don't get the majority in the house it's okay it'll be such a slim slim majority for the Republicans again that Hakeem Jeffries will

effectively be the Speaker of the House on major issues. Tie them up there, let them run off and do all sorts of impeachments or investigations, whatever they want to do. They'll get no laws passed without our help. Senate, you said right, filibuster still resides on WACO cabinet positions and WACO federal judges outside the mainstream. And then in the courts, we do full court press, no pun intended, in all of these courts as the plaintiff now, not the defendant like Joe Biden's administration has had to be on cases even up till yesterday where they're still effing with the administration and its policies, we do it now on the plaintiff's side.

I want to leave my point here on one political point. You quoted Tolkien in Lord of the Rings. One of my favorite songs is by the heavy, How Do You Like Me Now? When these people that voted for Donald Trump, and they're not all Republicans, by the way, when these people wake up and they realize that on the 48 hours after the election, just 48 hours after the election, Donald Trump's net worth went up 40%, Musk's net worth went up 30%, Howard Lutnick, who's the president of his transition committee, he went up 15%. Bitcoin went up 12%. Bezos, who parties with Ivanka and Jared in the billionaire row in Florida, that's why

he didn't do the endorsement through the Washington Post that he owns, he's up 5%. And I said Musk up 30%. The American people that voted for them, not one more dollar was put into any program that helps their lives. Not one more dollar was returned to them in taxes. And yet all of the billionaires and oligarchs were benefited. If you don't like that, you're going to hate when the policies they try to float out there, starting with cutting more taxes, increasing the deficit, cutting. If Elon Musk, along with Howard Lutnick running Doge, which is a play on the cryptocurrency that he owns, the Department of Government Efficiency, whatever the heck it is, if they

cut $3 trillion, that's going to be coming from entitlements, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, education, Food from entitlements, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, education, food and drug administration, and the rest. And then when you and I keep going here, I want to posit who's really going to be the president of the United States, because it's not going to be Donald Trump, not the way he's carved up Elon Musk's role, RFK Jr.'s role, Susie Wilde's role, Leonard Leo taking over federal courts, and JD Vance doing immigration. Other than playing golf and effing with our allies overseas, I'm not quite sure what

Donald Trump's even going to be doing. You know, to that point, I think about the Teamsters, for example, led by Sean O'Brien. Sean O'Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention, the RNC. Sean O'Brien was at Mar Republican National Convention, the RNC. Sean O'Brien was at Mar-a-Lago partying with Donald Trump. There's like a photo of them together, giving the thumbs up, wearing matching red ties. And Sean O'Brien refused to endorse vice president Kamala Harris. Similarly, the firefighters union refused to endorse

vice president Kamala Harris. Well, what's interesting too about Sean O'Brien, I was looking at his Twitter feed and the official Twitter feed of the Teamsters. And they've congratulated lots of people for winning the election, but they didn't congratulate Donald Trump. But they were major help. They were majorly helpful to Donald Trump in winning.

And so my reflection was, and I wrote this in a post, I said, Sean, why aren't you congratulating your guy? Like you spoke at the RNC, just say congratulations because now please explain to your members when Donald Trump starts appointing people to the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB, which prevents your workers from collectively bargaining, from asserting grievances against their employers,

from picketing, from going on strike. Explain to me how you've helped your union by literally supporting someone who destroys unions. And to your point, Popak, we're going to see that soon. We're going to see the appointees to the NLRB and it's going to be important for us here at Legal AF and across, frankly, you can't rely on corporate media. I don't even know who watches CNN, MSNBC, or any of these networks anymore.

I mean, what an epic failure they were, but it's gonna be incumbent upon us and others like us who are in this space to get out the message about what is happening. But it's gonna be felt right away amongst the union members and they're gonna be like, all right, well, you lied to us. I mean, didn't Donald Trump say that on day one,

the war in Ukraine would be solved, even if he won before he even took office? Well, the war in Ukraine has not been solved. The unlawful invasion of Russia, they're not stopping. So that didn't happen. And I see people who are saying like, oh, you know, especially on the right wing, they'll be like, well, look, I saw an article in Newsweek

that says, you know, Hamas has offered a plan for a ceasefire already, and that happened on day one. This is Donald Trump doing it already. You know, and that also speaks to just the lack of understanding and just the, you know, lack of understanding. It's the same plan that's been on the table now for literally over six to seven months that exists. And so to your point, it reminds me of student government election where, and I ran for student, I was student government president in high school. I was student government president in high school.

Me too. I was student government president in middle school. And you know, when you run for student government, that's, I didn't even know that about you. That's funny. Yeah, I was class president. When you run for student government, you know, you often have people, I'm not saying me, you know, and they would go up there and say, look, free lunches, free pizza, you know, no homework, you know, we're going to be there two parts later.

