Legal AF - 5/16/2026

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31:15Also, make sure you subscribe to the Legal AF Substack and Legal AF YouTube channel. So ABC reported at the end of the week, the following. Donald Trump is expected to drop his$10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. He's like, okay, great. In exchange, what? For the creation of a$1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration, like the J6 insurrectionists, like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and other MAGA people who claim that Biden harmed them? More. Catherine Folders reports the following. I'm told the potential commission tasked with approving payouts to Trump allies will likely be called the President Donald J.

32:10Trump Truth and Justice Commission and the total amount available in the fund will be$1.776 billion. More in this story about the internal debate in the months leading up to this proposed settlement in the IRS case and how officials discussed utilizing a centuries-old common law principle called the rule of necessity. Let's just bring in Michael Popak right away. The rule of necessity, let's just be very clear, that's not really an old common law principle. That's not like a real thing that you go, hey, when in doubt, just call it the rule of necessity. If it's needed, say the rule of necessity says we don't have to follow the law.

32:56Come on, that's the dumbest thing ever. This isn't a real thing. Frankly, it's deeply problematic that a news organization like ABC would like say the centuries old principle, the rule of necessity. I mean, maybe you should basically say it's an absurd fiction to say that a rule of necessity, I'm sure the concept exists like conceptually, but the rule of necessity doesn't vitiate the rule of law. you know, and then they're like, they've been talking about this commission for months now. No, they have not. Judge Kathleen Williams in the Southern District of Florida, when she got this lawsuit of Trump suing Trump, basically enforcing the taxpayers to pay him, Trump suing his own IRS and Treasury Department, alleging a data leak of his tax documents back in 2019.

33:45Also, when he was in office, which by the way, I believe is time barred. I believe there's a ton of immunities. This case is as frivolous as it can be. There were 7 ,500 other people who were involved in the data leak. Should it be a class action and all 7 ,500 people get$10 billion? Is that the precedent that should be set right here? This case would go nowhere if there was actually a DOJ that filed a motion to dismiss. It would be dismissed in a second by the judge. But the judge is like, this seems collusive. And Trump's bragging that he won the case before it already began. So the judge said, I want to see paperwork.

34:23And so about why this is a real case and not some like collusive fraudulent thing you want me to rubber stab. So then what does the Trump regime do? Aha, we'll just dismiss the case and we'll create a commission. And rather than going to Congress to give a billion dollars or$5 billion because it's taxpayer money, we'll just create a commission by dismissing a fake lawsuit. And then we'll give billions of taxpayer dollars to the insurrectionist Popak. I can't even believe what I said is a thing. You know why it's not going to go any well? We're going to see what happens with Judge Williams, who I know well in Miami.

34:57Had all this start, Donald Trump, at the top of his administration, filed a federal tort claim act against his own government, seeking$10 billion from the Internal Revenue Service having nothing to do with Joe Biden. This disconnect that, as you said, does not get covered properly or criticized by news media, linear news media, is a flagrant here. Biden had nothing to do with the leak. There was a leaker within the Internal Revenue Service who frankly did a service because the tax returns that we were fighting over should have been revealed by Donald Trump as a candidate Trump every time he ran for office.

35:45He's the only presidential candidate in the modern era to have not voluntarily released his tax returns. And every time he was challenged on it, he said, well, I'm under an audit. He was under an audit every year, which is not a good thing, by the then Internal Revenue Service, even before Joe Biden, he was under audit by the Trump Internal Revenue Service the first term. And there's nothing that says if you're under an audit, you can't release your returns. Turns out the leaker leaked it to ProPublica and the New York Times, who did a whole Pulitzer Prize winning report about the fact that Donald Trump doesn't pay taxes.

36:22Donald Trump and his family pay almost nothing in taxes on billions of dollars of revenue. And that's the thing he wanted to hide from the American people. So the leak happened. Was he damaged? I don't know, damaged by having to reveal that he doesn't pay taxes? I don't understand the damage. So that leads to a lawsuit after they don't get a resolution with the Internal Revenue Service, because it turns out internally, they're struggling, like, how do we settle a claim with the guy who's our boss? And that is the focus that Judge Williams had in her orders in the last couple of weeks where she said, look, in order for me to have jurisdiction as a federal judge, there has to be what we call adversariness, which is just a highfalutin term for the parties on either side of the V have to be at each other's throats, have to be adversary.

37:17Can't come here if one is colluding with the other or one is in a dominant power position to control the other. It would be like a parent corporation suing its wholly owned subsidiary. They owe me money or, you know, in order to have a fig leaf to cover up for a phony settlement. See, in order for a settlement to be real and to be in good faith and be enforceable, there has to be an exchange of consideration. A party giving up a legitimate claim in return for cash, okay? That doesn't have to be equal. It just has to be what we call a peppercorn exchange, right? We learned that at law school. Value on either side.

