Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Investigation Backfires as Top Advisor Traps Himself

Episode Date: May 31, 2025

Wait a minute, did embattled Trump Sec of Defense Pete Hegseth just lie to Trump’s own advisors about using an illegal warrantless wiretap to justify firing 3 of his underlings in a phony “mole”/leak hunt? Or did Hegseth’s personal attorney lie to Trump’s advisors about using the illegal wiretap? Either one is bad for Hegseth, as the hunt for leaks in the Trump Administration just backfired and created a larger scandal for Hegseth. Michael Popok is back and reports. Qualia: Head to https://qualialife.com/LEGALAF and use promo code: LEGALAF at checkout for 15% off your purchase! 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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by Hegseth's own personal lawyer who works at his office because he's also in the military, a guy named Tim Parlatore. Which is it? Did Tim Parlatore lie? Or did they actually use the unconstitutional illegal wiretap in order to fire three people? Well, the Trump advisors and therefore Donald Trump

are being a little bit uncomfortable with Pete Hegseth and the answer to the question as to why these three gentlemen were fired and why they've taken to the airwaves, including on Tucker Carlson, and told the world they never leaked anything. They're being made scapegoats and they're being made political fodder in order for Pete Hegseth to keep a chief of staff that nobody wants. Is this just politics, office politics at play? But what about the warrantless wiretap? I'll get to the bottom of it. I'm Michael Popock.

You're here on the Midas Touch Network and Legal AF. I mean, Pete Hegseth is so far below water. You can hear him gurgling. I mean, he's got to appear before the Senate soon for a hearing. And now we've got this new reporting. Let me map, let me lay out the cast of characters and the players here. Tim Parlett-Torre, you may remember once represented Donald Trump as a lawyer related to Mar-a-Lago and then noisily quit because he said his

investigation and representation of his client Donald Trump was being interfered with by one of Donald Trump's private other lawyers named Boris Epstein. But Tim Parlett-Torrey, who's a former Navy, in the Navy, when he's not a full-time private lawyer, represents a lot of MAGA right-wing people. He's one of the, he used to be one of the go-to lawyers for that, but he decided, I guess, to give up his law career, take a naval commander position and be assigned

to Pete Hegseth. So Pete Hegseth has a babysitter in the form of his former private lawyer, Tim Parlatore, and you and I are paying the freight on that, on taxpayer dollars. So that's Tim Parlatore. Pete Hegseth, we know, is our obscenely unqualified head of the Department of Defense. He fired, Hegseth did, back in the middle of April, three people, senior people, on his staff. A guy named Dan Caldwell, senior advisor, a deputy chief of staff named Darren Selnick,

and a number of other people. When they were fired, those three guys got together and they wrote a letter to the public that said they didn't leak, they didn't do anything inappropriate and that they were being made out to be scapegoats. In fact, they went on, at least one of them went on Tucker Carlson. This started to give pause

to Donald Trump's internal advisors who thought maybe Hegseth was lying to them. And this is a problem. Now the Trump administration is blocking Hegseth from appointing who he wants as his chief of staff. You know, he wants Ricky Buria, sorry, to be his chief of staff. And the Trump administration does not want that. And these other people were sort of the adults in the room

who got canned when they remember back in April when Pam Bondi and Pete Hegseth were going after leaks. I mean, this is the leakiest administration I've ever seen. You hear leaks on a daily basis and they all end up being basically true. But here's the headline. One of two things just happened, according to reporting. Either Tim Parlatorre, the private lawyer, now naval commander working in the Department

of Defense for Pete Hexa, lied to the Trump advisors about a warrantless wiretap being used to determine that these guys had taken top secret documents about the Panama Canal home with them on their cell phones, either lied about that or it happened and they're trying to cover it up. Both are equally bad. To hear Tim Barlett-Torres say it, I never told anybody there was a warrantless wiretap of anybody and that's what we base the dismissals on. But that's not what the Trump advisors believe. Trump advisors believe based on reporting and at least four different sources now coming out of the Guardian, that parlatory told them exactly that.

We got this. It's criminal investigation. We did a warrantless wiretap through the National Security Agency, which led everybody's hair to be on fire because that's unconstitutional and that's illegal. That's actually worse than the leaks that are being charged against these three people. Now it all came to a head. Can I tell you you're on the Midas Touch Network

and on Legal AF? I think so, I'm Michael Bopak, sorry. I'm back behind the microphone. It all kind of came to a head because Dan Caldwell went on Tucker Carlson and basically looked the camera in the eye and said, I didn't leak a thing. I didn't take home photos of the Panama Canal,

top secret photos. In fact, that's somebody else and they're getting to the bottom of that. They know who that is. I lost out in some inner office politics because Hegseth wants his own chief of staff, a different person. That's what happened to me.

