The MeidasTouch Podcast - Special Edition: MeidasTouch Presents New Legal & Political Podcast 'Legal AF'

Episode Date: March 17, 2021

On the kick-off episode of Legal AF, hosts MT founder and civil rights lawyer Ben Meiselas and legal wiz Michael Popok, discuss the “origin story” of their legal and trial work together, including First Amendment and social media cases for MeidasTouch involving Fox News and Kelly Loeffler, Republicans (the GQP) using “cancel culture” to silence critics and attack the free press, and the legality of “blue” state efforts to suppress minority voting under the Voting Rights Act. Later, Ben and Michael take on the ethics of Big Law firms hired to shill for Trump, including McGuireWoods’ secret work to root out anti-Trump staff at Voice of America. --- 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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Pull up a seat and check out a wide variety of table games with a live dealer. From roulette to blackjack, watch as a dealer hosts your table game and live chat with them throughout your experience to feel like you're actually at the casino. The excitement doesn't stop there. With over 3,000 games to choose from, including fan favorites like Cash Eruption, UFC Gold Blitz, and more, We'll be right back. Welcome to Legal AF. The A stands for analysis and the F stands for friends. We are your legal analysis friends. Ben Mycelis, managing partner of Geragos and Geragos. And you, of course, know me as one of the founding brothers of Midas Touch and here with my colleague and great friend, managing partner of Zupano, Patricius and Popak, Michael Popak. How are you doing, Mike? I'm doing great, Ben. I just found out you're managing partner of your firm. I like that too.

Exactly. If you say it enough times, it becomes true is kind of my philosophy. And so I think even when I was in law school, I was saying I was the managing partner of my philosophy. And so I think even when I was in law school, I was saying I was the managing partner of my firm when I was the paralegal. Yeah, I was the managing associate of my firm for a long time. But, you know, one of the things I want to talk with you about is, of course, our new show. I want to talk about our legal careers and our backgrounds and what led us to do this show. I want to talk about our legal careers and our backgrounds and what led us to do this show. And then, of course, I want to start getting into some of the legal news and the format that this show is going to take. And so I think it's helpful if we just introduce how we met each

other, Michael, and then we can talk about our background. So we met actually on opposite sides of the case, and I won't get into the case in specifics, but I was on the plaintiff side of that case. You were on the defense side of the case. It was a highly contentious litigation over, you know, controversial facts. But through that case, you know, I think we were able to achieve what is rare these days in law, but what occurred, you know, many decades ago, or what we believe occurred many decades ago, or that could just be the lore they tell us, you know, when the legal profession was first created. But we developed a friendship, which developed into a great friendship and developed a, a friendship, which developed into a great friendship and a very, you know, incredible working relationship where we do a lot

of cases together. Yeah. Yeah. That, that was a, that's a nice highlight to our, both of our careers and it's unique. We're both very tenacious advocates and trial lawyers representing our client's interest. I was in-house global head of litigation for a Wall Street firm. You were on the other side, as you described, taking one of our subsidiaries, high-profile subsidiaries, in a high-profile case. And while we fought tooth and nail about the case, we always kept it on very professional levels. And I think we developed a deep abiding respect for each other and our approaches to the case. And when I left that Wall Street firm and decided to return to private practice, you were literally one of the first phone

calls that I made because of our friendship and my admiration for you and what you were accomplishing. And I think it started something like this, Ben, I'm going back into private practice. And I don't know if you remember your response to that. What did I say? You said, Popak, you're going back to private practice. We want to work with you. We want to try cases with you. It was literally like that. I think I was sitting in my study, just trying to figure out my next steps. I hadn't even decided yet on the law firm that I was going to join or the partners in Miami that I was going to join forces with. And you were right out of the gate. Let's find ways to work together. has developed into one of the most rewarding aspects of my return to private practice,

frankly, has been working with Geragos and Geragos, working with you particularly, and watching you from day, it wasn't day one, it was day two of Midas Touch. I said, what is this Midas Touch that I just saw that you launched? What's that all about? I think you had, what was the number you told me you had at the moment that I made contact with you over Midas? We maybe had a few hundred followers at the time, maybe. It was probably very late March. We're almost celebrating the one year anniversary of Midas Touch. We're about 11 months and 17 days into it right now. But to your credit, you were one of the very first people. Maybe I was your first call when you returned to private practice, but you were the first person who believed in Midas Touch.

