Legal AF - 2/7/2026

26:19Popok:How do we know that? because of counter evidence in emails that have been released by the Epstein estate and other sources that put a lie to most of what she said, other than my name is Ghislaine Maxwell and I'm currently in a Florida, wherever she was, penitentiary. Other than that, everything else really didn't hang together. And how do I know that? Because I look at another piece of data, the departure of her lawyer. If you'll remember, or if not, you'll hear it here straight for the first time, she doesn't have a lawyer any longer. David Oscar Marcus quickly departed after that deposition.

26:58Popok:No more him campaigning for a pardon. No more him saying she'll be vindicated in court. He lost at the United States Supreme Court. They didn't take her appeal. And now she's a jailhouse lawyer writing effectively petitions on toilet paper and sending them into courts where the courts are like, yeah, you're not getting out of jail based on this jailhouse lawyer petition for habeas corpus that you just wrote. But that's something that gets missed. Her lawyer with a law license said, yeah, I'm out. And now by herself, I don't know who's even preparing her for this High Wire Act of going in there, and I agree with you, taking the Fifth Amendment.

27:38Popok:But this is what the Mike Johnson and MAGA don't give a crap about the American people. Instead, they're running these phony hearings about Clinton in a hot tub or what did what did Hillary know? And, oh, let's get Ghislaine Maxwell out here instead of doing what they're supposed to be doing, which is release all of the Epstein files and force, force the FBI and the Department of Justice to prosecute people in the Epstein files and follow up with them. Don't just say Trump's absolved every time they do a data dump. Go follow the leads and figure out who has escaped prosecution and bring those heads to the American people.

28:21Popok:That's not happening at all.

28:24Ben Meiselas:Democrats, when they take over the House of Representatives, they'll issue a subpoena for Melania now. Melania is in the files multiple times. She has a nickname for Ghislaine Maxwell, G. And she said, G, J-E, referring to Jeffrey Epstein, look great in that New York Magazine article. You know, the one where Donald Trump said that Epstein likes girls on the younger side. You look beautiful as well, G, in that photo of you, Melania said. love to hang out or see you soon in Palm Beach. Then Ghislaine Maxwell was like, sweet pea. It's her nickname for Melania. Sweet pea. No, I'm super busy, so I'm not going to be able to hang out with you, but hopefully we can do something soon together.

29:07Ben Meiselas:Then earlier this week, Melania was asked about Ghislaine when Melania was holding a press conference using American-Israeli hostages in order to promote her movie Melania. Then Melania was asked a question, well, what do you think about Ghislaine being moved to the minimum security facility. I am not here to talk about any of this. I am here to talk about these hostages. It's like, it's fair game, Melania, right now.

29:33Popok:Wait, how about the reporter who yelled out, do you think it's appropriate as first lady during an official event to shill your documentary?

29:40Ben Meiselas:And she said, I'm not doing that. I'm just here with these hostages who were freed. And you can also see Melania in theaters, You know, and so that's literally what she did. And so the American people are watching this. The rest of the world is just done. The American people, though, are watching this. And as I said before, this isn't a political thing. Like these are horrible people. These are doing horrible things. And there should be a legal process to deal with the criminal things and a moral and ethical process to do with those things also. And these are just, it's just bad. It's just being bad humans who are hurting and harming and lying.

30:26Ben Meiselas:And that's what this is about. Now, take our first quick break of the show. When we come back, though, I want to show our audience and our listeners how to look at these documents, what some of these things mean on top of it when it says something like deliberative process privilege, because I want to explain to you the anatomy of the cover-up that's taking place here. I want to touch upon Ghislaine Maxwell's Fifth Amendment claim and why I think it's bogus. And then we have a lot more to discuss on other topics as well. A reminder, if you or somebody you know has been injured in an auto accident, a trucking accident, if you're the victim of sexual assault or abuse, if you know someone who's been injured by the negligence of others, or if you know someone who died in a tragic accident and their family member is looking for a lawyer, reach out to the Popak Law Firm.

31:17Ben Meiselas:Call 877-POPAK-AF. That's 877-POPAK-AF. Or go to thepopakfirm.com, thepopakfirm.com. Also, make sure you subscribe to the Legal AF YouTube channel. It's on its way to 2 million subscribers. And make sure you subscribe as well to the Legal AF Substack, wherever you get your Substack. Legal AF Substack, Legal AF YouTube. We'll be right back after our first break of the show.

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34:35Ben Meiselas:Welcome back to Legal AF. Thank you to all of our sponsors. This show is made possible thanks to them. Keep the lights on. And Jordy does some good discount codes with those sponsors. The discount codes are in the description below. It's worth pointing out, though, as the MAGA Republicans have wanted to try to distract and deflect and make this about Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. Both Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton have requested that they be permitted to testify publicly in the House and the Senate, do both, do it bicameral. They don't care. They just want it in public in front of the entire country to say, you wanted to subpoena us?

35:15Ben Meiselas:Okay, let's do a public hearing. You've got Bill Clinton posting the following. I've called for the full release of the Epstein files. I've provided a sworn statement of what I know. And this week, I've agreed to appear in person before the committee. But it's still not enough for Republicans in the House Oversight Committee.

35:32Popok:By the way, before you, once that's down, Todd Blanche, the number two in the Department of Justice, effectively cleared Bill Clinton because he came out with a defense last week and said it's not a crime to party with Epstein. And so at worst, what is it? Bill Clinton is in a hot tub? Bill Clinton got a gift?

35:48Ben Meiselas:Right. But look, the reality is Bill Clinton, I believe, has a lot of questions that need to be answered. All right. I think that's fair, and I don't care what Blanche says. But Bill Clinton is saying, I want to answer them. So I'm saying, great. What's the issue then? What's the argument? And Bill Clinton says, well, now Chairman Comer says he wants cameras, but only behind closed doors. So who benefits from this arrangement? It's not Epstein's victims who deserve justice, not the public who deserve the truth. It serves only partisan interest. That's not fact finding. It's pure politics. And then Hillary Clinton says, for six months, we engaged Republicans on the Oversight Committee in good faith.

36:32Ben Meiselas:We told them what we know under oath. They ignored all of it. They moved the goalposts and turned accountability into an exercise in distractions. Let's stop the games. If you want this fight, Colmer, that's the MAGA Republican who leads the House Oversight Committee. Let's have it in public. You love to talk about transparency. There's nothing more transparent than a public hearing. Where are the Republicans? Get Donald Trump for a question and answer. Yeah, of course. That's where I'm going. Of course. But the point is, who objects to what Clinton and Clinton, what Bill and Hillary are saying?

37:09Ben Meiselas:Guilty people. The only people who object to such a thing is people, to your point from the first segment, Popak, who have an agenda of covering things up for Donald Trump. Because once they testify publicly, the next question is, OK, so Donald Trump and Melania, you testify publicly. Hillary is not even in the files. Donald Trump here in the files 38 times more, 50 times more than Clinton is or by far. So by this logic, you guys go next. Oh, and now this is what the magas are saying. Oh, crap. Now we're going to have to do a whole six hour hearing in front of the public on Epstein. We don't want to do that because then the public's going to focus on it.

