Legal AF - 4/25/2026

30:02Call or text 877-POPAK-AF or visit thepopakfirm.com. They've got lawyers across the country who are available 24-7. The consultation is free. The Popoc firm is representing a lot of listeners and viewers of Legal AF, so don't be shy. Reach out to the Popoc firm now. And again, you can look in the description below for those numbers and the website once again. Also, make sure you subscribe to the Legal AF YouTube channel and the Legal AF Substack. Both are doing great. We need to keep on growing the Legal AF platform and Legal AF, the winner of three major Webby Awards. Congratulations to Legal AF for winning those three major Webby Awards.

30:40let's take our first quick break of the show. And by the way, you all made that possible. They were People's Choice Awards, meaning you all pushed it over the edge in a very competitive category. So thank you for that. Let's take our first quick break of the show. My cat Chanel, she runs the house. I just pay the mortgage and scoop litter. So when I found something that fixes that worst part of having a cat, I paid attention. This podcast is sponsored by Boxy. Boxy is the last cat litter you'll switch to. And their Boxy Pro Deep Clean, It's the best cat litter money can buy. The PRO in Boxy Pro stands for probiotics, which Boxy puts right in the litter that gobble up odor-causing bacteria and keeps the box continuously odor-free.

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32:03That's B-O-X-I-E-C-A-T.com slash Legal AF and make sure you use my code LegalAF so they know I sent you. Let's talk about something no one wants to talk about. What happens when you die? Because unfortunately, it's going to happen to you, but you can be prepared. With trust and will online estate planning. I'll be honest, I've definitely been one of those people who keeps putting this off. And I'm not alone. 43 % of Americans say they just haven't gotten around to making a will yet. It's easy to delay even when you know it matters, especially when it comes to things like naming a guardian for your kids.

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33:20Don't wait until it's too late. Protect your loved ones today, tomorrow, and beyond with Trust and Will, the most trusted name in online estate planning. Go to trustandwill.com slash legal AF and get 20 % off. That's trustandwill.com slash legal AF to get your 20 % off. Trustandwill.com slash legal AF. Welcome back to Legal AF. Thank you to all of our sponsors. You see, Popak, when it comes to the best laid plans, they usually have to be plans when it comes to Donald Trump. It's usually like the best laid dumps, like he just spews something out in the moment. He thinks it's a good idea. It comes from the malignant narcissism and the anger and the rage and the retribution, and let's just do it.

34:09We'll figure it out later. And what he has been able to do is bend reality to this fictitious dystopian world that he's created. But where that really has hit the wall is in courts always because it has standards. That's why I like the law, the elegance of it, right? It has rules of evidence, right? It creates a system of structure where you can't just have a fire hose of lies and disinformation. And it's why Trump hates the judiciary so much because when judges do their job, Donald Trump can't get away with it outside of it where he can abuse and use the media and he can spread the propaganda and he can, you know, just relentlessly attack and harass people to try to break them, you know, that doesn't work in a courtroom, especially where there's a litigant on the other side who stands up to you.

35:11So what happens though when you don't have a litigant on the other side that stands up to you? That's kind of the iteration of Trump's fascism and authoritarianism and the little baby that he is, that he doesn't want there to be an adversary on the other side. In his view, well, now that I am this authoritarian dictator, now I could finally win lawsuits because he's always a loser and loses them. If I basically just sue the government, then I'll have the taxpayers pay me whatever money that I want. And I'll have federal judges just basically rubber stamp it so I could finally say that I won lawsuits.

35:46I mean, it's right out of like the cartoonish villains that I grew up with. I've got a plan. And now I'm going to sue my own government. And I'm going to make them pay and the taxpayers are going to pay for it. You know, it's that level of like idiocracy, but it's real and it's happening. And so he sued the Treasury Department and the IRS in late January for$10 billion. He alleges that he was part of an IRS data breach that affected about 7 ,000 plus other high net worth people. You may recall that time period, there was a lot of big stories in Pro Publica and elsewhere about how really rich people don't pay taxes.

