Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Screws Himself as Scheme Blows Up in His Face

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

Did Trump just compromise our national security by having to tell China this week that it has been spying on it and discovered former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s “AOL” emails on Chinese servers, before Indicting Bolton? And Did Trump just cover up blowing a surveillance operation over China by announcing new “maximum tariffs” against China blowing up the Stock Market, all to allow him to vindictively prosecute one of his political enemies? Popok makes sense of all of Trump’s bizarre behavior today and his willingness to stop at nothing to make a critique pay. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! 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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With flexible coverage options from TV insurance, you only pay for what you need. TD. Ready for you. If you're like me and you start from the proposition that you can't trust the thing that Donald Trump says, that when you hear the leak that John Bolton, former national security advisor and ambassador to the U.N. or Republican is about to be indicted by the Trump administration, you start to wonder about why is it being leaked now? Why is it being leaked

the same day that Donald Trump attacked the Chinese? Is there a link between John Bolton, the Chinese, and Donald Trump that needs to be further covered up? And there is, I'm going to uncover it all for you right here on the Midas Touch Network in LegalAF. The new reporting has already been reported that John Bolton, former national security advisor who's been the bane of Donald Trump's existence, even though he's a Republican, forever. It all stems from a 2020 book called In the Room Where It Happens, Where John Bolton made certain claims against Donald Trump that got under his skin. How do I know that this indictment is all about that? Because I have in my hands the unredacted or redacted version of the search warrant affidavit, which talks a lot about the 2020 book

that Donald Trump tried to stop back in 2020 with a lawsuit and it failed to stop it from being published. Now, in the book, John Bolton talked a lot about the Chinese. In particular, he said that Donald Trump was trying to curry favor with Premier Xi, President Xi, at the G20 summit, to try to convince him to help him get elected, get Trump elected by buying more American agricultural products won't you buy more soybeans so I get elected? It'll make me look good. In the same breath,

John Bolton said that in his interaction with Donald Trump, he was also in favor of internment camps, he was in favor of giving favors of dictators. And this always got under Donald Trump's skin. Now, in order, here's the Chinese connection. Today we wake up to Donald Trump being pissed off about the Nobel Prize. So at the same time, he goes after all of a sudden, out of nowhere, and attacks the Chinese. He says there's going to be heavy tariffs because of their, withholding of rare earth metals or putting control tariffs on those to try to flex their economic muscle to show that they control the tech supply chain. So what's the connection between John Bolton and China?

You're here on the Midas Touch Network and Legal AF on Michael Popak. I'm going to weave it all together now, as we like to say, to show you my working theory, which I think I'm right about. Now, the reporting is that in order for this indictment, or what could be a criminal, complaint against John Bolton for taking with them after 40 years of government service, some documents marked top secret are classified, you know, sort of like what happened at Donald Trump when he was indicted for espionage and obstruction of justice at Mara Lago. Donald Trump now trying to show that other people did it too.

Now, in order to get the search warrant to even go into his house with FBI agents in September, they had to tell a federal judge something. So what they told the federal judge is that they determined that they had probable cause because they found John Bolton's AOL hacked emails on a foreign country's servers that they were surveilling secretly. So Donald Trump is willing to compromise active national security surveillance by telling the foreign country that they have been hacked by America in order to go after John Bolton. now who could that foreign country be well the only country that's been in the paper the only country that has had its agents indicted recently for something called salt typhoon are the chinese we've been hearing things since the campaign about the chinese actively hacking all americans and government officials emails and aOL accounts and john bolton just so happens on paragraph 13 36, the hack of Bolton's AOL account by a foreign entity.

Now, foreign entity, a foreign entity, a foreign entity that John Bolton said in his book that Donald Trump was trying to collude with to try to get elected. The Chinese. Who does Donald Trump attack today the day the leak comes out about the indictment or the possible indictment of John Bolton coming out of Maryland? The Chinese. All of a sudden we get this posting that says, oh, I've told you that the Chinese have been laying in weight, that we're going to have to come after them with maximum tariffs, which tanked the stock market, lost a trillion dollars in value because the Chinese reflects in their muscle and their negotiations to show America and Donald Trump in particular who's their daddy, who's Trump's daddy, the Chinese. they wanted to show what the impact of the American economy could be.

But Chinese hackers get indicted in New York. Salt Typhoon gets discovered. And Donald Trump's Department of Justice and FBI have to reveal to a foreign entity that they've been peering in hacking their systems and discovered John Bolton's emails. And now you've got the cover story. So let's start from the top. John Bolton, 40 years in service,

UN ambassador for George Bush, national security advisor for Donald Trump. Ever since he left the office, the things that he saw, he wrote his book. In 2020 or 2019, the Trump administration got a copy for preclearance and said, no, you can't use it

because there's classified information in it. The federal judge didn't believe that, dismissed the lawsuit. There was a grand jury that was impaneled even during the Biden administration about John Bolton, but that was disbanded, and the thing was over. What Donald Trump doesn't like is all the bad things that John Bolton said about Donald Trump

in his book. You know, in particular, John Bolton hears the 10 biggest claims the BBC said in John Bolton's book. Number one, Trump wanted help from China forget Russia to win re-election. that at the G20 meeting that Trump went up to Xi and according to Bolton studdingly turned the conversation to the coming presidential election in 2020

alluding to China's economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he'd win. He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchase of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. Agriculture is one of the main industries in the Midwest that helped propel Trump to victory in 2016. He also said that China putting ethnic minorities like the Uyghurs in internment camps was the right

thing to do. Donald Trump, the keeper of the freedom flame, wanting to see people in internment camps, that Trump offered personal favors to dictators like Erdogan in Turkey. Also, we know he's currently doing it. He's currying favor with Bolsonaro in Brazil by punishing Brazil. Bolton also thinks the Democrats should have gone further with their impeachment efforts. He also said that Trump suggested he wanted to serve more than two terms. He thought that he didn't know that the UK had nuclear weapons and he thought that Finland was a part of Russia.