And early on, we would do these style podcasts. We would post small clips of them on, you know, on Twitter and other social media, and they would get a few hundred views. You know, now all the videos get millions of views, but you were there from the very beginning, giving great legal analysis, and you developed quite the fan base very early on amongst the Midas Touch followers who kept on saying, when's Popak coming? When's Popak coming back? I remember once on something as esoteric as the emoluments clause of the US Constitution, I got like a million TikTok views. A, at that moment, I didn't quite know what TikTok was. I thought it was for preschool kids to do dance routines in the middle of the street. I didn't realize

there was going to be a following that would watch really hardcore analysis of constitutional and legal issues that were, you know, that were sitting on that site. So that was fun. And I don't know if you remember, we even had people in my law firm write very interesting articles on artificial intelligence and all sorts of other cutting high concept legal concepts that you posted on what was then your Midas Touch website. I think it evolved into something else. But at the time, you know, Jordy was looking for content and we were supplying these articles, you know, at a pretty rapid pace and he was making them look great with all sorts of graphics and all sorts of things. So no, I've been a big believer of both you, your brothers, Midas Touch, how you

described the business model, the political aspect of it, the counterweight to the Fox News and the Newsmaxes of the world. I mean, I don't know if you ever envisioned that rocket ship taking off as quickly and as successfully as it did, but I was certainly hopeful that it would. And I mean, I don't know if you ever envisioned that rocket ship taking off as quickly and as successfully as it did, but I was certainly hopeful that it would. And I really wanted to be an early supporter and adopter and a big promoter of it. And of course, you've been a big supporter. You've been our lawyer as we've been threatened with numerous lawsuits and have been involved in numerous lawsuits in our very early stages. But just so those listening out there, you know, know your background, my background,

so they know they're not just talking to two people playing lawyers on Legal AF podcast, if you can give the Cliff Notes version of where you went to law school and very briefly, you know, your career trajectory that brought you here today. Yeah, I'd be happy to do that. And I will do it briefly. It's always difficult, even for lawyers and trial lawyers to talk about themselves, but I'll give it a go. So I started my law career at Duke Law School in North Carolina. And right after that, when I graduated, I started with two very large, what we call Wall Street law firms, global law firms based here in New York, and worked in both

white collar criminal defense and general litigation and securities litigation, primarily on the defense side. I've been until you and I connected while I've done fair amount of plaintiff's work. I've been mainly defense oriented, which I think is the reason you and I work so well together on our plaintiff's side cases. And then from there, I went down to Miami because I really wanted to be a trial lawyer when I grew up. And accomplishing that in New York at these major firms is really not a goal, not a dream for most people. If you're in New York at a major firm and you try one case in your entire career, you're doing okay. And that's not how I foresaw what I wanted to do with my life and my career.

So I went down to Miami and eventually I was with a very well-known firm based in Miami in South Florida. And before it was all said and done, I tried over 40 cases, trial, jury trials, federal trials, state trials, arbitrations all around the country. And then about five years ago, now it's about six years ago, I was invited by a major Wall Street client of mine to come back to New York and to be the global head of litigation and all things employment related for this 15,000 person company that's, you know, I won't mention the name, but it's very, very well known.

And, you know, that was a new opportunity for me, a new challenge for me. They wanted me to build from scratch an in-house trial team. When I got there, they were handling none of their cases in-house by themselves. They all there listening, that is a tremendous body of work and trials. They were arbitrations. They were state and federal cases all across America. We had a very good track record. I think we were, I don't know, 19 and four or 20 and three, Tom Brady type numbers. But I've really accomplished all that I wanted to accomplish there, having built that team from scratch, being a senior executive at a company. And I was chomping at the bit to get back to full-time trial work. That's my passion. That's my talent. And so I decided after four years to return to private practice. And that's when you and I connected because we had met on that case. And, you know, I reached out to people like you and I decided, yep, there's a need for Michael Popock to return to private practice. There's a lot of great cases. And I'll say it for the listening audience. You gave me the first case for the new firm of Zampano, Patricius, and Pofock. In fact, a week before we opened our doors, you and I had filed that case

in a federal court in California with my firm name under your firm name. And my partners in Miami were like, how did you get a case already? We haven't even opened the doors. I said, well, the magic that is Ben Mysalis and Michael Pofock. What can I tell you?