You know, there would always be that approach, right? And then there was always someone who Ram who was probably less popular, who would say the real things that could be accomplished and not accomplished. And, and oftentimes that would, you know, you know, the, the other person would win. I mean, the person who would make all of the promises. Well, at some point, the promises to all of these different groups, I mean, what Donald Trump says, no tax on tips. Okay, let's see you implement that

because last time Donald Trump's policy was no tips on tips. No tips in general. Why? Because Donald Trump appointed people in the labor department whose views were the bosses own the tips, the bosses then get no taxes on tips, that they own your tips, and then they write it off as a tax exemption.

You know why? Because that's what oligarchs do. And I think that as we message things, as we talk about things, what the oligarchs were able to do here is in the vacuum of people speaking bluntly to workers, the oligarchs convinced the workers that they were representing the workers' interests when everything they do is contrary to them. But just to end this one political point before we pivot to the legal side on the intersection, everything you and I just outlined is the path forward to regain power for the Democrats because he's never going to be able to make good on any. First of all, I don't even know what the promises

were that helped the common person or every man or every woman or every gender. There is no promises there. And so they will be suffering because he will do exactly what he said they were going to do, but they didn't listen to what he said. And then we'll have the ability to say, look, come back home. You heard this guy said that it was broken and he will fix it, but what was broken?

The job market is roaring under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Infrastructure investment roaring, stock market too, inflation down, taxes stable, public education fine, health care where it should be, immigration. It's the same as where it was before. We've been trying to do a humane immigration, dignified immigration policy, but Donald Trump literally stopped it in its tracks. So we're left with that transgender people are people that are moving from one gender to another are not going to play women in sports. I mean, as he adds trillions to the national deficit and does a trade war with China.

I mean, so this is how I said, how do you like me now? Because when the Democrats do a much better job in opposition than they're able to do apparently when they were in the majority and control to point out how he is not helping everybody's daily lives, he's actually severely hurting you. You mentioned the unions and we just pulled it forward to other groups. That is the way we crush him at the midterms. In the meantime, we got to use the legal system and the attorney generals and the blue and the federal judges that we know are with us effectively. Let's talk about what's going on as well with President Biden just announcing his 56th round

of judicial nominees for federal judicial positions, bringing the number of announced federal judicial nominees to 261. That's a record right there. And to your point, those are permanent positions as well. So those people can't be removed. You reference like Judge Kazmeric in the Northern District of Texas. To your point already, Biden has 261 of them around the country where these lawsuits are going to be filed,

they're going to be brought, and we're going to cover here. Senator Elizabeth Warren has also called on Chuck Schumer, I don't think, you know, whether Elizabeth Warren called on it or not, I'm glad she did. I think this is going to happen regardless, to take immediate action while Democrats still control the Senate right now and the White House to use every minute of the end of year legislative session, not just to confirm the federal judges, PO-PAC, who we talked about, but the key regulators, none of whom can be removed by Donald Trump. And if Donald Trump tries to remove them, you know, for cause, or if Donald Trump tries to do something like revoke the 22nd amendment on term limits or anything like that, and he

spends his political capital there, you know, I say to that, bring it, bring it. No, if you want to do, if your agenda, you do you end of retribution right away, bring it, we're prepared for that fight to happen. And what will be very clear is rather than delivering on the promises that you made, you will be tied up in legal fights over all of these things. And people may be saying,

well, he controls the Supreme Court. He's gonna be able to appoint three more Supreme Court justices. Sure, I mean, yes. For it to get to the Supreme Court, though, he's going to have to fight battles across all of these states every single day. Thousands of them every single day. His legal team, remember, who's probably going to be leading it.

People like Alina Haba are going to be the ones, you know, in charge of these legal fights across the country. And we're gonna be geared up with the top litigators, the top constitutional scholars. This is like Little League against the Los Angeles Dodgers. I mean, in terms of the legal talent that's gonna be against each other. And just on your point about the federal judges

and all of that, what I want, and I'm calling for here on Legal AF and on Midas Touch is for the Supreme Court justices, Amy Katanji Brown Jackson, Kagan and Sotomayor, who's not going anywhere, by the way. I know there's some chats about maybe she should try to resign to be replaced by Biden, not happening. They don't have the votes or the balls to do that in the Senate, so it's not going to happen. She should just sit tight and just get through the next four years and let's see if we can regain the White House. But those three, when they're sitting over the circuits for which they are responsible, the appellate circuits, and we've listed some of them here and I've done it on Hot Takes on this

network and on Legal AF the channel, the second, the ninth, the third, the first, a little bit of the seventh, depends on what you're doing, DC, when they're sitting over those and they do sit over those as the first judge, we talk a lot about the shadow docket and making decisions. They have the right to make a decision to deny an emergency application for an appeal on their own without turning it over to

the other nine. And I want them to exercise that right and deny an application when they see fit and don't automatically turn it over to the nine to see if there's votes. And then if these people want to come up through a traditional writ of certiorari request for appeal with full briefing and oral argument. Great. But these emergency applications going to the full panel for vote for the ones that we care about have to end. Couldn't agree more with you, Michael Popak. Look, we've got a lot to discuss. And I want to we're gonna we're gonna geek out a little bit. When we talk about the Chevron doctrine, what it was, how