Donald Trump has hated the trolling of John Bolton for a long time. Now, if you go into Kelly O. Hayes, the U.S. attorney, and that's the only thing this indictments got going for it, if it eventually comes out. There is a legitimate prosecutor. I'll be frank, that's run in the case in Maryland. Before she became the acting interim U.S. attorney, she was the head of the major crimes unit. She's a real career prosecutor,

and she has told people in her office that she thinks she can get the indictment. Now, the allegations about it starts on page 9, paragraph 30, all about the 2020 book. This is what the agent, the FBI agent says. According to government records, Bolton submitted a draft manuscript for his book, The Room Where It Happens, a White House memoir to the National Security Council for pre-publication review on December 30th, 2019. He was told on January 23, 2020, that the manuscript appeared to contain significant amounts of classified information, including top secret level.

Another letter was sent to Bolton's attorney about the manuscript, about details of the manuscript, about details of the manuscript, there was a request for a temporary restraining order, but Royce Lampberth, a Republican judge in D.C., stated in the court's order that he would not grant the temporary restraining order, although he did state that Bolton gamble with national security and exposed his country to harm and himself to civil liability. So, of course, they quote that. Then there is this interesting section that's completely redacted that John Bolton's AOL account, was hacked by a foreign entity. Now, let's tie it to the Chinese.

There's only one foreign entity, whether it's the Salt Typhoon group of hackers, the 12 hackers that were just indicted by the Trump administration that had been going after and successfully getting information and documents from government officials, including Donald Trump, including J.D. Vance.

And now I assume including John Bolton. Now, here's the link. In order to bring this indictment, they had to have told the foreign entity, China, in my theory, that they have been spying on China and found the Bolton emails. Otherwise, it would come spilling out in the indictment. So they did that, showing that Donald Trump would do anything, including compromising our foreign national security to expose a hacking and surveillance operation in order to put a 79-year-old former national security advisor in jail or to at least indict him.

This is how depraved and deranged Donald Trump is. Now, as a cover story for that, I'm going to continue here. Donald Trump, today, the day of the leak indictment comes out, goes after hard China. China, you did me dirty. I'm going to have to raise tariffs on you. So Donald Trump was willing to tank the economy because the stock market dropped over two and a half percent. just today because of the traders being upset with being blindsided with we're going to be raising tariffs on China because they're holding back on rare earth minerals, you know, copper and lead

and other things that we need for magnets, for auto manufacturing, for chip manufacturing, for AI chip manufacturing as well. Our entire tech economy is based on rare earth metals. Everything tanked today, except the rare earth. metal companies, including one that the Trump administration owns, that the government owns, that went up. Now, why would you fight with China now? Because they already told the Chinese in a weak moment that they caught them spying on John Bolton. What's been the delay?

The delay, according to MSNBC, is that they had to tell the foreign entity that they've been spying on them before they found out about it in the indictment, which could come as early as Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, there's been a grand jury already in progress that Kelly O. Hayes has been presenting evidence to. Now, their only question they have is, should they do it as a criminal complaint, followed later by an indictment?

Because they might be having trouble getting the, it's a complicated case, getting the indictment out of the grand jury. They can criminally charge him through a complaint. It has to be substituted with an indictment. It's what they did with Judge Hanna-Dougan in Milwaukee. the first piece of paper that charged her was a criminal complaint prepared by a prosecutor.

It was later substituted with a grand jury. But in terms of timing, now that we're back at economic war with the Chinese, don't be surprised if you see the criminal complaint come out first and then the grand jury indictment sometime thereafter. I think this all goes down based on the reporting. Early next week,

James Comey, Letitia James, John Bolton, get ready, Adam Schiff, the senator, Lisa Cook, on the Board of Governors. It doesn't matter whether there's a competent prosecutor like Kelly O'Hays or an incompetent one like Lindsey Halligan. Donald Trump is going to go down his checklist. He's checking all the boxes, and they're just all the wrong boxes demonstrating to the American people the tremendous amount of abuse that's going on here. If you thought I'm wrong about Donald Trump.

I'm hating John Bolton. Here's a clip of Donald Trump about John Bolton after the search warrant was executed, including lying about not knowing about the search warrant. Let's play it. No, I don't know about it. I saw it on television this morning. I'm not a fan of John Bolton.

He's a real set of a low life. When I hired him, he served a good purpose because, as you know, he was one of the people that forced push to do the ridiculous bombings in the Middle East of Bolton. He wants to always kill people, and he's very bad at what he does. But he worked out great for me because every time he doesn't talk, he's like a very quiet person, except on television.

He could say something bad about Trump. He'll always do that. But he really doesn't talk. He's quiet. And I'd walk into a room with him with a foreign country, and the foreign country would give me everything because they said, oh, no, they're going to get blown up because John Bolton is there. He's not a smart guy, but he could be a very understanding.

patriotic. I mean, we're going to find out. I know nothing about it. I just saw it this morning. They did a raid. So we're going to continue to follow all of this story. The good news is you're going to be hearing a lot about a guy by the name, a lawyer, a lawyer by the name of Abby Lowell. He represents Letitia James. He represents John Bolton. He doesn't represent Comey. But I think he's also in the running or will represent Adam Schiff. So, you know, these are the lawyers that are stepping forward and running into the burning building to protect democracy. So, are we here all together on Midas Touch. Until my next report, I'm Michael Popak. Can't get your fill of legal A.F. Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal A.F. 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.F. What else? All the other contributors from Legal A.F 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.