38:02That's a legitimate settlement off of a case that's been filed in federal court. I'll tell you what federal judges don't like. They don't like to be used as a pawn. They don't like to be used by parties who are really in cahoots with each other to try to use a federal courthouse and a federal judge for their nefarious purpose of claiming that they're entering into a settlement on a lawsuit that never should have been filed. And so the judge said, you know what, I want to hear from you, IRS, and you, Trump, on the 20th of May, coming up, about why you're not, this is not a, what appears to me to be a collusive lawsuit with no adversary party.

38:45You're both on the side, it's Trump v. Trump, except it's not a divorce. So I want you guys to discuss that in briefing with me. But I don't trust you. I mean, this is my interpretation. So I want to get three stellar rock star judges and former judges, former solicitor generals and current top litigators to write me a brief, an Amici brief, an amicus brief, informing me of how they see it. So she appointed the former Solicitor General, who argued dozens and dozens of cases, Don Verrilli, the former federal judge John Gleason, and Faye Gay of Celinda Gay in New York. And they filed on the 14th their brief, which didn't come out and say there's no adversary process here, it's a fake lawsuit, but gave the judge the tools to make that conclusion for herself.

39:47Seeing that, we then have the announcement, Trump freaks out, we got to do something with the lawsuit, we got to hurry up and quote unquote settle. What are you settling? Because if you don't have a legitimate lawsuit, all you're doing is stealing from the Treasury, stealing from the taxpayer, violating Article 1 of the Constitution, the purse string power of Congress. Article 2, you don't have the power as the power of the presidency, right? And separation of powers, the rest of that. So they come up with this, we need a victim's compensation fund. Now, there is reporting that one of the people that's behind this is a guy named Mike McCluskey, who people may remember was the gun-toting lawyer in St.

40:32Louis along with his wife during Black Lives Matter. Remember that? as the Black Lives Matter protesters peacefully walked by his gated community. He and his wife were out there with like their guns. And he got convicted of a crime, eventually pardoned by a Republican, and lost his bar license for a period of time. But now his big thing for his law firm is representing Jan 6th Insurrectionist. He's got hundreds of them. And he's been pushing for a victim compensation fund to give them money for having attacked the Capitol. I mean, I almost vomit when I read the rewrite of history being led by right-wing media.

41:12I was reading in the New York Post. I was catching up on something. I caught Miranda Devine, who is a podcaster who works for Rupert Murdoch. And in her paragraph about Gen 6, she said it was unarmed protesters, most of which did not end up breaking into the Capitol. I'm like, stop, stop. Watch, read the Jan 6th report. Read the indictments at the time announced by the Department of Justice. Watch the footage. Watch the pitched battle medieval style on the Western Terrace and the blood that literally spilled on the steps of the Capitol. And then come back and tell me about the unarmed people that were there for a day in the park.

41:58But that's how MAGA talks about Jan 6th. They're victims. They are political victims. The people that went peacefully to the ellipse to listen to Donald Trump's insurrectionist speech-giving were not the ones that were indicted and convicted. The ones that attacked the Capitol were the ones that were. And so Trump comes up with, I'll drop my$10 billion suit. That would have went to him personally. I'll set up a fund, which now you've so artfully reminded everybody. He always loves these. I'm going to send everybody a check for$17.76. Where's that check, by the way? I'm still waiting for that refund check from the tariffs.

42:39$1.776.00, whatever it's going to be. And that's going to be led by a commission that Trump's going to appoint on his own without any power from Congress, using funds that Congress allocated, not even to the Internal Revenue Service, to the Department of Justice for victim compensation funding. I'm like, okay, how did the DOJ end up the one that's going to have to spend the money, our taxpayer dollars? And where is the congressional authority to do any of that? Congress can create an executive agency. President can't create an executive agency or a commission. So somebody came up, I can only imagine who it was.

43:19I have some thoughts. With the rule of necessity, okay, the rule of necessity is when there, because of a conflict of interest among a judicial panel or otherwise, that, and there needs to be an arbitral panel, there needs to be a dispute resolver or a commission or something to look into something, but there's conflicts everywhere. You just got to set it up anyway. It's the rule of necessity because somebody's got to do it. That is different than a victim compensation slush fund set up by Donald Trump to reward his cronies and to continue to rewrite and put another layer of bullshit varnish on top of the Jan 6th history to make them into victims that actually get cash like Ashley Babbitt's family or Michael Flynn.

