The MeidasTouch Podcast - Legal AF: Episode 16

Episode Date: August 1, 2021

The leading law and politics podcast — MeidasTouch’s Legal AF — is back and coming in hot with special guest attorney Sam Yebri (samforLA.com). On its Sweet 16 episode, MT founder and civil rights lawyer, Ben Meiselas and national trial lawyer and strategist, Michael Popok interview Sam, who’s running a #MeidasMighty-style, progressive, grassroots campaign to represent LA’s 5th District on its City Council. Sam, Ben and Popok discuss his campaign and approach to addressing and solving LA’s homeless crisis. After a brief interlude where Ben welcomes Popok back with open arms from his summer holiday, the hosts get back to their brand of hard-hitting analysis Legal AF listeners have come to expect. First up, Ben and Michael examine how various federal courts are addressing COVID-19 policies, from Florida’s sinking the CDC mandates for the cruise ship industry with the help of a flip-flopping 11th Circuit, to a Trump-appointee Indiana federal judge upholding a university’s decision to mandate vaccination for its students. Then, the hosts do a deep dive into Attorney General Merrick Garland’s recent decisions to: (a) deny Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks request to have the United States substitute in as the defendant in the case brought against him for inciting the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and (b) issue new DOJ policy supporting the First Amendment and preventing prosecutors from seizing journalists records except in extraordinary circumstances. Ben and Popok round out the episode with a look at yet another Former 45 courtroom loss. This week, the Second Circuit soundly rejected the Trumps’ attempt to force into private arbitration a class action suit brought against Former 45, Eric and Ivanka for endorsing a "multi-level marketing" "get rich quick scheme" run by ACN, allegedly causing tens of millions in losses. Ben and Popok scratch their heads over Trump et al.’s wacky decision to argue, in effect, that the Trumps were so close to ACN (and its alleged fraud scheme) that the Trumps should get the benefit of the arbitration agreement between ACN and its customers. Easter Egg Alert: Ben bans Popok from any future days off! Subscribe to the MeidasTouch Podcast for more episodes and remember to give the show a 5-star review! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/meidastouch/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/meidastouch/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGamingOntario. What's up, Midas Mighty? This is Ben Micellis, and guess who we got back from his never-ending vacation? vacation. Michael Popak is in the house, which means if it's Sunday, it is legal AF, provided that Michael Popak is not backpacking through Italy. And I say that, Michael, with some resentment, but also with some sense of jealousy, because it truly looked like a beautiful vacation. Summarize it in 10 seconds and then let's get right to the law. All right. After two years of working hard.

First of all, I'm glad to be back. I'm glad to see you. And I'm glad to be back with our listeners who made me, my heart got really big during the vacation when I read all the comments about them missing us and missing legal AF and missing Popak and all of that. And it's. Popak, you've got lots of fans. There's lots of times where we have polls that say, who's your favorite brother?

And people will say, why can't Popak be included? Right. Yeah. Why can't Popak be the brother? Why can't we have Popak merch? Popaki in this, Popocky in that. I mean, look, at some point, I think I've created a monster. I created a superstar who's eclipsed the brothers. You have to spin me off like work and Mindy in my own show. No, no. I can't tell you how thrilled I am to be back in your presence and with you to do this show.

And even though I had a great two weeks, you know, this was a two year vacation in the making because of pandemic. Everybody suffered through it. I just put it off. But but it was a as you said, it was a traipse through Europe, starting in Italy, ending in Greece and everything in between. For those that can get out and travel, go see Sicily. It's an amazing place. I was really blown away by it. But now I'm tan, ready, rested, coming in hot like a fajita. We're ready to cover all the topics today. I love it. And we should probably let people know as well on the top end of this show while we're at it. I joke about Popak's vacation, but at the end of the day, Popak deserves a vacation.

And we as Americans have employee rights. And frankly, the employee rights need to be expanded. Now, Popak, because of the work that he performs, would be an exempt employee, as the law would categorize it on lots of aspects of things. But what you should always do out there for those people listening, though, is, you know, you should check, though, what your rights are as an employee. The laws in your specific states set minimal thresholds, and America is grossly behind other countries in the benefits we provide, both in terms of medical leave for maternity and paternity leave. But states are beginning to catch up. The federal

law, what's called the FMLA, has baseline standards. Within the states, there's baseline medical leave standards. Some states expand on the federal law, but you should look at your employee handbooks. You should see what PTO paid time off you have. You should look at your sick days. with the law. And there's a whole body of law in this area about what employers have to provide their employees in certain circumstances. And it's possible that there are, if there are violations taking place, I mean, you can give Popak and myself a call and we could let you know, you know, if we think that there are issues with meal breaks and wage and hour violations and things like that. And I joke with Popak, but I want everyone to know I take these issues incredibly seriously and you as employees work your dedicate your lives to these jobs.

Yeah, listen, I agree with you. And I certainly encourage the people that work for me to take all of the holidays and vacations that they're entitled to. I've been known to push a few associates out the door when I felt like they were burning through vacation time because, you know, frankly, employees that aren't recharged and rested are of limited use to both themselves and to the people they work for. But you're right, our country is falling way behind in that area. And while the laws that you cited govern wage and hour and overtime and

time off for family and medical needs, you know, there's just not a mandatory vacation time off or paid time off period in this country for just vacationing, for just turning your brain off and being with your family and friends and doing something different. But if you have labor and Fair Labor Standard Act cases, wage and hour cases, those are certainly things that you and I have handled in the past and would handle in the future. So nice segue off of my backpacking through youth hostels throughout Europe. Yeah. And I just wanted everybody to know that it's a joke that Popak and I have, but we do take that time off very, very seriously, as you should, as your employer should. I want to note at the top of the show,

we have a guest today, Sam Yebri. He's running for city council here in Los Angeles. He's actually a well-known civil rights lawyer. His offices are in Century City, which is about 15 minutes, 20 minutes with no traffic, six hours with traffic. That's an L.A. joke for those people out there from Los Angeles. And I want to speak to Sam because he's running on a platform as progressive, but also very pro L.A. business. And I want to speak to him about certain issues like the homelessness crisis that we have here in Los Angeles. And what do we do with mandatory vaccinations, you know, and balancing that with business interests? And how does he square those away?