MAGA got the Supreme Court to get rid of the Chevron doctrine, but how that's a very bad mistake by them because now this opens the door for a different type of litigation that we're going to see be brought right now in the pro-democracy, pro-worker community. You know, and I think one of the lessons as well is, you know, and honestly, Popak, I think the pro-democracy frame and label is important. When you hear some exit polls, though, people didn't even know what the word authoritarian meant. It's an indictment on our education system. They didn't know what dictatorship is.

They didn't know, I mean, if you go through some of these questions, people just didn't know some of the most kind of basic things, but we have to also speak to workers and people who are struggling and people who are going through things in a more direct and blunt way and make it clear how the oligarchs are using the legal system to frankly screw you and we're gonna make sure we expose that. Let's take our first quick break we will be right back on Legal AF.

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No questions asked. Remember to head to zbiotics.com slash Legal AF and use the code Legal AF at checkout for 15% off. Welcome back to LegalAF. I'm Ben Mycelis, joined by Michael Popak. Wanna touch upon some legal questions that I'm sure people have. There's three main ones I really wanna go into.

I wanna talk about whether Jack Smith will prepare a report on the cases that he's been a special counsel in. I'm also curious your thoughts, Popak, if the fact that Donald Trump's challenged the existence of special counsels generally, if that narrow issue should still be litigated before the 11th Circuit, Judge Cannon ruled that special counsels don't exist,

but Trump's administration may wanna utilize special counsels. So it's an interesting position and question that I have there. I want to ask you about what we think Judge Mershon's gonna do in New York. He still has to rule this week on the absolute immunity question that's presented to him. That's not, that case doesn't automatically go away the way the others do as a state court case, unlike the federal cases where there's rules about prosecuting incumbent or president-elects in general.

So the state has a different consideration, but what we think is gonna happen there. But let's kind of start by talking about this Chevron doctrine how it was repealed by the Supreme Court the precedent was overturned and What that means for the legal strategy to contest Trump's attempt to implement project 2025 So Pope I could you can break sure and I got a I got a very sweet note from a law professor of mine. I went to Duke and I had a, he was at the time a young professor. He was by 10 years older than us. Lawrence Baxter, he's still there. Went out into business, came back, it was like a revolving door a little

bit. Went to business and banks and came back to, and he wrote me after he saw my Chevron doctrine, hot take. And he said, I think you learned, he's from London, he goes, I think you learned he has a he's from London he goes I think you learned that in my class I was so pleased after Tuesday to see your Chevron doctrine analysis so it was great to see the person that actually I learned it from in law school that's how long it's been around come back to me and say that that they found some hope and which I know our audience our community will find from these episodes and what we're doing here. So Chevron Doctrine is something that you and I were taught in law school, goes

back that far for me. And it came out of a case involving Chevron, that's why we call it the Chevron case. Actually, it was brought by all people by Neil Gorsuch's mother, who was Anne Gorsuch, who was the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. It's hard to believe. And what she wanted established, and she was successful, is to have a doctrine that the reasonable interpretations of the heads of these agencies, we run our American life through agencies, through the administrative law. That's the bane of the federalists' existence. They hate the administrative state. They hate civil servants. They don't want regulation.

And so that's always been at odds with traditional conservative values and Republican positions even, like Ann Gorsuch took. And for 45 plus years, the law of the land was if there was competing interpretations and a very complicated law or statute passed by Congress, because people shouldn't be surprised that Congress is not exactly great at actually drafting laws, because there's so many competing interests and lobby groups and different things that are involved that they get a lot of conflicting language, you know, something on page two conflicts on something on page

1,000 and then somebody's got to interpret it and that is always until this past summer been left to the to the interpretation of the head of that department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Securities and Exchange, the Food and Drug Administration, you name it. All of our lives are touched every, the law that's closest to us in our lives is that of administrative agencies. And of course, that's the thing

that Donald Trump wants to hollow out, defang, defund and put meat puppets of his choosing or more likely, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s and Elon Musk's choosing in these places where you actually have the people that were the biggest abusers that were being regulated now the regulators, the wolf literally becoming the head of the chicken coop. And that's what Donald Trump did in 2016. He's gonna do it all over again. But now we've got a way to do jujitsu because the Supreme Court,

because it has a checklist of things that Leonard Leo on the Federalist Society has told them they need to do. Get rid of Roe versus Wade, check. Roe v. Wade, check. Get rid of the separation between church and state, check. And the third one is of their tenets, of their holy grail, is to get rid of the Chevron doctrine. And so

by getting rid of it, you no longer give deference or respect to the decision, the reasonable interpretation by the experts, the scientists, the economists, the people who are the experts in the field for that regulator, and now it's left to the federal judge. In some complicated, it could be some complicated scientific, mathematical, economical matter for this guy who was a C student in high school in chemistry. But Chief Justice Roberts, when he wrote the decision, joined by Gorsuch over turning his mother's ruling,

boy, talk about Oedipal and Freudian, getting back at mommy, they wrote, no, no, no. Chief Justice Roberts, it is for federal judges, federal judges to interpret the law without reference or deference to anyone. Okay, we'll take you up on that because as I said at the top of this podcast, 81% of the federal judiciary was not nominated by somebody named Donald