44:07Now, he says, I'm personally not going to take any money from the 1.76, whatever, billion dollars. But in his lawsuit, for all of it, you've got the Trump Organization entities, 17, 18 of them, Eric Trump, Don Jr. So the family is going to line up to the trough and take all of the money, which brings us right back to Judge Williams. So they think they're going to dismiss this case before the 20th and just have the judge sign off on the order of dismissal. Not so fast. If I'm Judge Williams, and if you're listening, here's the blueprint. You need to hold an evidentiary hearing, much like Judge Ho did in New York when they tried to dismiss the indictment against Mayor Adams.

44:56She needs to get to the bottom of whether she had been had and the federal court used by the Trump administration for this unholy creation of an unconstitutional fund. So if I'm her, I bring in the lawyers who she has inherent authority to discipline. I bring in the parties and I say, look, I see you have a settlement. I see you've submitted a voluntary dismissal order. I'm not going to allow the dismissal order until I get to the bottom of what happened and why this happened. Now, they're going to say, well, you don't have to judge. You've been questioning your jurisdiction. Right, but I haven't issued an order denying my jurisdiction yet.

45:34And I think the court has been used, and they don't like it. Look, I've been involved with federal court proceedings where because of business deals and business terms, the parties resolve something. And the federal judge or magistrate judge felt like they were a pawn in a commercial transaction, even though that was not our intent. And we had we had some explaining to do about why the lawsuit is being dismissed at that moment. Same thing here. So I think we're going to have to have some fact finding with Judge Williams about this. And then you and I are going to spend the rest of the summer talking about the lawsuits that are spawned from this decision.

46:17Because if Trump thinks he's going to start handing out money without a federal court oversight over it brought by a public interest group, Democracy Forward, Democracy Docket, Mark Elias, Norm Eisen, we can name them, American Civil Liberties Union, all of them, the attorneys general, are going to move to stop. this fund for being created, funded, distributed, because it violates the Constitution and the powers of the presidency, period. So this is going to spawn a cottage industry. You and I are going to be doing lots of videos and lots of podcasting about the attempts at federal courts to stop this.

46:58It's going to go up to the United States Supreme Court probably next term. But this is how Donald Trump is going to try to save face, because he's got to dismiss that case in front of Judge Williams He's trying to make lemon out of lemonade, but it's unconstitutional. Yeah. And on the one hand, yes, saving face because he brought this lawsuit. On the other hand, when a door is shut because our law doesn't allow certain things, a collusive lawsuit, what Trump does is go, aha. But the law never said that I can't just start settling cases with myself outside of a court. So why do we even need a court in the first place?

47:39And these are things that, frankly, our founders and our legislatures didn't fathom. And I think there was also not fathoming that you would then have a Congress that would just go along with it. because the way to stop it is you would have Congress asserting itself right now to block this stuff and to pass laws that say you can't do this, you can't do this right away, close the gap right away. I mean, you think during the Biden administration, you had in a bipartisan basis legislation that said, you know, any president can't withdraw from NATO without going through certain hoops and require a two third vote of the United States Senate.

48:23Trump's still going to try to test that but you would immediately go in and any loophole that exists you'd create a law to block this and because no one would think okay could you fathom obama's gonna settle a lawsuit against obama and then create a commission and then give the money out to friends no it's in he got criticized because he wore a a suit color a brown suit suit right yeah whatever the suit was that, you know, so no one even thought. And now it's like, oh, he's he's going to do that. This ain't three dimensional chess. The guy's just violating the law and he's violating our Constitution.

49:00And we have to and we have to call it out. Now, I think strategically, Popak, even though I agree, the issue of an evidentiary hearing is if you don't have jurisdiction, how do you do an evidentiary hearing? But I think Judge Williams under the auspices of subject matter jurisdiction and jurisdictional discovery. I think you can order evidentiary hearing regarding jurisdictional discovery. I acknowledge we're not getting into the merits of any of this. I'm just trying to understand how this was brought to me so I could determine jurisdiction the same way there's briefing. So I would do, if I were one of these firms advising her, I would say do an order to show cause, Ray, jurisdictional issues that require evidentiary hearing.

49:48Make it clear that you're not getting onto the merits and things where you would have jurisdiction. Make it clear that it's about the procedure. And then, I mean, the reality is, who should be called in as a witness? Trump. Trump in his personal capacity. If this was any normal situation, a federal judge would not hesitate to call in the plaintiff, the name plaintiff, get into my court right now. I want you under oath. Get the court reporter, put the person on that. That's what normally - The only thing I disagree with on that, the only thing I disagree with is even if there's no jurisdiction, the federal judge has inherent authority to ensure that the courtroom is respected and that the federal courts are not abused.

50:33So even if you tried to file something and it turns out there's no jurisdiction, you can still be sanctioned for bad faith filing. You can still be sanctioned by the judge. That's why I think she calls an evidentiary hearing, order to show cause or otherwise, to bring the parties in and said, explain to me what happened here. Explain to me, you know, because this is what it looks like to me. You file a lawsuit. I say, I don't think there's adversariness between the two parties. I think this is a bullshit lawsuit. I set up a briefing schedule. I get the amicus briefs. You announce a settlement ignoring the lawsuit.