We've worked on a lot of great cases since then. The abbreviated version of my career and lots of people know me for Midas Touch. A lot of listeners generally know my story. I went to Georgetown Law. I was a civil rights litigator, litigated some of the most contentious, high profile police shooting, police brutality, and misconduct cases, particularly in the Fresno-Bakersfield area, did lots of catastrophic personal injury cases. I still do catastrophic personal injury cases. Michael Popak still does catastrophic personal injury

cases and civil rights cases. So part of what we're going to be talking about on this show are cases that we are actually working on. And we will invite listeners if they have issues, if you have cases, if you know people who have been injured or you want to just pick our brain on issues, feel free to reach out to us. We want this to be interactive and we want to be as helpful as we can be. I led the Colin Kaepernick litigation against the NFL and some other high profile litigations. Not only do I do litigation, I do a bunch of transactional work. And of course, I started Midas Touch a little bit longer than a year ago at this point, a little less than a year ago at this point, almost a year as of March 28th was when we would have started. And May, we officially became a political action committee. And through

this relationship, we've been battling and having lots of legal battles through Midas Touch. I think as Midas Touch grew, people started coming after us. And you were there shoulder to shoulder with us. And we should talk about some of those Midas Touch litigation histories. So let's first talk about the Fox News cease and desist and our response to that. Yeah, that that I don't know if that was the first one or Kelly Senator, then Senator Kelly Loeffler was the first one, but they came really one right after the other. Fox News, using their own words against them, was somehow copyright infringement. That Midas Touch didn't have the license to use those clips, didn't have the right to use those without compensation, and should stop using them and take all those viral videos that were getting 1 million, 3 million, 4 million hits, take them down.

I mean, certainly during the election season. So we really know they were doing the bidding for the Trump campaign. And we wrote back, I wrote back, and with your help, a very succinct letter that told them to go AF themselves. And more particularly said that the use of that material is fair use under copyright law. It's fair commentary under copyright law that in the world of First Amendment and social commentary, that Midas Touch is allowed to use that and to use it for their own purposes in parody or criticism, social criticism, political criticism, and that they should go, in short, jump in a lake. And we never heard from them again. And they certainly never heard from

them again. And as we try to educate those listening to what these different legal doctrines is, as we tell these stories, of course, they'll know the First Amendment, you know, the freedom of speech. And we as a political organization might First Amendment, the freedom of speech, and we as a political organization might as touch have a freedom of speech. But can you talk to briefly the fair use doctrine and why political organizations like us and others and even documentarians often refer to this fair use to use footage of things that are in the public sphere in our videos and why that's not a copyright infringement. Yeah. So let's start from the copyright angle. Anyone that creates something of artistic value,

whether it's a play, an article, a news report, a movie, some version of music, any of that instantly has a copyright that's owned in common law. And it may be under federal law if they've registered it with the federal patent and trademark office. But you enjoy if you've created something, a copyright. And there's no doubt about that. There's no argument about that. The question is, can a second person use an aspect of your copyrighted artistic expression

for their own commercial use or other use? And what the law says is, yes, if it's being done, not just to make money, right? You're not just copying literally the painting behind me or the audio track and using it and just ripping it off, but you're using it for some sort of criticism, parody, social commentary, or the like, because how are you supposed to make the criticism in a fair, open society, a First Amendment society? How are you supposed to do that if you don't actually use the clip? And there's very famous cases, including Hustler Magazine and the now recently deceased Larry Flint had a very famous case involving fair use

because he used the picture of a very famous person and he put him in a very anatomically impossible position. I'll put it that way. And that person, that religious leader took exception to it and argued that they had violated his copyright in many other ways. So what the law says very succinctly is that you, Midas Touch and others, are allowed to show clips of things previously produced in which somebody has a copyright if the purpose of doing it is commentary,

criticism, satire, and the like, even if you make money off doing it. So that was the Fox News. You sent them a letter. They ran away as soon as you did that. Then we got the letter from Kelly Loeffler, former Senator Kelly Loeffler, aka looting Loeffler. Tell us about that. Yeah. So same thing. We got a very detailed letter from her law firm. I think it was on behalf of Citizens for Loeffler claiming that the looting Loeffler video, which was obviously driving her up the wall right at the moment she was in a very contentious and now losing campaign to keep her seat in Georgia. And we get this very strong cease and desist letter that we need to take down Kelly Loeffler, anything related to her, videos related to her, and that it was