Trump. Okay, as many as he did, Joe Biden did more and will do more as did Obama, as did Clinton, and the rest. And they're still hanging around, including some old Reaganites that are still hanging around, and George Bush people who consider themselves moderate country club Republicans, not MAGA. And so those are the people now who are going to be responsible for whether this new MAGA Trump Project 2025 executive order, and I want to talk about executive orders versus actual bills that

become law and how Trump tried to use them unsuccessfully the last time, and I'm sure he'll do it again. An executive order is one where he doesn't need, the president doesn't need Congress. He has the power to issue an executive order to change policy as long as it's not inconsistent with congressional law already on the books.

So you can F around with the Clean Water and Clean Air Act, but if it violates the Clean Water and Clean Air Act and or it violates the Administrative Procedures Act, the APA, because you would, well, no, that's, that's, I'm not sure the executive law would go through the APA, but at least the law would, the bill would. But in any event, if it violates the fundamentals of the law, then we run into court, which we are going to do to say, you just violated the Clean Air Act, you just violated the Clean Water Act, you just violated this law or that law or the investment act or whatever it is that deals with that thing. And now you get to a friendly federal judge, maybe one that's going to be appointed in the next few minutes and confirmed the next few minutes by Joe Biden. And he says,

or she says, or whatever says, hey, that violates. And now we're up and running through a circuit that's friendly as we then have to as this funnel, because most cases do not end up with the United States Supreme Court. I know we talk about the Supreme Court in an inordinate amount because we have to on these key fundamental issues of our life. But only 70 cases a year get heard by the Supreme Court versus tens of thousands of cases that are filed around the country. And so for those ones that matter to us of the 70, let's say 40, we've gotta aim, if you're an advocate,

like me, somebody who's done appellate law, but not at the Supreme Court level, but in other appellate courts, you aim for where you think the votes are. You need to count to five. So you got to aim for Amy Coney Barrett. You got to hope you can grab Roberts occasionally to pull him over on all these five to four votes. And that's the way that we do it. The new decision that I just, that you and I just spoke about is, is forget Chevron. It's now, we're going to be calling it the Loper-Bright

doctrine because under the Loper-Bright case they overturned Chevron and left it to the federal judges. But that as you outlined in the opening of our podcast that opens the door for us to have a direct line of sight to the decision maker to rule that whatever Donald Trump did is either unconstitutional or against the actual law that is executive order or other things were passed against. And that's where we get, or the Administrative Procedures Act, and that's where we get to the federal judges that matter.

And that's why him getting everybody appointed and confirmed before he shuts off the lights on January 20th is of the utmost importance to everybody in this audience and to you and me. Okay, so by break, simplifying your message there, by breaking the power of agencies because Republicans thought that agencies were overreaching with their regulations. They wanted to tear down the kind of regulatory state as they called it.

They neutered, they took away all of the power of the agencies and in their plan, they were either going to place that in Congress that has to be very specific on legislation, which Congress never is, and or put it in the hands of federal judges because in the MAGA logic, they would run to a Judge Eileen Cannon or a Judge Kazmeric or a friendly judge who would issue nationwide injunctions where they don't have to show any deference to the agency to block the agency action and tie it up in court for many, many years. And that was their game plan.

That was their playbook. Now that they're in power, they've created a little bit of a mess on themselves because it's not like the Supreme court can just now all of a sudden they won't overturn the new precedent that they created. What the Supreme Court does, even corrupt, horrible Supreme Courts do, is they still have to chip away at a doctrine for at least a decade to a little bit more before they do a wholesale reversal. So with Roe v Wade, they chipped away at it for 40, 50 years, and then they had the opportunity, then they did it with Chevron also over the same time, 30, 40 years. They chipped away at it, chipped

away at it, chipped away at it when they realized it wasn't what they thought it was going to be after Reagan, and it was being utilized by Clinton and Obama in ways they didn't like to then get rid of Chevron. And it's interesting as a former law student to see how these doctrines shift and literally the answers to questions now would be different than the answers of when I was in class. But now they've created a regulatory framework that actually harms their agenda

because now Democrats, you remember what I said at the outset of the show, there are now at least 261 Biden judges that are there setting aside the Clinton judges that are still there, or the Obama judges that are, that are still there. Um, you know, who can look at these regulations, issue nationwide injunctions to stop what Trump wants to do. Then Trump will appeal it, it'll go to a circuit court.