51:08It looks like I got used. Tell me why I'm wrong. She has the right to say that whether there's technical jurisdiction of the subject matter or not, you don't get to abuse. I mean, this is where Trump's failings. You don't get to abuse the federal court system at your whim. yeah then he's oh it's so unfair could you believe it an obama appointed judge is going after me you know it's that loser behavior to tie this into our first segment that was on full display which xi jinping the guy's a loser trump's a loser you know this country elected a loser a con artist loser masquerading as like a strong man who can fix problems who can never even fix his own problems and his whole life has been one problem after another, one bankruptcy after another.

51:55When we come back, I want to talk about this golden ballroom filing. I want to talk a little bit about the arch. Then I want to get into conflicts of interest around Blanche. And then let's talk a little bit about the Supreme Court, what they did in Virginia. Briefly, we should acknowledge that once again, the Supreme Court that would always do this principle, the Purcell principle. We're not going to disturb what's going on. The voters voted. No one should overturn it now until the next, you know, all of their principles are all BS. Their frameworks are all BS. They just going to decide what they're going to decide is basically what they're going to do.

52:34And they're going to use frameworks like sociopaths in arguments to reach the conclusion by acting like they're weighing interests. But at the end of the day, the only interest they care about is turning the United States into their fascist theocracy. It's the reality. All right, Let's take our last quick break of the show. A reminder, if you or somebody who has been injured in an auto accident, trucking accident caused by the negligence of others, if you know someone who maybe tragically was catastrophically injured or killed in an accident, reach out to Popak. You trust him. You listen to him.

53:04He's got a law firm. He's helping legal AFers. Call 877-POPAK-AF or go to thepopakfirm.com. One more time, 877-POPAK-AF or visit thepopakfirm.com. Don't be shy. They have lawyers across the country. And the consultation, of course, is free. Also, make sure you subscribe to the Legal AF Substack and the Legal AF YouTube channel. Just search Legal AF on YouTube. Search Legal AF on Substack. Subscribe to both. All right, let's take our last 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.

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56:22Never really thought I'd be talking about massive litigation because a president of the United States wants to build golden ballrooms, take over golf courses in DC, build triumphal arches so that it's the biggest arch in the world, bigger than Pyongyang's arch. Never thought there would be the concept of this to begin with. And then that this is a lot, there's a lot of litigation over this, but this is a major priority of Donald Trump as noted in the first segment, Donald Trump said multiple times, I don't care about the financial situation of Americans, not one bit. Then Brett Baer showed him those words and said, Hey, you know, you're getting a lot of pushback on this.

57:04and you want to clarify or give it more context no trump's like perfect words i don't care about people's financial condition i don't care about it one bit that's not what i think about in the office of the presidency it should be like the main thing that you think about in the office of the presidency but he's focused on triumphal arches and on ballrooms and so even as there are lawsuits that are blocking the construction of these things trump just goes ahead and he brings out like bulldozers and he brings out cranes and he just started doing it. And then so you have to go to court and you have to say, Hey, he's doing it judge.

57:38And the judge says, stop doing it. He goes, I'll stop doing it. Then he keeps on doing it. And the judge is like, all right, stop doing it. He's like, all right, I'll stop doing it. And he keeps on doing it. I'll just show you right here what went down yesterday where you had a democratic Congress member Huffman, who was cross-examining Doug Burgum, the interior secretary who testified this past week in Congress. and Bergam said, we're not doing anything with the arch. Don't worry. We're going to come to you first. Okay. You don't have nothing to worry about with the arch. There's an approval process.

58:09Stop being hyperbolic and saying we're doing it. Stop it. Here, play this clip. Hey, I'm here at Memorial Circle, about a mile from the White House, just over this bridge from Arlington Cemetery. In fact, you can see Arlington right there. And what's going on behind me is an atrocity, frankly. We see construction activity that is clearly part of the attempt to build what Donald Trump intends to be the largest arch in the world. Here, looming over Arlington Cemetery, where 400 ,000 of our fallen war heroes are buried. So, look, there's a group of veterans' families that have gone to court to stop this project.

58:54I led an amicus brief with members of Congress in support of their litigation. And Judge Chetkin in that case made it very clear to the administration that she didn't want to wake up one morning to see bulldozers actually breaking ground. Well, this isn't a bulldozer. Behind me, it's an industrial drilling rig. There's other equipment mobilized over here. But ground is being broken. And what is even more upsetting in many ways is that yesterday, In the Natural Resources Committee, I asked Secretary Burgum under oath about this project, and he swore. There isn't a project, not even a proposal, no final agency action, just a discussion about a possible arch.