So I'll be interesting to hear Sam's response and his background and perspective as a civil rights lawyer. And it's one of the things Popak and I like to do on Legal AF is introduce you to new upcoming candidates who could be the future stars of their political parties. And we'll check back on them in a few years and see if our predictions are right. So let's talk about a case involving cruise ships. Popak knows a lot about cruise ships. He knows a lot about backpacking, and he knows a lot about this 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision reversing a district court order and upholding CDC,

what appear to be very common sense restrictions within the cruise industry, which DeSantis opposed and initiated this lawsuit because DeSantis wants to basically force cruise ships not to have people wear masks and force cruise ships to allow unvaccinated people to run rampant. And it's interesting. It's one of the few examples where the cruise ship industry is like, no, no, no. We want these regulations because we're not fucking idiots and we want to keep our own people safe. So we want to be able to have common sense restrictions. We agree with what the CDC is saying. And we see this in Florida and in all of these other GQP states of the government actually intruding in business decisions where businesses want to compel people to be vaccinated, compel people to be safe,

to force businesses to do the unsafe things. So, Popak, first off, I love just talking about cases with you. I'm so glad we're having these conversations and I'm so glad that I'm saying, Popak, what do you think about this case? Yeah, it's a fascinating case. And the way you've teed it up, industry versus Republican governor, which I never thought I would say, is really right on point. Look, the industry knows that it can't get people to start cruising again and can't get confidence in their industry unless they go above and beyond the call of duty to make sure cruising is safe from a hygiene and COVID sense. It seems like a million years ago, but it was just two years ago or less that the thing that

kicked off COVID in this country, if you will, was, if you remember, there was the cruise ship, I don't know, was it in California that was off the coast. And we wouldn't let them on because they had an outbreak of this new thing called COVID. This is when Trump said, oh, don't worry, it's going to disappear in a week. You know, we're not going to let that cruise ship debark anybody. And those six people will stop us from having COVID. How did that work out? So the cruise industry is really sensitive. They've had Legionnaires disease in the past. They've had viruses and plagues kind of run their way through cruise ships,

these closed entities, these closed circuit environments. And so the industry is like, how do we get confidence in cruising again? How do we fill our ships? I know we follow the CDC guidelines on things like masking and inoculations and cleaning, and we'll do a test cruise, a simulated cruise to test out all these procedures before we let live paying customers on. And DeSantis in his infinite wisdom said, no, I hate that idea. People should just go on

regardless of whether they've tested in or tested out with COVID, regardless of whether they're vaccinated. And they should just roam free on a 300-foot enclosed environment for two weeks. Terrible idea. Yet the DeSantis administration went to the federal judge first in Tampa, who was a Bush one appointee. And he agreed with DeSantis that it was too onerous of a set of restrictions on the cruise ship industry. Again, a cruise ship industry that really wants to be regulated in this area and ruled in their favor, ruled in favor of Florida and said, nope, I'm going to enjoin or put a stop, at least for now, the enforcement of the CDC guidelines on cruise ships. Well, the others with brains in their heads took the appeal up to the 11th Circuit, which is the federal

appellate court for Florida, and got a three-judge panel initially to rule in its favor and stop the order of the Tampa judge, which would have prevented the enforcement of the CDC regulations on the cruise ship. So that was like a hooray moment for about a week. Then the DeSantis administration did two things. First, they filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court of the United States, arguing that the Department of Health had overstepped its guidelines, which the CDC reports to, and wasn't allowed to implement these regulations. And ironically, the Supreme Court justice that is assigned to the 11th Circuit, in other words, their go-to justice for all things in Florida and Georgia happens to be Clarence Thomas. So they make an emergency application to Clarence Thomas.

While that's pending, a new panel of the 11th Circuit, three judges, decide that their original decision was wrong, and they lift the injunction, allowing the cruise ships to go out without complying with CDC guidelines. One of the most interesting things about that, Ben, I don't know if you saw who ruled on the 11th Circuit's favor, but it was a pretty mixed bag. It's a Obama appointee judge, it's a Clinton appointee judge, and it's a Trump appointee judge. So this thing kind of crosses even political lines because they voted 3-0 to stop the CDC from enforcing its regulations on cruise ships. An interesting thing, and I think of a a it's the Trumpism on steroids, which is now the face of the Republican Party. It is the insurrection party. But these views that

they have and we saw it the other day, Popak, where it's like they think they're civil rights leaders because they refuse to wear masks. They act like they're civil rights leaders by providing disinformation to the public about vaccinations and telling people not to be vaxxed. At the end of the day, one of the most conservative positions out there, and we talked about this before the show, should be to get vaccinated to conserve your life and to conserve the lives of others in a party that is about personal responsibility. irresponsible decisions people could be making by killing themselves. And I tweeted out this photo last night, Popak, and to me, it made sense. But I guess to others, because my brother's like, what the hell did you just tweet out? I tweeted out a photo of just a room that looked like it was a room of like a hoarder. It looked like a room of filth and disgust. And the point of it was, and I wrote GQP, and then I did like those letters that are like uppercase and lowercase, which is like, give me my freedom. And it's like,

at the end of the day, if that's how you want to live privately in your home, the government shouldn't encroach into your home until and unless that becomes a health hazard to the homes around it. But you have the right to live how you want to live privately. The reason we have regulations, whether it's speed limits, whether it's wearing seatbelts, whether it's just not doing things that are incredibly dangerous and harmful to others in public. You don't have the right to urinate and take shits in public. It's disgusting. We have laws against that, you know, and you can't fight for your freedom. You have the freedom to do how you want to live publicly, but in private, but in these public spaces, you don't. So that to me is what this is about. Yeah. There's two, I agree with you.