The circuit court will make rulings that'll go back to the district court. Then it gets put on a Supreme court docket. The Supreme court will then have a certain amount of, you know, they may take it in the next term. There's oral arguments on it, but these things are not going to happen quickly. And over the course of four years, it's a way to, it's a way to stop it. But we're driving. And I love the way you summarized it because that was, I nerded out a little

bit there, but, but the, the, your, your path that you're outlining is perfect. And the big difference I want people to come away from this particular podcast to today's podcast with is that being the plaintiff in civil court for federal Having the plaintiff in civil court for federal to challenge executive orders and statutes and new law that MAGA Congress and or Donald Trump tried to impose is a leverage advantage than where we were in trying to defend them from the Biden administration. We can now do to them what they did to us through our courts, our favorable circuits, our nationwide injunctions, and that's what we're going into. The takeaway from today is gotta be this is the toolbox. And the good news is it's not just Ben and Michael talking about it.

There's a virtual law firm of people besides us that are working right now on the brief, people besides us that are working right now on the brief, just fill in some names and some dates, the lawsuit, the draft, we know exactly what they're gonna do. They may have been, they may have ready a raft of 40 executive orders for him to use his Sharpie with on January 20th, but I assure you, we have a raft of dozens of lawsuits already drafted with our fingers hovering over the print

and file button against each one of those things. And now we have the advantage because we're in the plaintiff driver's seat. Same thing with the states. Republicans wanted to always, their whole line with everything is states rights, states rights, states rights, weak federal government states rights. Well, right now, governors like Newsom and Governor Pritzker in Illinois, I mean, they're out there saying,

you're going to have to come through me. Gavin Newsom doing a special session of the California State Legislature to increase the budget for lawsuits. New York too. New York just funded the empire, did the same kind of fund just two days ago. Yeah, and we're seeing that across the country in these pro-democracy, pro-worker states, and the states are going to fight back,

and the states are going to protect back and the states are going to protect its citizens from Donald Trump's encroachment. And again, you have some of the top lawyers, top litigators who will be working with the states, and Trump's going to have a team of Alina Haba and Rudy Giuliani and people like disbarred lawyers and people like Giuliani who were out there whining today about Wilkie Farr, one of these law firms, taking his money. Giuliani says he can't eat any food anymore because, I'm not sure about that, he says he's unable to even get food because all of his assets are being taken away because the law firm, after getting that 140 plus million

judgment against him, guess what, they're collecting on the judgment on him and they're taking all of it. They're taking his watches, they're taking his furniture, they are selling it all. And that's a grain of accountability right there as well. I wanna come, we'll take a break. Let's talk about the remaining pieces.

What happens in these Trump cases? And I think we know on the federal level what happens But there's still the issue of a public report on Trump stealing the nuclear secrets and the January 6th case before Before judge Chutkin and then we should talk about judge Mershon as well what he's gonna do this week Let's take our final break of the show. Are you looking for something simple and delicious to add to your wellness routine? Well, here's the thing. I used to put regular honey into a lot of my foods, breakfast, tea, protein. But then I was introduced to Manicura. And Manicura puts

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it'll be a surprise and fortunate, but I think people know by now from seeing your hot takes and watching this channel that the prosecution against Donald Trump in the federal cases go away. They'll be dismissed. There's you know you can't prosecute a sitting president and at the federal level he's in charge of the federal government. So those cases aren't going to happen anymore. We'll talk about the state case in a moment. Let's talk about what Jack Smith can do. Release the report publicly. Submit the report to Merrick Garland to make public. I know Merrick Garland's probably the most popular person in this chat. I say that sarcastically, but I don't think it is a productive exercise

on this show right now, because we could probably spend 20 shows about focusing on Garland. Let's focus on what we can control and what we can do. As I said, at the top of the show, as civil litigators, I've won a lot of cases, I've lost cases. I've lost cases that I thought I should have won.

I've lost cases where the judge just did, I was never gonna win no matter what I did in front of a judge. Certainly doing the post-mortem is helpful to reflect on what you can do in the future, but at some point you gotta get up, you gotta move forward. So we're the move forward network. This is not the pity party. As I do in the future, but at some point you gotta get up, you gotta move forward. So we're the move forward network.

This is not the pity party. As I said at the outset, if you want the pity party channel and what was- There's plenty of them out there. Go find another, we're the, how do we work together and build and have productive solutions channel and what is in the realm of possibility

and let's get an accurate information channel. So Pobok, tell us Jack Smith, Mershon, what do you expect to happen in both of those? And as a 35 year trial lawyer, to paraphrase you, I've lost cases I should have won, I've won cases I should have lost. And I tell people if they're a trial lawyer, they say they've never lost a case. That means they haven't tried enough of them. And so we're used to this. We're used to dusting ourselves off immediately and getting back into the game with renewed energy and strategy and focus about how to win.