filled with defamatory material, false material. It was really just using her own words against her. We used her words, and then we used the clips of Judge Jeanine Pirro and Tucker Carlson, who had referred to her as a looter when she was selling and buying certain stocks for her portfolio, based on the inside information she had received in secret Senate intelligence briefings. So we were using the words of Fox before they got their script together and they realized, oh, shit, we have to cover for her every second and we can't be against her. But that's their initial reaction was what most of the public's reaction was in the early days of COVID. Why are you selling and trading stocks off of inside information? And she went livid, especially because we showed it was Fox News hosts who were saying that. So we went after her. We also exposed her law firm. And I think that that law firm also that represented her in

that they also were hosting a transition to Biden event later on, which we were using to just show the hypocrisy of these of these law firms. And that's an interesting point, too, before we get to our Marjorie Taylor Greene case. Law firms have particularly come under fire for their roles in subverting democracy. I think that there's been a general view, especially as someone who has a criminal defense practice in the law firm. I think I'm okay with the concept. I don't think I know I'm okay with the concept of allowing individuals who are accused of crimes to have representation. That goes back to Adams representing the British and President Lincoln representing people who were accused of

crimes and people who eventually were proven to be criminals. To me, the line was drawn is when you actually aided and abetted the overthrow of democracy and subverting and using your powers as a law firm to subvert democracy. So we did a video at Midas Touch called Shame on Jones Day, because Jones Day, a large, very respected law firm, was helping out with some of these lawsuits, particularly one in the Supreme Court, to throw out votes. I believe that one was in Pennsylvania. And even since we made that video, Jones Day,

which is usually ranked amongst one of the most powerful large law firms in the world, has muted and has precluded any comments on their tweets. And Michael, they're able to do that, even though it's cowardly, because they're a private company, right? Like, there's no issue with them doing it, even though I think the issue is that they are complete cowards for doing it. There's no First Amendment issue presented. Right. And why is that?

Yeah, we'll talk about it when we talk about Marjorie Taylor Greene, because the First Amendment is only a protection that citizens have against the government, the U.S. government, doing something to abridge or interfere with freedom of expression in the First Amendment. See, a lot of people throw that term around like, well, you've taken away my First Amendment because I'm not allowed to do something on my gaming platform that I'm on, or I've been muted by Jones Day, unless they are acting under the color of the federal government, which sometimes they are, and lawyers like you and I make that argument in a compelling way. But if it's just citizen dough against citizen dough, there is no First Amendment right that you have to your freedom of expression. It's only against government interference of that improper interference of that right. And that brings us to where we did bring a lawsuit, our third legal battle together in Mid-Mid-Estuch and under a year against Marjorie Taylor Greene. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the congresswoman from Georgia who's a QAnon

conspiracy worshiper, who mocked transgender rights, who literally stalked survivors of school shootings and accused them of being actors and making up the school shooting. This was a person who was elected to Congress. This is someone who's a close ally of Donald Trump's, which just tells you how fucked up our political system is that that takes place. And frankly, that's the new face of the GOP. respect people who have conservative values, but stalking children who survived and saw their classmates die from school shootings and calling them actors. That's the most radical view that there is. There's nothing conservative about that. That's crazy. She also said that 9-11 was a hoax. And I work for an organization that is one of the major survivors of 9-11. So I took that very, very personal. Yeah, she's out of her mind. She's a QAnon-backed person. In the history of the Congress, she may be one of the only people who ever got stripped by vote of Congress of her committee assignments, because

the vast majority of Congress felt she wasn't qualified to be in any committee at all, let alone the Education Committee, which is what the Republican leadership elected, decided they should put her in. So she's a denier of school shootings. She believes they're hoax, including Sandy Hook, right? And yet they put her, they try to put her on the education committee. And the rest of Congress said, no, that's a bridge too far. And they stripped her of all her committee assignments. Yeah, that's Marjorie Taylor Greene. So, of course, Midas Touch has a political committee, as a group that is was just the strategy she deployed,

not just to Midas Touch, but that when anybody would criticize her, rather than try to debate these views, rather than try to argue why she thought these crazy views were valid. It's always just a point that's worth mentioning before kind of getting into that. It's like when these Kevin McCarthy's talk about you're canceling Dr. Seuss, you're canceling Dr. Seuss, and then he reads Green Egg and Ham. No one has any issue with Green Egg and Ham. as a private corporation had issues with is that there was some portrayals of the Asian community in very racist ways and black and brown communities in very racist ways. And so if you want to if you if you, Kevin McCarthy, as a congressman, want to make the argument that that you're in favor of it, hold up the real pictures. You know, Marjorie Taylor Greene, if you're going to do these stupid PR stunts that you do where you gaslight people,

when the military of Guam comes and the National Guard from Guam, men and women who serve our country, you know, heroically come to your office to speak to you when you say that they're not even affiliated with the United States and they're a foreign country and your office to speak to you when you say that they're not even affiliated with the United States and they're a foreign country and they come to speak to you, you hide in your congressional office, right? That's what she did yesterday. She hid in her congressional office and she sent out an aide to talk to them. So all they do is hide, hide, hide.