37:51Ben Meiselas:I'll toss it over to you. But that, to me, is the issue on all of these issues. It's the meta issue, the macro issue, the game, okay, is that there is a side, and I don't want to even view it politically, who wants to bring accountability and openness and transparency because the system is rigged against most Americans. And not only is it rigged, there are people who are being outright abused physically, psychologically, mentally, and sexually by the people who are rigging the game. And there are people out there saying, let it all out in public. Let's be transparent. And then the people rigging the game are saying, let's keep it quiet.

38:33Ben Meiselas:The people rigging the game were the people for all of these years accusing the people who wanted it transparently of rigging the game. And they convinced a good portion of the country that the people rigging the game were the people who wanted openness. And because the people who wanted transparency were not out there bragging about that, but we're actually talking about, I don't know, the helping people and delivering health care and doing things for people. You know, that was not as salacious as the people who threw out these allegations. But it turns out that the people who have been making the accusations all along are the very people who have been doing those same things they've been accusing the others.

39:13Ben Meiselas:It's the oldest tale of humankind, Michael Popak. And it transcends all of this stuff. So they want to go on these MAGAs and make this a political game, right? You know, and ooh, you know, you should call it, you should say it this way, you should say it that way. And people are just like, nah, just enough of this crap. That's one of the big things here, Popa.

39:35Popok:Yeah, look, it reminds us of the old biblical adage. The devil's greatest trick was convincing the world that he doesn't exist. And that's what we're watching over and over again. And then we're going to watch the umbrage that'll be taken by members of the Trump administration when we do provide oversight. And Howard Lutnick has to sit in an oversight committee hearing. Or Pam Bondi next week has to sit in an oversight committee hearing. Or Cash Bedell has to. And they're going to have, oh, and the Epstein questions come up inevitably. Oh, you have nothing better to talk to me about than the Epstein files?

40:12Popok:No, let's talk about the lying you did around your relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. that's fair game for the American people to know about your fitness for office or whether you should be impeached or not. And you see, you know where this is going to go. I just had Senator Blumenthal, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut on. And I said, are you ready? I said, are you ready for Pam Bondi next week and her snarking and sneering and sarcastically presenting her way through this hearing to try to save herself? You know, oh, what about you, senator and what about you in this picture senator and what about something you did in college senator instead of answering the question are you ready this time you know because i felt like you did you guys all did a great job but you were caught a little bit flat-footed by the fact that you would be so imperious and so um disrespectful to the process to the office to the senate so no we're ready michael he said we are ready for that this time and if they have to sideline her and say, all right, you're not giving us, you know, I see your pie hole opening, but nothing's coming out of interest.

41:16Popok:We'll take over from here. They'll just do leading questions as the prosecutors, many of them were formally, and just lead her. And they don't care what her response is to demonstrate how pathetic she is to the American people and so on and so on and so on. The one thing I want to touch on related to Epstein is this hearing. And this is going to be The Freedom of Information Act, FOIA, has become a tremendous and powerful tool used by public interest groups, used by the ACLU and Democracy Forward and independent journalists to go after the Trump administration. It sounds innocent, right, that the government has to provide all the documents pursuant to a legitimate FOIA request.

41:58Popok:And if they don't, a judge could order them to and force them to pay attorney's fees for delaying. So an independent journalist, there's three different FOIA cases out there at various levels of court and appeal involving the Trump administration, Trump and Epstein that live on independently from the data dump we call the Epstein files. So there's one in front of Judge Chutkin that was brought by Democracy Forward to get this, a narrow subset of all communication between Epstein and Donald Trump. that's pretty good and that's still being litigated by democracy forward and judge chutkin and even though the the doj as we write on right on cue said but we just put up all the docs that doesn't answer the for that doesn't properly respond to foia a second case brought by the national inquirer of all things that supermarket tabloid at the end of the of the supermarket aisle from like 2017, like before you and I even got together and did Legal AF, has been kicking around, made its way to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals about Epstein files.

43:11Popok:And again, they sent in the beleaguered Department of Justice, appellate lawyer to the Second Circuit, judge, we're about to produce pursuant to the Epstein Transparency Act. Isn't that going to do it? And the Second Circuit said, no, that's not going to do it. And so they're going to have to produce additional documents or go hunting through the pile they've already produced, which brings us to a judge, Randy Moss, for football fans, not that one, who is a federal judge in D.C. who has a case in front of him brought by an independent journalist who listened like you and I did very closely to Pam Bondi say out loud on a Fox interview in February of last year, are we ever going to get the Epstein files and the client list?

43:54Popok:And she said, no one put words in her mouth. I didn't see a puppet master behind her. She said, I have the files and the client list right here on my desk. Okay, there it is. So the independent journalist filed a case a couple of months later and said, I want, quoting from the clip, I want everything that Pam Bondi had it on her desk related to Epstein at the moment she made that comment. And that was filed in August. The judge, Judge Moss, ordered that the Department of Justice respond by Jan 6th, ironically, this year with a, sorry, Feb 6th, with a response about whether Pam Bondi was going to produce these documents and what had been done to comply with FOIA.

44:51Popok:So they got some guy or I don't, I can't tell for the name what it is exactly, the person is exactly, but they filed an affidavit that said, I'm responsible for responding to Freedom of Information Act requests. I went to the Office of Attorney General. I did the search and there is no quote unquote client list anywhere And there's nothing, quote unquote, on her desk that hasn't been produced. See link to our major Epstein library recently updated. And the judge says, listen, I'm not playing gotcha, but that pointing to the Epstein file disclosures is not going to do it. She either had documents on her table, on her desk, or she didn't.

45:33Popok:And if she did, she needs to produce those. And I want to hear, he now said, I want to hear from Pam Bondi about what she was referring to that was on her desk. Now, Pam Bondi's known she was in trouble and a trap of her own making almost from the moment she said it. Because in subsequent clips, subsequent interviews, she said, now I want to address this thing that the media has taken out of context. Like what context? How do you take out of context? It's sitting. If I told you, Ben, Ben, that thing you're looking for for me, it's sitting right here on my desk. I'll send it to you. You can't later on say, well, you misunderstood what I said desk.

46:13Popok:When I meant papers, what I really meant. So she's been trying to backtrack her way. It ain't working. And Judge Moss is not buying it. So here's what's going to happen. Pam Bondi is going to file another, if she's still the attorney general, we'll talk about that next. She's going to file another go pound sand federal judge. I'm not going to tell you. It was a rhetorical flourish. It was a metaphor. It was something else. But I didn't have anything on my desk. And that's going to be a problem for her among a mounting pile of other problems for Pam Bondi. And this is going to come up, by the way, if she's even there.

46:51Popok:and you and I will speculate in a minute about whether she's going to be at the hearing or not. But if she's at that hearing coming up this week, this is going to be fair game for any senator or member of the House like Jamie Raskin to say, you got a federal court order coming down the pike that's going to require you to turn over the Epstein list, the client list, and respond to it. Where are those documents, ma 'am? And we can just anticipate what her response is going to be. Absolutely.