36:29Well, they got that information from this data breach that this IRS contractor with the last name Little John, he worked in the IRS. And apparently he's been sentenced, I think in 2024 to four or five years in prison. But like he went to become a contractor at the IRS. And specifically, I think with the purpose of like finding Trump's tax returns and other rich people's tax returns in order to expose rich people not paying taxes. That became an issue at a sentencing. So about 7 ,600, 10 ,000 other people, somewhere between that number, were impacted by this data breach. They didn't sue. And remind you, This took place in 2019 to 2020.

37:07Who was in office then? Yeah, Donald Trump, Trump's IRS. The data breach was under Trump's 2019-2020 IRS. So 2026, likely far outside the statute of limitations, I may add, Donald Trump files a lawsuit against the IRS and Treasury Department. IRS is inside the Treasury Department. Treasury Department is led by Scott Besant, you know, arrogant Scott Besant, who's like, I don't believe that the Russians have made money when we remove sanctions. Not at all. That's not what happened. I mean, clearly they did. But he's a Trump bootlicker, Trump sycophant. And so Donald Trump's idea is let me do this case against Besant.

37:45Besant will pay me$10 billion, the taxpayer money. It's our money. And then Trump's like, yeah, I don't know what I'll do with it. I'll decide. Maybe I'll give it to charity, in which case he's probably thinking in his own mind he's going to use it as a$10 billion deduction against all of the other shady income that he's been getting through these quid pro quo, you know, quid pro quo deals. So he files the lawsuit. In a lawsuit, what normally happens is you file a lawsuit and it's an adversarial process. The other side then goes, oh man, I've been sued. That makes me angry. I don't want to be sued.

38:19And then they fight back, right? That's a case in controversy. Under Article 3 of the Constitution, there needs to be real cases. You can't just have me and Popak basically say, hey, Popak, hey, Ben, you want to see if the court thinks that we should take – if you should pay for Disney on ice when we take our daughters together? Yeah, let's see if the court does it. Hey, judge, me and Popak are best friends. Who should fit the bill? That's not what courts do. I mean I'm giving an exaggerated example. Courts deal with real-life controversies, not like things like that. And otherwise, there's no jurisdiction to have the case.

38:54And so the Treasury Department and IRS, they don't respond to the lawsuit, as you would expect a litigant. Instead, the plaintiff, Donald Trump, says, I'm in productive discussions with the defendant and we're thinking about settling the case. So can we have 90 days, Judge, so that they don't have to actually respond to the lawsuit and we can work out a settlement? And they're not going to object to the request for 90 days. Popak, take the story away from there of what happens next. Happy to. And I know some of the players. I know Kathleen Williams well, a very respected judge down where I practice, the Southern District of Florida.

39:36We have a lot in common. She went to Duke. Our birthdays are two days apart. And she had an illustrious career as the federal public defender in Miami and also in Orlando for a number of years. and has tussled with the Trump administration and MAGA before. She's the judge that ruled against Alligator Alcatraz, finding that building a detention center in the middle of the Florida Everglades, a protected site, was a violation of environmental law. She's taken on DeSantis and his attorney general, James Utmeier, finding him in contempt because they tried to pass a law that she found invalid, making illegal migrants having that violate Florida law, not federal law.

40:29So she's no stranger to the Trump administration. She is a firebrand. She is independent. And if, but this is, this is where, and I checked the civil cover sheet. This is where Trump wanted the case. He wanted the case not in the West Palm Beach Division, to put it near Judge Cannon. Just a little tutorial for those that are tuning in. The Southern District of Florida runs from Fort Pierce through Key West. There's stops along the way with different courthouses, Fort Pierce, West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Key West. And the U.S. attorney and the public defender cover that entire stretch, all up and down the coast.

41:12If you practice down here, you got to go like 70 miles in one direction and 70 miles in the other direction to cover the whole Southern district. And the federal judges are in those different courthouses. Williams happens to be in Miami, which is the largest of all of those courthouses. And so when you're a civil litigate, and this got filed January 29th, 2026, as Trump and his kids, because I think Eric Trump and some Trump organization people were in there, entities were in there as well, versus the Internal Revenue Service that he owns and controls through his treasury secretary. And it was a complaint.