And you'll have to trust us on this. We know how to do this. And we know how to pin Donald Trump back. The goal is to make him lame duck on moment one. Many, many things are, as Jack Smith put in a recent filing, unprecedented about Donald Trump. First time, second time in an entire presidential history that a person's returning to office

after having lost in the middle. But it also, and twice impeached and 34 times convicted and five times indicted and all of that. But he has one term. Just to answer questions that sometimes come up, especially from our global colleagues and global members of the audience who don't know, he only has one term. And so yes, he can do tremendous damage in a term, but we need to now, what we're trying to do is minimize and work through the bomb blast and keep it as contained as possible through the courts, through our leadership in the House and the filibuster in

the Senate, in the minority position or the slim minority position or whatever it's going to be. In terms of the updates, look, as we knew when we went to the polls, if Donald Trump won, he was going to fire Jack Smith and end the special counsel position. The problem is he made some bad law along the way. He had his judge of choice, Aileen Cannon, who we may see again like a bad penny pop up in the administration in some capacity, whether White House counsel or attorney general or there's ever an opening of the Supreme Court again, somehow putting her in there.

But she made the decision that this special counsel or any special counsel who doesn't go through Senate confirmation and isn't properly apportioned money through a congressional process is illegitimate and should be ignored and dismiss the indictment on those grounds. Okay, then that means that Donald Trump citing the precedent that he keeps citing in all of his filings of US versus Trump will not be able to appoint a special counsel for any of who the enemies list that he wants to go after unless he goes through a Senate confirmation and a House Congressional budget allocation.

Okay? I'm not sure he's able to get a House budget allocation given the fact that the House is not all monolithically MAGA on the Republican side. And there are some people there that are conservatives and Tea Party people and country club Republicans that don't all vote in lockstep. And they'll be leakage in terms of they won't be as solidified and unified as Hakeem Jeffries and the whips will keep the Democrats. And then on the Senate side, you've got the filibuster. So that

really means that under his own precedent that has not been ruled upon by the United States Supreme Court and won't be because the case will be withdrawn by Jack Smith and there's nothing he can do about it, okay. He just killed special counsels and he used some special counsels and what I'm sure was planning to use some special counsels to go after some of his enemies. So that is one of the unintended byproducts that we're going to use against Donald Trump. Now we have the first filing by Jack Smith this week. He asked Judge Chuckin and she granted it until the second of December, a date near

and dear to my mother's heart, because I was born that day, to file a report after they consider the quote unquote, unprecedented development of Trump becoming president while there's an ongoing prosecution against him. And so she said, great, now what's gonna happen between now and December 2nd is that they're gonna tabletop this out, they're gonna game strategy this out. First, think they want to watch what happens in New York

on the 14th of November and the 26th of November with Judge Mershon and what he's gonna do on the immunity decision first and then whether he sentences and how much he sentences Donald Trump for on the 26th of November for the 34 count felony conviction in New York State Court related to Stormy Daniels and the hush money cover up election interference part one. That's one. But he is ultimately not, I don't want to blow smoke or sunshine here as our normal motto mantra.

He is going to, the Department of Justice is going to dismiss the case against Donald Trump. Maybe without prejudice, maybe they hope statute of limitations is not running and they could maybe get back at him at another time, but he's gonna pardon himself and everybody else around, which will ultimately kill that case. So that case, the DC election interference case gets, shh, and Chuckin will see the status report and she will dismiss the case against him. No mention of the unindicted co-conspirators

because there's nothing to talk about now till he gets around to pardoning all of them when he returns to office, which he will. And then he'll make a filing probably in the next week or two to let the 11th circuit know that they're withdrawing their appeal about Mar-a-Lago because they can't continue to litigate this case against the future president-elect on Jan 6th and the future president on Jan 20th. And so that is going to happen. He's not going

to wait around. We're not going to wait around for Donald Trump and the optics and the theatrics of him firing Jack Smith. They are gonna put themselves out of business. Now, the report that you talked about, that's very interesting, because Jim Jordan and Loudermilk, those two guys, those two MAGA that had Judiciary and Oversight Committee and Will in the Future,

they've already put Jack Smith on notice. I know you, it's almost like we know you wanna burn the files and not retain them, but you need to hold onto them. Good, I read that I was like, I agree. Because the files will be made public because it's not just gonna be turned over to the two idiots on the committee.