There's two competing principles there. Your, your personal Liberty stops at the edge of my public health crisis. And you don't have, and that's one. The second is there are just things that you and I in this society can do completely autonomously and by ourselves. There are. But there are things that we cannot do by ourselves. We cannot defend this country and operate a defense policy. We cannot run an economy by ourselves. We can't, most of us, unless you live in a single family house, we have to live with other people. I live in a high rise in Manhattan. I can't just be by myself in a condo unit because that's not how New York works. So there are just things collectively that as a

collective, we have to do together. And there's a social contract that's supposed to go on among all of us. It's not the Declaration of Independence. It's not the Constitution. It's not the Bill of Rights. It's a social contract that says you can do what you want until you harm someone else. And when we're in the middle of a public health crisis, you're not allowed to do certain things that get other people ill or kill them. And that's where it ends. And that's patriotism. And the Republicans have completely, in their blind allegiance to Trump and to try to get reelected again, they have lost their way. Their gyroscope is completely cracked as to the intersection of personal liberty and the social contract. They've lost it. They are lost as a

party. And look, one thing among many that Biden is doing properly, besides being the adult in the room, is he's trying to restore the social contract that exists between us. You know, I saw, you saw this photo of the hoarder. I saw photos about a month or two ago of America in 1917 during the Spanish flu of U.S. baseball players, Yankees and others, wearing masks that look almost identical to the ones we're wearing today, playing baseball. And you did that. You got a polio vaccine because you were a patriot. You got a smallpox vaccine because you were a patriot. You inoculate your children when they go to public school and hopefully private school because you're a patriot and you're a contributor to the social contract. How this got distorted into a political fight about the Delta variant is just mind-boggling.

It's just a party that's lost its way. Absolutely. And we might as well talk now about, while we're on the topic, the district court decision relating to the lawsuit filed by certain Indiana University students against the state university. It's the premier state university in Indiana's decision to require as a point of enrollment that its students be vaccinated. It was interesting, Popak. I went to I was fortunate enough to go to a Phoenix Suns playoff game. They ended up losing to the Milwaukee Bucks, and it was an incredible NBA finals and NBA series. But you had to present your vaccine card and show that you were

vaccinated. They did a swab, which lasted about 10 minutes, and then you could watch the game and you had to wear a mask. Did I want to do all of those things? No, but did I want to make sure I could watch it and be happy and be healthy and be safe and take 20 minutes of my day to make sure that I was protecting myself and protecting others? Sure. And so literally what we're talking about here is minimally inconvenient in the sense of presenting your vax card.

I mean, it's getting a vaccine at some point in time before you enroll in this public university, because in the accurate wisdom of the university's leadership, when you go into these public spaces and these big lecture halls, they want to make sure that you're not getting your fellow students sick. That's it. Yeah. Yeah, this case is amazing. So this is Claston versus the Board of Trustees of Indiana University. And you have eight students, I guess their parents are behind it, who have decided they don't want to get mandatorily vaccinated. And they're claiming that under the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment, which deals with due process, that they have the freedom to be free of unwanted medical treatment. But this is a public health crisis. And we are now beyond what I'm now going to refer to as, I read it on Facebook. We are now beyond that as a rationale for not getting vaccinated or bringing these kind of lawsuits.

That you read it on Facebook, that you think, and I'm not making this up, it's in the lawsuit, that you may get acne from taking the inoculation, the vaccination, is not a proper grounds under our Constitution. And the balance that is weighed by a judge in a public health crisis versus the 14th Amendment and constitutional rights over your body, over your liberty, okay, that's not going to work anymore. You're going to have to come up with science. You can't just say, well, young people contract a disease at a lower rate, so why are we vaccinated? That's not good enough. We're two years almost into this pandemic, a pandemic that would have been crushed already had we reached herd immunity and 70% plus of vaccination. We have

a huge population of people in this country, in the tens of millions, who are not vaccinated, primarily in red states like Indiana. And the other interesting thing about the decision in which the judge, who was a Trump appointee, okay? So again, crossing political lines here, common sense and constitutional analysis. The judge said, look, I understand that there is a certain amount of body autonomy that comes with the Constitution,

the penumbra of rights and the 14th Amendment. I get it. But there is a public health crisis and a public interest that outweighs what you read on Facebook. I mean, that's what the 100 page decision basically says and rejecting it. And it's great. I don't know what's going to happen when they take it up to the appropriate appellate court. And I'm assuming somebody will. But for the very first decision to come out of a federal court from a Trump appointee, finding that mandatory vaccination, which is now sweeping the country in terms of federal government and even private employers, to have it come out in favor of the ability to mandate vaccination is a very good thing. the case, though, you should know. Because Indiana is one of those states that has outlawed the

ability of an institution to ask for proof of vaccination, either by passport or otherwise, sort of like Florida, Indiana can require, based on this new law, can require their students to get fully vaccinated, but they can't ask for proof that it's happened. So it's going to be on the honor system. That is a very fascinating caveat, which in many ways kind of swallows the rule. It kind of swallows the mandate and it is on the honor system. But it is odd, and we're going to see this again and again, the politicization of a public health crisis where the conservative angle should naturally be go get vaccinated if that's truly what they believe as conservatives. And so it's just it's it shows you that this is no longer a conservative party, but just a whack job death cult. And when Sam Yebri joins the podcast in a bit, I want to know his approach about mandatory vaccinations in L.A., because we are going to see

this is going to be the trend, Popak. Am I right i right like i think at some point people already having enough of this you know these idiot unvaccinated people you know who are fucking up just our ability to go out and be safe people who are vaccinated you know i just think that we're going to start seeing more and more institutions requiring vaccination cards and mandatory vaccinations and laws being passed and these idiot, wacko, idiot GQ peers pretending that their rights are being infringed upon because they have to get a shot in their arm that's going to save their life. So just on that, I just read a very good article yesterday. We're now moving in the pendulum. We're now moving from pretty please, won't you get vaccinated?

And now rapidly into we'll give you $100 if you get vaccinated. But the new things that the companies are doing, which are all being rolled out almost at the same time is, okay, you don't want to get vaccinated, we're going to make it hard on you. You have to wear a mask and not one of these cloth masks. You've got to wear one of those uncomfortable K95 or N95 masks. You've got to get tested weekly. You have to pay for it. And if you get COVID notwithstanding that and you're out, this is interesting. Some of the companies are saying those are lost wages that we're not going to compensate you for. So we've moved from pretty please do the right thing, go out and get vaccinated to if, okay, idiot,

if you don't do it and you're now infecting everyone and impacting our business model, you're now going to pay. You're no longer going to be a freeloader and a free rider in the system. You're going to pay the consequences. And as you let Sam in, we should mention the group that has, or the organization that has one of the strictest policies and requires, you know, vaccination passports is none other than Fox News that requires these vaccination passports. And we are joined by Sam Yebri. Sam, am I saying your last name correct? You are. Hi, Ben. Sam Yebri. Yeah. Good to meet you, Michael. As long as someone named Mycelis can pronounce the last name right, I'm very sensitive to the pronunciation.