47:17Ben Meiselas:I want to show people the documents, what they look like, how to read an Epstein file document and what documents are being withheld and why I'm confident the most damning documents are the ones being withheld. to your point, the FBI interviews, but all of the internal memos, all of the internal research, the deliberative process by the United States attorneys, their strategy. When we talk about deliberative process, their strategy memos to each other, right? If you think about it, it's like Super Bowl Sunday's coming up, right? You know, the plays that the coaches call, right? They have all the codes that the quarterbacks wear on their arm, and then they have the playbook, right?

48:03Ben Meiselas:That's deliberative process. You can see the game being played on the field, but the coaches don't want to ever turn over the playbook because they view those documents as confidential. And the DOJ, we would call that, that's their deliberative process, their playbook, what their strategy is behind the scenes. But obviously, as that relates to prosecute in a child sex trafficking ring, that's of course going to be where all the secrets are, right? The same way in football, the playbook would be having what all the plays are and when you call the plays and things like that. Now, normally in a criminal case, the defendant would not be able to get those documents, right?

48:45Ben Meiselas:Because even though they're entitled to discovery, should they be entitled to get the playbook that the prosecutors are using to prosecute you? No, you don't get that. So in the actual case, a criminal case, the deliberative process privilege makes sense. We're not going to hand over the playbook to the criminal defendant, you know, but we'll turn over all of the stuff that you have to turn over transparently, the evidence, but not the playbook. So if you look at the memo that the DOJ just ripped off or took down from the website. It's the 86-page prosecution memo listing the co-conspirators. And you'll see it says, this memorandum details the investigation and steps taken since the indictment of Jeffrey Epstein in this district on July 2nd, 2019, and analyzes the extent to which certain Epstein associates and employees may or may not be criminally liable for their conduct during the employment with Epstein.

49:44Ben Meiselas:So you see why this is like the DOJ playbook. The date of this is December 19th, 2019. And so this is after Epstein dies. And by the way, there's a lot more questions about Epstein's death right now that we've seen in the Epstein files. Someone who looks like in an orange jumpsuit was allowed in when there was never references to that made before right around that 1039 time period. But in any event, you have this memo that outlines it. You'll have lots of other memos and reports and internal emails amongst the United States attorneys to each other that outline these co-conspirators, that co-conspirator.

50:23Ben Meiselas:What do we think about this person? What's our strategy here? What did this witness tell us? What did this victim tell us? What did this survivor tell us? So if you notice on the top of this memo, it says privileged. managed attorney work product, deliberative process, confidential, subject to federal rule of criminal procedure 6E. So that would have been labeled that during the time period of the Epstein case. On December 19th, the lawyers would put that on there because they don't want it to be discovered in active cases, in active. And this was before the Epstein Transparency Act, of course.

50:59Ben Meiselas:Now, if you look at the bottom right of the document, you'll see two numbers. One says EFTA 02731082, and another one says EFTA 3022461. Why are there two numbers? Because one of them was given that Bates number, likely during an original case. And then when it was reproduced again, it got another, what we call Bates numbers. So one of the things that I've been saying is all of these documents were out there ready to be produced years ago. And how do you know that? Because they already had the Bates numbers ready to go years ago. And all that had to be redacted from something like this is the victims' names.

51:45Ben Meiselas:And under the Epstein Transparency Act, that is all that is allowed to be redacted. Victims' names, victims' faces, survivors' names, survivors' faces, any personal identifying information of survivors and victims, that's it, that's all. You can't withhold on the basis of privilege like you could in an actual criminal case. You could say deliberative for the reasons I said, but not anymore. You can't do that because the Epstein Transparency Act says the Epstein case is done. The Ghislaine case is done. Produced the records, all of them, including deliberative process and attorney-client privilege.

52:20Ben Meiselas:So here's how I don't just speculate and say, oh, they must be hiding the worst documents because they turned over these documents. I know they are, is what I'm telling you, because of this concept. Deliberative process privilege withholding is what they're saying. So I want to make that point. The other point that I want to make as well is I think it's total BS that Ghislaine Maxwell is going to invoke the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination because she's already been incriminated. She's been found guilty of the things she's being asked. Okay. And she answered the questions for Todd Blanche.

52:56Ben Meiselas:So to the extent that there should be a concept of a waiver, she, my view, waived it because she spoke to Todd Blanche on these exact topics that she's now going to invoke the fifth for. Also, what the Republicans want to do with her at the deposition is they're going to try to arrange, and I want you to watch for this because No one else is going to talk about this. What's called a blanket Fifth Amendment assertion, meaning at the beginning of her deposition on Monday before the House Oversight Committee, she's going to want to read a letter that says, I'm not going to testify. I have active cases pending.

53:35Ben Meiselas:I have a habeas petition. So for each and every question I would be asked, I'm going to invoke the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. And then what James Comer is going to want to do is say, thank you. We appreciate you saying that. It's unfortunate that you're not willing to testify, but you've invoked your fifth. This hearing is hereby adjourned. We're done. Okay. What I want to see happen is she should still have to sit there and I'll throw it over to you, Popak, for six hours. And every Democrat should be able to ask any question to her and let her invoke the fifth every single time to every single question.

54:15Ben Meiselas:And I know she doesn't want to do that because she doesn't want a question to be asked like the following. Do we have, Kelsey, the Jeffrey Epstein deposition before he was criminally prosecuted the second time? Let me show you what Epstein's deposition looked like. Let's play this clip.

54:34Popok:Have you ever had a personal relationship with Donald Trump?

54:41Ben Meiselas:What do you mean by personal relationships?

54:43Popok:Have you socialized with him? Yes, sir. Yes? Yes, sir. Have you ever socialized with Donald Trump in the presence of females under the age of 18?

55:01Ben Meiselas:Though I'd like to answer that question, at least today, I'm going to have to assert my fifth, sixth and 14th amendment rights. So my view is she should have to sit there just like that. And she should be able to have Democrats ask her questions. Have you ever been aware that Donald Trump was engaged in sex with underage girls? Yes or no? Just asking the question. Were you ever aware if Donald Trump was or wasn't engaged in a child sex trafficking ring with Jeffrey Epstein and yourself? Yes or no? Let her sit there. Let her say, I invoke my Fifth Amendment right and get that tape and then make that tape public and show this is her talking to Trump's number two at the DOJ in former criminal defense attorney, Todd Blanche.

55:46Ben Meiselas:She was willing to answer it then. Then when we asked her the question, she invoked the Fifth. That to me is critical. And it's a strategic blunder if Democrats don't get that out of this deposition, Popak.

56:00Popok:Yeah, let's talk about the Fifth Amendment in that kind of context. As I agree with almost all of your analysis, there is a way for the Trump administration to solve the problem of the Fifth Amendment and to demonstrate what we've been saying throughout this particular podcast. They have no intention to having Ghislaine Maxwell tell the truth about her close personal relationship with Donald Trump, his close personal relationship with his BFF, Jeffrey Epstein, and the ways in which Donald Trump could be connected to the child sex trafficking ring. The Trump administration, Donald Trump has no intention to waving a magic wand that he possesses to force her to dispense with the Fifth Amendment and testify.