There's minority members and ranking minority members on those committees, and they're all going to get the same access. So either they're going to push to get all that information released, not just the 3,000 pages of evidence that already came out just to defend the immunity application or determination, but all the evidence, all the grand jury secret testimony, all the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of witness testimony, transcripts and pieces of evidence and emails and text messages, the 3000 Mark Meadows text messages. And now my argument would be, especially after Donald Trump pardons everybody, that between

the pardon and the dismissal of the case, unredact everything. Everything, it doesn't change the public record or the public's need to know. So everything gets ripped off that was blackened and all those pages, everything that was, there's no more grand jury secrecy issues, release all of that to the public. And the question is, does Jack Smith,

and ultimately does Merrick Garland, who makes the ultimate call, release a report sort of like the 300 page Robert Herr report about Joe Biden doing whatever with the boxes of confidential, top secret information when he left the vice presidency, does that get released to the public in the next 70 days? There's nothing Donald Trump can do about it. It's a decision made by the sitting Attorney General in consultation with, you know, his special counsel, and I think he'd be doing the public, the rest of the public,

a disservice if he decided, A, to somehow oppose the release of all the files, just like the Jan 6 committee did. You know, I know there's a whole bunch of MAGA myth and QAnon conspiracy theories that some part of the Jan 6 committee's three terabytes of data was somehow burned and destroyed. It wasn't. And there was a link publicly with all of the doc. We could all go rummaging through those documents.

I think it still exists, or it it should same thing here with Jack Smith I don't think he's gonna take two years of work and just go never mind he's got everything developed I think he does the report I think Merrick Garland owes it to the American people for all the reasons that we touched on about Merrick Garland to release that report and at least not to oppose the unredaction of everything that's already been filed, and all the things that louder milk and Jordan another another backfire that we'll take advantage of all that information coming out to the public. You want me to switch gears and talk

about Mershon? Poback, I always love when you switch gears and talk about Mershon. All right, I only have two gears today. Mershon.hawne's got a lot of weight on his shoulders right now. He's a state court judge, not federal and nothing that we're going to talk about on this particular moment has anything to do with a pardon. There's no pardons that are going to happen to help him out. Donald Trump can, can stamp his feet all he wants, but he's not going to make

the 34 felony count conviction go away. He hasn't been sentenced. That got delayed a number of times because of the immunity issue that was going on at the United States Supreme Court that took nine months, 10 months, to work its way through the Supreme Court who was trying to help him out by delay.

So now he's got two decisions. He's got a motion pending that he said he's gonna issue in another week, less than a week, about whether the immunity decision from July requiring judges if the conduct falls, to figure out whether the conduct falls in one of three buckets, core constitutional conduct that's absolute immune from the Constitution and the powers given under Article 2 to the presidency. The stuff that's sort of official conduct, it's on the job description for the president or at least to the outer boundaries when stretched, and there's a presumption of immunity that can be

overcome by the prosecutors or prosecutable private conduct. That personal conduct has nothing to do with the presidency at all. Like I wanna stay in office. I wanna be, I'm the campaigner in chief. I wanna have Mike Pence hanged, things like that. So, but that only applies to stuff when the guy was president. 90%, 95% of what Donald Trump did

in the Stormy Daniels, hush money coverup, catch and kill program or what the government, of what Donald Trump did in the in the Stormy Daniels hush money cover-up catch-and-kill program or what the government the sorry the Manhattan DA Success. Yeah, the Manhattan DA successfully called the Trump Tower conspiracy Was all before he before he was elected. That's the point It was the cover-up to cover up the October surprise of a series of women coming out and saying that he sexually assaulted them and or had sex with them outside the marriage. Didn't want that to happen, so he kept paying them off 120, 130, 140 thousand dollars

apiece through people like Michael Cohen and the head of the National Enquirer. That's all pre, and it worked because it never came out and he beat Hillary Clinton. And then the continuation like the payment because Donald Trump's cheap and he pays everything over time and usually at a discount stretched out over into actually making it to the White House. So there's a couple of meetings with Michael Cohen in the White House, a couple of payments on personal checkbooks that he signed and then sent back by FedEx for the White House. Who cares? That's not presidential conduct. Or as Alvin Hellerstein, senior judge in the Southern District of New York said when he was faced with the issue, covering up a private sex affair is not a matter for the president. It's not a presidential act. And so no, you don't get to take the case to federal court and no.

Same thing here. So I think that the judge, even with the pressure that's now on him, with now sentencing somebody who's about to be the president-elect of the United States and future president, he's going to deny the motion for immunity, I think, because it doesn't apply. The couple of phone calls and couple of meetings and a couple of pieces of testimony by, you know, Madeleine Westerhout, who's like Donald Trump's scheduler, who sat outside his revolving door of his, you know,

and kept him on his golf program. Now that's not enough to make it presidential conduct. But then he's got a 12 days later, a couple days before Thanksgiving, then he's got to decide on sentencing. And I'll give you my opinion, I'll kick it over to you, Ben, for yours. The analysis that's been done and will be done by the Parole and Probation Department in New York about similar criminal convicted felons. That's what he is. I know he just got reelected or elected,

