Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Scared of SCOTUS Ruling Devises New Plan

Episode Date: July 20, 2025

Trump knows that the Supreme Court, based on a May decision,  won’t support him out and out firing “without cause” —like fraud or a crime—the Federal Reserve Chair and the nation’s central banker Jay Powell. Michael Popok calls out Trump’s efforts to use the F word (fraud) against Powell as he walks around with a firing letter in his back pocket, and why it will backfire with the electorate..and the US economy. 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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I'm back and I wanted to jump into this J-Powell Federal Reserve story, Donald Trump's pressure campaign to try to get rid of J-Powell before his term expires as the chairman of the Federal Reserve on May in 2026. First of all, there's a giant brick wall at the end of the road that most reporting completely ignores. It's that the United States Supreme Court, who for all intents and purposes is in Donald Trump's back pocket, even they, in May of this year, said that he's not going to be able to fire Jay Powell without cause. I'll read to you from the actual quote. It's from a case involving Gwen Wilcox, who used to be the head of the National Labor Relations Board, but no longer. They went out of their way, the majority,

the six to three MAGA majority to put a ring fence around Jay Powell. Even the credit rating agencies like Moody's who rate the credit, it's like the credit score for America. It determines how much we have to spend more, what the interest rate's gonna be for our borrowing. Even they said, if Jay Powell is knocked off by Donald Trump,

it will lead to a downgrade of our credit rating. So Donald Trump, knowing that, now he's thrown around the F word because he knows, even though he's doing things like, I've got a resignation letter, demand for his resignation letter in my back pocket, and he's hit the button on all his MAGA social media influencers and peddlers to like every day, every hour. You can say it, you can tell it's the theme of the day to attack Jay Powell, to make him leave. So right on cue, here's what we've been watching.

Now remember, brick wall, Quinn Wilcox case Supreme Court just from this May. I'm gonna read it to you from, I'm gonna read from it in a minute. But that's gonna stop Donald Trump, even Donald Trump from firing Jay Powell. Doesn't mean he's not gonna stop Donald Trump, even Donald Trump, from firing Jay Powell. Doesn't mean he's not gonna stop his pressure campaign to make him quit. A terrible impact on the economy for voters, for people that care about

kitchen table, pocketbook, and wallet issues. You don't want Jay Powell to leave. That's why they're left with, he overspent maybe on the reconstruction of the Federal Reserve building. That's why we should get with he overspent maybe on the reconstruction of the Federal Reserve Building. That's why we should get rid of Jay Powell. Are you insane? But here is the drum beat that Donald Trump has been running. He brings a bunch of MAGA Republican legislators

into the White House to talk about crypto. But while he's there, he's like, I have a letter that's been drafted for his resignation. Do you think I should do it? Do you think I should do it? Now, apparently the person that's really drumming this drum to get rid of them is William Pulte. Pulte Homes, big construction contractor,

building single-family homes throughout the Southeast. Well, he's now the head of Freddie May and Fannie May and Freddie Mac, you know, lending quasi public private lending institutions for mortgages. He hates J-PAL, he hates interest rates ever being high. So he's been pumping them on his social media, saying there's fraud in the development

or the renovation of the Federal Reserve building. Now, right on cue, then you get the legislators together in the Oval Office and you get one of them who's doing like real-time reporting, like it's like an in-game bet for one of these sports books. You've got Anna Luna from Florida. When she's not busy telling Donald Trump

that he should be releasing all the Epstein files, she's there saying, oh, I'm in the meeting now, Jay Powell, Jerome Powell's definitely being canned as Federal Reserve Chairman. Now this letter gets drafted, Donald Trump denies it, by the way, when he gets hit by the media with it. Did you have a letter calling for his resignation,

demanding his resignation? No, I don't have a letter, yeah. Well, apparently the letter's out there. Pulte released it. Pulte drafted it for Donald Trump's signature. Trump showed it to everybody in the room. Then he's got, who should be the ones trying to tether this administration to planet Earth. A couple of guys that used to work on Wall Street, one of them, Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary

that used to run until he sold it off to his sons, a company called Canterford, Charlton, another one, Scott Pesent, who's your Treasury Secretary, they're campaigning. Scott Pesent's like, well, if Jay Powell is, steps down or is fired or is removed by the 26th of May as the chairman, even though he's, his governorship,

because this is a board of governors, even though his governorship goes two more years, it would be very awkward for him to stay after he was removed as chairman. I don't think he should do that. So you got Scott Bissett, who's on the short list by Donald Trump to be the Fed chair, campaigning now to get rid of the Fed chair. There's a couple of other guys, all white men that Donald Trump wants to put there instead. And all Donald Trump cares about is to have low, low, low interest rates, cheap, cheap, cheap money

to bail out his failed, failed, failed economic policy. That's it. There's a reason he doesn't call it. And no one in the administration calls it Trumponomics, like Reaganomics. You know why they don't call it Trumponomics? Because it sucks, because it's failing. Because the tariff scheme brought in just $50 billion

after we just got rid of $3 trillion worth of tax revenue. $50 billion of these lame brain tariffs, it's not gonna fill, it's not gonna close the gap. Like, yeah, we got an extra million dollars out of Vietnam. Okay, great. What about corporate tax revenue? What about high net worth tax revenue? How are we gonna pay the social safety net,

which is Donald Trump, of course, is busy destroying. So right on cue, he's got the Laura Loomers of the world, you know, loony Loomers out there with her, why he listens to her? She has no body of work. She's accomplished nothing in her life other than she's got a big mouth and she puts it into the keyboard, but she loves,

I mean, she literally says, I love Donald Trump and Donald Trump loves her. So they're mooning over each other and he uses her as a, you know, like Tokyo Rose to like come up with all this propaganda and go after his enemies or create new enemies. So she goes after Pamela Jo Blondie. That's what she calls her because she wants her out of there. And then, you know, Bondi just fired James Comey's, I felt sorry for James Comey's prosecutor

daughter, Maureen. She's just working her ass off, bipartisan, in New York, as a prosecutor, she wins some, she lose some, she wins the Jusane Maxwell, she loses the Diddy, the Diddy trial, at least the big rocketeering count, and she gets fired. But no, Laura Looney Loomer, oh no, the son has to be fired too.