So with respect to this instance, Marjorie Taylor Greene blocked us and we brought a federal lawsuit. Our two firms together might as touch the Marjorie Taylor Greene. And tell us about that lawsuit. Yeah, that's great. And listen, back on that last point, the Republican Party has so lost its way that it's so it's so worried about cancel culture and Dr. Seuss and the Muppet Show that it's lost its way as terms of conservative values. I mean, I'm a Democrat, but as with you, I have friends that I respect that are traditional conservatives and libertarians.

And this is not that party. But we should be careful. One last thing for the followers, if I just touch. Don't be distracted by this smokescreen of The Muppet Show and Dr. Seuss, because while they're doing that, that is giving them cover while they're canceling voting rights, which we're going to talk about a little bit later in the show. That's what we got to keep our eye on. The prize is what they're doing about voting rights in America. And forget the Dr. Seuss

debate. But as to Marjorie Taylor Greene, after they blocked you, blocked Midas Touch, and this is interesting for the followers, not just on her, actually not on her official Twitter account. She didn't really use her official Twitter account, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, for much of anything. She tweeted on it once or twice a day. Where the action really was and is, is on her personal account that she had before she was elected and then after, much like Donald Trump. He barely used the at POTUS Twitter. He always used the at real Donald Trump Twitter, even after he was elected. So the side issue here is, can the use of a private Twitter account by a public official, can that be protected under the First Amendment?

In other words, if she blocks Midas, which she did, even if it's on her personal account, can that violate the First Amendment? The answer to that under the case law, including some recent cases brought by the Knight Foundation at Columbia against Trump and others, including AOC, is that a private Twitter account that's in the hands of a public official that's really used as the official arm of the social media for that public official can lead to First Amendment protection if they do something wrong. You know, the first argument was, what's my private account? Well, that doesn't work when you're a public official. And we had a side-by-side comparison that we used both in the lawsuit and with her lawyers. And we said, she's tweeting twice a day from her public account, but from

her private account, she's tweeting every 20 minutes, including fundraising drives and campaigns and all sorts of horrible attacks, inappropriate attacks on transgender and other policies in the Biden administration. That is her official account for all intents and purposes, de facto. And by blocking Midas Touch, the argument goes, she has destroyed or prevented Midas Touch from participating in the public square, which is the equivalent of going into your local park, getting on a soapbox, and being able to speak freely in this country under the First Amendment. If I take away your box and I gag you, I have violated, and I'm the government, I have violated your First Amendment rights. I do the same thing

electronically in social media if I ban and bar you and mute you from my official social media channel because you have the right, Midas Touch does, and others to participate in that public square with a freedom of expression that's now been denied you because you've been electronically bound and gagged. That's the premise of the federal government was attempting powerful government official who commands a military stand on a stage or use his Twitter account to attack private individuals in foreign countries, cancel culture often is a dictator, a Putin, a Kim Jong-un, actually picking people out and killing them. And we were moving in that direction, frankly, with Donald Trump. Thank God he's not elected again, because what he was doing was using the weight and the faculties of the most powerful position in the world of all history to target his enemies one by one and to affirmatively harm them and cancel them one by one. You just think about even in the course of my representation with Colin Kaepernick, it was one of the very first examples. I remember the day very, very, very a ton. It was in Huntsville, Alabama. Very clearly, it was the word Huntsville, Alabama of a bitch off the field. And that was one of the

opening salvos. And I'm going to attack private individuals and use my power to do that. He continued to do that. We see in the news recently, the Trump working with a law firm, McGuire Woods, to one turn Voice of America, we'll talk about what that is, into his own propaganda arm, a la North Korea, a la RT, what Putin has in Russia, what North Korea has, and to purge employees by utilizing a private law firm. In this case, it was McGuire Woods to target enemies of Trump and people in there who were disloyal to Trump. That's what true cancel culture is, right? Well, listen, you're exactly right. Let's give a further example. You had a president at the time who used the language, as you said, of despots and dictators. He literally said,