59:39There is a discussion about it. I wouldn't say there's not a proposal. So clearly we're being snookered here, folks. Yeah. And so what the Trump regime will say, we said no bulldozers. We didn't say industrial drilling rigs. I mean, that's their whole MO, treating us all like we're stupid. We said no bulldozers, judge. So if the judge doesn't specifically say bulldozers, industrial drilling rigs, any machinery whatsoever, that's what the Trump regime does. And in the past, in every law, in every contract, including the Constitution, the ultimate contract, there's an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.

1:00:23You don't have to put in a contract, right? If you're doing a deal with somebody else, you don't have to put in the deal. Oh, and by the way, you're not going to slap me in the face every time you see me, right? Because if you're doing a deal, you don't think you need the language with an anti-slapping you in the face clause, right? Except Donald Trump will slap you in the face or sucker punch you and go, oh, you didn't put the anti-sucker punch clause in there. And it's like, well, we did a deal together where we were going to build something. I would think implied in that is a covenant that you're not going to punch me in the face and then go into my bank account and loot my ATM.

1:01:04Oh, there was no, I can't loot your ATM account clause in there. And this never would fly. And the fact that this is now what's being represented at the Justice Department at the highest level by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, that this is what the Trump regime is, this is worse than Pam Bondi. Look at this legal filing on the ballroom that the Trump regime just did. Reply in support of defendant's motion for indicative ruling, dissolving the court's injunction. What does it even mean? I mean, I've heard these words before, but you want an indicative ruling for the judge to reconsider the order blocking the ballroom, even though the judge's order is stayed or paused and you're able to build it pending a ruling by the court of appeals.

1:01:50And so there's actually no, but you want an indicative rule. What are you even talking about? But look how it's even written. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, which again is not a government agency of any type, never once denies that this lawsuit is motivated by an irrational desire to stop anything associated with Donald Trump. Even Democrats have labeled this Trump derangement syndrome or TDS. Plaintiffs insist this suit must move forward despite the three assassination attempts against Trump in less than two years. And then it goes on to say over here, as Secret Service has stated, fixed structure constructed using threat resistant materials, including missile-resistant steel columns, military-grade venting drone-proof ceilings, and bullet ballistic and blast-proof glass will form a fortified structural buffer protecting the main White House and West Wing.

1:02:46The project, which includes a state-of-the-art hospital and medical facilities, top-secret military installations, bomb shelters, structures and equipment, protected partitioning and other features is fully designed to protect the president. So where the federal judge said, hey, the ballroom structure itself, that the ballroom, the place where you want to do your balls, your tea parties, your banquets, your Xi Jinping little children clapping at you thing. Yeah, you need congressional approval for that. If you want to use some discretionary funds and build the security features and deal with the bunker underneath, and that's national security, I'm not going to meddle with national security.

1:03:34By the way, the Trump regime doesn't have the funds for that. That's why they want Congress to appropriate a billion dollars for East Wing modernization of your taxpayer dollars. So if you're keeping track,$1.776 billion to the January 6th insurrectionists,$1 billion for the ballroom that Trump said private money was going to pay for. And so Donald Trump's plan is, just like I said before, you never had a, you can't steal from my ATM clause. Oh, that's an industrial drilling rig, not a bulldozer. You know, Donald Trump goes, oh, this is national security. The ballroom is a shield. That's how it's going to stop them.

1:04:14Without the ballroom, a ballistic missile will hit me. This stops it from the West Wing. It's a shield for me. And it's like, just stop, man. Everything with them is a con. Every damn thing is a fraud. And then you scroll down and you say, whose name is on this? Todd Blanche. Who signed this ridiculous thing? Todd Blanche and another associate attorney general. but Todd Blanche's name's on there. So Popak, I'm going to have you close out the show. And I know you've got a lot to discuss and I'm going to see you do a little weave and tie it all together. Those cases, Todd Blanche and the fact that he should be recusing himself from all of this.

1:04:50And then lastly, bonus points. If you get in Virginia and the United States Supreme Court, Popak, 10 minutes, if you choose to accept the assignment. I'm in, I'm in. Okay, here we go. Let's start with Todd Blanche. Todd Blanche has been blowing kisses to Donald Trump as if he was Marilyn Monroe and JFK in Madison Square Garden from almost the moment he got the job. He's also worried about his own ticket, his own bar license. And so Todd Blanche was told over a year ago by the ethicist, Joe Tyrell, who's now been fired. We wonder why Pam Bonney He was firing the ethicists. Now we know why. Because he told Blanche under no uncertain terms that he needs to recuse himself, put up a compliance wall between himself at the Department of Justice when he was deputy attorney general and anything related to Donald Trump personally.