Why? Why can't they have independent jobs independent from your hatred of James Comey? But that's for another day. So Laura Loomer's going after Jay Powell and he got all this going on. So I went to my 40th high school reunion recently. And while many of my classmates were excited about retiring

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and use code LegalAF for an additional 15%. That's qualialife.com slash LegalAF for an extra 15% off your purchase. Your older self will thank you and thanks to Qualia for sponsoring this episode. But now let's talk about the brick wall. Yeah, time. So in the Supreme Court case, here's the Supreme Court just so we know what we're talking about. And this I reported on at the time. This is Trump versus Wilcox. It was only a three-page opinion because it was one of those

emergency applications, you know, where they make a decision where they act like they didn't really make a decision but they made a decision, where they act like they didn't really make a decision, but they made a decision that helped Trump, letting him firing people. And the big issue there was what kind of agency is it? They're all created by Congress. But if Congress also puts in a for-cause termination requirement before you can get rid of a board,

does that impair the executive branch's authority? Once you've created the executive branch's authority? Once you've created an executive branch agency, can you tie the executive, the president's hands, to limit his ability to fire at will by Congress? In other words, you can give birth to the agency as an executive agency, but can you control it after you've given birth, so to speak,

and given it to Donald Trump? I mean, giving birth to something that results in handing it off to Donald Trump, I know is a disastrous metaphor, but go along with me for a minute. Once it's handed off to Donald Trump, can you as Congress limit what he can do with that agency in terms of hiring and firing?

And in the Wilcox case, the Supreme Court said that in certain types of agencies, you can't limit the president's ability to fire only for costs. So he can fire whoever he wants. Even the ones that were created for non-partisan purposes that weren't supposed to be political, they allowed this political process to infect it,

except with one or two limited exceptions. And one of them in particular, was the Federal Reserve. So here was the Supreme Court led by John Roberts, basically putting up a ring fence to protect J. Pal. Here's what they wrote. Finally, respondents Wilcox and Kathy Harris, she was the head of the Merit Systems Protection Board, a similar agency where she got fired as well, contend that arguments in this case necessarily implicate the constitutionality of four-cause removal protections for members of the Federal Reserves Board of Governors or other members of the Federal Open Market Committee.

That's what Jay Powell heads. So in other words, they're saying, hey, if you let it happen to us, they're next. Here's what the Supreme Court said, the MAGA majority. We disagree. The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the first and second banks of the United States,

citing to a case from 2002, which we call Celia Ward. So what's the point there? The point there is very unique, the Federal Reserve, it goes back to our historical tradition of the first couple of banks that were around, like Alexander Hamilton times, and we can't, and the president would not be able to fire somebody except for costs. That's why you see

Trump starting to use the F word fraud. He committed fraud. His fraud. There's fraud in the building and the redevelopment of the Federal Reserve building. Now that redevelopment's been going on for three or four years. And yes, it's over budget by a lot. It's over budget by like $700 million. However, the Federal Reserve has major, according to Jay Powell, who wrote a letter back to Donald Trump and to Russ Vought and said, hey, listen, I'm not the builder. I'm not the developer.

These were the core issues that needed to be accomplished by the redevelopment, the restructuring, the renovation, including major structural issues that needed to be shored up. I can tell you from my own kind of the smaller development world, shoring up structural deficiencies is very, very expensive. And so he sent the letter back, Trump has sent Russ Vought,

remember that name, Russ Vought is not only your current office of management and budget head, basically running the nation's checkbook, he's also effectively the head of Doge. He's been the head of Doge even when Elon Musk was here. And he is the architect. He is the creator. It is his fevered imagination

from which Project 2025 came. He was a leader in the Heritage Foundation. He was in the shadow government for Donald Trump while they were out of power for a couple of years, and he was always going to go back to that Office of Management and Budget. And they used that position in a way with a giant sword to slash lose three trillion. The entire budget bill that was created came out of the fevered mind of Russ Vought. So they sicked Russ Vought on Jay Powell.

Again, he doesn't have to leave. He knows he's not gonna get fired. This fraud thing is not gonna lead to him being fired for cause, although they're trying to drum it up now or trying to embarrass him. And if I'm Jay Powell, for the good of the country, and to avoid Trumponomics, stay in your chair.

The nation needs you as a counterweight against Trump. But all we're watching are people folding from the MAGA Congress to even federal judges, to a certain extent, and certainly the United States Supreme Court. Somebody stand up for Americans and our economy. And that's gotta be Jay Powell. And even if you leave on May 2026,

which you're gonna leave on May 2026, stay on the board of governors for two more years until 2028 to let that seat be filled by the next president of the United States, which I'm sure with our help here is going to be a Democrat. So until my next report, this is Michael Popock

on Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. Come over to Legal AF, the YouTube channel as well. Follow me there. And until my next contribution, I'll be seeing you. Can't get your fill of Legal AF, me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument,

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