Sam, welcome to the Midas Touch Legal AF podcast. Popak has graced us with his presence. Popak took a four month vacation and so he showed up today finally after all that time, as we mentioned. Sam, as a litigator and as a civil rights lawyer, what was the longest vacation you've taken of consecutive days in the past decade? So usually has to do with the birth of one of our children. We have four kids under the age of eight. So we've taken some baby moons, maybe a week with an extra weekend. So nine days with my wife begging us. When we formed the law firm of Yebri, Mycelis, and Popak, you will have four weeks paid vacation.

You can take anything consecutively. I'll be in charge of administrating that policy. If we could be so lucky to have Sam, you know, the first thing I, when Sam told me that he was going to be running for city council, is I said, are you the craziest person in the world? You've got a successful law practice. Sam is a distinguished civil rights lawyer. He takes on a handful of cases, but does an incredible job at them and has developed a reputation in the community where lots of other lawyers just over the past few years have been like, you got to meet Sam. This guy knows how to handle his cases.

He crushes them. And he's developed this incredible reputation. But Sam, you're running for city council. You're a young guy. What is going through your mind to leave a successful practice to do this? You sound like my parents. They say, are you Michigan? Are you crazy to give up your practice? You have four little kids, mouths to feed. But it's really, I always start off by saying how much I love Los Angeles. It's a phrase we don't hear often anymore, especially those of

us who've lived here for a long time have seen it kind of degrade. But I just have this desire to give back. I came here as a refugee from Iran at the age of one and really lived the American dream and have a debt to repay to this incredible city. I think all of us can agree, our city has a lot of challenges, a lot of problems, and it's not gonna get better

with the same old folks in charge. And I wanna be a part of the solution. I really wanna tackle these problems. And every day I see people dying on the streets from homelessness or our streets not being clean and not being safe and solutions not being provided. My heart breaks. I want to turn the city around. And I think a lot of good people share that passion. And it's been really exciting to talk to people who want to help and chip in. And Sam, that's what I want to talk about right now, which is the homelessness epidemic.

I mean, it's probably as bad in L.A. as it is anywhere in the country. I just had a friend come in from Canada and he wanted to see all. First off, he thought that I like hang out places and I had to make it very clear that I don't do things. So he thought because I'm a lawyer in the entertainment sector that I like go to all of these restaurants, like Nobu and Mr. Chow. I'm like, I've never been to any of these restaurants. You want to go to Tony's Pizza on the corner? I'd be happy to. So I brought him though, to some of those restaurants just to show them that like, you know, to have some credibility and keep them as a client. But I said to him, I said, under this condition, I want to drive you through Skid Row. I want to drive you through real LA

so you truly have an understanding of what LA looks like. It's as bad here as it is anywhere. But this is an issue confronting cities. I was just in Chicago. The violence, the homelessness there, right outside in downtown was horrible. But how do we as progressive, as Democrats, as people who believe with this kind heart that want to help people,

how do we remain compassionate towards the plight of individuals, but also make sure our streets are safe and keep things in good conditions because we get hit hard on that by the GQP and these conservatives and we don't usually have great answers. Right. So I'm glad you mentioned the fact that your friend was visiting because when someone asks you to take your town around Los Angeles, it's a wake up call. I think a lot of us grow numb to what we're seeing around and we avoid places, we avoid places like Skid Row, right, or Venice Beach. And that's really where the suffering is. So I start off by saying, we have a duty to people who don't have a home, right? I think that housing and shelter are right. And we have to do everything we can as a government to provide alternatives to sleeping on a park bench or on the street or

on the beach, right? With that also said, there's an ordinance passed last week, which really set out clearly that there are certain places where people cannot sleep, whether it's parks, next to schools, next to fire hydrants, there's certain basic rules that any first world city needs to employ. So we have to balance both of those competing interests. Homelessness is on one hand, a massive poverty,

economic disparity, affordability, rent crisis. We have to get serious about the other side of it, which is mental health and addiction. It's really a crisis that unless we tackle that side of it, it's not going to get any better. And the city tends to focus on the housing side of things. We're building brand new construction housing for those who are unhoused in a very expensive, cumbersome, slow way. I've seen statistics, five, six, $700,000 per unit, while every day, five people who are unhoused are dying on the street. That's irresponsible for us to take that sort of slow, cumbersome approach that has no urgency. When there are other models that we can use to get people into hotels and motels,

get them into tiny houses, modular housing. And there's, I think the best work being done are these nonprofits that are on the ground providing services and care and offering treatment. Some of the bigger ones like Union Rescue Mission or small ones that have shared housing models, like Alexandra House, Friendly House. There's things that I think money should be devoted to those nonprofits that can get out there and help people. Every life saved is really critical. And I think government just, we've not shown the urgency. And you're right, we're getting hit as Democrats, right?

It's worse in blue cities, right? And what I always say to my fellow colleagues, my fellow Democrats, is that I don't think it's progressive to let people wither away and die on the streets. We have to change our mental health laws right now, unless someone is an imminent threat to themselves or someone else or, quote, gravely disabled. They can't get the help that they need. And some of us in the party say that we should not be changing those rules because there's civil rights and privacy and civil liberty issues here and let people make decisions how they want to live their life. But I don't think they can make those decisions if they have severe mental health addiction issues. And that's a big part of it is to get serious about that aspect of it.

Sam, I think you're right on the money when you're not treating homelessness as a monolithic issue of people who just don't have housing. Because people who don't live in urban environments, I live in Manhattan. And so I pass it every day. I live right by Central Park. So I pass it every day. The issue, the problem. And you can't treat it as just, there's two sides of it. There are people who clearly have been priced out of a marketplace and would like to afford housing and are trying to make a living wage, but can't and are on the street. That's one group, or in shelters or other things. And those people, there are good tools for those folks,

rent subsidies and building more affordable housing, helping them with eviction protections so they don't get unlawfully evicted. There's tools there that work. That's right. But the people that I think you have to address in a different way are the people that the average tourist and local person passes at the entrance of Grand Central Station, Port Authority Bus Terminal, Penn Station, Central Park. And those people are suffering, as you can tell from observation, from severe mental health and or drug addiction problems. And they deserve housing as well. Now, if you don't address, as you said, the underlying mental health issue, putting them into a home is one thing.

Having them have the ability and the survival skills and desire to stay in that home is another. Because if you talk to some of them, and I have, they'll tell you in their own way, they prefer to live on the streets. And we have to address that as well. And I think your approach is the first step. I think that's right. And what I often say is housing and shelter is necessary, but it's not sufficient. And we can't build our way out of this crisis alone unless we're building that wraparound services and that mental health care. In the city of LA, in the county of LA, for 10.5 million people, other than jail beds and ER beds,

for someone who has a mental health breakdown or addiction breakdown, there are 81 residential psych beds for someone to get outpatient treatment from the county. If you don't have insurance, if you don't have other places to go, that's shocking. And what's really happened is a safety net for people who have those issues has really been ripped apart and we have to put a piece of it back together. And there's a study that came out last week that the leading cause of homelessness among women is domestic violence. And those women need different type of responses to falling to homelessness. They can't, like you said, it's not monolithic. You can't lump those folks in with everyone else who's either sleeping in a car because they got evicted or because

they have an addiction to an opioid, right? There's really unique personalized care that's in treatment that needs to happen. And I think the nonprofits need to come in and I want to empower them to do this work. And Sam, Democrats are leading, though, in this space of public safety and public health when it comes to vaccinations, the way we're encouraging vaccinations in public spaces. I think we can be, unless I'm mistaken here, I think we can be bold also in framing homelessness as a public safety and health issue that does require it to be addressed, you know, in a similar matter as, hey, we don't want unvaccinated in public spaces to harm others. Similarly, you know, we want to make sure for everyone's protection that we have robust support for homeless and non-homeless alike in these

spaces. I think that's right. And in Los Angeles and California, Democrats were really innovative in coming out with immediate responses to make sure folks that were homeless didn't contract and spread the COVID-19, right? Parks were utilized and shelters were set up quickly and trailers presented and people understood that they'll give up some of their public space for the short term so that folks who are unhoused can have a place to go during the pandemic. But now the challenge is what do we do long-term, right? We can't permanently give up our public space and our beaches and our parks and rec centers. And we have to build affordable housing

faster and cheaper. And I think Democrats, sometimes we get in our own way by having a whole lot of rules, whether it's ADA or labor, environmental, that make it really difficult to build supportive housing, to build shelters and build affordable housing.

I think we need a little more common sense and reform on how to do this. And this is where the local government can make a huge difference. And Sam, we just talked about before bringing you on a district court judge upholding a Indiana University's decision to require vaccinations for enrollment. That specific judge was actually a Trump appointee who, when balancing the interest, said we have to focus on the safety of our students. But I do understand the civil rights aspects of it. But when you step into this public space and you can infect others, we have to be

cognizant of those public health concerns. What are your views regarding mandatory vaccinations in public and private spaces in Los Angeles? Yeah, so I was really pleased to see that Governor Newsom and now some city council members and county supervisors have called for the either mandatory vaccination of all city, county, and state employees. I've actually called for that several weeks ago as a candidate, or in lieu of mandatory vaccinations, weekly testing. And now LAUSD is going down that path as well. It's a competing balance, right? I think you have to follow the science.

I'm someone who thinks that giving up some minor freedoms like masks is a small ask when we're talking about potentially saving lives, saving your neighbors lives. We put in that context. Right. Vaccination. I understand there could be some reasons why folks don't want to do it. And I do have some concerns about making them requiring it until it has their full approval of the federal government. Once that happens, then it could be treated like any other vaccine. Right. When any of our kids go to go to public school, or things like that. So I think we got to continue to follow science, I'm open to see what the federal government does. And I think at minimum, you know, large public gatherings, government employees, you know, major public space issues should be regulated in a way,

whether it's vaccine, mandatory testing, mandatory masks, things like that. Do you think downtown L.A. is going to make a comeback? I do. I'm bullish. Maybe I'm either naive or overly optimistic about the future of L.A. I think once we get out of this pandemic and people kind of remember what L.A. is and can be, we have a bright future. So we're finally going the way of michael of manhattan with some real public transportation in the next six years on the west side of los angeles the district that i'm hoping to represent fifth council district there's gonna be a there's gonna be a subway coming to beverly hills century city westwood village and the va if you know that part of town for the first

time ever and it's going to get linked up to lax and holly and to downtown, to Santa Monica. Thousands of people are going to be, hopefully, have housing near transit with bike lanes so that we can actually use those stations. And then one thing that Mayor Garcetti did is we have the Olympics and the World Cup coming. We need to put our best foot forward. And there's sort of this urgency, not only because of the crisis everywhere with homelessness and crime and other issues we're facing, that as a minimum will force us to step up our game, and I think we will.

Well, Sam, I want to applaud you for taking the step to run for city council, frankly, at huge risk of leaving a very, you know, lucrative, very prosperous civil rights practice that you have. And, you know, me and the brothers and Midas Touch and Popak were somewhat accidental activists. We weren't really talking about politics until politics truly encroached into our lives in a way that felt like life or death. And I know that's why you're doing this and making these sacrifices. And I think the city, state, and I think in the future, nation will be better off for it. You can find Sam at samforla.com. That's S-A-M-F-O-R-L-A.com. Sam Yefrey, thank you so much for joining the Mind is Touched Legal AM.

It's my pleasure. Thank you, Ben, for the opportunity. Michael, good meeting you at this great conversation. Good luck, Sam. We'll follow you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Bye now. What's up, Midas Mighty? Ben Micellus here, joined by my younger brothers, Brett and Jordy Micellus. Have you got your Midas merch gear? If you haven't gotten your Midas merch gear, I don't know what's taking you so long. I got my gear. Most of the Midas Mighty got their gear. We have some incredible stuff.

Isn't that right, Brett? That's right. And with the new CDC guidelines that say you no longer have to wear masks indoors or outdoors if you've been vaccinated, a lot of people have been asking us, how do you let people know you've been vaccinated? How do you know if you're around other vaccinated people? A lot of people are concerned. But, you know, we already thought about this, guys.

We got our Vaxxed and Relaxed merch line. You could get it now. If you still want to wear masks, if you still feel comfortable wearing masks around indoors or outdoors, we got the masks. We got the tees. We got the shirts. We got it all. And we got more on the way.