1:05:52And yet, all we've watched is Todd Blanch during his tryout to be the attorney general as being involved with the grand conspiracy prosecution of Donald Trump's political enemies back in 2017, going after the CIA director, going after the attorney general, going after senators and FBI directors and the rest. There hasn't been a thing he's recused himself from. And Emil Bovey, the same thing, although he's now safely ensconced at the Third Circuit Court of Appeals for now. And so when you watch Todd Blanche, watch a conflicted man who is violating almost daily in public the rules of ethics of my and Ben's profession about what you can and can't do.

1:06:42You can't switch sides in the middle of a baseball game. I mean, unless you've been traded. You can't flip-flop that way, be the personal criminal defense lawyer for Donald Trump, and then be our attorney general on matters involving Donald Trump. Blanche is also worried about his own ticket, his own license. So he continues to try to go after licensing and bar associations like the D.C. bar with a new lawsuit to try to stop them from regulating the conduct of Department of Justice lawyers like himself. Why? Because he watched what happened to the first wave of lawyers in Trump one. The ones that were fined, indicted, convicted, disbarred are all five of those things.

1:07:35He doesn't want it to happen to him. So they're going after the new lawsuit, the D.C. Bar, in order to claim that they are under the Department of Justice wasting our money and abusing the rule of law, claiming that they're a left-wing organization. No, they're a bar regulator that regulates your conduct. And just to show you the charade that's being perpetrated, they had no problem with the D.C. Bar when Pam Bondi's brother ran to be the president of it and lost. But since he lost, now the D.C. bar is the enemy, just like the lawyers and the law firms are the enemy. See, they're about to lose again at the D.C.

1:08:16Court of Appeals in a three-judge panel about their continued attacks to put out of business major law firms in America that have the temerity of representing clients against the Trump administration or against Trump's interests, or hired people that Donald Trump didn't like and tried to get rid of 50 % of their revenue by taking away their national security clearance, right? And so that looks like, based on an oral argument that just went down, that looks like Trump's going to get slapped back once again for having gone after those law firms. He's going after law schools and American Bar Association for trying to take away their ability to be the credentialing authority for law schools.

1:09:03Why? Wants to make more uncredentialed MAGA lawyers and less diverse lawyers. Best thing that ever happened to somebody that went to law school, best thing that ever happened to anybody in any profession is to be surrounded by an intelligent, diverse population. Okay, period. On the bench, off the bench, in the law firm, in the law schools, in the press pool, you name it. only good things happen from diversity. But not to Donald Trump. That's a four-letter word. So this is all being led by a conflicted, literally conflicted, Todd Blanche, which brings us to the lawsuits that his Department of Justice is defending, right?

1:09:42Because every time an organization pushes back against Donald Trump's capture of public property to scar it with his name to violate all of the national historic and congressional rules and environmental rules surrounding these public projects as Donald Trump, knowing that he's, what we're watching is a man who knows he's on life support and that his days are literally numbered between now and the midterms. And so a short-termer on a short track tries to do maximum destruction to rewrite history in real time. So the only goals that Donald Trump have, which is why he revealed that moment of telling the truth and telling the American people he doesn't care about them, which should be add number one through a thousand at the midterms for the Democrats.

1:10:39It's just running that over and over and over again, and then running the statistics of doubled fuel prices, doubled food prices, millions and tens of millions of people thrown off of health care because of the Obama subsidies being canceled, and all the other kitchen table politics and checkbook politics that matter to people. Just run that as an ad, 30 seconds, and you're done. So knowing all of that and knowing he's about to be put out of business and become, I mean, wait till he's powerless after the midterms if we're right about our calculation. And watch what he does then. Now he's still relevant.

1:11:19He becomes completely irrelevant once the Senate and the House are controlled by the other party. And so he's busy now, both as a distraction method and to pump up his ego and to step on the news cycle, another poor news cycle, and going after these public buildings, trying to put his name on it, whether it's the Kennedy Center or let's in the middle of the night knock over the East Wing without permission and put up a golden ballroom and then say everybody since Washington has wanted a golden ballroom. and then say, no, what I really need it for is to protect my bunker underneath the ballroom.

1:11:56The ballroom is irrelevant. It's just the structure to collapse on top of the bunker. Again, as Yusuf, you said, it's all word salad. Kamala Harris used to get attacked for word salads. I don't even understand any of this. Nobody does. And one of the things that one of our collaborators on Legal AF said to me recently in our audience, Sky Paribent, was we have to go after these types of events. The attempt to take over of the golf courses, you know, the nation's first black integrated golf course, the takeover of the ballroom, the pool, painting a tidy ball blue, you know, which doesn't fix the problem of a leaky, a leaky millions of gallons of water leaking out of this pool.