56:52Popok:When you're in court and a witness is being compelled to testify, a federal judge will tell the government, if you want this witness to testify, you have to give them immunity. If you give them immunity, then their assertion of the Fifth Amendment is improper. her. I will strip it from them and force them and compel them to testify. But it's up to you, prosecutors, to give her that pass. Now, she got prosecuted and convicted of five felony counts of child sex trafficking, for which she is serving 20 years, apparently, in some plush Beverly Hills style penitentiary in Texas at the moment. She was convicted by a jury, a 12-0 jury in New York under Judge Nathan and sentenced.

57:43Popok:If in the civil context you take the Fifth Amendment, which is I think where you're going, you don't, in criminal context, it cannot be used against you. You can't be compelled to testify against yourself. And a jury can't make any adverse inferences and conclude your guilt because of it. Not so in civil. And Congress is civil, not criminal. And so if you take the Fifth Amendment, the jury is instructed, which mean the American people, that every time the person takes the Fifth Amendment in a civil context, you can presume that whatever they're being asked about, they did. In other words, an adverse inference can be drawn from the question and therefore the answer.

58:32So when in In the civil fraud case against Donald Trump, Letitia James, the New York Attorney General

58:39Popok:herself, deposed Donald Trump, and he took the Fifth Amendment more than 600 times. The jury in a civil case can be told when he's asked, did you inflate your assets fraudulently in order to put yourself up at the top of the Forbes 400 list or 20 list of wealthiest people or to secure bank loans? I take the Fifth Amendment. you can presume that he did it. Same thing goes in Congress. Now, she's already got two levels of protection making her assertion improper, meaning somebody could jump out to court and force her to testify over the objection. And we can test whether that applies in a congressional hearing setting or not.

59:22Popok:It's a compelled testimony. She already was convicted, as I said. And then when she was deposed for nine hours over two days by Todd Blanche up in Tallahassee, Florida, coming out of penitentiary, she was given what we call a queen for the day immunity. Meaning anything that she said, as long as she didn't lie, she could not be convicted of or prosecuted for. and with that secured by her then lawyer buddy of Todd Blanche, a guy named David Oscar Marcus, they went into this performative theater of lies. Now we know she lied, okay? David Oscar Marcus, I don't know him. I mean, I know of him. He's no longer here.

1:00:12Popok:You can make your own presumption about why the lawyer quickly departed his representation. But if Trump and the Department of Justice really wanted the American people to hear from Ghislaine Maxwell, right? Again, they would absolve her of any liability or exposure, criminal exposure for her interview with Todd Blanche. Because that's it. That's all that's left. There's nothing else that she could be prosecuted for. She can't be prosecuted for the child sex trafficking ring. She can't be prosecuted at that point for anything she told Todd Blanche. And the only thing she could be prosecuted for, for a crime is if she committed a crime of perjury to Congress, right?

1:00:58Popok:And was therefore, which we've seen, that's a tool of this administration. You bring that charge against Michael Cohen, or you bring it against James Comey, the FBI director, or whomever. But that's the only thing that she's exposed by. So you could work on stripping away, and maybe even having a federal judge saying, no, you can't take the fifth when you go into Congress because you have no legitimate expectation that you will be prosecuted having been convicted and having received immunity. Now, Trump could also pardon her, but he knows that's political suicide, even though he keeps flirting with it.

1:01:37Popok:So it's just another indicia that the Trump administration, you know, with this split screen, You know, we want, you know, only the Democrats to come in here and talk about the Epstein scandal and, you know, and pound the table. And the Democrats like or independent people like Jack Smith or the Clintons are like, OK, just turn on the cameras and make it a public hearing. We're happy to show up and answer all of your questions. Oh, shit, that didn't go well. And now they've got this one. Why they keep demanding Ghislaine Maxwell. well. I have no idea. She's untrustworthy. She's a liar. She is an unguided missile against the Trump administration.

1:02:19Popok:Why Comer or any of these people that are allegedly MAGA and loyal to Trump continue to flirt with disaster to bring her into that chair, I have no idea. But we've just outlined all the ways that if the Trump administration really wanted her to tell the truth, which he doesn't, they could make that happen. But they're not, and that should be held against them.

1:02:42Ben Meiselas:I want to take our last quick break of the show. When we come back, I want to talk about what else is going on in the DOJ. So as they're covering up the child sex trafficking ring, covering up documents there, they are losing lawyers for prosecutors at such a rapid speed. It's unprecedented. about 7 ,000 of some of their top senior mid-level people, paralegal, everybody's quitting or being fired. And so they're having to now pull from other departments. Being an assistant United States attorney, it's like a deputy or one of the, you know, kind of line prosecutors, one of the most highly sought after jobs from law students.

1:03:27Ben Meiselas:And now they can't, no one wants to work for the DOJ right now. And again, this isn't a partisan thing because it's Trump-appointed judges and George W. Bush-appointed judges and Reagan and George H. W. Bush judges, as well as Democrat-appointed judges who are out there just saying that this DOJ is incompetent, is foolish, is contemptible, is sanctionable, and people are destroying their careers by working for this DOJ because the work itself is horrible. The work product is terrible. And they're doing terrible things and violating laws. So I want to talk about that. And then let's leave on a high note as well by talking about Elon Musk being forced into a deposition despite the Trump regime claiming that he was a high level cabinet position.

1:04:20Ben Meiselas:And the judge wasn't buying that at all. Let's take our last quick break of the show. A reminder of someone you know has been injured in an auto accident, a trucking accident, or the negligence of somebody else or a sexual assault or sexual harassment case. Call or text 877-POPOC-AF or visit thepopocfirm.com. That's 877-POPOC-AF or thepopocfirm.com. Also check out on Substack, Legal AF Substack, and check out the Legal AF YouTube channel. Both are doing great. Let's keep those channels growing. growing. And by the way, don't be shy when it comes to calling the Popak firm. I know you trust Popak and I'm sure you know people who have been injured in certain types of accidents and they're looking for lawyers.

1:05:04Ben Meiselas:The consultation is free. Reach out. The worst that could happen is they'll say there's not a case, but they are representing people more on the wrongful death and the kind of catastrophic injury cases. So think about that when you call. All right, last quick break of the show. We will be right back after these messages.

1:05:19Popok:Well, when it comes to dog food, it feels like you have to choose between fresh and healthy or easy to store and serve, but never both. Well, you don't have to choose any more thanks to Sundays. Sundays was founded by a veterinarian and mom, Dr. Tori Waxman, who got tired of seeing so-called premium dog food full of fillers and synthetics. So she designed Sundays, air-dried real food made in a human-grade kitchen using the same ingredients and care you'd use to cook for yourself and your family. And my Lily, a Border Collie Chocolate Lab mix, loves it, and we love it for her. Every bite of Sundays is clean and made from real meat, fruits, and veggies with no kibble.

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1:07:01Ben Meiselas:Welcome back to Legal AF. Once again, just want to thank those sponsors who make this show possible. In addition to subscribing to this YouTube channel, go check out the description below, the subscription button and then make sure you check out those sponsors and take a look at those discount codes. All right, Popak, I want to talk about all of these DOJ lawyers who are quitting. You go back to some of the early Legal AF episodes of last year in 2025, February or March, you and I predicted this exactly. We saw where this was heading when we saw some of the initial resignations in New York. And we said, what's going to happen is all these DOJ lawyers are going to quit.