In fact, we have a clip of the interview with Tucker Carlson that set Donald Trump's advisor's hair on fire. Let's play it. Dan Caldwell is a Marine Corps veteran who wound up until three days ago advising the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth on military policy. He was one of the strongest voices in the US government

and the Trump administration against the war with Iran. And his rationale was simple. It's not in America's interest and many Americans will die and billions will be spent on a war we don't need to fight. And as someone who fought in Iraq, he was able to take that case to the principals with some force. Then three days ago, he was fired from the Pentagon. But not for his views on Iran, no. Dan Caldwell was fired because, reporters are told off the record, he had leaked classified

documents to the media. But what were these classified documents exactly? Well, no one of the Pentagon could know the answer to that because Dan Caldwell's phone was never examined, nor was he given a polygraph. So actually beneath the headlines was nothing other than a false accusation. Was Dan Caldwell fired because he opposed the push to war with Iran? You decide.

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and use code legal AF for an additional 15%. That's qualyalife.com slash legal AF for an extra 15% off your purchase. Your older self will thank you. And thanks to Qualia for sponsoring this episode. Okay, both of these things are equally bad. By the way, this is now all going to come up when the Senate Democrats take over questioning at the hearing with Hegsak. He's not prepared to give these answers. We see how members of the administration perform,

and that's doing a heavy lift in that sentence, at hearings in front of the Senate. They will not do well. Trump administration doesn't need this problem. They've got enough scandals du jour, two and three a day. They got an out of control, illegal rogue president who turned the White House into a private printing press for he and his family and he in the world of cryptocurrency.

They're gonna take on several billion dollars with a B before their administration is over in selling crypto. So between the cryptocurrency and the bribery scandal coming out of Qatar and the other bribery scandal coming out of Cutter and the other bribery scandal coming out of Abu Dhabi. They don't need Pete Hegseth or lawyers around him to be lying to the Trump administration about using warrantless search warrants or wiretaps or actually doing that. We said at the top of this administration that almost everybody in the inner circle around Donald Trump that Donald Trump put in as political vendetta are not qualified for their jobs. RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, head of the national intelligence community, Pete Hegseth, first

among them. We thought Matt Gaetz, remember Matt Gaetz for attorney general? We thought that was bad. That was so bad, even Matt Gaetz thought he couldn't be attorney general and get confirmed. But somehow Pete Hegseth, with all the allegations against him, and let me just go through the litany of allegations before I end the hot take

against Pete Hegseth, including with evidence that he sexually abused a woman in California and then settled with her so she wouldn't tell her story, right? And Tim Parlatory was involved with that as well because he threatened that woman that if she came to the Senate confirmation hearings and tried to testify, he would sue her. So you have that.

You've got three or four marriages. I've lost track myself for Pete Hegseth. He cheats on every woman he's ever been with. He got drummed out of two different veterans organizations that he was running because of financial mismanagement. And his only claim to fame besides getting booted from two different charities for mismanagement and spending public drunkenness allegations,

including when he was in positions of authority, bad and failed marriages, abuse of women outside of his marriage, and maybe even inside of his marriage. You combine that with what was his only qualification besides the fact that he was a captain overseas during a war. Other than that, 13 years on the Fox and Friends weekend anchor couch Ladies and gentlemen your

Secretary of Defense Maybe not for much longer. It sounds to me but every month we talk about these are the final days of Pete Hegseth but lies to the Trump administration advisors about whether he used a warrantless wiretap to fire people and then turns out that that may be a fraudulent story and a cover-up, that's usually a ticket out. We may soon be hearing that Pete Hegseth needs to spend time in his marriage with his family and therefore is honored to have been thank you for your service and thank you for being in the Trump administration.

But I'm not sure this guy makes it the next 200 days. We'll continue to follow it right here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. While you're here, come on over to the Legal AF YouTube channel where we sit at the intersection of law and politics, make it a clearing house or a one-stop shop for intersection of law and politics, make it a clearinghouse or a one-stop shop for all things law and politics. It's me, about a dozen other contributors. We got some

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So until my next report, I'm Michael Popock. Can't get your fill of Legal AF, me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF sub stack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the sub stack, you'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, Morning AF. What else? All the other contributors from Legal AF are there as well. We've got some new reporting, we got interviews, we got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes. Where? Legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe.