Legal AF 3/7/2026

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31:30It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's Upwork.com, Upwork.com. Welcome back to Legal AF. thank you to all of our sponsors they keep the show going we're grateful for them the discount codes for all of those sponsors are in the description below jordi and popock spend a lot of time picking who's going to be the sponsors rejecting sponsors that don't fit the brand so make sure you check it out and uh let them know we sent you all right popock we talked about uh in the last segment bondi cover-ups will she be fired now the issue is she runs a large organization.

32:14It's called the Department of Justice. Once upon a time, it was both the biggest and the most respected law firm essentially in the entire country, if not the world. I would definitely say the world. It was a place where the top law students would want to work. People would leave private practice jobs where they may be making millions of dollars to give back through public service. Working at the Department of Justice, it was a stepping stone frequently to become a federal judge or state court judge. It puts you on an incredible career trajectory. Also, the career DOJ lawyers usually were people of high integrity, of high moral character, and they also had huge amounts of resources.

32:56So when you would see the USA on the plaintiff side or on the prosecutorial side, and you were on the other side of the V, as we like to say, on the defendant's side, you would say, wow, we're going to be in for a fight because you never doubted that they had good lawyers with high character, high integrity, even if you thought that their prosecutions were overzealous or you disagreed with them, you never really doubted their ability to function. We now know there has been like close to 9 ,000 or more DOJ lawyers who have either resigned or fired or have been pushed out. DOJ lawyers, staff combined top talent, top divisions, civil rights divisions, antitrust divisions, you know, portions of their criminal division, crypto enforcement divisions, sex trafficking divisions, gutted, gutted.

33:51And, you know, offices throughout the AUSA offices throughout the country, United States attorney's offices throughout the country gutted where they have very limited talent to prosecute, you know, big, important cases. We talk about high profile cases a lot, but think about, you know, the cases that are medium profile or, you know, the cases that the DOJ prosecutes on a day-to-day basis that are not being prosecuted. We see massive errors. We'll talk about in a little bit. You have the DOJ not acknowledging even the most basic fundamental constitutional rights when judges grant habeas petitions saying that the government is holding people unlawfully in detention centers and release them.

34:34The DOJ sometimes doesn't follow the orders frequently recently, doesn't follow the orders. Then the judge hauls the DOJ lawyers in, threatens them with contempt. The DOJ lawyers say, I'm sorry, I'm not even really a United States federal prosecutor. I work in JAG. I'm a military lawyer. I'm an immigration lawyer. I don't know what we're doing. We're understaffed. I need help. We've had lawyers, DOJ lawyers saying, can you just put me in prison? Hold me in contempt, please. You know, but that's truly happening. But, you know, these lawyers are missing deadlines. They're missing. They're lying about the law.

35:09They are submitting false declarations. You know, when they're doing those things that we saw, you know, Trump's election denying lawyers do who got sanctioned and who lost their licenses. And so obviously the DOJ, which is this cauldron of corruption and criminality covering up sex trafficking and the Epstein files, they're not going to hold their own accountable. But in various states, you have state bar organizations, you know, the state bar, you ever hear of that? And these are the organizations that govern the professional responsibility and ethical conduct of lawyers in different states.

35:46And they have jurisdiction to remove people's legal licenses. In our federalist system, you are licensed to practice law, not in the entire nation in the United States. That may be confusing for some of our foreign viewers. But you are licensed in a particular state. You can take different state bar exams. You can be licensed in California, New York, Florida. But that means you have to take the bar exams usually in those states. There's a wrinkle on that recently they've introduced uniform exams and made it but you still have to take portions of other exams and then also pass professional responsibility exams of specific states so you're licensed only in a state so as a California lawyer, I can't on my own go into Nevada, or go into New York and start practicing law, I would have to have someone vouch for me there it's a process called Proact Viche, I won't get into that but I can't practice in other states without the assistance of local lawyers.

36:41who lend their bar license to my name. Now, one of the ways to hold DOJ lawyers accountable for their ethical breaches or their misconduct since the DOJ won't is through filing bar complaints against these DOJ lawyers. That could happen when people file them, citizens, or more frequently when judges make referrals because of the conduct that's before the court and a federal judge says, I'm referring you to the state bar because you've missed deadlines so frequently, you've lied to the court, you've engaged in crimes, whatever, and I can refer you to prosecution. But if I refer you to prosecution, that means the DOJ is supposed to prosecute you for criminal contempt.

37:23Bondi's not going to do that. So the most we can do now until there's a new DOJ and the statute of limitations on their crimes has not expired, but for now is basically remove their law licenses and let local ethical organizations that run the ethics, like state bar organizations, remove your legal license. And so I'll pass it to you, Popak, but under the guise of federalism, we have the Trump DOJ now essentially saying, well, the supremacy clause of the Constitution, federal preemption reigns supreme. So state bar organizations can't do investigations of any DOJ lawyer federal unless we say so.

38:05So we're going to do the investigations first, indefinitely, once a DOJ lawyer tells us they're under investigation, and then state bar, you have to stay out because of the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. So we want unethical lawyers in the DOJ. I mean, Popak, how sick, how sick is that? The wolf is now regulating the chicken house. Yeah, okay. So So you gave a great overview of how you and I have a bar license. And the one little connectivity there that goes to the 10th Amendment, which is everything that's not federal is reserved to the states, is that you can't practice in federal court directly coming out of law school by taking a federal bar exam.

38:52You have to have an underlying state bar. Pick one. Any 50 states in the District of Columbia, you've got to have a state bar. That's your ticket to sit for a federal bar, either an exam or to be sworn in because somebody vouches for you. Whatever the individual, I've done it all. I've taken tests. I've been sworn in for my federal bars. But you have to have one state bar. And you can't skip a step. If you show up at the federal court and say, I went to an accredited law school, and I'm ready to take your federal bar test, they're like, where's your state license? So the states, as you said, regulate appropriately under the 10th Amendment, things like professional licenses.

39:43You're not a federal, although some people think they are. You're not a federal lawyer. You're not a federal, you may be a federal practitioner. That may be 100 % of your practice is running over to the federal court instead of the state court. I have a mixed practice. I do state and federal work. But that doesn't mean you're a federal bar member only. So the states regulate either through an appellate division, an appellate court, an integrated bar like Florida, the Florida Bar. Talk about that in a minute. I'm a member of that one. Or through the Supreme Court of that state. Those are the three different major ways.

40:21And it's all about the same as you laid out. You take a multi-state exam, which is like general law around the country. You take a state-specific section. You take an ethics section. Then you've just passed the bar based on the number that you get set by the regulators. Then you've got to pass your character and fitness. You've got to get admitted into the bar. And the reason it's called a bar for those geeks out there is because literally coming out of old England, out of the ins of court and legal England, there was a bar, a wooden bar. And if you were admitted to the bar, you could stand on the other side of it in the well of the court and address the court.

41:02Everybody else was in the courtroom watching. So you're a member of the bar, means you could cross over that line. And still to this day, most courts, There is a – federal courts especially. There is a wooden swinging door and bar that I have to walk through and close behind me and sit at a table to address the court. You don't – that's why you don't address the court from – pardon me, folks. I come in like a minute late. I'm coming in through the door in the back. Hey, judge. Hey, dude. Sorry I'm late. No, no. You rush. Open that swinging door. Get in front of the bar and in your proper place as an officer of the court.

41:48Federal judges regulate and state court judges regulate, too, because when they observe something that's gone awry in their courtroom, a violation of the rules of professional responsibility or conduct, which are basically about the same in all states, comes from a model rule. they can say, hey, that was not only contempt of my court and my order violated the bar rule, including a major one, candor to the tribunal. Got to tell the truth. Got to tell the truth to the best of your ability to the judge or arbitrator or whoever that's asking you questions. Okay. You have to be candid and not lie to your opponent as well, and certainly not to your client.

42:26All of these things have been on, the violations of all these things on full display with this Department of Justice under Pam Bondi. Another indicia of Pam Bondi knowing her, she's on thin ice, is trying before she gets thrown out to get this new rule passed. Because what they didn't like in the first term is that the first starting team for Donald Trump of lawyers, all got fined, sanctioned, censured, disbarred, indicted, and or convicted. And some, all three or four of those things. So you're talking about Ken Chesborough and Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis and John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, and the list goes on.

43:15Clark, Jeffrey Clark, this group all got some version, Even Alina Habba got sanctioned by a federal judge for her shenanigans in private practice. So they don't want that to happen again. And Pondy is forcing, because Trump is too, forcing the Department of Justice, assistant U.S. attorneys and U.S. attorneys to take ridiculous positions that are unethical, defiant of court orders, telling, to paraphrase, a former senior leader of the Department of Justice, Emil Bovee, now a Third Circuit Court of Appeals judge. tell judges to go F themselves. We're not answering their questions. We're not, we're deporting people without due process in the middle of the night, whether they like it or not.

43:58So she's making them do it. And they've had a complete inability to refill the six or 7 ,000 people that have left the Department of Justice. So Bondi publishes, and we missed it, we caught it later, about a week or two ago in the Federal Register, a proposed new rule. New rules. Okay. I feel like I'm, what's his name? Bill Barr. New rule. States can do the investigation, but we can block it and do our own. It'll be the feds investigating themselves. And like you said, go on indefinitely. We can do it for as long as we want. And while we're doing an investigation, whatever that means, states, you stay out of it.

44:43You can't do your thing even though there's an underlying bar license that you do regulate, but not here. Now, the Florida bar for instance took a very interesting position when Pam Bondi had a bar complaint against her brought by the same group that brought the claim against or the bar charge against Lindsey Halligan, which was Florida bar took the position, which I don't agree with, is while they're in federal practice and working for the federal government, we're not going to investigate. Meaning when they're out, they will. Because Bondi and the rest have another problem. The statute of limitations for things like obstruction of justice is now longer than the administration.

45:30In other words, it's a five-year statute of limitations for most of the crimes, including lying to Congress, that these people are committing before our very eyes. But this term is over in 2028. So the next Department of Justice, I love the sound of that, in 2029, can prosecute all of these people, including Kristi Noem, including Pam Bondi or Todd Blanche, or anybody else that obstructed justice or lied to Congress. So I love these people say, well, these these oversight committee hearings, are they really useful? Yes, for many reasons, including the one that I just outlined. So this whole now the state bars are all they're all apoplectic, most of them anyway.

46:18And they're all going to comment and oppose the rule about this is their right under the 10th Amendment. This is their professional regulation, self-policing, not up to the feds. and whether you want to decide whether they did or didn't commit an ethical violation, that's for you. You want to discipline them from a professional standpoint, but from their bar license standpoint, that's our job. So there's going to be a whole fight over that. But the fact that she's even trying it is remarkable. I do want to say one thing because you and I, you said something earlier that triggered something for me.

46:51You said a version of, it's not like we want to be critiquing and criticizing and calling to task Donald Trump, you know, for ratings or whatever. And we have no choice because we're watching an out-of-control, lawless, rogue presidency. We've got to talk about it. And he just continues to do it over and over again. We don't blow smoke or sunshine here. I mean, that is our remit. There was a, I caught this doing some other research on something I did a hot take on on Legal AF that's up now. Judge Reyes, who's a Biden appointee, who has been attacked, she's a D.C. federal judge, who's been attacked by the Trump administration time and time again, including them bringing a judicial ethical charge against her, which she got cleared of, related to her case where she ruled that the transgender community can't be drummed out of the military.

47:42She just posted on her docket literally what she calls a shout out to the quality of one assistant U.S. attorney that was before her. Now, she ruled against that person, him, but she wanted, and obviously, she wanted to contrast his conduct and his behavior with those that are not following his lead and are being defiant and disrespectful of federal courts and misleading them and not being honest to the tribunal. Let me read this to you, Ben, and to our audience. Listen to this posting. Have you ever seen anything like this in your career? February 3rd, the day after she ruled against the government, about 350 ,000 Haitians who, based on her order, will not be deported back to war-torn Haiti based on a Christy Gnome order, which has now been affirmed, at least for now, at the Court of Appeals.

48:36Here's what she wrote. The court thanks all counsel of record for their substantial efforts to date, efforts that have amply aided its work. The court highlights Assistant U.S. Attorney Druman Y. Sampat. His work has been, in a word, exemplary. In a few more, it's been the very best tradition of Assistant U.S. Attorneys. Over a two-day motion hearing, he exhibited mastery of an intricate statutory regime, three complex doctrinal areas, and 1 ,500 pages of an administrative record. And even with the court lobbying endless questions at him, he did so with good humor throughout. The court has not before docketed this type of judicial shout out, her words, but Mr.

49:24Sampat's efforts demands no less. So when we see appropriate conduct, behavior, good lawyering, we, like Judge Reyes, will call it out. The fact that we don't do it is not because we're editing and leaving on the cutting room floor really good behavior by the Trump administration that we just don't want to talk about because it gets in the way of our narrative. We don't have a narrative. We're just talking about, at the intersection of law and politics, what is right and what is wrong. And I think that's why people hang out with us, at least on a regular basis on Legal AF and on the Midas Dutch Network.

50:00Right. I mean, covering up a child sex trafficking ring wrong should be your Democrat or Republican. That's wrong. And that needs to be called out. I don't know what's what needs to be called out more than more than that. an unlawful war for regime change without even trying to explain it to the American people and then saying the reason that you did it was because you believed Israel was going to strike first and then Iran was going to strike you next and then saying I didn't say that when we heard with what you like the words that you said Marco Rubio and Maga Mike Johnson but not even trying to explain this to the American people or get legal authorization I mean I just think objectively It shouldn't matter what political party you're from.

50:49We should be able to call that out as wrong. I mean, having masked agents roam the streets in military gear, kidnapping, killing, torture, terrorizing, going into these states that are have their own kind of state sovereign functions and invading them. And that's that's wrong. What we saw with Alex Preti, Renee Nicole Good, the 40 plus people who died in detention centers as well last year, the nearly a dozen people who have died this year. That's objectively authoritarian conduct. That's bad. We should call that out. And it's not an anti-Trump thing. It's Trump is doing that thing. And I am anti the person who has shredded our Constitution and shredded our rights and shredded, you know, I think the the the things that actually made America viewed be viewed internationally, you know, as something that's special.

51:48I mean, I'll read this to you right now. This is from a a foreign minister in India, a foreign secretary of India who also served as an ambassador to the United States in China. Perhaps what unsettles me most is the sense of disbelief. For many of us, the United States was a country we admire deeply, its institutions, its culture, its ideals. To see such callousness now, such indifference to the human cost of war is profoundly troubling. Power exercise without reflection risks becoming something colder, something stripped of the moral restraint that once gave it legitimacy. And I mean, I think whether you look at the U.S.

52:28war posture, how Trump and Hegs have talked about themselves as predators, that the United States is a predator country that dominates and rains down death. I mean, when I hear these words, I'm like, what the hell is even, what is happening here? When you see in domestic policy or domestic life, invasions of our states and our cities, I mean, what the hell is going on here? And, you know, when we started Legal AF many, many years ago, we warned that this could be a reality. And lots of people in our very early days criticized me and Popak and our whole team. And they would say, ah, hyperbolic.

53:12And I would get all the fact checks and this and that and saying, stop, stop trying to be so hyperbolic. Why are you saying all of these things? Because we're listening to what's happening. We're showing you the evidence and the data. With that said, we're going to take our last break of the show. A reminder, if you or someone you know has been injured in a trucking accident, car accident, been injured by the negligence of somebody else, if you know somebody who's in a tragic situation, maybe they were killed because of the negligence of somebody else and you're speaking with their families, all these kind of catastrophic injury cases Michael Popak handles at the Popak firm.

53:48and he represents a huge amount of people who listen and watch the show who have cases. I've been calling Popok. Obviously, you trust his legal voice here. Don't be shy. Call the Popok firm, 877-POPOK-AF or visit thepopokfirm.com. That's 877-POPOK-AF or visit thepopokfirm.com. Also, subscribe to the Legal AF YouTube channel. Let's get that 2 million subscribers. Also, subscribe to the Legal AF Substack. Let's get that staying as one of the top substacks out there. All right, last break of the show. We'll be right back after this quick break. This is something I wish more people talked about sooner, and it runs in my family.

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57:09Results not guaranteed. Cancel any time. That's smartcredit.com slash legal AF. smartcredit.com. Welcome back to Legal AF. Thank you to all of our sponsors. Once again, the discount code for those sponsors are in the description below. Support our sponsors, support the show. And our sponsors are great. They do great stuff, do great work, make great things, support our sponsors. All right, let's get into it. Popak, let's just talk. We talked about this disastrous DOJ. I want to show you some examples of this. So as Josh Gerstein explains, the Trump administration through the DOJ reverses course again in litigation of Trump executive order targeting the major law firms.

57:57One day after moving to drop the appeal aimed at reviving the order, the executive order, the DOJ now asks to keep on going and they want to withdraw their dismissal. If that sounds confusing, it's because this DOJ is absolutely idiotic and it is confusing. Trump puts out executive order targeting different law firms. Remember, he would like have executive order on this law firm or that law firm and say, because this law firm employs this lawyer or these lawyers, you can't do business with the government. And there's lawyers who had sued Donald Trump in the past or who Donald Trump doesn't like or lawyers who are on TV who criticize him, whatever it is.

58:38So Trump does executive orders at them. There are lots of law firms that capitulated and entered into settlements with Donald Trump and behaved absolutely pathetically. And this was very disappointing to say the least, especially firms that people once respected who will go down in history as traitors. That's their history now, destroying their law firms. And we learned that some of them have Epstein connections. surprise surprise and they're in the Epstein files surprise surprise but the law firms that fight won they won big the cases got consolidated pretty much before a district court judge Beryl Howell she and any other judge who heard these types of cases who strongly ruled against the Trump regime and said that there are constitutional violations attacking these law firms so after losing big and I mean in scathing orders like like this executive order by Donald Trump is frivolous It's it reeks of fascism.

59:28Like the orders were just like, you're not going to win this. Trump appealed through the DOJ to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. And then I guess somebody realized, you know, not only are we going to lose, but we're probably going to be sanctioned and we may lose our law licenses for doing frivolous appeals. And also, I think some of these DOJ lawyers are like, we're going to keep attacking law firms. Where are we going to work after this regime is over? Aren't these firms that hire people? And maybe this is a bad look. So the DOJ, for whatever reason, they decide to dismiss their appeal, meaning the case is done.

1:00:06The law firms win. The law firms announce we won. This should never have been filed. Trump gets wind of that. He tells the DOJ lawyers, You dismiss this? How could you dismiss this without telling me? No, no, no. You refile it. Like we can't refile it. We dismissed it. Then withdraw your dismissal. So they file a motion to withdraw the motion to dismiss the appeal. Motion to withdraw motion to voluntarily dismiss the appeal. Defendants, meaning the Trump regime, respectfully moves to withdraw their motion to voluntarily dismiss their appeal against the law firms. Counsel for Trump reached out to the law firms for their position.

1:00:47The law firms oppose, stating the law firms oppose the government's unexplained request to withdraw yesterday's voluntary dismissal, to which all parties agreed. Under no circumstance should the government's unexplained about-face provide a basis for an extension of its brief, to which the government, the Trump regime, says, regardless of the law firm's position, this court has not yet granted the motion to dismiss, and it is the prerogative of the government to pursue this appeal now. In addition, there's no prejudice to the law firms. If the court grants this motion, this court should grant this motion to withdraw.

1:01:27A popock, a motion to with. So now you all see why Pam Bondi wants to try to get immunity for her lawyers who can lose their license for filing stuff like this. Well, yes. And let's let's go over the only reason. So for those that that are courtroom watchers and watchers of legal AF, the reason that they had to put that text in about we reached out to the other side. And here is their statement is because the rule in that particular court is you need to reach out to the other side and what and whatever their position is, you need to tell us what that is. They didn't want to write those words. They want to write the words that highlight that they refuse to tell the court the real reason within hours they needed to withdraw the motion to withdraw because they're being berated and abused by Donald Trump.

1:02:21somebody woke up over there and says, they don't have a really good reason, even though they're not totally wrong. You do have the right to withdraw emotion, but you need to give a good faith reason. And they decided to skip that step. But what it demonstrates for me is, assuming that the original policy decision to stop going after the law firms was a good one, And it's another example of Donald Trump folding under pressure because he's going to lose on this appeal. Whether it was Judge Beryl Howell, which I'll mention in a minute, or Judge Leon, there were three judges that kind of handled these cases.

1:03:01And the appeal of it got consolidated up. Beryl Howell had the best line, and it's consistent with what you just said, Ben, about how these law firms that settled will go down in history as the Benedict Arnold of a profession. For which I'm not sure they recover in terms of future hiring, retention, you know, all the other things that go along with being a major law firm in this country, our leadership. She said, and I'm paraphrasing because I haven't read it in about six months, but she said in a footnote, complimenting the law firms that came to her and to other federal courts. She said, when you're being put by the federal government on a blacklist that imperils your ability to not only earn a living but to represent clients, the most fundamental and sacrosanct relationship, one of the most sacrosanct relationships in our society is that of lawyer and client.

1:03:57even to Tocqueville, when he was roaming around America during the Revolutionary War period, said the thing that distinguishes America and its version of democracy is the lawyers, the independence of the lawyers. When that happens to you, don't settle. Come to a federal judge near you and let us handle the issue. And what they found is the First Amendment rights and the Fifth Amendment rights of these law firms were being violated. Because what Donald Trump did just to rewind for a minute, is that Donald Trump was pissed that he was effectively radioactive during after the first term, that not only because we saw what happened on Jan 6th, and Donald Trump fomenting an insurrection, and doing nothing about it in dereliction of duty, but he was also the subject of a major fraud investigation against his family and himself that resulted in a judgment of fraud, persistent fraud for 10 years brought by the New York Attorney General Letitia James, and a monitor, a court-ordered person who still sits inside the Trump organization because of their fraud, an auditing firm that quit and publicly announced that none of Donald Trump's financial records could be trusted because effectively they had been lied to for years.

1:05:25So as that is a backdrop and a conviction on 19 felony counts of a series of major companies that Donald Trump operates for business record and tax fraud. So with that, banks and law firms were like, nope, don't want to touch Donald Trump with a 10-foot ball. That's why he ended up having to get, lawyers had to leave their law firms in order to represent Donald Trump. C. Todd Blanche, C. Chris Keiss, C. Alina Hava, this little law firm you never heard of near the golf course in New Jersey. Because no major firm wanted to take him on. And the other aspect of major firms that drove Donald Trump crazy is they all had what we call pro bono departments, which were lawyers, usually young lawyers, but some senior lawyers that would take on controversial cases or cases that had a lot of merit against Trump and the Trump administration or Donald Trump himself for free.

1:06:27All major law firms had a pro bono department like that. Donald Trump hated that. So when he got into power, he put a list of 14 or 20 law firms who made a lot of money, this was their livelihood, in representing clients before federal government agencies, or in some rare circumstances, representing federal government agencies with some highly technical legal issues. Some firms made 50, 60, 70 % of their money representing clients against the federal, or in collaboration with the federal government, like, Like, oh, Amazon, you're going to do a cloud computing contract? Oh, Amazon has lawyers. And Donald Trump said, oh, no, you law firms, we're not going to let you.

1:07:14We're not going to give you the security clearances that you need. We're not going to give you the ability. We're going to bar you from federal. They even went as far, Ben, just to remind everybody, to threaten to bar lawyers from going into federal courts or to go meet with the Securities and Exchange Commission or other federal agencies. And all the judges that got it for the few firms that you and I know well that stood up for themselves and ran to court, they all won. First Amendment violation, Fifth Amendment violation. And with scathing, as you said, scolding of the Trump administration for doing what it was trying to do and put them all back in the game.

1:07:53And they all got their security clearances back and their ability to have clients back. And clients have the lawyer of their choice back. There was a bunch that settled, led by, as you referenced, a firm that has an Epstein problem that settled first for$40 million. A firm that I know well, that I have friends that work there at Paul Weiss in New York. We're like, why are they settling? Well, now we know why. because there were plenty of documents in the Epstein files connecting the head of Paul Weiss to Jeffrey Epstein directly, to the head of, to Leon Black, a financier, a disgraced financier in New York, and Epstein and girls.

1:08:38So now we know why they settled first. I'm not sure the partners of that guy knew that that's why they were settling first. And then others for$100 million,$125 million, one at a time. up to a billion dollars in tribute being paid to Donald Trump in pro bono services, which we've never got a proper auditing for. Like, who's providing the services? What are they providing? How are they providing it? But that'll be on their epitaph, on their obituary, that they settled with Donald Trump. This is a loser for Donald Trump. So it made sense that finally they're trying to clean up the loser's cases, And they start dismissing appeals and not pursuing appeals so they don't get another loss, especially in this particular area, as he's also simultaneously trying to protect his federal lawyers and his senior lawyers from losing their bar licenses.

1:09:32So that sort of made, you know, you know, you are like, it's it's evil genius, but it's genius. Get rid of the loser case. Try to do this rule. Try to delay bar grievances and disciplinary actions against against lawyers that work for the Department of Justice and senior leadership. But somewhere because the press and Midas and Legal AF, we platformed the public outrage about this and the celebration about his dropping it, Trump got embarrassed and he retaliated and he said, who made that decision? And then we got to withdraw the withdrawal. But that's good. We'll take it as a gift. It is a loser dead on arrival legal case for the Department of Justice.

1:10:18And it makes Pam Bondi and everybody in leadership and Donald Trump look as ridiculous as they really are in real life. And yet another thing for the next oversight committee hearing on the Judiciary Committee, if Pam Bondi survives the Epstein hearing, which I'm not sure she does, but if she survives that, makes its way around that. This whole thing about the rules she's trying to pass, the fact that she's trying to protect her lawyers from being disbarred, including herself, and issues like this that you just pointed out are all going to be appropriate fair game and fodder for the next cross-examination of Pam Bondi.

1:10:57Right. And you lose. You lost, Donald. And the right thing to do when you lose. I mean, Popak, you and I have litigated. You win. You lose. And frequently when I would lose, there's no trial lawyer who litigates tough, big cases and wins every case. That's just not the way it is. when you lose, you handle it with humility. Are you sad? Do you go home and you're, what could I have done better? Was it me? Was it the jury? You know, could I have done things? But you usually, the way I would always practice, you look the other side that you may have had hard fought battles with. You shake their hand.

1:11:37You wish them well. I mean, people don't know this about me and you. We became best friends because we were on other sides of cases. Popak and I were at each other's throats on a very serious, high profile, big case where we were on opposite sides of it. And we left it becoming friends and saying, you know what, this was we can fight hard, but we are also, you know, at the end of the day, we're lawyers. We have responsibilities to our communities in this profession. And and that's how we became friends. And I respected you and I respected your talents and what you were doing for your client and your honor, right?

1:12:19And yes, we were at each other's throats, but I respected you as a lawyer in the case. I know you did the same for me. And we got a good result from both of our clients, if that's possible, in a resolution. And then that's it. You're right. We stayed friends. And I didn't know if Popak was a Republican or a Democrat or an Independent. That's true. You know, what, you know, I, you know, I wasn't doing videos back then. No, no one knew what the politics, you know, was. And, you know, I represented clients who were Republicans. I rep, some of my clients may have become Trump supporters in the future.

1:12:53I don't know whether they were or weren't. I was representing people. You were representing people. I represented Howard Lutnick. I worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. He did. So we so so the point, though, is, is that, you know, you lose, you know, and yeah, the right move was to dismiss the appeal, never to do this executive order in the first place. But he's like, he's a sore loser. It's baby behavior. It's gross. It's just gross behavior, which brings me to the last topic I want to talk about, which is these tariffs against the world. We'll talk about it briefly because we covered it at length two shows ago.

1:13:27But everybody knows the tariffs against the world were obviously rejected by the Supreme Court. They were declared, you know, what Trump did under IEPA was declared illegal. So rather than accepting the loss and saying, you know what, that's, you know, I shouldn't have done that. I'm putting this mildly. You shouldn't have done that. Shouldn't have stole, you know, billions of dollars from people. You return the money. You give people their money back, right? That's what you do. You shouldn't say, I'm going to fight this every day. I'm not going to give you your money. You stole money. You were found to have stolen.

1:14:02Give it back, Donald. Give back your bottle. You shouldn't give it back to people. Then Donald Trump goes, you know what? What I'm going to do, I'm going to make the tariffs bigger. So he finds another law that he violates and says This one, section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which deals with monetary currency manipulation. Balance of payments. And balance of payments. But like, you know, when we were on the Brenton Wood gold system, you know, I mean, it was like nothing to do with the current system when the dollar was pegged to gold and whether there could be like a run on gold. although you know by going to war against iran maybe he's going to be creating you know that fiscal crisis yeah i got the fiscal crisis to tariff the world you know i didn't think about that one until i'm speaking you know speaking out loud um but now what happens the same groups that sued i'll give it to you popak they're suing and saying you're unlawfully invoking this other law right now and then there are other groups now i saw like nintendo file a lawsuit and others saying first return the money you stole from us, you know, the first time.

1:15:16And then other groups are saying section 122 is unlawful. And Trump's like, well, you know, I could probably drag this out to my third year now and do what I did last time before the Supreme Court takes it. It'll be like, you know, April 2027, maybe, you know, and I'll drag it out then. What do you make of all this? Yeah, you know, it's funny. One thing about Trump, though, he recognizes that the things he does will lead to lawsuits. You and I were talking, it wasn't quite in our wheelhouse for today, but we were talking about the White House and Trump convening a college sports summit for no reason other than to distract attention from things that matter to everyday Americans like the gas pump and the supermarket and healthcare and how they're gonna help aged parents or young children in their lives.

1:16:05But Donald Trump loves sports. We're gonna have an MMA fight apparently to celebrate a 250th anniversary of America for no reason. So, but at one point he said, I'm going to do an executive order and I'm going to solve the whole problem with college sports and all the money in there and how students are treated. There'll be a lawsuit, so I'm going to get sued over it. He said it like four times. He's a little gun shy now, a little post-traumatic stress disorder from all the times he's been successfully sued. So in this one, we've got a couple of free, a couple of data points that have developed in the last 72 hours.

1:16:39You've got Judge Eaton, who's a senior judge at the Court of International Trade, who has been given the remit by the chief judge of the Court of International Trade, which is a court I love, by the way, because you and I never talked about it in four and a half or five years of legal AF, and now it's all, we can't stop talking about it. The Court of International Trade sitting in New York, three judge panels usually. Judge Eaton has been given the assignment to do all issues related to refund. under the Supreme Court ruling that the tariffs are taxes and the taxes are illegal. And therefore, Trump's use of this International Emergency Powers Act to tariff the world at 200 countries and unlimited goods is illegal.

1:17:26So Judge Eaton actually had, this is like a new, this is something new that the judges are doing. They're making the Department of Justice and lawyers and departments audit themselves and tattletale on themselves before they make rulings. We've seen it, for instance, in judges saying, how many court orders has the Department of Justice violated in this district alone when it comes to writs of habeas corpus? 127. They're making them do the hard work. Here, Judge Eaton had a questionnaire to the the Customs and Border Patrol person responsible for trade, about how many, they call it impositions, how many have happened since IEPA?

1:18:16And he said like five times the amount as before. Okay. And how many of those have you refunded? None. And what processes or rules have you been given by your superiors to start refunding under the Supreme Court ruling in February? None. Okay, thank you. He then wrote an order that said, as of right now, you are to stop imposing the refund, the IEPA tariff. You are to send the money back to them. Now, he didn't set up yet a procedure for people that have not yet applied for the refund, but he's getting there. And that's going to put pressure on the Trump administration to either come up with a method to, in the next 90 days, repay the$150 billion back to primarily American importers and pass back to businesses and come up with a plan where this Judge Eaton is going to make the ruling for them.

1:19:10Now, Donald Trump's decided that he's going to use another statute, which he has no ability to use. If there's, as you said, a balance of payment problem, which sounds like balance of trade, but it's not. It has to do with currency. It has to do with the fluctuation of the U.S. dollar. And so when we thought we were getting paid for something at a certain dollar amount, that currency fluctuated because of other issues. And now we're not getting what we thought we were getting. We thought our dollar was worth X. Turns out our dollar is worth 20 cents less than that. So we're getting paid less. There is almost no balance of payment problem in America.

1:19:51It is a rounding error. The World Bank considers it a rounding error. The couple of billion dollar delta Donald Trump's using. We got a balance of payment problem. We don't. And it's illegal. And in 20 states led by the Democrats, California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, Oregon, you name it, have all joined together. 20 out of the 24 Democratic attorneys general have joined together, along with Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Andy Beshear in Kentucky, to challenge the use of what we call Section 122 tariffs. Because there's no balance of payment problem in this country. So it's an illegal, illicit use of the tariff thing.

1:20:32And for Donald Trump, I joked at one of my hot takes, it's like a person robs your house. They rob your house. And they get caught. And they say, well, we're not going to repay you. I'm not going to give you back what I stole because I'm about to steal from you again. That's not how that works. His first attempt at stealing our money got spotted by the Supreme Court and shot down. Now it's time to repay it. Now, a lot of people are mad at the Supreme Court, like they didn't put in a process for the repayment. That's not how the Supreme Court works. As to paraphrase Amy Coney Barrett, I'm a judge, not an economist or a business person.

1:21:10We declare the thing invalid. You guys go sort it out at the Court of International Trade or the Congress or something. Now, there is a dirty little secret here, which is it's probably going to end up being plaintiff's lawyers that are going to, you know, shout out to the plaintiff's lawyers that are going to have to find a way through class action suits to get the money ultimately back into the American pocketbook for having paid for tariffs through prices that were increased now that the tariffs have been refunded. So it's not a windfall for the businesses, right? The businesses through American importers paid the tariff, whatever it was, passed it along 70, 80, 90 percent on to Americans through price increases.