I mean, it put a chill down my spine the first time I heard it, and I have never recovered from it. He called the press the enemy of the people. First of all, let's just bring this out, put this out on the table. The Russians and the Chinese have actively worked on social media, behind the scenes, to foment discontent in America, to drive a wedge between people because there is nothing they would rather have than a destabilized America where people are arguing with each other. And they have been doing that in a brainwash campaign for years, which also impacted the election. So people that think they're not being manipulated by the Russian and the Chinese who are working day and night on social media, they love the attacks on Black Lives Matter that have being used by the President of the United States, because it destabilizes America. They don't want America to get a vaccine. They want America to be back on its heels. And the fact that people have been manipulated by the Russians and the Chinese

on their social media feeds for years is something that's not talked about enough. But to hear a president go after a governor like Whitmer in Michigan, which led to her almost being kidnapped and killed, and him not taking personal responsibility for that, for him not taking personal responsibility for the Capitol attack, which is a cause and effect result from the language he used moments before they launched that assault on democracy, is chilling that we had gotten that far. But organizations like Midas Touch, what you and I do for a living, we're on the front lines of making sure that the First Amendment

and freedom of the press is protected, because without it, we don't have a democracy. There's no doubt about it. And speaking about what despots do, you know, they have their arms in, you know, foreign countries through kind of propaganda arms. You know. Russia has RT. And what Trump was trying to do with Voices of America, and for those who don't know, Voices of America is an international broadcaster. It's funded by the United States Congress. It's the largest and oldest US-funded international broadcaster. You may not know about VOA or Voice of America here because it's primarily intended for foreign audiences across the globe. But Donald Trump saw VOA as a propaganda arm. And so it was recently

revealed that through a no-bid contract, a law firm called McGuire Woods, which was paid as much as $3 million as part of this confidential no-bid federal contract. I mean, just that fact alone, a confidential no-bid federal contract. Like you know you're doing something wrong when you're getting a $3 million no-bid contract anonymously. And it's not like some secret operation of like a B-2 fighter jet where you couldn't post the bid. It's to work for Voices of America. And the idea was to basically pay McGuire Woods to pour over employees at Voice of America's records and social media communications, compiling dossiers on the employees to basically purge anybody who was disloyal and to turn Voices of America into a propaganda machine to bolster Trump's image abroad. These press conferences where Benjamin Netanyahu, who Trump would always called baby, who himself is under their own version of a federal prosecution in Israel. So Israel would not be at war with certain countries and they've always been at peace.

But then Trump would announce existing. He would announce peace deals where there was already peace to begin with and claim credit for things. I mean, and he lined up like a bunch of these press conferences. Do you remember before where he would have all the leaders and Jared Kushner would be there and they would declare like a ceasefire and there was never fire. Israel's been dealing with these countries forever. And it has to be a fire in order to be a ceasefire. So is there anything illegal with what McGuire Woods is doing? McGuire Woods, so everybody knows, is like a Jones Day. In our world, these are large two-name or three-name law firms with sometimes hundreds,

but usually thousands of lawyers. They represent large corporations. They pay young associates about $180,000 a year from the top law schools. They take the best and brightest and have them pour over just documents all day. It's like you go to these top law schools, all you're doing is learning this incredible stuff. You go to these firms, and they literally just have you sit there for 100 hours a week, pouring through documents to find whatever or to create arbitration clauses to prevent people from having their day in court. But anyway, McGuire Woods is one of those two-name firms. But anything that they have to worry about?

Yeah, I think they do. And look, as a graduate and alumni of what we call big law, right, I was at one of those two name firms. I was at Skadden Arps to start my career. You know, I have to tell you now, having been a lawyer for 30 years and worked at what we call the American lawyer does a ranking every year of law firms, and we call them, lawyers like you and I call it the AmLaw rank. And these AmLaw 10, 20, and 50 size law firms, I have to tell you, they've lost their way. There have been more stories in the last few years about the Skadden Arps of the world, McGuire Woods, Jones Day, for money, taking on ethically questionable representations. Unfortunately, my firm that I worked at, I'm an alumni of, Scadden was front page New York Times with a scandal about the work they did for the Ukraine government,

in which they paid tens of millions of dollars to settle with the federal government over their work there. Jones Day with the work that you described, and McGuire Woods, who gets $3 million to basically be a stooge and a tool of the Trump administration to create an enemies list at the VOA to purge it of people that were not pro-Trump. How is that an appropriate role for a big law firm with ethical ethics, ethical guidelines, boundaries, and rules of professional conduct? It isn't. And big law has lost its way because like a shark that has to move in order to survive, big law has to continue to bring in these tremendous revenue streams in order to prop up their infrastructure and to pay all those $180,000 or $500,000 associates.