1:07:42Ben Meiselas:And they're like, they're not going to have lawyers who work there. And that's basically where we're at now is that the DOJ, I'm not being hyperbolic. They quite literally do not have the lawyers to keep up with the cases anymore. And that's a big problem because they have lots of cases. And it was never even a conceivable concept to me that the DOJ could show up in federal court and tell a judge, judge, we don't have the resources to meet these deadlines. It just was unfathomable. And if any DOJ lawyer ever said that they would be fired immediately because it's like, what are you doing? You have unlimited resources.

1:08:28Ben Meiselas:You'd hear that from the criminal defense lawyers or the adversaries of the DOJ that we're being overpapered or outmatched because we can't possibly compete with all of these resources that the DOJ has. But now it's inverted. It's the opposite right now. And, you know, and it's having real serious ramifications. Like first and foremost, think about the cases that are not high profile, that are just not being prosecuted or where deals are being cut with criminal defendants simply because the DOJ can't keep up with its workflow or cases not being pursued because the DOJ is so overwhelmed that people aren't looking through the paperwork.

1:09:07Ben Meiselas:So think about these sex trafficking cases and fraud cases and deadly crime cases that are just in gang cases and all these things that are not espionage that are just not being looked into or investigated because there are not lawyers who are able to look into the crimes that are taking that are taking place. Public integrities doesn't even exist anymore at the DOJ. I mean, both in terms of the department and whatever. But one of the issues, too, is that like when Trump has the sense his Gestapo and his, you know, SS, his Border Patrol and ICE into these areas and they start rounding up people, that people hire lawyers and the lawyers file what are called habeas corpus petitions to get their clients released from these concentration camps that they're in because they often don't go through hearings.

1:10:01Ben Meiselas:and they're being detained without any hearings at all. And they get lost in the system. So these habeas petitions have to get filed because hearings aren't being taken place where some of these people are kidnapped. And the DOJ and the Trump regime has taken the position like, we don't need to go through hearings. So they're forcing the people they're kidnapping or throwing into these detention centers to affirmatively tell the judge by invoking habeas corpus, hey, hey, we're being unlawfully detained here. Then the judges are very frequently saying to the DOJ on an emergency basis, you have to release this person.

1:10:40Ben Meiselas:You've literally kidnapped a person and you haven't provided them due process. Release them. And then the people aren't being released because there's no lawyers who are reviewing the judge's paperwork. So the lawyers who are representing both migrants and citizens then rush back to court and say, judge, and it's hard to get court dates sometimes because courts are crowded themselves. Judge, it's been a week or two weeks or three weeks, and the DOJ said they were going to release our client. He's still being kept there. And then the judge is looking at the lawyers and the judge is saying, what is going on here?

1:11:14Ben Meiselas:And that was the hearing that just took place in Minneapolis, where the lawyer, this Julie Lee, is out there saying, we don't have lawyers. I had to transfer here from the immigration department and I was a lawyer for immigration enforcement, not at AUSA. And she said things have gotten so bad. She's a Vietnamese immigrant. And she moved here in 1993, Julie Lee. And she said, I volunteered to work at the DOJ because there weren't lawyers there who can process the paperwork. So people were being unlawfully detained. And she thought that she'd be able to get through these petitions because she said she wanted to help and release the people who are basically remaining kidnapped and are not being released.

1:12:05Ben Meiselas:And then the judge is saying to her, you have to release them. I understand that, but saying that you're overworked is not an excuse. And she goes, judge, just hold me in contempt. I need to sleep. I'm so overworked. I'm so tired. I can't do this anymore. I need to sleep. Hold me in contempt. That was the big salacious headline that a DOJ lawyer, technically someone who is now working as an assistant United States attorney, but who was working in a different department, is saying this. But when you actually look through, Popak, the hearing transcript, it was the federal judge and Julie Lee talking about how there were all these people with habeas petitions that have been granted to have people released, but there could be thousands or more people who are just remaining in prisons who are ordered out because the DOJ is losing them in the system.

1:12:57Ben Meiselas:That's what was overwhelming Julie Lee and why she broke down in court. And so now the DOJ isn't using these immigration lawyers anymore. They're now said, we're going to start using JAG lawyers, the military lawyers who go by an entire different set of military, these judge advocate generals are now posing as AUSAs and showing up in court because the DOJ doesn't have AUSAs. Popat, this is unchartered territory within unchartered territory.

1:13:31Popok:I never thought, I've been doing this for 35 years. I've been doing white collar criminal defense for just as long. And it always sent a chill down my spine when the United States of America would identify themselves as the United States of America, Well, it kept me on my toes anyway, especially as a young lawyer, because they had unlimited resources. I used to tell my clients, we're up against a leviathan of unlimited resources, of mindless just, you know, if we've got 20 people on the case, they can put thousands of people on the case. We got to do, you know, we have to outwork them in some way.

1:14:05Popok:But there's an asymmetry about this relationship. It's gone. It's gone. I talked to the, like you do, I talked to the attorneys general around the country. I talked to Democracy Forward. I talked to the people that are in the courtrooms against the Department of Justice. And I said to, I said to Sky Perryman and to Rob Bonta separately, the attorney general for California, I said, I'm looking at, you know, I do an audit. I'm looking at probably, you know, in any given week, I'm reading about, let's say 30 to 40 court decisions, then decide which ones I'm going to talk about. And in those cases, I see the same names over and over again for the line prosecutors, the people in the courtroom.

1:14:50Popok:How many times do I have to see Brett Schumate for the Department of Justice? How many times do I have to see Drew Ensign or Yakov Roth? I mean, and not just in one area of expertise, like this is an immigration case. This is a due process habeas corpus case. This is a case about civil liberties and civil rights. I mean, they can't, why? And they said, because when you subtract 6 ,500 people from an organization and you don't replace them and can't replace them and don't want to replace them in certain circumstances, this is what you're left with. You're left with just a dozen people running around at that level of leadership and management, you know, this level of middle management that's running around like the boy at the trying to stick their finger in to all of these places.

1:15:36Popok:And what's suffering? Justice is suffering. The next wave of cases that you and I will follow, first wave was how do we oppose the 250 lawless, unconstitutional executive orders and the other orders and policies they spawned, right? Okay. That's wave one. You gave a good overview of sort of a decoder ring of how to analyze documents. Let's do this in phases. Phase one was, holy shit, he just signed 250 executive orders. He's basically sidelined Congress, and he's decided to take over budgets, take over things that the Constitution prevents him from taking over, like voting, civil liberties, civil rights.

1:16:23Popok:and he's trying to call everything an emergency and a war in order to expand his powers. Okay, what do we do about that? Okay, 700 cases later in federal courts, we're doing pretty well, looking back on a year, and we know what to do now for year two. Second, now the third, that's first wave. Second wave is the civil rights and civil liberties cases brought by individuals who have been abused, killed, murdered, tortured, left in dank prisons, detention centers, and now their cases are flooding into the courtrooms. You know, every time you and I talk about Operation Midway Blitz, Operation Metro Surge, whatever, Alligator Alcatraz, whatever these stupid juvenile trolling names are, there's human beings on the other end of these policies and procedures.