So let people know you've been vaccinated. Shop at store.MidasTouch.com to get yours. And that's not all we have. We got the club democracy gear. We got the shout out to the Midas Touch Legal AF podcast and um I like that he was up front about the vaccination issues and where you know where he stood on it um you know I I think it's good to see he really is making it like, you know, he he's taken a pay cut. That's probably 10 X of what he's making to run for city council. And so I do applaud him for that. And we need people like that who are willing to, you know, sacrifice a lot to represent the people. I want to talk about another person who's ostensibly done that, who we've talked about before. And we'll talk about two different activities that he's taken now, Merrick Garland, who oversees the Justice Department.

First, Popak, let's talk about the declination by the Justice Department to represent Congress member Mo Brooks, one of the insiders of the insurrection. Mo Brooks, Donald Trump, all these cronies tried to avail themselves of, whether it's congressional privilege, executive privilege, all of these immunities, trying to have the Justice Department to either indemnify them, represent them, bail them out of these civil lawsuits that they're in, and frankly, with the January 6th Commission to prevent them from testifying before the January 6th Commission in a memo that was widely reported, the Justice Department said inciting an insurrection,

you do not have the privilege of being a government employee. You're not in the course and scope. And this differs, though, Popak, from other moves where we were a bit critical of the Justice Department. The Justice Department recognizing executive privilege with respect to the Lafayette protesters and Trump and the DOJ, the old DOJ and Trump's DOJ, attacking peaceful protesters. And the defamation case that they stepped into. And E.G. Carroll. Yeah. So what's going on here, Popeye? Yeah, this is really interesting. I mean, the ultimate say about whether Mo Brooks is going to be substituted out as a defendant because he was a federal employee within the course and scope of his duties and substituted in would be the U.S.

government, which is what he's trying to do. We've talked about indemnification on various other episodes, but here it goes beyond that. If he were successful and if he is ultimately successful with the judge, he's already failed at the Department of Justice level, in getting himself out of the case, the U.S. government would come into the case as the defendant and defend themselves, if you will, because their federal employee, Mo Brooks, at the January 6th assembly that took place yards from the Capitol, that Trump and others, including Giuliani, and in this case, Mo Brooks, incited, whipped up and fomented the participants to march and charge and attack the Capitol. And when Mo Brooks stands in front of a group that's already at a fevered pitch and says to them, we're going to kick ass and we're going to take names and then points them in the direction of the Capitol.

And Trump does the same thing and says, I'll meet you there as he walks off in the opposite direction of the White House. And these followers, these cultists, these idiots, these insurrectionists take that at face value and charge the Capitol. We've now all heard the heartbreaking and heart piercing testimony of the Capitol police of what happened that day. So Moe Brooks shows up at this rally. He's wearing apparently body armor, which came out later. The rally is paid for by a Trump, not a PAC, like Midas touched, but a Trump supported not for profit who pays for the whole thing. And he says, oh no, but I was a federal employee. I'm a Congressman from Alabama. You have to represent me and take me out of the case and let the U.S. government be the defendant.

And the first step in that process is going to the Department of Justice and asking for what's called a certification under federal rules and the DOJ manual that allows him to step out of the case, the government to step in. They took one look at it and they said, OK, we're going to make this easy on you. Electioneering and campaigning, which is what you were doing, is not part of your official federal duties. It's what you do to get reelected. It's what you do to curry favor with Trump and for whatever reasons, but it's not something you did as a congressperson. And therefore, you're outside the scope of your duties because you are campaigning or electioneering. And therefore, we're not going to step in and substitute in for you as a defendant. Now, that ultimate decision is still with Judge Mehta, who is a Obama appointee, a meet to Mehta in the VC circuit. But now that the DOJ has said we're not certifying it,

it will be next to impossible for Mo Brooks to convince the sitting federal judge that the DOJ was wrong and he was actually acting as a sitting congressperson at the time he told people to basically attack the Capitol. Merrick Garland is a very smart individual. He was a D.C. Circuit judge. When you rise through those ranks as a Democrat appointee, it's based on a meritocracy, unlike Trump, who is picking completely unqualified individuals to be judges. And so Merrick Garland, you know, should have been a Supreme Court justice. He was, of course, held up by Mitch McConnell, who created some bizarro interpretation that in the last term of Obama, Obama couldn't appoint somebody and prevented Merrick Garland from being appointed and then swiftly appointed a justice within, what, seven days after Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

And within 38 days left in the term, they cramped in Amy Coney Barrett. Because there's no intellectual consistency there. But there is intellectual consistency if you look at the decisions Merrick Garland's made, and you look at the E. Gene Carroll defamation case, the Lafayette Square case, and this most recent Mo Brooks decision, and you can distinguish them. And I think that Merrick Garland is anticipating the challenge, and he's ready to go into cases where he's defended the farthest edges of executive privilege and government privilege. The E. Jean Carroll defamation case, obviously, a sexual assault is not within the course and scope. The defamation case relates to a question where Trump was accused and rightfully so of defaming an individual.

But it was during a presidential press conference. And so he was under the drapings of being a president. Now, he's a complete psychopath, disgusting, fucked up person who brought such shame on the presidency, but nonetheless, he was acting in the capacity of a president answering questions. And to your point, let's just throw it back at you. If he had made those statements, Trump, not at an official press conference, but at one of his rallies, what do you think Garland would have done? He would have done exactly what he did with Mo Brooks here. He would have said that's not in the course and scope. And Merrick Garland is protecting, though, future lawsuits

against a president for misspeaking as presidents may, not as Donald Trump's would in the future, but protecting a president who may just say something wrong and then get sued for it. And then someone point to that decision in the E. Jean Carroll case as precedent to sue in the future, whether it's Biden or a future president. And Merrick Garland may be giving a little bit too much credit to the type of credible people who will be presidents, but we hope we don't have a Trump again. And similarly, Lafayette Square, while attacking peaceful protesters, was shameful and horrific. On the farthest reaches, it could be viewed as a presidential act of dealing with defense and protest and outside the White House. And it happened on or around the grounds of the White House.