And there's only so many document productions that you can staff 20 people on. And so they're always looking for ethically questionable revenue streams. And this is how they get into problems. If every lawyer that runs those firms would take out on a yearly basis, the rules of professional conduct that their bar license is tied to and review it and remember that this is a profession that is founded on ethics, they would turn down this work. It wouldn't even be questionable. I tell a personal story that's a little bit humorous. I took the bar twice, once in New York, and then five years later in Florida when I moved, because most states, there's no reciprocity. You have to retake the

test. So there's two parts of the test for those that are out there listening. There's no reciprocity. You have to retake the test. So there's two parts of the test for those that are out there listening. There's the practical side, which is substantive law that you need to know to pass the test. And then there's the ethics, the ethics test that you have to always take. And so when I was a young lawyer and I hadn't started my career yet, I got my ethics score and I got my substantive score in New York and I passed. And in Florida, five years later, after I'd been in practice for five years, exactly what you would have thought happened, happened. My substantive score went up because I'd been in practice and I understood the law a little bit better. But my ethics score went down

a couple of points because things that looked absolutely unethical when I was a young lawyer, as I got older, I was like, well, maybe if we get a waiver, maybe there's a way to take that case. And it just shows you, it's not that I became more unethical as time went on. It's just, you do lose your way a little bit. You have to remind yourself. You and I look at a case and we go, that's not right. That's not ethical. That's black and about the proper role of law firms, many of which sided with Trump. Look, you want to be a Republican-oriented law firm and just represent Republican causes? This is America. You're allowed to do that, but you can't cross the line and become an arm of voter suppression and continue to challenge proper and fair elections in an undemocratic way just because you've been hired and given a retainer. That's not the proper role of a professional legal law firm in this culture.

And I wanna get into that, Michael, as the last topic before we wrap up our first Legal AF. And for those listening on our future Legal AFs, now that you know our background, we will be digging deeper into more stories, will be the overall format. I thought that the first one was important that you get to know Michael, you get to know me, you get to know our backgrounds, you get to know the cases that we did together through Midas Touch. We you get to know the cases that we did together through Midas Touch. We can talk about some other cases that we are working on together, but I do not want to give away all of that on the first podcast. You're going to have to keep on listening

and follow some of our top cases, including our ongoing case right now, which I will just tease, and I will leave you to listen to on the next one where we talk about. But going to the last point, voter suppression. We talked about law firms aiding and abetting voter suppression. There are corporations who are now stepping up, particularly in Georgia, Coca-Cola, Home Depot, who are opposing these efforts. But the lesson that the GOP, who I now call the GQP, who everybody should call the GQP, the lesson that they've learned, apparently, is not how we actually open up the vote to people. It's how do we make it more difficult? They looked at what happened on January 6th and said,

you know, that was bad because everybody could literally see it. So now let's work behind the scenes to literally suppress the vote and to prevent people from even having their day in court. What they're upset about is they didn't do a good enough job to preclude people from voting in the first place. That is the sick lesson the GQP has learned. So in Georgia, there are, and many states from Arizona, Michigan, you know, literally there have been hundreds of hundreds

of pieces of legislation. It seems that what the GQP is doing across the country while the Democrats are trying to get, you know, individuals relief. And this is just the fact the Democrats are trying to get people relief. OK, Democrats are trying to get you stimulus checks to try to get infrastructure done. They're trying to get vaccines out. Like that's just a fact of what it is. You may want to debate with me. Is the cost too high? Is the cost too low? That would be a normal Democrat conservative debate. We could have the debate on costs. But what we shouldn't have a debate about is that we need infrastructure. We need vaccines. We need we need relief for people