41:52It went on forever. And this is one of the things that calls me. For a president, no president in history has violated the Privacy Act against the American people more than Donald Trump. And yet, this snowflake is suing for his own violation of the Privacy Act because he didn't like the fact that his tax returns, that he should have by tradition released to the American people in 2016 and in 2020 to let them evaluate who they were electing. He always said, well, I'm under audit, so I can't release the returns. There's no, that's not a thing. He just made that up. And so when this Chaz Littlejohn leaked it to ProPublica and New York Times.

42:35New York Times, for instance, ran, I think it was a Pulitzer Prize winning report having received the leaked information detailing how Trump and even going back to his father, you know, have effectively never paid income tax on billions of dollars of income. I mean, very little, thousands of dollars, you know, of income tax. And, but anything that happened with that Privacy Act violation, if that was a Privacy Act violation, was already sort of mitigated by the fact that the House Oversight Committee, a year or two later, got his tax returns and released them to the American public. How many hot takes and videos did you and I do about the tax returns?

43:16So that's out there already. This is like Donald Trump suing over the Epstein birthday book. Oh, the Wall Street Journal ran an article and said that I'm on page 253 of volume two of the leather bound birthday book for Jeffrey Epstein. All right, great. Who doesn't have a copy of the birthday book at this point? Might as put it up on your sub stack. I put it up on Legal AF sub stack. Hold things out there because the Judiciary Committee released it. So this already has the look of being what are your damages? But we knew that didn't matter. But in order for Donald Trump to have a claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act against the government, he had to show that he has a real case in controversy, right?

44:05And that there's an exchange of consideration. In the law, if I say to you, you've harmed me, I am going to sue you, and this is my legitimate case, unless you settle with me now or after I file the case. Okay, if you and I enter into a settlement agreement and we exchange consideration, I won't sue you or I'll withdraw my suit in return for a pile of cash. Okay, that is an exchange of consideration that the law recognizes. If I say to you, I don't have anything of value, I just want you to give me money. That's a robbery. That's a robbery. For Donald Trump to go knock on the door of the IRS and say, hi, Donald Trump president, please,$10 billion, please, that's not in settlement of a case if there's no case and no real controversy.

45:00That is a theft. That is embezzlement in plain sight. So Donald Trump, to try to cover up for that, decided to manufacture a lawsuit that he filed in January 2026, which he alleged a privacy violation. At best, this is a rogue employee that did not have the permission of the IRS to do it. It would be very hard for him to hold the IRS responsible for it. Maybe he could, ultimately, if he can even sue his own government. So that's where Judge Williams said, I was waiting for the parties to file some sort of opposition papers to each other, but I haven't. Now, why did the IRS not file an answer, a motion to dismiss?

45:46And the only piece of paper that's gotten filed effectively since January 2026 is the complaint. Why is a motion to extend time to let the parties have a discussion about settlement? Why? Well, there is reporting, including with the New York Times, that there is a struggle going on in the Department of Justice, even the one controlled by Donald Trump, about how do we get out from under this ethical conflict of being on the other side of Donald Trump while still president about this dispute? How do we put any Department of Justice lawyer in there at all? So while that struggle was going on, and again, another leak from this very undisciplined administration, the fact that you and I can talk about that kind of reporting, while that was going on, they came up with the wallpaper idea, let's just ask for more time.

46:39Which the judge, who obviously reads the New York Times and has her own thought process, said, wait a minute, wait a minute. You got to have adversary parties on either side of the V, right? And I'm not, fundamentally, a bedrock principle, she wrote, of a live case or controversy to give me Article III under the Constitution's power jurisdiction is there's got to be adversariness. That's what it sounds like. Got to have adversaries. Like you said, it can't just be you and me eating, sharing a popcorn later today at Disney on ice. That sounds fun, by the way. that's not going to do it. It's got to be F you, you stole my seat.

47:20And then something happens. And then we have adversarial relationship. Without adversariness, there is no jurisdiction for a federal court. There's no lawsuit. And if there's no lawsuit, then there's no consideration for an exchange related to the settlement. And if there's no exchange of consideration, then Donald Trump is just stealing billions of dollars from the Treasury, which would lead to public interest groups and others withstanding going back to federal court to stop him from raiding the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service. And this all gets set up with a four-paged ruling or a order by Judge Williams, which we posted up on Legal AF Substack, that says, huh, you know what I want?

48:09I want the parties in May to brief this issue. And I also thought she trolled Ben, the Trump administration, a little bit because she said that by May 20th, the parties shall each file a memorandum of law each. I don't want to see one unless you want to just concede there's no adversariness. Better be two briefs about why you think the president of the United States can sue his own agency while he's president. Because there's been discussions, according to the leaks, that maybe we should just wait till 2029 when he's not president any longer. But in 2029, it's a whole different Department of Justice and government.

48:53The other fundamental question is, even if she finds somehow adversariness, does she take the Department of Justice and the lawyers for the government out and appoint an independent counsel? There's something you never associate with this administration, an independent lawyer that doesn't work for Donald Trump. And have that person be kind of on the adversarial side to guide the judge as an officer of the court. If she doesn't like, Ben, the way those memos look for the IRS, she's called their bluff. She has the power, as has happened before with this administration, to appoint an independent counsel to give her advice on this.

49:36And where all this stems from is you and I covered it, but now it's starting to rear its ugly head, is an executive order that Donald Trump issued back at the beginning of the administration when Pam Bondi was still the attorney general that directed everybody in the government, including the Department of Justice, had to follow the interpretation of law set by the president. Period. That was the capture of the Department of Justice and destroyed its independence because it would be the law is whatever Trump says it is. But how do you do that? There goes adversariness about interpretation because they got to follow the law, the guy that they're allegedly having, they're in this fictitious lawsuit with.

50:26This is fascinating. I want to see as you do what happens on May 20th, what happens with an oral argument on May 27th. If I'm in town, I may try to pop in and see it for myself. But this is the this is the unraveling. Right. This is like she pulled a thread and this could be a major unraveling of his attempts to steal billions of taxpayer dollars from the U.S. Treasury. Yeah. And the judge doesn't want to be implicated. It's what we've talked about before is in many ways, whether it's the cover up of the child sex trafficking ring and the Epstein files, this or the other. Trump wants to almost implicate the judges in his schemes to give it the stamp of approval.

51:08And here we see a judge saying, not today, it's not going to happen. And so I think the judge ultimately does, you know, one of two things. And maybe the judge even presents it as an option, which is the case needs to be dismissed right now for lack of adversity or lack of adverseness. And it could be refiled in the future if there is that. And maybe there could be some sort of tolling agreement or arrangement that you can bring it later. There are. I think the court basically says, look, the court can stay on the docket, but I'm going to stay the case until there is actual adversity when there is a new when there is a new administration in power.

51:48And then they can deal with it. But I'm not going to based on this dynamic and based more significantly on Trump's own words. Right. What the other footnote was, there was two footnotes in this four page elegant order. One footnote mentioned the executive order that you talked about where she said, look, Trump, your own executive order says you're the final decision maker and that the agencies don't have independence. So you now are the one who makes the decision based on your own executive order. But number two, there were at least two instances where you're on record publicly as saying you're settling with yourself and that you've already won the case before it began because you're settling with yourself.

52:27So when they come in late May and both sides present their argument, whatever's going to happen, if they even do that, the judge is going to grill them on, well, what about Donald Trump's statements saying this? Do you think that's an appropriate statement? And then we're going to see the lawyers from both sides going, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, what level of coordination does Trump have? How has this been communicated to you? Who at the DOJ knows about this? Have you spoken to Todd Blanche? What could be interesting also is that there are these congressional hearings with Besant and Blanche and other people, and they've been asked about this lawsuit, and they've denied having any knowledge about it, or we don't know, or we'll go through the normal process and channel.

53:08So have they been lying under oath about what's been happening? So this puts the Trump regime in the bind that it should be in. But it's there because they're doing things that are improper, unlawful, criminal, despicable, in my opinion. You can have your opinion, too. All right. Let's take our last quick break of the show. A reminder, make sure subscribe to our YouTube channel. But more importantly, subscribe to the Legal AF YouTube channel and the Legal AF Substack wherever you go, you know, wherever. or just go search Legal AF on YouTube and on Substack, search Legal AF, subscribe there. Also, if you or someone you know have been injured in a car accident, a trucking accident, if you've been injured by the negligence of a company or the negligence of some third party, if you know somebody who was injured in an accident or maybe you know someone who was tragically killed based on the negligence of a company or someone else and their family is looking for a lawyer, why don't you reach out to the Popak Law Firm, 877-POPAKAF or visit thepopakfirm.com.

54:07They're available 24-7. And if you want to just double check, we have all that information in the description below as well. All right, let's take our last quick break of the show. We will be back with more. You've got weight loss goals, but hitting them, that's another story. Enter Weight Loss by HIMSS. It's designed to support you in losing the weight and keeping it off. And HIMSS now offers access to an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications, including the Wagovi pill and the Wagovi pen. With Wagovi at HIMSS, lose up to 20 % or more of your body weight when combined with diet and exercise.

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57:30And so use the discount codes in the description below. Shout out to all of them. Popak, rapid fire on this third segment. And I want to focus on three topics in particular. I want to talk about Jerome Powell and what the Trump regime now is saying that they're going to be, I guess, not criminally investigating Powell for now, they said, because Senator Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, said he would not support Kevin Warsh, the Fed chair nominee who was on who was partying with Epstein and may have had financial entanglements as well. as we saw during his hearing that he refused to talk about what the financial entanglements with a fund that may have had Epstein money commingled in the same fund.

58:18But he said, don't worry, the ethics department cleared me. I'm good, everybody. Okay, okay there, Kevin Warsh. So we've got Jerome Powell. I want to talk about Kash Patel's lawsuit backfiring, and then Virginia redistricting, what we expect to happen in the Supreme Court. Why don't we start with Jerome Powell. Yeah, great. Let's do rapid fire. I agree with you. So Jay Powell is not going anywhere. That's the top line. That's the headline. His term as chair of the Federal Reserve is up on the 15th of May, but his term as a board of governor is until 2028. And that's been driving Donald Trump mad because he wants control of the Federal Reserve, seven members.

58:58If he gets four out of the seven, he can control not only that, but the Federal Open Markets Committee, which sets interest rates. So you get the Fed Board of Governors, you ultimately get the Open Markets Committee, and then you can lower interest rates to your heart's desire, regardless of what it does, to wreck the economy, the deficit, the debt, pricing, inflation, and the rest, because you don't care, because you're on your way out. What we've been watching is an elaborate going out of business sale by Donald Trump. It's just he's doing as much maximum damage as he can possibly do and line his pockets as quickly as possible on the way out.

59:32That's his goal with Jay Powell. It started with Lisa Cook. He couldn't get her off with some manufactured allegations of mortgage fraud. So when that got blocked, and we're waiting on the Supreme Court to rule, but they're not going to let him fire her. So he turned to Jay Powell under an allegation that there's been cost overruns about two major federal buildings that make up the Federal Reserve campus that haven't been remodeled in 100 years. Meaning, if you want to check by math, go to the Federal Reserve, go to their frequently asked questions and their videos about the remodeling. It's very transparent about changing out 100-year-old electrical, plumbing, heating, air conditioning, asbestos mitigation, elevators.

1:00:21You can see how these things could like, the cost could escalate, right? And so it's doubled in cost. Many things have doubled in cost, especially since COVID when Donald Trump was president, especially things that deal with building supplies and logistics. Donald Trump's own ballroom doubled in price. There's the Department of Homeland Security has been working on a building for 10 years. It's doubled in price. It's not even done. So Donald Trump, oh, I'm going to redone the whole, I'll put a coat of paint on it. I'll just get my pool contractor from Mar-a-Lago. We'll put a new coat of paint, 25 million, call it a day.

1:00:58Yeah, no. It's billions of dollars of work for these two buildings. And Donald Trump decided to use that as an excuse to suggest that J-PAL is lining his pockets with kickbacks from the build. Right. Has anybody seen this guy? Does anybody think he's stealing from the Federal Reserve and he's getting kickbacks from contractors and vendors? No. And all that did was make Jay Powell more committed to the independence of the Federal Reserve and not letting Donald Trump take control of it. The more he bashed Jay Powell to try to get him to quit, either by embarrassing him or starting a criminal case against him, the more Jay Powell literally was committed to staying in that chair.

1:01:38See, past tradition, a Federal Reserve chair whose term was longer than his chairmanship would give up the term as well and let the sitting president name a replacement. He was never going to do that with Donald Trump threatening to destroy the independence of the Federal Reserve. So Kevin Warsh has been blocked effectively in the Senate Banking Committee because Tom Tillis, a Republican, somebody who Trump forgot was still in the Senate, has declared that unless the criminal case started by Jeanine Pirro against Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve for this BS made up criminal case about the construction cost overruns, unless that's lifted, he's not going to vote for Kevin Warsh.

1:02:24He basically apologized to him at the confirmation hearing. Seemed like a nice guy. I would vote for you. I have no questions for you. I'm not voting for you. Fast forward a day or two after the confirmation hearings. Trump, I guess, is trying to satisfy the requirement, the line in the sand by Tom Tillis, and had Janine Pirro announce in social media that there's an inspector general that's on the case and will report back to me on the facts. But in the meantime, I'm going to close the criminal case. But I may reopen the criminal case if it turns out I need to. And then how's that, Tom Tillis?

1:02:58Not great. You know, I joked during one of my hot takes, it's like Schrodinger's cat. It's a criminal case that's both opened and not open. It's closed and not closed. Which is it? So as of right now, we haven't heard from Tillis' office about whether this announcement satisfied him. I don't think it has, but certainly there's got to be back channel phone calls, or there should be, between the White House and Tillis about, is this good enough? And if it's not, what do we need to do? The ironic thing is Trump didn't have to do anything. He just needed to take a knee. He just needed to take the loss when Judge Boesberg, the federal chief judge in D.C., basically closed the criminal case by saying it was brought in bad faith and dismissed the subpoenas issued by the grand jury.

1:03:43No, they had to continue to act like it was still a live criminal case. So this is now going to turn to Tillis, and this is going to turn to whether he's now going to side with Trump and confirm Warsh. If he doesn't, by the 15th of May, J-PAL just stays in as the Federal Reserve chair, and he'll stay in his seat through 2028, and Donald Trump will not be able to capture the Federal Reserve at all at any time, even if Warsh gets on. And last note, even if Warsh gets on, he doesn't have six other votes to change interest rates. You need seven votes on the Federal Open Markets Committee of 12. He has one.

1:04:23If you add the two other Republicans or people that side with the Republicans, he's got two others. He's got three. He's got to give four more. You know, there's no superpower of the Federal Reserve chair. He has to work by way of consensus. So that's that. Patel, you and I talked about at length at the top of the show, Akash Patel has now opened up a can of worms, and I'm sure he wished he hadn't. I joked on a hot take, I've never seen a drowning man throw himself an anvil or an anchor, and that's exactly what he did. Only an idiot would try to sue his way, open himself up to discovery and depositions and sworn statements under oath, document review and document discovery and subpoenas.

1:05:09It's not hard to get the poodle room in Vegas to subpoena their camera and their credit card data about whether he drank at the poodle room or Ned's bar in New York or all the other places that the Atlantic magazine reported on. And now the Democrats are taking this like who never liked Kash Patel. I mean, who can forget Cory Booker, the senator, saying, I don't think you're going to be here at the next oversight committee hearing because you are the most incompetent, corrupt FBI director ever. And so from there, you have Jamie Raskin leading a group of House Judiciary Committee members who have demanded that he take a, I almost said a sobriety test, a written, are you an alcoholic test?

1:05:54And submitted under oath to the committee, and then they want to hear from him. And now people are going back to the Florida bar, different places where he's a member of the bar to try to get his application for when he applied about whether he had a drinking problem. You can't stand in front of the American people, especially with the videos running behind you of chugging beers at the hockey game for the Americans during the Olympics and other places where you're always seem to have a drink in your hand and then suggest that I am sober. And haven't you seen me during the Senate and House? Yes.