1:12:38The algae problem is not being resolved by a paint job. So you have to go in there and you've got to use your Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. And you got to do the injunction lawsuits and the temporary restraining orders. But that's just a way to distract from his undermining of democratic principles and the right to vote. And that's what we have to keep our eye on, which I think we do a really good job on here with our audience. You know, people powered, the harnessing of human power, which is the only thing we have in a democracy and is the thing that the founders and framers knew was our emergency button, break glass moment, was the vote.

1:13:20We might have to suffer in between elections with criminal presidencies, but we had the ability to flush the toilet at the midterms and the general election. And so these lawsuits that we've talked about, you know, this phony filing with Judge Leon about the ballroom on a case that's already up on appeal where he has no jurisdiction, speaking of no, Judges with no jurisdiction as a press release to appease the president. So much conduct being done by the Department of Justice just to appease Donald Trump. You know, while we watch that, leave it to our illustrious collaborators and friends and those that we admire in public interest groups.

1:14:03the NAACP, the ACLU, Democracy Forward, Democracy Docket, Mark Elias, and the rest, as they go after these and stop them in their tracks and make them change course. I just interviewed Attorney General Rob Bont of California moments after J.D. Vance's press conference about, we're going to cut off$1.7 billion worth of aid for people in hospice in California because they're not taking fraud seriously. And we know what he's going to do next. It's going to be a lawsuit filed. And they're going to capitulate and fold the way they've done over hundreds of billions of dollars. That's the dirty secret of this administration.

1:14:43All they want is the headline. And they chase the headline. And then when that goes awry, they walk away from the lawsuit. They fund the thing that they were trying to make a political score, a cheap political point over while people suffer. And they walk away. And that is what we've learned from Trump always chickens out. He does it in the lawsuits, too, through his Department of Justice. And so switching from all of those arc to triumph and pools, and we're going to leave it to the federal judges who have fighter jet focus on these cases and will ultimately make the right decisions and have confidence that those that we support on this channel and this network, are on it, right?

1:15:32It's not just Ben and me doing the report on it. It's the lawyers filing immediately the lawsuits to stop it, to supervise it, to provide judicial oversight over it. And that is where 90 % or 95 % or more of justice is done at the district court level and at the appellate court level just above it, period. Very few cases, even with the shadow docket, it end up at the United States Supreme Court. I'm not diminishing the importance of the cases that make it to the Supreme Court. Let's say 100 cases during the year. And they are some of the most fundamental about civil rights, civil liberties, women's rights, voting rights, yes.

1:16:14But justice is done at this level. Most of the justice is done at that level, which brings us to the United States Supreme Court. Two rulings that came out in the last couple of days as we led into the legal One of them is on voting maps, a series of decisions on voting maps, where they are using, the MAGA 6, are using fictitious legal doctrines, which they are inconsistently applying, depending upon whether a Republican or Democratic principle is at stake, to undermine people's votes. So they're allowing unconstitutional, in my view, violations of Voting Rights Act, racist maps to be used in Alabama, in Louisiana, in Missouri, even though we're only either just a month or two from a primary or voting has already started, throwing away the Purcell principle or Purcell doctrine that used to have the Supreme Court say a year away from an election.

1:17:15We're too close. We can't make it a political question and interfere. And now it's like, you want to use a racist map? How much time do we have? People voted already? That's fine. Go ahead. And that series of decisions then led to them ruling against Virginia, which was one of only two states that took it to the people about whether the maps in their states for congressional districting should be changed. All the red states that we cover, that was all state legislatures listening to some governor or some browbeating from Donald Trump and saying, yes, sir, can I have another? Where do I sign? That wasn't the people of the state.

1:17:55That was the state house succumbing to Donald Trump. Whereas the Democrats in California and Virginia ran it as a referendum or a proposition for the voters to vote on. And so the one in Virginia, 3 million people said, redo the maps. And they knew what the maps were going to look like because they were publicized. 10 to 1 Democrat. Oh, no, gerrymandering. It's rigged. Why so many Democratic seats? I don't know why so many Republican seats. And so it goes to a Supreme Court who could have overturned a four to three, you know, MAGA ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court. Note to the governor, Governor Spanberger, make some changes in the Virginia Supreme Court makeup.

1:18:39Why don't you add a few more justices of your own creation? That'll probably help. But back to the Supreme Court, they were like, well, we're not going to block the decision by the lower court. The highest court of Virginia spoke, and it's too close to the election, now applying the principle against the Democrats, and we'll deal with that before the general election. Come back to us on a proper appeal. We knew that was coming. And the other thing that I thought was important to our audience is the ruling on Mifepristone, which is one of two abortion drugs used for medication abortions in America, which is the way that 60 % or more of American women make that most personal decision about their reproductive rights.