1:17:12Popok:And they have rights, even if Donald Trump doesn't want to recognize it. And they, by way of, you know, the soldiers of the constitutional foot soldiers of lawyers and public defenders and law firms that are willing to challenge the Trump administration and civil liberties groups, they are running into court. There are hundreds, thousands, no, thousands, thousands of habeas corpus petitions filed under what we call the great writ to get people in front of a federal judge and out of their detention centers. And this is overwhelming each individual 93 federal district courts. The only thing I can compare it to is what happened after 1 ,500, 1 ,800 people were prosecuted by the Department of Justice under Biden for Jan 6th and how it all flooded into primarily one courthouse in the District of Columbia and how the judges there with grace, with dignity, with decorum were struggling under the weight but got through that.

1:18:17Popok:Forget that number. It's triple that number. In some courthouses, they can't even, Minnesota doesn't have that many federal judges to handle the byproduct, the demon spawn of Operation Metro Surge. And so you have this disconnect, which I talked about in the context of Julie Lee, the accidental whistleblower, who I'm giving her credit, but it was an accidental whistleblower, where she revealed as well as other DOJ lawyers in Minnesota in filings and in courtrooms that ICE is not returning their phone call. Here's a new strategy. Don't even respond to your lawyer. It's the lawyer who's the officer of the court with their law license.

1:19:01Popok:That's why they're all heading for the exit. And they're being set up by their client because ICE doesn't give a crap because it's a corrupt organization that, as Senator Blumenthal said, needs to be put into bankruptcy and receivership and restructured and taken over because it's lost its way. They never had a way. And so they're like, no, I'm not going to call Julie Lee back. And she said to the judge, Judge Blackwell, an African-American judge, she said a couple of things in her accidental whistleblowing. She said, first of all, I'm Vietnamese American, and I'm concerned that my client is committing racial profiling and my own family is at risk.

1:19:36She actually said that out loud in court, you know, now that the transcript is out.

1:19:39Popok:That's one. But you don't normally do. You don't normally throw your own client under the bus. But at that point, I think she had nothing to lose. And if you think Julie Lee was not qualified to take on that assignment to handle habeas corpus petitions, for which she said she foolishly volunteered, at least she had worked for ICE in immigration court, right? And so probably at least had a passing understanding of writs of habeas corpus and then gets handed 80, 8-0-BEN files in January. Here you go, Julie. Thanks for coming. Here's 80 files and you're in court in 10 minutes. I know friends that are federal public defenders, and that's very similar to their first day.

1:20:24Popok:So she doesn't know what she's doing. She's passing understanding of that. She's getting no training, which she admitted to Judge Blackwell. And she doesn't have a client that's returning her phone calls. She said to the judge, it's like pulling teeth to get them to comply or to answer me, let alone comply with your orders. I have to threaten to quit in order for them to do anything. And all the judge really wanted to hear is, like, I got five habeas corpus petitions in front of me. Why are they all being violated, the orders that I've issued? Now, we'll put this in the broader context. Last week, you and I reported on Judge Schultz, the chief judge of this same court system, who did a survey of his fellow judges and concluded and put it in order that in January alone, up to 100 federal court orders have been violated by ICE alone in January in Minnesota.

1:21:16Popok:And he says it stops now. Well, Exhibit A is it's not stopping and Judge Schultz is going to have to do something about it. To put that in context, I've been doing this 35 years. I've done zero violations of federal court orders and my clients too. Even if I add your 20 years, Ben, it's still zero. So to say that an organization committed 100 violations of federal court orders tells you all you need to know. Now we know why, right? We're peeling back the onion here with Julie Lee and other filings that have said the same thing, which is we'd love to respond, judge. We can't get ice on the phone and we're overwhelmed and all of that.

1:21:57Popok:Now, to plug these major holes in talent, right, you said they're bringing in military justice trained lawyers, JAG, the Judge Advocates General Office, okay? That is an entirely different set of civil code that only applies to people in the military. For people that are thinking back to TV shows like JAG or A Few Good Men, the movie or play, that's JAG, okay? Has very little resemblance to anything related to civil, our Constitution, civil rights or anything. They don't know writs of habeas corpus because they don't deal with it in that court. Are they upstanding advocates in a law process? Yes, but it would be the equivalent if we took a lawyer from France, or I'm serious, or Canada, or Mexico, who are also competent and very accomplished in their own legal systems, or Louisiana, which has a civil code, and shove them into an American federal courthouse under the federal constitution, federal rules of civil and criminal procedure, and said, go for it.

1:23:12Popok:I mean, this is like my cousin Vinny. In their world, I'm sure they're expert, but it is professional malpractice for them to take the assignment. And it is criminal for the Department of Justice to give them the order to go and do something they're not competent to handle. and that's where your law license comes in. And I thought the takeaway, frankly, from the Trump one was that if you follow Donald Trump into the abyss, right? Into the heart of darkness and you happen to be a lawyer, you're gonna get convicted, you're gonna get indicted, you're gonna lose your law license, okay? And no amount of Donald, and Donald Trump's not coming back from the dead or politically dead to help you, okay?

1:24:00Popok:I thought that was the lesson that was learned. Apparently not. Apparently, I don't know what it is about the seduction of power. It is an aphrodisiac. And people get all drunk with power. And the only person that's going to skate scot-free is Donald Trump because of the Supreme Court and the immunity decision. Everybody else directly under him or around him. We're talking to you, Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche, Stephen Miller, Carolyn Leavitt, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, and the list goes, John RFK Jr. You're all, okay, in the winter is coming, new Department of Justice is coming, new House and Senate are coming.

1:24:51Popok:You're all exposed. And if you're a lawyer below them, you don't, Donald Trump's throwing Tulsi Gabbards and the Pam Bondys under the bus. You don't think he's going to throw some Department of Justice attorney that he doesn't even know their name under the bus. You guys are toast. Get out now while you can. Don't violate your code of conduct, your ethics rules. Don't violate the oath that, this is you and me now doing what Mark, Senator Mark Kelly and five other congresspeople did. Don't give up the ship. This is the legal lawyer version. You, you, lawyers, took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.

1:25:35Popok:You cannot follow illegal unconstitutional orders that subject your law license to getting yanked and for you to violate the Constitution. You did not swear an allegiance to the person occupying the White House or the Department of Justice. You have an independent obligation, independent obligation and judgment to comply as an officer of the court with the rules of conduct and ethics. And every moment that you stay in the Department of Justice and you allow yourself to be used as a prop is one moment you are closer to losing your bar license.

1:26:16Ben Meiselas:People are dying. I think that aspect needs to be emphasized. You know, it's like when people talk about the image that Donald Trump posted of former President Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama, and they say, racist image. Just say what it is. Actually describe it every time. That's what I do in all my videos. Donald Trump posted an image of apes with the Obama's face photoshopped on the apes. That's what he did. And I think it's difficult to have to say that and describe that, but I don't want it to be lost in this gobbledygook of doublespeak. I want to describe exactly what's happening, right?