but he's a 34 count convicted felon in New York. And for those type of people, and there is no comparator, there's no person who's ever gotten 34 felony counts for business record fraud and election interference that ended up winning the presidency as a result. So throw out comparisons. But just for the run of the mill person who committed that kind of fraud in New York and got convicted, one third of them went to jail for between one and three years. So there is precedent, no pun intended, to do this. The question is, is he going to and then what does he do with it? I think he

sentences him to something but he suspends maybe a year but he suspends the sentence until after he leaves the White House. I don't think he says well I don't know you know you see you you won the presidency the people have spoken and will just nullify the jury's conviction on 34 felony counts of business. But that's a terrible message. What, you just run for office when you're facing the sentencing component of your crimes? So I think he's going to have to sentence him. I think I'll have to suspend it. Could he bend over backwards and say, I don't know, community service, your first time offender, I guess, but the first time offender is such a huge fraud that I think he's got to give him some sort of jail time, but doesn't start until 20, I don't know, 2029, 2030. What do you think Ben?

Ben Shepard I tend to agree. I think that you, um, you sentence, you stay the sentence or, um, you know, you don't just or, um, you don't just say you get out of jail free. That's not what's going to happen. You know, I think that there will be, um, some acknowledgement that there should be a sentencing. I mean, he's not going to be in prison while he's in the office. So that's, uh, clear. And then the issue is, is does he just sentence and suspend the sentence or say,

we're putting over sentencing until four years from now, based on the severity of the crime, we'll just have to reassess the sentencing, let it go through the appeal process, because Trump will appeal it through all the different claims of absolute immunity after this ruling, and then we'll stay sentencing until four years from now. And then there'll be a sentencing in four years.

I mean, again, not an ideal result would be an understatement, but also as we said, when we started this show, this is not the pity party channel. This is not the woe is me channel. This is the how do we use the skill set that we have, which is actually a useful skill set during these times. Certainly not a useful skill set if we wanted to be in the NBA, not a useful skill set if we wanted to be football players, but

fighting back against constitutional encroachment is a very limited skill set that Michael Popak and I have, and will be helpful in this process. That also means we need your help though in this process as well. And while I said it certainly, I certainly understand why there would be such strong feelings. I had very strong feelings post-election.

There's only one direction where we can go. And I reflect back on the quote I gave with the conversation with Frodo and Gandalf. And I see that we're in times that we're not the ones I wanted to be in that I am confident I put out everything on the field to avoid, but here we are and now we work. We work harder. We don't give up. We don't relent and now we have to work harder than ever. That's the reality we face. It's the reality we confront. It's the reality that we're ready for

and that we're prepared for. So we move forward. Michael Popak, I will be by your side every step of the way and please Subscribe to the legal AF YouTube channel right now. The legal AF YouTube channel is a rocket ship Michael Popak has all of the top Constitutional scholars on it as well, you know, we have that relationship with court accountability And they dissect the Supreme Court. I mean, they're literally the best group for that. So combined with POPA, court accountability, and all of the other incredible hosts,

Karen Friedman, Agnifilo. Tina Dahl. Tina Dahl. I mean, you know, that channel is needed now more than ever. So please subscribe to the Legal AF channel. I just want to thank everybody for sticking with it, for being here, for not giving up. We're going to fight by your side. That's our promise to you, Popak. Yeah, on that note, when you and your brothers built the channel, and you and me built Legal AF and now the new channel, we didn't do it just because we thought we needed it in order to get the democratic policies

through and get the next election in our favor. Cause remember, this is our first election cycle is complete. Then since everything was founded, we came in after Trump and then and then through Trump and beyond. We built these as durable communities so that we would be prepared for whatever happened this past Tuesday. And on the other side, as I said, not in jest, but in reality, so that we were all here as a community with a with something that we knew what to do on the other side of Tuesday. So we didn't just build it,

we're not just fair weather channels, we also knew that we could hit turbulence, but we wanted to build and we have, and your brothers, of course, with you, have built a sustainable, energized base that maybe we weren't effective enough in terms of reaching out to the hearts and minds of other people along with the rest of the media.

But we have built something here that is durable with not just us because that's where six of us, eight of us, 10 of us. It's the millions of people that have come here for a reason and have now come back. Now is the time to subscribe to the Midas Touch Network more than ever before or Legal AF the new channel because we have work to do. We're literally rolling up our shirt sleeves here to get to work to make Donald Trump a lame duck from the moment he walks in, pin him down and pin him back using every, every tool at our disposal. And we, you can have confidence in this, we, Ben, me, the other leaders of Legal AF, the brothers,

we know how to do it. We're in it together. Hit subscribe everybody. Thank you all so much. If you haven't subscribed also to Midas Plus, go to MidasPlus.com and we're in this together. Let's keep fighting. Thank you all for watching.

Have a good one everybody.