1:19:23No more personal and private decision about whether you're going to carry a pregnancy deterrent than that. And this Supreme Court, with only two dissenters, so seven to two, is going to allow Mifepristone to be shipped through mail order, through telehealth. You know, you get somebody on the phone to guide you instead of being in a doctor's office for the foreseeable future, another year, year and a half, until the regular appeal comes back up from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. It's the second time since 2023 and 2024 they've allowed Mifepristone to continue to be sold, even in states that ban abortion, while they get around to the merits of the appeal.

1:20:02So that is an encouraging sign. Now, there is a way to analyze that. Lisa Graves, who knows the Roberts Court like the back of her hand and is with me on Legal AF. We have a video up right now called Unprecedented, our podcast about the Supreme Court up this morning. And she said, this is all Roberts trying to avoid making abortion an activating issue and a mobilizing issue at the midterms. This is not him ultimately going to side with women potentially. This is just kicking the can over the midterms so it doesn't fire up the Democratic base and women and people who support women to go back against Trump administration and make it political.

1:20:50That is, I think, a very accurate description of what we just watched. Not that the Democrats need any more enthusiasm. The gap in polling between Democrats who said, when can we vote? They are at the starting line of this marathon race, and they've been there for 17 months. And they're ready for that tape to be pulled back in the race to start to get to the court, to get to the election ballot box and pull the lever. OK, whereas the Republicans are like, yeah, many of them are saying that's not the guy. That's not the policies I voted for, because the very fragile coalition that voted for Donald Trump have now abandoned him and he can't get them back.

1:21:35the Hispanic vote, the under 30 vote, the podcaster vote, the women vote, the independent vote, who are all interested in one issue and one issue only, affordability, have now abandoned him by double digits in the polls, never to be recovered in time, let alone at all. And with that, and with that, you have an enthusiasm gap where Republicans and independents that voted for Trump but want their vote back are just like, yeah, I'm not going to the polls. And that's okay. That's as good as converting them into Democratic votes. And that is what the Republicans are so worried about. They think they can wallpaper over it with money, money, money, and raise money.

1:22:21But we've seen in our own existence that money just can't get you elected if the fundamentals of electorability and popularity are not present. Kamala Harris spent a billion dollars to get elected. How'd that go? Not well. So that's a wrap on ballroom, pool, arc to triumph or Trump, Virginia Supreme Court, and an extra bonus on Mephapristone here on Legal AF. What do I get for that? A cookie? In any event, I'm glad that you're here. I'm going to do the wrap here for Legal AF. Thank you for supporting our show. I'm fresh off of last weekend's Webby Award ceremony where we swept all the hardware for Legal AF, the podcast, bringing home both Best News Podcasts trophies.

1:23:15They really are trophies. When I get them, I'll show them. One by the Academy Award and the other by the audience, the People's Voice Award. and Intersection, my podcast on Tuesday nights where I sort of ride solo, got the best new news podcast, People's Voice Award. So thank you for that. That just shows you that you are as committed to us as we are to you. There's so many ways to support what we do here. The podcast itself, still growing after six years, still needs more views and more downloads and more five-star reviews. Come over to Apple and Spotify and go hit those buttons there. become a member.

1:23:55We read all of the comments. Then on the shoulders of that base of Legal AF, the podcast, sits Legal AF, the YouTube channel that I curate. I've got a dozen contributors. It's got 12 new videos a day, a day at the intersection of law and politics. Take a minute, hit the free subscribe button. If you think you are a subscriber already, I assure you, you're probably not because we're getting 40 million views a month. We've got a million, 1.12 million subscribers. We got a gap. I get 10 % of our viewership and we're going to be really on the heels of our brothers on Midas Touch. And there's the sibling rivalry coming out.

1:24:39So help us over on Legal AF YouTube channel. And then we've got the Substack. If you don't know about Substack, find out about it. Come join Legal AF Substack. We got another nine to 10 pieces of original content there at the intersection of law and politics, including my live reports every day. You don't want to miss it. A whole new community on Legal AF Substack. And of course, support our sponsors, without which we're not able to do what we do without outside investors on Legal AF and the rest. So we really do appreciate everybody being here. Great show tonight. Thanks for your comments and support.

1:25:16So until our next show, which is going to be here, follow the programming guide. Monday, a new Legal AF live version. We call it Monday Night Live. Why not? Monday Night Live Legal AF 5 p.m. Eastern Time on the Legal AF YouTube channel. Another new piece of content for you on Legal AF YouTube channel. Wednesdays, midweek with Karen Freeman, Ignifolo and me. Saturdays, just like now, Ben Micellis and me on Legal AF. So until our next reports, shout out to the Midas Mighty and the Legal AFers.

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