1:06:27And that doesn't suggest that you're sober, especially when he stood before the press recently and couldn't remember key features of his own complaint that was filed about allegations. Not a good look. If he thought this was going to be cover for him to stay in office longer, I don't think so. A very uncomfortable Todd Blanche was standing next to him during the press conference. And if I'm reading the body language, I'm not sure Kash Patel makes it to the next oversight committee hearing. And then you've got finally in Virginia, and we're going to be covering it on Monday at 9 a.m. at the Virginia Supreme Court in Richmond, Virginia.

1:07:10We've got this, and it's no pressure on Virginia, but it's a big case, okay? Virginia put on a referendum that led to an election, a vote on Tuesday. Three million people voted in Virginia. And by four points, it will end up being about four points, the voters of Virginia voted to allow their House of Delegates, their statehouse, to redo the maps 10 to 1 in favor of the Democrats to balance out what's going on around the country So their vote is not diluted, not just by what happens in Virginia, but what happens in Missouri and in Texas. And so they voted for that. A very clear referendum. I've read it a number of times.

1:07:51It's not hard. I've dealt with ballot initiatives and challenges to the language of ballot initiatives. This one was fine. a judge in the reddest part of Virginia, Tazewell County, had blocked it originally when it was a referendum. The Virginia Supreme Court said, no, let's see what the voters do. Come back to us after. Well, the voters voted. And now Trump and the Republican National Committee want to disenfranchise and stop the certification of an election. Does that sound familiar? And so now the case has been revived and brought back before the Supreme Court of Virginia. And this question is whether there's some procedural issues about whether the House of Delegates referendum, the language matches the resolution and all sorts of other things.

1:08:40But what it comes down to in plain English is whether the votes of three million Virginians are going to be respected. They came out. There was$100 million spent. Barack Obama, you know, did a lot of campaigning with Governor Spanberger and the yes vote won. Redo the maps. Not only that, let me bring in, I have a clip from my interview with Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones, who helped lead the effort here in his office. We'll be arguing it. He and I talked about this, and this is true. When Spanberger, she won by 15 points as governor. She ran effectively. One of her campaign platform planks was to redo the maps in Virginia.

1:09:29So people knew when they voted for her that one of her first tasks in the statehouse was going to be lead the charge to redo Virginia maps and make them more Democratic leaning. And she won by 15 points. That's a landslide, by the way, that Donald Trump's always claiming that he obtained. So Monday, legal layoff will be, it's a fast moving story, be keeping a close eye on it. Florida, they're talking about spreading their Republicans really thin to try to redo it again and try to crank out two or three more. But if Virginia holds and no other state moves forward in this very short period before primary season, it'll be almost even playing field, net zero in terms of Republican versus Democratic seats going into the midterms.

1:10:22But one last thing, just to keep our audience's eye on it. We're waiting patiently, impatiently, for the United States Supreme Court to make a ruling in a Voting Rights Act case called Calais out of Louisiana. If that one turns over the apple cart, which we expect about the Voting Rights Act, watch a number of red states, even at the last minute, even in June, for an August primary to try to redo maps, but with litigation that we'll have to follow trying to block it. It is a fight to the death for whether this is going to be an even playing field come the election or the Republicans are going to steal an unfair advantage.

1:11:04One other point I'll make as well, just to round out this episode, the backfiring of the cover-up of the Epstein files. We know two weeks ago, Bondi was supposed to testify before the House Oversight Committee. She refused to show up saying she's no longer the AG, therefore I no longer need to respond to subpoenas. this ain't the same Democratic House Oversight Committee anymore. Like it's led by Congress Member Garcia, who's very aggressive. He's not letting Bondi off the hook. Now what the MAGA Republicans are trying to do is Democrats led by Garcia are calling them out. Republicans like, eh, we're done with hearings for the rest of the term.

1:11:45We're just going to do no more hearings through the midterm. We'll do round tables. And how about that? And then Democrats are like, no, we're not doing round tables. What are you talking about? We're doing hearings under oath and depositions. And then as a result of the Democrats fighting back on the House Oversight Committee led by Garcia, not just Democrats, people across the country, this is a bipartisan issue. It's not like a Democratic issue, but it's like, release the damn Epstein file, stop covering up child sex trafficking rings. Comer's now being pressed over and over again. What are you doing now?