who are who can become homeless. But what the GQP is fighting for are bills like this one in Georgia, two bills in Georgia that would have sweeping changes to voter access, including stopping no-excuse mail-in voting, curtailing early voting on Sundays, limiting access to drop boxes, and restricting early voting hours. This is specifically to target the record turnout of Black and Latino voters. Let's go back to that for a minute. And I agree with you. Florida has a similar thing going on. And what our followers need to understand is there's always been a tension between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party over voter turnout. Because historically, the more voter turnout there is, the more likely a Democrat wins. Always. The Republicans have always been a narrower party, a party that has that difficulty winning national office, notwithstanding the Trump anomaly. And whenever you have high voter turnout, you normally have a Democrat win. When you have lower voter or voter suppression,

you have a Republican win. And they've learned that lesson. And so what they've done is, and it targets minorities, Georgia in particular, is really callow attack, a racist attack on the Black voters. As an example, there is a very successful concept in every state, which is called souls to polls. And that is bringing buses to churches, primarily black churches, in places like Georgia and Florida, and making sure at early voting that happens on a Sunday, that the voters get to the polls and that they vote. Why does that scare the crap out of the Republican Party? Because those people generally vote Democrat. So how do you suppress the Democratic vote? You don't allow churchgoers on Sunday to vote early. It is despicable. It is a bald-faced attack. There is no justification other than voter suppression and black discrimination to eliminate Sunday voting, period. It's already been passed in the House, will totally change voting as we know it in America, allowing for the complete expansion of early voting, mail voting, voting in all different types of ways, Sunday voting, longer voting hours, more voting hours, no more gerrymandering, which eliminates or creates districts that discriminates against minorities and make sure that white Congress people get elected.

If that bill gets passed, that should counteract all of these state by state attempts to undermine the Voting Rights Act and undermine voting. And then we've got the Supreme Court, which we'll talk about on our next show, which is considering what to do about the Voting Rights Act and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which goes to whether restrictions on voting harm minorities, which is the core purpose of the Voting Rights Act is to avoid that. The Supreme Court is currently considering whether certain states have violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. So we've got all this going on right now that we're going to have to closely follow.

States trying to change their voting laws in order to suppress the vote. The federal government trying to cut them off at the pass by passing the Senate bill, number one, make it into law, which will totally eradicate the state's ability to control local elections, and the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act about whether all of these things or any of these things are constitutional. And ultimately, for me, you know, and why I became a lawyer is I want to fight with ideas. I want to fight for what I believe in. And, you know, we talk about what true cancel culture was under Donald Trump. We talk about true cancel culture, the GQP trying to suppress votes. That rigging, that cheating is antithetical to what a debate should be in a

democratic society. At the end of the day, we should put forth our views and all of these views. I say this on the Midas Touch podcast, which is if you presented the infrastructure bills and vaccine distributions and COVID relief and $15 minimum wage as referendum items, 75, 80% of Americans support these bills. And at the end of the day, if you have bipartisan support of the people, those ideas at the end of the day is what should prevail. And what we shouldn't have is people rigging the system and cheating. But that's why you have myself, you have Michael Popak, you have Legal AF, always here to hold people accountable. So I think this was a great first episode. I don't want to give

away too much of our stories, but it was great doing this with you, Michael. It was great after kind of starting this almost a year ago. Now with the audience that we have to have gotten this far, we appreciate everybody. The Legal AF, we're going to be doing once a week for now. We're going to be dropping these on the Midas Touch podcast channel. Eventually, we're going to be moving off the Midas Touch channel, but we wanted to connect with you through this already built-in audience. Any last words, Michael? No, I think it's great. You and I started, like you said, a year ago. It's amazing what you've done with Midas Touch. And I'm just so honored to be a part of it. And we put words into action.

You know, it's easy for, I think that's the distinguishing feature of you and I as commentators and analysts on Legal AF. And the difference between us and the other legal podcasts, just to talk about them for a minute, is that you and I are work-a-day trial lawyers that do this for a living. We're not just talking about our cases because they're interesting to us. We're talking about cases that you and I are doing that are on the forefront and the cutting edge of some of the most important First Amendment and other civil rights issues in America. And you and I have the perspective of not just being talking heads, but going into the courtrooms of America, of representing the Colin Kaepernicks of America on issues that are so important. And as you said, holding people accountable, not just blather on a podcast, as interesting as it is, but actually,

you and I leave these little Zoom boxes in these rooms, and we go out into the courthouses of America and make new law and hold and speak truth to power and hold our elected officials accountable. Thank you for joining this episode of Legal AF. Ben Mycelis and Michael Popak signing off.