1:21:52The Americans paid those price increases. Revenue came into the businesses, but then the businesses got the money back. So it's going to be a very rare business who's going to declare some sort of price holiday and say, hey, you know those Cheerios that were$5 a box? We're going to lower it to$380 for the next three months to pay you back. Forget it. But it's going to be plaintiff's lawyers who are going to have to be creative to figure out a way to bring class action suits against these companies to get the money back to the American consumer who ultimately paid the price. And it just shows you that Donald Trump will go out of his way to steal money from the American people.

1:22:34Well, you and I joked, as did the Wall Street Journal, that the best thing that could ever happen to Donald Trump after seeing that after 13, 14 months, his proof of concept sucked and that his tariff scheme was destroying the American dream. The best thing that could have ever happened to him was let the Supreme Court tear the tariffs down and he could blame the Supreme Court and go, I wanted to do it this way. I can't do it this way. And great. Recalibrate his economic policies to try to help Americans, maybe in time for the midterms. Nope. That's not how Donald Trump sees it. Yes, he attacked the Supreme Court.

1:23:08But then he's like, we're bringing the tariffs, bringing the tariffs back. It's just my body, his, I mean, they're shooting yourself in the foot and then they're shooting yourself in the head. No pun intended. And Donald Trump just finds a way, just finds a way to not only destroy the economic goals and success of the American people and steal money from them at the same time, but also So even when he's given a gift from a court ruling, he doesn't see it that way because, as you said, he's such a petulant child that he can't reverse course, which is our gift because he'll never be able to tick off all the boxes of things that people hate about him.

1:23:52His immigration policy, right? Right. Mark, appointing Mark Wayne Mullins, a former MMA fighter and a guy who does home home development, home remodeling videos on YouTube, does not qualify you to run Border Patrol, ICE and FEMA. OK, he might be good if you want to hire him for personal security. You want him to be your bodyguard, maybe. but the head of, in the middle of this, the middle of this, as you said, cauldron of chaos, this is the guy, because nobody else wants to be in the administration. So these are all gifts. He can't fix immigration. He can't fix the economy. He can't fix the scandals, the corruption in time for the midterms.

1:24:44They're printing ballots. Primaries have happened. right we're down to you know one hand and a couple of figures in the other hand until the midterms so the polling becomes real and the only thing i can i'll leave i'll leave my rant on this the only thing that is the cure the cure the antidote to what we're watching is to vote overcome all of these ridiculous barriers to voting and bring your you bring your grandmother and bring your passport and bring your first grade report card, whatever it is, whatever the rule that ends up being left standing in your state, and make sure you're not purged from the rolls based on mail-in balloting being under attack.

1:25:34You got time. Use the time now. Fix your own voting situation now. Then you can help others around the country get them registered. Because if the anti-Trump vote just comes out, this is going to be a way of election that's going to wipe clean and send all of the House packing, put the Democrats back in power in the House and the Senate and set up for a 2028 presidential race. So no more hand wringing, right? What's the line that I heard a lot of my attorney generals use when I interviewed them? If your hands are busy doing something, you don't have time to wring your hands. That's what we need.

1:26:13busy hands can't be ringing them. And this is where it's the number one thing everyone I've ever interviewed, so have you, has said, which is get ready to vote and vote. That's what the Republicans are scared shitless about. Because if we vote in the right numbers, if we just vote and don't sit out the election, they lose. We want voting in mass quantities, not fraudulent, just regular. They don't want voting at all. That's the only way they can win a general election. So that's what we need to do to restore the co-equal branches of government, checks and balances, and get corruption out of this administration.

1:26:55Well said, Michael Popak. And everybody, we're thankful for Popak being back here on Legal AF. I know everybody wanted to see Michael Popak. Occasionally, though, Popak and I want to give each other a little bit of time off. So maybe Popak will do some solo videos without me. I'll do some with that. But I know you want to see us together. I know more importantly, you want to see Popak. So Popak, it's great to have you back. And a reminder to everybody, if you or someone you know has been injured in a car accident, a trucking accident, if you know someone or you've been injured because of the negligence of another company or a person or something, reach out to the Popak firm.

1:27:34If you know someone who's been killed in a wrongful death case and you speak with their family members, they're looking for lawyers, reach out to Popak. He's got the Popak firm. The consultation is free. 877-POPAK-AF, call or text or visit thepopakfirm.com. Again, there's a link in the description below as well. And also go check out the Legal AF YouTube, check out the Legal AF Substack. Right now, let's keep growing those Legal AF properties and make sure you subscribe to, again, the YouTube and the sub stack. That's it for me and Michael Popok. Thank you everybody for watching. Stay in there, stay in the fight, keep telling the truth, keep watching Midas Touch, Legal AF, and we're grateful for you.

1:28:15See you next time on Legal AF. Shout out Midas Mighty, shout out Legal AF.

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