And so do I think that that should receive the protection? No, of executive privilege. But do I see the argument why on the farthest edges you would give it executive privilege? Yes. But in this case with Mo Brooks, you draw the distinction. Look, we've recognized two cases that were outrageous examples, but that's as far as we're going to push it. This Mo Brooks clearly falls into campaigning. And by the way, the message here, when you read the memo and says or other federal officials, which clearly meant Trump and Trump's inner circle and basically gave the January 6th commission carte blanche to say, go subpoena, go subpoena Trump. I think they're going to. By the way, I agree with you. When Mo Brooks was dodging service of process, because this starts with the Eric Swalwell

and others lawsuit about the insurrection. When Mo Brooks was literally dodging service at his house where the process server had to sneak in and serve the wife who happened to be in the house, was he acting within the corset scope of being a congressperson? and serve the wife who happened to be in the House, was he acting within the coercive scope of being a congressperson? Or was he just being a scummy guy that didn't want to get served with a lawsuit that he knew was coming? I think he was acting as a scummy person who didn't know the lawsuit was coming. And doubling down now, a scummy person who was avoiding a lawsuit where he was acting outside the course and scope of his congressional duties to incite an insurrection.

Another major Merrick Garland decision was sending the message loud and clear within the DOJ. Stop going after reporters. Stop trying to probe and pry into who their sources are. Of course, Merrick Garland doesn't have that as a blanket rule. If the reporter is engaged in illegal and unlawful conduct or in the commission of a crime, the government can have its duty to investigate criminal conduct. But the idea here is under the Trump administration, there was an enemies list that was created that made the Nixon's enemy list pale in comparison. And Trump would go after and subpoena and seek the records of reporters and their sources to try to out people and create very dangerous situations where you could put the source's life in peril. Yeah, there's things to unpack here. One, just to put a little bit of a real life framework to this, the Committee to Protect Journalists, which is an online database, estimates that in 2020,

30 worldwide journalists were killed in retaliation for their reporting and 11 so far in 2021. It is a dangerous occupation to be a journalist. I know that the Republicans don't feel that way because the journalists have been called the enemy of the people. They're not. They're the ones trying to kill them. So, you know, it's like, yes, they're the opposite of the enemy of the people. They were empowered by our founding fathers to be the protectors of our democracy in the free exercise of First Amendment right and the freedom of press, all those things that were denied to our founders and colonists by King George. And it starts really from our cradle of civilization

and democracy. So it's really offensive and unpatriotic to go after journalists. Having said that, I applaud, and I know you do too, Merrick Garland's decision to pass a federal DOJ guideline and regulation that will prevent seizing journalists' records during what's called a leak investigation. So there's a leak of confidential information, usually at the White House or at a department, and that information makes its way into the press. In order to get to the bottom of it, sometimes the government refers to it as a mole hunt, M-O-L-E hunt, comes from spy novels. And in order to do a mole hunt, you got to figure out, you know, how the leak happened. So you naturally would love to talk

to the journalist who may have the confidential informant that gave them the information. But you have to balance the need to protect confidential information and national security secrets against the First Amendment right and the freedom of press. And of course, the Trump administration didn't balance those things. And they just went after journalists and secretly obtained their iPhone records and other records to try to find out, in this case, you know, who leaked information about the Russia investigation. It's just wrong. But that's on one level. One level is good. We've got a Department of Justice official, the Attorney General of the United States, that has a backbone, a spine, and ethics, and has passed this new regulation. But what we really

need passed while Biden has the majority in Congress is legislation at the congressional level that permanently protects journalists from this type of thing. Because if Biden loses or he's out and Garland's gone, the next attorney general, and if he's a stooge like Barr was under Trump, they could change the policy. So rather than having this flip-flop policy, there is right now being considered in Congress what's called, I'll use the acronym, PRESA, which is the Protect Reporters from Exploitive State Spying Act. I think it's a very cumbersome name. I think they just wanted the acronym. But it is a permanent fix to this problem of journalists who operate in the gray area all day long and have their own constitutional rights violated and potentially more in terms of retaliation against them by a crazy out there with a weapon. You know, the cumbersome name, you see what they were trying to do, because protecting private enterprise from intrusion by governmental actors should be a conservative point of view, but it isn't now. This new conservative party isn't conservative. We don't call them conservative. They're GQP wackos who are out there calling the press the enemy of the people. So that name you gave is cumbersome because my own opinion is they are

trying to appeal to some group of Republicans who may still favor limited government, which is not what the GQP favors anymore, hoping to get some votes. And at the end of the day, in a world where the GQP supports an insurrection and the insurrection is exposed as an insurrection by the media who hold people to account. The GQP is very fearful of the media shit. The GQP wouldn't even pass a resolution to support the Capitol Police officers. So the idea that they're going to come along and support this, that could hold them accountable. I won't hold my breath, but I am glad this is a step in the right direction. And Popak, finally, I want to conclude by talking about a case where Trump lost in court, a big setback, but it really hasn't gotten a ton of headlines in a week that's been filled with what's gone on in the January 6th commission, and rightfully so. But how's this for a headline, Popak and Courthouse News Service?

No arbitration for Trump in pyramid scheme class action. The Second Circuit this week advanced a suit over the former president's endorsement of a multi-level marketing pyramid scheme where only select few of the top re-profits off the backs of lower-tier cogs. airplane. And you would go through some of these pages and on those random corny airport magazines, you would see Trump endorsing just some of this random shit and go attend this seminar. And it's basically these multi-level marketing schemes, have people pay tens of thousands of dollars to attend seminars. And then they bring their friends in and their friends bring their friends in and they're supposed to be compensated. But basically, it's all a gigantic Ponzi scheme. And of course, Donald Trump, before he ran for president of the United States and was elevated by idiotic, idiocracy, cultist party, was running pyramid schemes. He has that distinct,

he will be one of one in history as being a president before elected who ran pyramid Ponzi schemes and on that basis was elected. But in this specific case, Trump was sued for aiding and abetting the pyramid scheme. Trump cited an arbitration agreement between the Ponzi scheme company and the individuals that the Ponzi scheme contracted with. So Trump's argument to break it down basically was, this was my company. Like he leaned into it, in other words. And he said, they should have viewed this pyramid scheme, that's a known pyramid scheme,