1:27:02Ben Meiselas:There's an invasion by ICE and Border Patrol in states, torturing and terrorizing people. That's what's happening. And the ramifications of everything you just discussed there, Popak, is also that people are dying in their thirst for power also, right? If you think about the dismantling of USAID by Trump and Doge and this entire regime, we don't have the numbers right now. But on the low end, the dismantling of USAID killed tens of thousands of people dead. Mothers, children, babies, dead. All people dead. And the number could be as high as in the millions because we know that when data was being collected by our government, the USAID was the biggest relief organization in the world.

1:27:56Ben Meiselas:And it stopped over the course of several decades, millions of people from starving to death and contracting HIV and AIDS and other serious diseases. By the way, you don't have to even quote me for that. Donald Trump's daughter, Ivanka, was a big proponent of USAID during the first administration, and she would use those stats as well. And they would always talk about, oh, look how she's helping women in sub-Saharan Africa or here or there, right? I mean, that was one of the things they pushed back then. But now when they ripped it apart, remember they incinerated, like they They destroyed food where they could have just sent the leftover food.

1:28:37Ben Meiselas:They rather the people starve to death and they destroyed the food, which, by the way, also harmed our farmers who didn't get paid for the food that they were making to send to USAID and Trump didn't pay those farmers. And so finally, Popak, we're going to get a deposition of Elon Musk and a federal judge ordered this deposition take place. Elon Musk and the Trump regime argued he was a cabinet official. Their argument was that he's what's called an apex official and that you can't just depose cabinet level officials. You can't just depose the secretary of defense because of, you know, things that the military is doing.

1:29:21Ben Meiselas:You can't just depose the treasury secretary because of things that, you know, are going on there. you have to, if you have lawsuits that you have to depose the people in the departments, and then only if it determines after like a ton of litigation that there's an exceptional need for the apex person to be deposed, then you have the ability to make a motion to the court and get that deposition. If you think about it, you may go, well, why does that make sense?

1:29:56Ben Meiselas:Well, I don't know, against a pharmaceutical company, right? If everybody sued a pharmaceutical company and then everybody got the deposition of the CEO was the first place you would go, the CEO couldn't be the CEO. So what the law says is you could take depositions of senior people, but you have to climb the ladder. First, maybe do the regional person and that person may give you what you want. But if it turns out the regional person doesn't know, then go to the regional person's manager and then go up again and then go up again. And then maybe you can get the CEO afterwards, but you can't, your first depot can't go to the CEO.

1:30:34Here, the ladder was

1:30:36Ben Meiselas:climbed by these groups suing Doge for their dismantling of USAID and the people who worked at USAID. And in any event, they argue, we don't have to climb the ladder because Elon Musk didn't even work at the government. Who is he? He never had a real role. We don't know what his title is. Get his deposition. And the federal judge on multiple different levels ruled both. Elon Musk seems to be the only person who has this information that the plaintiffs sufficiently asked others and no one else knows the answer. And the court has asked for explanations and no one's providing answers. So it seems the only person who could actually answer this is Elon Musk.

1:31:22Ben Meiselas:And also, Elon Musk is not a cabinet level person. So we're not going to use the apex analysis of cabinet level people, he should be deposed. So they ordered to be deposed, you know, the Trump regime is going to appeal that. But it's just fascinating to me in a lot of levels, Popak, that they're still arguing that Elon was like a cabinet member person. And then it also goes back to a theme we talked about earlier on this episode, which is Elon Musk never testified before Congress, which if you are a cabinet person, you at least usually have to testify. Although you see these bagels don't want their cabinet members to testify in the Republicans.

1:32:01Ben Meiselas:The Democrats had constant oversight hearings when the Democrats controlled the House, frequent oversight hearings of all of the people, even when they would call in Mayorkas, right? The Homeland Security secretary guy who would get, who would come in, Fox would get all the sound bites that they want. Democrats would call that guy in all the time. They weren't like, oh, we don't want to give Fox a sound bite when the Republicans can just ask the guy these questions. No, no, no. They called them in. They called them all in frequently. You'd see the secretary of defense on there regularly. Secretary of, all these people would show up over and over not with these MAGAs, not with these MAGAs, that ain't what they're doing.

1:32:41Ben Meiselas:And when Bill Clinton says he wants to show up, they're like, no, no, no. Even though we said we wanted you to do this, we actually don't want that. And now Elon Musk, like they're hiding him. They're hiding his testimony. And I just think it's so BS, you know, it's putting it lightly, that you're out there doing all this destruction, saying all of these things on regime media. and then it's like, okay, well, we have your deposition and can you say it under oath? And then all of them, no, no, no, I can't do that. Remember when Kristi Noem testified, what was it, a few months back? And then she said she had to go to like a special FEMA meeting and the meeting never even took place.

1:33:19Ben Meiselas:She walked out of a hearing. I'm sorry, I have to go. After she was being cross-examined. What do you mean you have to go? Like that should annoy and anger and make you livid regardless of your political party, right? I mean, transparency really means transparency. And again, going back to a theme of this episode, all these MAGA Republicans who use transparency, turns out they're the ones who hate transparency the most because they're covering up this all. They're at the heart of the cabal. They are the cabal. You know, all the pizza references, be like, pizza, gay pizza, what the hell? They're the ones talking about the pizza in the files.

1:34:00Ben Meiselas:it's all them them them them them them all of it and to me that's not political I'm not saying this to you as a democrat I'm saying it to you as someone who's read the files who's read the documents who's saying why are they hiding from depositions saying I want Bill Clinton to be deposed he's saying he wants to do it in public in front of everyone and MAGA saying no what's you have to force Elon Musk to show up at a deposition after he goes out there and wants to you know, spend hundreds of millions of dollars to meddle with our election system, and he won't, he won't speak in a deposition? If you don't want to be in a deposition, don't do the role, don't do those things, and you won't be deposed.

1:34:43Ben Meiselas:So, Popak, I'll give you the final word.

1:34:45Popok:Thanks. Tulsi Gabbard, or whoever, who did you say walked out of the committee meeting? It was... Noam. Oh, Noam, yeah. That reminded me of the Godfather II, when the senator who had been compromised by the family during the hearing about Michael Corleone being the head of the family, suddenly stood up in the middle of it and said, well, I'd love to sit here, but I've got another hearing that I have to attend. But the Italian people are some of the hardest working people. I mean, seriously, I didn't realize The Godfather was a documentary. So look, you've got judges like Judge Chung in Maryland, who is saying the obvious out loud.

1:35:27that USAID was destroyed, not by Marco Rubio.

1:35:33Popok:There was a lot of reporting at the time that Marco Rubio did not want to stop the$50 billion of USAID, which is an extension, it's supposed to be an extension of American diplomacy run by the State Department in order to convince people to turn towards the West and away from our enemies in the East, right? When you have starving people and women who have issues about food security and disease and reproductive rights and children, things like that, and you don't feed them, house them, help them as an extension of the largesse of America, you just put them into the hands of the Chinese, the Russians, and the rest, which is what's really happened.

1:36:19Popok:reordering of the world by way of Donald Trump, which we probably are not going to be able to completely recover from, despite a lot of the healing that we'll be able to do with a proper president, a democratic president in 2028. There's just things that we're just not going to in one generation fix, you know, the reordering of the world where the European Union has turned its back, understandably, on the United States. The booing of J.D. Vance and his wife at the Olympics is the least of their problems. But the European Union joining together and these new configurations of China at the heart of new relationships, exactly what happens when you pull out of world influence, which is what the Trump administration did.