1:12:19What are you doing now? What's going on with the Epstein files? What's going on with this and that. And then Comer admits not only are they doing these roundtable things, they don't want to do hearings. He says that a lot of people on the committee are thinking about helping Trump get a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell. Comer said that on the record to Politico of all places. And then Comer said, oh, I didn't mean me. I meant other people. Then all the Democrats like none of us. So who are all of these people who are Republicans, obviously, who want who are working with Trump to get Ghislaine pardoned?

1:12:52I mean, Comer made this comment on the record. And then Comer's like, ah, stop with the clickbait. Stop with the clickbait. You said it. Those were your words that there were lots of people that you know in the committee who were trying to help her get a pardon. So you put all of that together, and the American people right now are just livid, and they want accountability. And again, this isn't, I don't think it's a Democratic issue, Republican issue, independent issue. These issues should be kind of universal issues, getting at the truth, getting at the facts, presenting credible evidence and allowing people to use credible evidence to form opinions, not lead with opinions, form opinions after being presented with the facts.

1:13:39That's what we do here on Legal AF. We give you the facts, the evidence, the receipts, then form your own opinions. Whether you agree with me or Popak or not, you'll be fully informed to draw those opinions and make those opinions on your own. Let me ask you, let me ask you before you leave on Epstein, what happened to the call by Melania for hearings where victims can testify and seek dignity and justice? Where are those? Exactly. Well, that's the one, two step, right? She says that. What happens right after? Paulo Zampoli, who's the person she says introduced her to Donald Trump. Zampoli is now embroiled in this Rai 3, this Italian documentary on him that he tried to shut down, where he said, all Brazilian women, they're just telenovela liars.

1:14:28His girlfriend was Brazilian, and they had a custody dispute. It's alleged that he helped expedite her deportation, which he denies, to Brazil. She says that she's got all this dirt and information on him and the Trumps and that she knows what's, I mean, she's been with him for like 20 years. She was trafficked to the United States by Jean-Luc Brunel, one of Epstein's traffickers. Then she fell into the circle. She met Zampoli. Zampoli and Epstein were trying to buy modeling agencies together. Zampoli's all over the files. So in Melania's like, it wasn't Epstein who introduced me to Trump. It was Zampoli.

1:15:04OK, got it. It was the guy who wanted to do modeling agencies with with Epstein. That makes it much better. Melania. OK, that's who introduced you at the KitKat Club. But that's what so Zampoli is like. I want to testify to corroborate Melania that I'm the guy who introduced Melania to Donald Trump. And then the Democrats like, great, we would love us. I mean, Zampoli is like the special envoy of like cultural events. He's like he's got an ambassador position right now. And Democrats like bet we get Zampoli. Oh, great. We're going to ask him all of these questions about Melania's immigration status, all of the things about the Einstein visa.

1:15:40All of that's fair game. The Republicans are like, yeah, we're going to do roundtables now. We're not going to do real hearings anymore. And by the way, Ghislaine, you want a pardon? Ghislaine, you want a pardon? I mean, in my own view, in my opinion, I don't lead with my opinions. I lead with objective facts. And then I give you an opinion. All of this is related and draw your own conclusions. but I think it's all related. I want to thank everybody for watching this episode of Legal AF. If you or someone you know has been injured in an auto accident, car accident, trucking accident, if you've been injured by the negligence of a company or a third party and you're looking for a lawyer, reach out to the Popak Firm, 877-POPAK-AF or go to thepopakfirm.com.

1:16:20They've got people across the country. Consultation is free. They'll see if you have a case or not. Even if you know someone who may have a case, tell them, reach out to the Popak Firm. More of that information is in the description below. Also, make sure you subscribe to the Legal AF Substack and Legal AF YouTube channel. Let's keep growing those channels and building the Legal AF community. Thank you so much, everybody, for watching. We appreciate you. We're grateful for you. Subscribe to the Midas Touch YouTube channel. Get us 7 million subscribers. Get Legal AF 2 million subscribers on that YouTube channel.

1:16:50Great to have Popak back. See you next time on Legal AF.

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