as though I was one with them so that there can't be a class action. This should be compelled into arbitration and not go before the court. It's strategically stupid. It's publicly stupid. It's legally stupid. And the second court agreed with my assessment, at least on it being legally stupid, because this class action for fraud will proceed against donald trump and his kids and i'm just looking at this photo right now and i just tell everybody just to google this uh no arbitration for trump and pyramid scheme class action where'd they get that photo from this photo of him with like the other pyramid schemers and photoshopped Melania is literally both hilarious and puke inducing at the same time. Popak, we got a few minutes left on the show. What's going on

on this one? I like this case too. This is another case by a friend of mine here, Robbie Kaplan, same lawyer for Jean Carroll. She's been making a cottage industry out of going after Trump civilly and otherwise. And this one's interesting. You and I have talked about arbitration before. In order for him, in order for Trump and his children, because they've all been sued individually, the unique strategic decision that good lawyers made, and I'm going to contrast it with bad lawyering by the Trump lawyers in this case, The good lawyers, the smart lawyers, decided not to sue ACN, the Pyramid Scheme Company, who had an arbitration provision that

would have put them into arbitration, but only sue Trump and the children under an aiding and abetting and racketeering and fraud and California unfair trade practices case in order to avoid arbitration. Because this is not a case you want to take to arbitration. If you're a plaintiff's lawyer, like you and I are on occasion, it's a case you want to take to a trial and you want to be able to have a jury and you want to have damages and discovery and depositions. That's why you want to try to get your way out of arbitration if you can. So they made the strategic decision not even to sue ACN. Trump said, well, wait a minute. Even though I was a spokesperson and I got paid millions of dollars, I should get the

benefit of the arbitration provision that's in the ACN agreement with its operators. And operators are people that bought in for thousands of dollars in order to be able to sell telephone service and all this other BS, which is all like you called it multi-level marketing. It's all, as you said, a Ponzi scheme. It's all pyramid scheme. And none of them made any money. The only people that made money was ACN and Trump and his family with endorsement fees. And Trump said, I get to use that agreement. Now, normally under arbitration agreements, which are a creature of contract, you don't get the benefit of being able to use an arbitration agreements, which are a creature of contract, you don't get the benefit of being able to use an arbitration provision unless you are a signatory. You sign the contract that has

the arbitration provision in it. He did not sign the contract that has the arbitration provision in it. So he had to go to a default argument, which is an argument under what you and I call equitable estoppel, which says, even though I didn't sign the contract, under equity and under certain other conduct between ACN and me, the other parties, right, the plaintiffs should have known that I was going to ultimately use the arbitration provision. And the Second Circuit took a look at it and said, let me get this straight. You're doing things outside as an endorser, which is secret. No one really knows that you're getting paid these millions of dollars. That's the foundation of the lawsuit. But at the same time, you're arguing that the people who were victimized by your Ponzi scheme

should have known that not only were you in bed with ACN, but that you were going to be using their arbitration provision one day? No way. Case dismissed, lower court decision affirmed, and you're going to have a trial, Mr. Trump, with no executive privilege and your children seeking millions and millions of damages. And while he can try to take a Supreme Court appeal, my gut is it's a dead loser, and he's going to be in deposition in that case within the next six months. We talk a lot about this on the podcast, which is, you know, lawyering is about the law, but it's also about strategizing. And here, this didn't really make any sense to me, Popak, because if I'm representing Trump, I want to basically make the argument and

disgusts me to say this, but he did the wrong thing. So I can give what the right argument was, is that the celebrity apprentice was, you know, gave a light endorsement to this thing. Nobody could have associated that I was integrally involved in the operations. This was just kind of almost parody of, you know, and I would distance, if I was him and his lawyer, I would distance from the entity. But his tact to try to get this into an arbitration was to say, no, no, we're basically the same company. We're like them. And the victim should have known it.

And the victim should have known we were the same. The victim should have known we were the same. We're basically the Ponzi scheme company. And so it was just a strategically a blunder, legally a blunder. But frankly, the right and just results concluded there. Let me give you one more inside baseball. Talk about blundering to contrast the plaintiff's lawyers and their great strategy of how they put the case together. The Trump lawyers,

this should come as no shock to our listeners because the Trump lawyers, whether it's at the election law cases or these cases are always making mistakes. They made another mistake in the lower court before they went to appeal. They did not raise below, they did not raise at the trial level, the argument that the arbitrator should decide the issue of whether these claims should be arbitrable. There's a whole body of law in arbitration under the Federal Arbitration Act that say what things need to be decided at the trial court level or the appeal level, and what actually has to be decided by the very arbitrator that some party is claiming they should be in front of. And there's an argument to be made, I'm not sure it was that strong, that the arbitrator should have been the one to make this decision, not the trial, not the judge.

And the Second Circuit said, that was an interesting argument, but it's one that you needed to have made at the trial court level before the appeal and you didn't do it. So you've waived the argument. So you've got it's like a clown car again of Trump lawyers who can't even do the fundamental things in a court, which is preserve issues for appeal. And I'll give one more inside baseball and then leave our viewers and listeners with this. Just one thing I've noticed, Popak, as an overall trend over the past 18 months, these arbitration clauses were generally a species of corporations who wanted arbitration clauses in there, believing that that would defeat and destroy class actions. It would prevent costly litigations. Across the board now, when I deal with companies, just generally, essentially all of them,

the trend that I'm seeing, and on my side, when I represent companies and I'm talking in-house. So across the board, what we're seeing is a lot less arbitration provisions being built in because plaintiff's lawyers are starting to understand that you can bring lots of arbitrations or that arbitrations can end up actually being significantly, not a little bit, significantly more expensive for the corporate defendant who often has to bear the full costs of the arbitration than it is for the plaintiff. But Popak, I just want to let you know that I am glad you are back from vacation. Our listeners are glad to be listening to the Popakian dialect. They missed you. I missed you.

I am glad to have you back. We all wanted to wish you a great vacation, but had fun on this episode and look forward to next week's and the week after that and truly continuing to grow Midas Touch Legal AF and special thanks to Sam Yebri. Look forward to following his career.

Popak, any final words? No, just thrilled to be back in the bosom of our listeners and staring at your scruffy face for yet another edition of Legal AF. Would have just stuck with no, but you went on at the end. And so I will just simply say shout out to the Midas Mighty. And thank you for listening to this edition of Midas Touch Legal AF. Ben Mycelis, Michael Popak signing off.