1:37:10Popok:It's not just about the money. It's about shuttering State Department offices and consular offices around the world, which means you're taking away the American, think of it like McDonald's. It'd be like McDonald's closing thousands of its franchise units around the world and then wonder why they're not selling any more hamburgers. We sold democracy and the benefits of democracy through the State Department, through the voice of America, the voice of Europe, through radio and other, and now internet information and media to promote the flame of democracy. Donald Trump got out of that business with America First, took the money with him.

1:37:52Popok:And as a result, you have dying, as you said, dying and dead people. And there was a big fight between Elon Musk and Marco Rubio about USAID, when Elon Musk put USAID famously through the wood chipper, when Marco Rubio did not want that to happen and had some other people appointed. So finally, a federal judge is like, you know what, we got to get to the bottom of what happened with USAID. And I can't think of anybody better than the person that effectively took it over and ran it. And I'm not going to let you hide behind all of these other doctrines, because there are now extraordinary circumstances that require you to sit in a chair and answer questions under oath to the class action lawyers that are suing on behalf of USAID and its beneficiaries.

1:38:41Popok:While he's in the chair, I would love to ask him other questions like, is the Don Lemon prosecution related to the fact that Don Lemon is in a lawsuit with you in a contract dispute? I don't think those two things are completely unrelated. Call me crazy, but I think those are things one day I would hope that Elon Musk is going to have to answer for. And there's other things. If Elon Musk thought he was going to come in, like a bull in a china shop, and tear down hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars of America influence, and reshape in a negative way the relationship between the federal government and the states and its people through defunding it, and do that with complete exoneration and get away scot-free?

1:39:32Popok:Wrong. Wrong. And you can't hide behind what they always wanted to hide behind, which is that he was not a confirmed Senate official, right? That's just a violation of the appointments clause. That's what's at the heart of the case that we're talking about. That doesn't help you. That's not a defense. That's actually the violation that you're being charged with here. Who were you to be addressing cabinet members who had all been confirmed by the Senate? Okay. We think they're depraved and immoral also, but at least they got confirmed by the Senate. Who are you to stand there with a baseball cap and a black t-shirt and a black ill-fitting coat and start talking about things and forcing, like it was some sort of hostage video by Donald Trump, forcing applause about all the great work that you did before you got fired and then had a fight with Donald Trump and got tossed on your ass, threatened to create a new third party to challenge Donald Trump, then kissed and made up with Donald Trump because of the billions of dollars, billions of hundreds of billions of dollars of federal government contracts that your company relies on.

1:40:40Popok:He's about to do a giant SpaceX merger bailout with your and my money. And then, like the coward that he is, does not want to sit in a chair and answer for all the illegal unconstitutional things that he did and take responsibility for it. When he was building the wall of receipts that never materialized about all the money he was saving, all a lie. In fact, he cost us more money because of all the bailout, all the buyout contracts for federal employees that he furloughed and all of that. It actually cost us more than he actually saved us. You're all bragging away, jumping up and down on a stage like a ketamine-addicted madman.

1:41:23Popok:Not my words, the words of Susie Wiles, the head of Donald Trump's chief of staff. That was all fun and games, right? It's fun to go play. It's fun to go play a politician, right? It's fun to go play a federal employee, isn't it? Except now we're into that third wave of litigation right this is the cleanup section of litigation and we're only like a month into second year of the trump administration if he thought if he thought that things would by now he'd be firing on all cylinders think about trump from trump's perspective i'll leave it on this trump destroys the american economy he destroys or tries to destroy the global economy He has his commerce secretary, we now know closely linked to Epstein, tell the American people that the tariffs, which are about to be torn down, hopefully by the Supreme Court, are going to lead to the American economy firing on all cylinders no later than the fourth quarter of 2025 or the first quarter of 2026.

1:42:32Popok:Has anybody looked at the economy recently? Look at your own checking account recently. Okay, none of that is happening. The American economy and the hopes and dreams of the American people crushed by Donald Trump in a year's time, digging a hole so deep he'll never dig out of it within a year. While he attacks the Federal Reserve, also destabilizing the financial markets, he said it was going to be the golden era of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. How's that going? Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin fell off the shelf this last week and last two weeks. Okay. The only thing that's making money right now is gold.

1:43:06Popok:Okay. People rushing in to buy gold, including companies affiliated with his commerce secretary. And he's wondering why. Why am I so unpopular? He just gave an interview a couple of days ago when the guy said in an interview, your polling is not doing great with the economy. It should be. Your polling is not doing great with the American people. It should be. Well, it's not. 70 % of the American people think this is a failed administration because it is. 70 % of the American people want their vote back. 70 % of independents or 75 % of independents want their vote back. 70 % of voters under 30 want their vote back.

1:43:44Popok:70 % of women, Hispanics want their vote back. And I'll leave it on this, Ben. When I interviewed Senator Blumenthal last week, I said to him, you know, share with our audience for a minute without breaching confidences. You know, the collegiality of the Senate, you know, it's a long tradition. Guys talk. are your Senate Republican friends and colleagues, are they worried about their electoral chances and that of the midterms? He said, you can see it in their eyes. They have a thousand yard stare. They are, even if the House won't admit it, the senators are very, Republican senators are very worried electorally, politically about Donald Trump after year one and beyond.

1:44:29Popok:And, you know, So that we know why. So we just got to do what we do here. Midas Touch, Legal AF, all the videos, all the lives, all the things that we're reporting on is just get people the information they need to continue to win the hearts and minds of people, to remind them why Donald Trump is so depraved in his administration too. And then help run them out on a rail come the midterms and beyond. Covered a lot today.

1:44:58Ben Meiselas:we uh we'll always be doing this level of detail i think that's what makes this show important that you know sometimes we don't know okay are we going to do two segments on the epstein files are we going to do and it's just a feeling sometimes of how do we make sure we get you all the information that you need to be fully um you know prepared knowledgeable uh aware of the cover-ups taking place and that you could help others and explain what's going on to others. So Super Bowl weekend. So tomorrow, enjoy the game if that's what you choose to do and watch that. We appreciate you. We're grateful for all of your support.

1:45:44Ben Meiselas:Hang in there. We're in this together. Let's keep fighting. We've got momentum. And it's always an honor to spend time with you over the weekend, Legal AF. And a reminder, make sure you hit subscribe here. Help us get to 6 million subscribers. But more importantly, help the Legal AF YouTube channel get 2 million subscribers. It's on its way to 2 million. So subscribe to Legal AF. Subscribe to the Legal AF sub stack. And also, if you or someone you know has been injured in an auto accident, car accident, trucking accident sexual assault uh medical malpractice uh call 877-POPOC-AF or visit thepopocfirm.com the consultation is 100 free they're available in every state available 24 7 877-POPOC-AF or go to thepopocfirm.com seriously don't be shy popoc represents hundreds now of people who listen and watch legal af web cases so he's there to help you as well um again appreciate y 'all.

1:46:44Ben Meiselas:We'll see you next time on Legal AF. Shout out Midas Mighty. Shout out Legal AF.

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